The NYT Imagines Life After Earth

An anonymous reader writes to mention a New York Times article entitled Life After Earth. The article looks at 'bio-vaults,' be they in the frozen north or on the moon, which might allow the human race to continue on after a globally catastrophic event. From the article: "The trouble with doomsday, Dr. Shapiro argues, is that it is almost always rendered in popular culture as grandiose, though in reality, many minor incidents present substantial everyday threats. In 1918, an influenza strain killed some 30 million people; a possible new bird flu strain spurs contemporary panic. In January 2003, a computer virus shut down airlines, banks and governments. That same year, a tree fell on power lines outside Cleveland, resulting in a blackout for much of the Northeast. Doomsday can be understated."

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[Stanistani]

There was a paper published detailing how to enhance the smallpox virus by adding a cancer gene - it increased the projected mortality rate of the virus, and made the existing vaccine useless.

So, yeah. Doomsday is a relatively trivial exercise.

Eat, drink. Be merry.

Unsustainable Societies

[eno2001]

Back when I was in college I took both an environmental Biology class and an environmental Geography class. The term unsustainable lifestyle was used frequently in these classes to talk about the wasteful way that the western world lives. Much of what the classes indicated was that this view indicates that for the maximum carrying capacity of the Earth (how many people can be kept simultaneously alive and healthy at a given time) to be reasonable, we would all have to live in grass huts and eat rice. There aren't enough resources to go around and that is not a changeable fact. But these discussions were primarily limited to the domain of ecology.

It occurred to me the other day just how fragile our lifestyle is. Take, for example, the 2003 blackout mentioned in the blurb. That blackout lasted about two days where I lived and longer in some of the outlying suburbs. Just in those two days, I personally lost food in my fridge/freezer, got an XP (no SPs) laptop infected with a virus while trying to access the internet without my Linux firewall using a UPS to power the DSL modem, and had neighbors "wilding" in the nearby city neiborhoods since they didn't have to work the next day. On a larger scale, my neighborhood grocer lost a lot of their stock and prices went up to account for the loss (and oddly never went back down again), my employer lost a few Cisco routers due to unstable power when the power did come back online in spite of the UPS systems, and I'm certain there were people who had far more serious problems due to the blackout. Just two days and everything was starting to go to hell in hours.

Then I thought about this... for those of you who use less reliable OSes like Windows, do you remember how much of a pain it was to restore back to the EXACT state you were in before a hard drive crash? It's nearly impossible pre-Windows NT. You can get real close, but you're never back to exactly where you were before. Things that you've built up over time and come to rely on but also taken for granted are gone or don't work right. Or if they were downloads, then you might wind up having to use a newer version that loses functionality compared to the older one which you no longer have. Now apply that to a city. A state. An entire country. The way our societies are built are unsustainable. We are on very shaky ground and there is damn little we can do about it.

Also consider the "little things" that aren't so little when they regard you personally. Take breast implants. They require periodic checkups to make sure everything is going just right (ie. you're not about to be killed or made deathly ill byt them). If you happen to be coming up on a checkup and the hospitals are full of bomb blast victims, do you think anyone is going to see you anytime soon to check them out? Not likely. At least not until it's life threatening. That's no way to live.

I propose that people should try to find ways to live that can be easily carried on after most disasters (barring complete catastrophies or nuclear holocusts). For example, hydroponic gardens that are operated by wind up mechanisms with cisterns to collect rain water for the irrigation of the gardens. Or, alternative modes of mass transportation that don't rely on centralized power sources or centrally distributed fuels. Pretty much all of these systems should be self contained and rely on nature. Solar, wind, hydro, bio power sources are all essential.

At the very least, know how to get yourself out of a sticky situation using bleach, aluminum foil, paper towels or napkins, baking soda, a simple container and lots of copper wire... Those of you who know what I'm talking about will smile.