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Pharaoh's Gem Brighter Than a Thousand Suns
Tamas Feher from Hungary writes "An Italian archaeologist accidentally found that the central gem in Tutankhamun's regal necklace is not amber, but a mere piece of yellow glass. Kinda cheap for the famous Egyptian pharaoh, best known for his splendid golden mask. Except that piece of glass is much older than civilization. Where did it come from, StarGate? Kind of. Scientists now think a meteorite much larger than the Tunguska event fell from the sky and exploded over the Sahara in prehistoric times. The tremendous heat of the 1000 A-bomb sized fireball melted large chunks of desert sand into perfect glass. The memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the pharaoh's heavenly powers."
That suggests to me he dropped and broke it. :)
Doesn't lightning strike the desert? I know it doesn't rain that often in the Sahara, but still, I find that at least as plausible as a huge meteorite.
Looks like Naquadah to me...
If the explosion happened "before civilization" then it might be hard for there to be any memory of the "apocalyptic event" that created the glass. We're talking 800,000 years here... even before the advent of oral legend (Mmmmmmm.... oral legend).
Just thinking of possible alternate sources of prehistoric yellow glass, I know volcanic glass is usually black (obsidian), but surely there are some situations in which molten lava melts sand of various compositions that happen to be in its path, and therefore could conceivably result in other colors of glass? And I know there are no volcanoes in Egypt, but it could have been brought from elsewhere, the Egyptians were known to do a bit of trading now and again. Since they don't actually seem to have any actual evidence for the meteorite theory, it seems just as plausible.
Oh no... it's the future.
The memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the pharaoh's heavenly powers." Or maybe, it's just a pretty sparkly shiny bouble...
"You know you're narcissistic when you quote yourself in your sigs." -- PRoPAiN!
The actual gem was replaced with a piece of yellow glass by grave robbers who did a very good job of concealing their tracks.
The event 800,000 years ago was one in Southeast Asia, not Egypt. Presumably the Egyptian one was much later.
Situation: It is found that an item which was held in high regard or considered important by some civilisation is really just an ordinary item.
Option 1: Similar to monkeys attracted to shiny objects, they have at some point in their baboon-fight happened to step on a piece of glass which by random chance happened to lie on top on some metal - getting lodged in the metal, and then warily but triumphantly being raised by the newfound emperor causing everyone to bow down to his shiny splendor.
Option 2: They needed reasons to consider things important, whether that was wood, glass, textile or gems, and the most powerful people typically had the most important things, like today.
is in thier rarety. Glass was a gemstone before it could be made in quantity. This necklace may be OLD. Glass, Diamond, Sapphire, Ruby, it's all the same. The jewlery industry is trying very hard right now to find some way to discount the value of man made stones, or we may soon see the value of all gems erode as the value of glass did once.
Everybody knows 3 people with my name.
Don't you mean the FAARGATE!?!??
We don't vant to get sued. Just be sure it has a mohawk and a wheelchair.
From TFA:
Compare and contrast.
The other day I was skimming through a book I very much enjoyed as a boy: Asimov on Astronomy.
Chapter 2 is about asteroids and comets that may impact the Earth, and how much damage they would do. He concludes with:
Asimov was writing in 1966 but still should have known better. The kinetic energy of a shattered object is the same as the intact object. The only difference is that the energy will all be shed in the atmosphere instead of mostly in the lithosphere. Human suffering might be ameliorated somewhat but unless the trajectory of the pebbles is changed, the atmosphere is still getting superheated with disasterous local, and possibly global, effects. If you're standing under the shooting-star display, then like any nearby sand, you're getting cooked.
Yes, this ruined the ending of Deep Impact for me. Yes, I'm a geek.
The glass was placed there to foreshadow the upcoming apocalypse in the middle east.
d od/jp3_12fc2.pdf) will unleash 1000 A-Bombs unto the region unless our noble nobel winners (http://physics.ucsd.edu/petition/) can remind the administration of the impact a large glass field could have upon our environment.
where upon the US Congress (pdf link: http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/
We're talking 800,000 years here... even before the advent of oral legend
The event 800,000 years ago was over Southeast Asia, and was "even more powerful and damaging than the one in the Egyptian desert". The article doesn't provide any indication of when the Egyptian event might have occurred. If it happened just a few thousand years ago, it might have been within the memory of Egyptians. Of course, the article doesn't give any information suggesting that it was that recent, either.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
When you go to the jewlrey story, you'll find that the prettiest gems with the deepest color are the man-made gems. The natural gems look faded and washed-out in contrast to the "laboratory" made versions. The man-made emeralds are the deepest green, the man-made rubies are the deepest red, and man-made saphires are the brightest blue.
For some people the value might be in the scarcity of the natural gems, but for me the value is in the aesthetic decorative value of gem (with the lab gems being usually of better color).
It has been already published by New Scientist on 10 july 1999!
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
i wonder if they are aware of this HUUUUGE 19 mile wide impact crator nearby ;)
c rater.html
;)
;)
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060303_big_
i mean this crater is sooo damn big that it wasnt even noticed till it was seen by satalites
theres on in europe like that too
its sooooo damn huge, an entire town is built in it, and an entire cathedral was built using a special rock that only forms from extreeeme compression and no one even knew it was a crater until some scientists realized the cathedral was built from that rock
when they are tooo big its hard to notice
like when you capture a lizard and it escapes and crawls onto the back of your arm, and thinks its safe cause it cant see your face
your so big compared to him that it doesnt even realize its still on you
I agree with you. However in 200 years when synthetic pure white diamond is used commercially in very large crystals, when corundums(i.e. saphires) are used for windows, our great grandchildren will wonder about us wearing what is to them just glass. I wonder what jewelry will be like when our physical scarcity matches our current digital scarcity. How will we adapt to such abundance?
It turns out that while Tut's sarcophagus initially appeared to be ordinary gold, it is in fact solid fucking gold. "Yeah, I couldn't believe it", Dr. Packenwood said, "but when we finished running all the scientific experiments on the coffin, it turned out to be 200 lbs of solid fucking gold!"
stuff |
Sounds similar to moldvite: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moldavite
The world is made by those who show up for the job.
It could be that Tut's successor really didn't want to put any more valuable geegahs in his tomb, and arranged for an impressive-looking but cheap amulet to save costs. Or, even more likely, a preist or other worker involved in Tut's burial preparations took it upon himself to replace the valuable gem with yellow glass, knowing it wouldn't be noticed among all the other bright, shiny things. Since the evidence was buried beneath the sands, this might just be an argument for one of the earliest 'perfect' crimes.
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
Metals. Gold, silver, titanium, maybe even gallium or iridium alloys. The shiny stuff that we can't, as of yet, easily make out of aluminium, charcoal, and air.
I cant believe how scientists create complete scenarios with details for things that happened aeons ago and they do not have even the little of sufficient evidence to justify sufficient crap :
Scientists now think a meteorite much larger than the Tunguska event fell from the sky and exploded over the Sahara in prehistoric times. The tremendous heat of the 1000 A-bomb sized fireball melted large chunks of desert sand into perfect glass. The memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the pharaoh's heavenly powers.
And then the fish were living in trees, and people had 3 legs. Ah, the meteorite brought to you by courtesy of benign aliens.
Read radical news here
Remember though, Kay Jewelers sells only Created gemstones not synthetic ones.
Yes I was actually told this looking for a Vday present.
They'll probably wear Duke Nukem Forever CD's around their necks. There will even be a single DVD version called "The Heart of the Nukem".
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
"I wonder what jewelry will be like when our physical scarcity matches our current digital scarcity"
Heres hoping its the encased souls of my enemies!
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
The piece of glass is brighter than a 1000 suns? Oh wait, no, there might have been a huge explosion that was that bright.
Are headlines just randomly chosen strings of words now?
Hmm... a bracelet made of Rearden metal.
Circumcision is child abuse.
Although the desert itself is millions of years old, between 8000 and 2500BC (end of last ice age until the final retreat of the monsoons) the Sahara area was very fertile, which is what led to civilizations forming there. Such an air burst would have had to happen probably around 10000 - 11000 BC or earlier, and was likely found because the area was mostly grasslands, not desert. It's possible it happened between 2500BC and 1300BC (around when Tutankhamen died), but such an event likely would be documented since writing was common by then in that region.
With water pollution destined to become a continuing problem, water quality-sensitive organisms like clams and oysters may become more scarce in the future, making pearls more rare. Add into this that there are few non-aesthetic uses for pearls (that i'm aware of, anyway), which means there isn't much drive for commercial synthetic manufacture. Invest in pearls!!
My guess would be that the process of making whatever could be made in abundance be patented to create an artificial shortage so the price stays up.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Man-made gems can be more ethical as well since they don't finance activities which further human suffering. See also conflict diamonds.
"Hi, I'm a famous researcher, can I see that ancient, impossibly valuable gem for a second?"
"Thanks, let me put it into my closed 'examination device'."
(Waits a moment)
"Ok, it's done." Hands chunk of yellow glass back to curator, "Yeah, it was just glass all along. Funny, huh?"
Walks quickly away with 'examination device', whistling happily.
My expectation is that this fellow will probably also find that the Hope Diamond, the British Crown Jewels, and pretty much any other gem he examines to have been glass all along. AMAZING!
-Styopa
Aluminum used to be an extremely rare and precious metal before they figured out how to extract the ore cheaply and efficiently.
There's actually a technical difference between the two. It's a teeny tiny technical difference, but it's a difference.
Man-made gems can be more ethical as well since they don't finance activities which further human suffering.
;-)
I see we have incompatible opinions on marriage...
throw a 10 pound bowling ball off the empire state building
throw 20 pounds of BB's off the empire state building..
same effect? I don't think so.
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Keep an open mind... Some new information (Esoteric and academically/Scientific), I recently saw spoke about ancient civilizations, +10 000 years and more (example, Lumeria and Atlantis, to name only two.) (To take a part), from a very long and complicated history/story The ancients had wars with very powerful nuclear weapons which resulted in to creation of all known desserts. Egypt was very important had first pyramid.(the one with no markings) (This is important as it was always fought over repeated blast, otherwise there would not have been sand to make the glass) Egyptians had long and integrated history with the civilization from Atlantis. So when I read this story I was pleasantly surprised that we have evidence about something that happened a very long time ago preserved with the pharaoh. 800 000 years, no problem... Ancient Civilizations 180 000 million to beginning of last ice age. Not going to give you the whole story go on do your own research and make up you own minds
If it's older than the earliest Egyptian civilization (around 3000BCE), well ... Sahara wasn't a desert at the time: Sahara.
The Raven
to bling bling
NT ;)
Aluminum is very common, but it's always found as a salt or oxide, originaly to smelt alluminum they mixed AlO with sodium metal and heated it until the sodium reduced the AlO to pure AL + NaO; this was a very dangerous and expensive reaction, which is why aluminum was very expensive, worth its weight in gold and rare. The modern method uses electric arc furnaces and electrity to cheap to measure, they just melt the baxite ore and the electricity electrolyses the ore into metal.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
What about those of us wishing to buy diamonds to express our fake love?
Synthetic or Manufactured diamonds would fill that market niche very nicely.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
How will we adapt to such abundance?
With violence.
You don't expect our future corporate masters to go quietly into the night, do you? They'll get their governmental thugs to enforce their right to profit, and failing that, they'll build their own "security forces" to ensure the safety of their business models.
Those darn sand people...always travelling in single file.
Prove it.
Are you suggesting there's something wrong with that?
Now, Osmium (roughly 6 times as valuable as gold) is a definite candidate for a precious metal, but couldn't be used ornamentally as it is highly toxic. Oil, as it is being consumed many millions of times faster than it is being generated, could potentially be a candidate as a precious substance.
Some of the freakier minerals are also candidates. Probably the freakiest I know of is a blue feldspar called "Blue John" that only naturally occurs in about a mile radius of the town of Castleton in the northwest of England. Because it is highly chaotic in nature (its absolute non-uniformity is part of its uniqueness and is what people like about it) it would be hard to reproduce in a laboratory. As such, it is pretty much guaranteed to remain extremely rare.
Speculating on future tastes, then, my guess is that non-uniformity and asymmetry will play a major role in the future.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Your wife buys that??
Keep in mind patents expire after 30 years or so. So, if they don't make their money in that amount of time, that's their problem.
It's not like software where 30 years of downtime on an idea is insane.
"he memory of such an apocalyptic event may have made sand-glass gems a desirable symbol, meant to emphasize the Pharaoh's heavenly powers."
Alright, it takes modern technology to figure out where this came from and how it was made. It also appears that anyone directly witnessing this event would be fried to a crisp.
So then how would the Pharaoh know how significant the piece of glass was?
-1 disagree is not a modifier for a reason. -1 troll, flaimbait, redundant, overrated are NOT acceptable substitutes.
DeBeers. They have the world's monopoly on diamonds and are quick to buyoff any new mines and ventures to control the supply. They are shitting bricks(diamonds?) and spending millions into detecting the ever more sophisticated synthetic diamonds. With all the effort they force on you to make the "perfect" diamond it will cost more than just buying one from them.
"You're everywhere. You're omnivorous."
We all know that the Tunguska event was caused by Tesla's Wardenclyffe Tower, which somehow was able to channel immense amounts of energy half-way around the globe. Apparently he was able to channel energy several thousand years into the past as well, creating the prehistoric glass for the Egyptians to find. Crazy guy, that Tesla. Crazy like a fox.
m0nstr42.blogspot.com
My Lite-Brite was brighter than a BILLION dead suns!
Shaw's Principle: Build a system even a fool could use, and only a fool would want to use it.
1. Italian scientist finds self alone in room with ancient amber necklace
2. Takes wife's aniversary gift out of pocket and..
3. Makes up BS story to tell the press
4. Profit
Next week we'll have a story on how Tutenkhamen's stuff was found in Venice, provoking theories that the Egyptians came from Europe and were sold out of it a la columbus & native Americans.
There is a group of scientist near Sarasota FL who can make a flawless, gem-quality 1Ct. diamond of any color for about $200.00. It takes about a week.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
Simple. By creating new and rare objects of jewelry. They may be difficult to create multi-color gems, gems with embeddded holograms, gems with holograms that are different for each facet, flexible gems you can use as clothes, etc..
My Suburban burns less gasoline than your Prius.
Remember though, Kay Jewelers sells only Created gemstones not synthetic ones.
That's actually a more accurate description. A lab-grown diamond is a diamond, just as much as a mined diamond is a diamond.
Funny comments don't deserve +5
You may already be aware of this, but if you're not that interested in reading Funny comments, you can always change the Funny reason modifier on the comment settings page to -1, -2, or even -6 if you're so inclined. There are some of us who enjoy the Funny comments as a break to an otherwise dull day; to each their own.
I was very surprised and pleased to see this story on SlashDot. For one thing, it offers so little opportunity for MS-bashing and ranting about the superiority of *nix users that no one even tried, making this story perhaps unique in the annals of Slashdot history. ;-)
/.rs seem to be boggled by the concept of King Tut valuing a piece of glass as a jewel. A jewel is nothing but a highly valued decoration, which may or may not be made of precious or semi-precious gemstone. In this case, neither the actual material, glass, nor the supposed material, amber, happens to actually be a stone.
It's also nice to see something of low-tech, cultural interest, here. However, both the author and a number of
And the "glass is glass" mindset seems to be near-universal, but that's like saying "music is music". In fact, there are a great many different types of glass, each with its own set of characteristics. Just a moment's thought will make this obvious to the most oblivious among us. I don't believe it's possible to be reading this without having, at some point in life, run across thermal shock resistant glass (borosilicate, one brand being Pyrex), tempered glass (as in a shattered car windshield), and "normal" plate glass. And, it may not have been obvious, but the coiled glass tubes in any stereotypical mad scientist's lab are yet another type.
These all have different chemical characteristics which make them as recognizably different, given the knowledge, as Bach from Bantu Tribal Drumming. The article dimurdoch linked to does a pretty good job of explaining this, but that reply is probably buried too deep for most people to see it. The meteorite explosion referred to is not supposition or theory; it's well-documented, though poorly known, fact and it provides about the only logical explanation for the chemical composition of this piece of glass.
As for Tut valuing it, yes, the Egyptians of 1300 BC were capable of making glass, but not glass like this! For one thing, the saying "Clear as glass" would have puzzled the heck out of any Egyptian of the period, if you could have translated it into ancient Egyptian for them. Ancient glass was not clear. Think porcelain, not windowpane. Centuries would pass before the glassmaking process was refined enough to produce clear glass by anything other than accident. What's the common, defining characteristic of all of the most precious stones, today? Clarity; they're all crystalline. There are other stones that are just as brightly colored that aren't anywhere near as valuable because they're opaque. You don't get that lovely glow that light passing through a gem produces. This glass isn't clear, by any means, but it's the next best thing; it's translucent, as are virtually all known gems of the period. In fact, most "gems" of the time were opaque stones we now consider semi-precious at best, such as lapis and carnelian. But, this piece of glass would have glowed a very royal gold.
Add in the fact that this piece of glass came from 1000 miles away at a time when most people lived their entire lives within 5 miles of their birthplace. Then consider the strange tales that must have accompanied this shard, of an inexplicable (at the time) sea of such glass chunks, the remnants of the Kebira crater impact.
Finally, think about what a truly odd material this was. It looks like the lightest colored amber, but is obviously not amber. It feels like glass, but is, at a guess, 10-15 times harder than the glass they knew how to make. (Tempered glass is about 8 times harder than plate glass.) Had they tried, they probably couldn't have produced enough heat to melt this glass. It certainly wouldn't have melted at anything close to the melting point of their glass. If they had tried, failed, and immediately dropped it, still glowing hot, into the coldest water they could find, it would not have exploded like their
They'll probably wear copper vials of crude oil around their necks.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
You got it right. Finer division of the projectile mass reduces penetration and overall damage.
I know a guy who tried to kill himself with a shotgun blast in the mouth directed upward toward the back of the palate. I'm not sure about the gauge, but his x-rays show a remarkable galaxy of fine birdshot still lodged throughout his sinuses and lower skull, so I guess it was likely a large shell. There's also a lot of metal reconstructive mesh in there. The blast caused a fair amount of disfigurement as it rebounded foreward out of his face, but overall he's remarkably physically healthy. If it had been buckshot or a solid shell instead of birdshot, he would definitely be dead.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
I'm hoping that after 200 years, humanity will have lost a bit of its obsession with spending vast amounts of money on pretty pieces of rock and will have moved onto doing something worth while.
Sorry to go offtopic, but where did you buy your synthetic diamond?
Don't answer, De Beers will have the dealer dead within a week.
What would you like to identify first?
...
w: a yellowish-brown gem
w: an uncursed worthless piece of yellowish-brown glass
30 years downtime is today in pretty much every business insanity.
30 years back means 1976. Think back and ponder what technology has come into existance since then. VHS would come out of patent this year. And it is de facto pointless that it does, since the format is completely outdated by now. If it wasn't for the format war, JVC would have had the monopoly on video cassettes for the entire time of their existance.
Development happens so fast that technology from 30 years ago is outdated by every standard. And that time frame is getting smaller and smaller.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Well, it appears there were 5 bachelors with mod points that read your post...
Had they been married, they would have selected the "Insightful" option.
Moderation +5
80% Insightful
20% Funny
Four mods found the parent comment insightful, and only one found it funny!!?? Worse, the post actually got several serious replies refuting it!
I mean, I know that
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5196362. stm
"It's time to take life by the cans." ~ Bender ("Bendin' in the Wind", ep. 3-13)
Jeez it was a long time ago.....
I'm hoping that after 200 years, humanity will have lost a bit of its obsession with spending vast amounts of money on pretty pieces of rock and will have moved onto doing something worth while.
:^)
Those "pretty pieces of rock" are often associated with the pursuit of the fairer sex. According to Inigo Montoya, "You could not ask for a more noble cause than that."
You can read the first chapter for free from Max Barry's website, which is exactly where you'll see this.
Remember, open source is free as in speech, not free as in bear.
Jewelry is more than the sum of it's matter. People seem for forget artwork plays a huge part in it! Think about it for a moment. Clay in its raw form is almost worthless. However, you can shape and fire it into pottery.
More to the point. It's not just matter and energy that's worth something, but rather its application of them.
Life is not for the lazy.
To summarise the gist of their content: ... but similarities with Tunguska, plus simulations which subsequently matched Shoemaker-Levy's Jupiter impact suggested that the airburst of a low density metorite/comet would not only account for the glass formation, but was statistically probable.
1) the glass was the result of a single event because of the distribution of large quantities of glass (100s of thousands of tons) formed at the same time in small area
2) the event was likely astronomic because analsysis of zircon crystals withni the glass indicated a temperature of 180000K degrees ( cf. lava at c. 100000k )
3) the absence of a crater matching the glass distribution was not conclusive (there has been significant water flows in the Sahara since the event, so the glass could conceivably have been transported from the area...
4)
The program was a bit sensationalist, but the references can be googled from TFA.
I'm surprised nobody brought up the theory that this is a nuclear weapons test site from an ancient civilization! The educated guesses all say "1,000's of A-bombs". Don't forget that Trinity was "only" about 10-15 kilotons. A thermonuclear bomb can generate upwards of 50 MEGAtons, well over 2 orders of magnitude of energy. This is old news. The glass has been known for centuries under the name Libyan Desert Glass . I have a chunk I bought on eBay over a year ago. But back to topic, books written in ancient Sanskrit describe bombs as powerful as the sun, and there are unexplained areas of radioactivity such as the one in Rajasthan, India. Why couldn't Libyan glass be from an ancient thermonuclear bomb test site?
Read a preview of my novel CYBERCHILD at www.smartalix.com/cyberchild
This was the subject of horizon on bbc2 last night.
He didn't find out is was glass by accident! He had a hunch and booked time for himself and his team to test it.
The metorite theory was confirmed by finding degraded zircon plus other high tempreature/pressure indicators in the glass. They concluded that, like tunguska, there was no significant impact crater due to the object exploding in the atmosphere. The resulting fireball and small crater (too small to survive) created the glass.
The area was not desert back then. The glass formed out of limestone and was broken up and distributed by water.
if a perfectlty square rock, 10ft to a side, is thrown into the atmosphere from outer space,
it presents a total of 600 sq ft of surface area for the atmosphere to burn away due to abalative effect...
if 1000 square rocks, thrown into the atmosphere, are presenting 6000 sq ft of surface area, the abalative effect is far greater.
note, both rocks have 1000 CF of volume.
if you blow up the asteroid, the effects are reduced, even if 100% of the original material enters the atmosphere.
same as the BB's and bowling ball...
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
Been reading your Von Daniken or whatever? Here just for kicks, to help you out of your pit of ignorence. Atlantis is mentioned in one source originally, Plato's Timaeus, to provide a hypothetical to measure against the Republic. The guy who brings up Atlantis mentions it as a story his granddaddy told him on the equivalent of April Fool's Day. Look, mystical bullshit is fun to read, but it's still bullshit. Real history mystery is more interesting. Like, the mystery for example, of why so many miserable ignernt fucks, oops, folks, over the centuries have wanted to believe in a place like Atlantis. Go learn something worth learning.
While I have played the nationstates.net game, I have not read Jennifer Government, and that's not where I got the notion from.
Controlling the economy is of utmost importance to everyone. The rich want to stay rich and in power and the poor want to get rich and take power. You can't have power without money. (Money is war in convenient quantified-token form, but that's a whole 'nother discussion.) So when someone decimates the economy of scarce items, whoever is in control and striving for control loses a HUGE investment of time and effort, as well as their entire goal of control. It's only logical to assume that the losers will strike out violently in this scenario.
Of course, they can't win. Someone with enough power (a device, a method, a support structure and organization, whatever) to destroy the economy in such a manner would be virtually untouchable. Especially when they use that power for philanthropy and get a power-base of epic proportions. At that point, it turns into an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" situation for the formerly power-hungry control freaks.