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The Social Difficulty of Saving Earth From an Asteroid
mantis2009 writes "When it comes to stopping a cataclysmic Earth vs. asteroid event, social science and international political leaders have more difficult questions yet unanswered than physicists do, according to report delivered at this week's American Geophysical Union meeting. Wired has a discussion of an analysis authored by former astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who worries that the international community is nowhere near ready to begin the complex and inevitably controversial task of deflecting an asteroid on a collision course with Earth. Among the questions to be answered is whether to modify the Partial Test Ban Treaty to allow nuclear weapons in outer space. Another possibility to avoid the destruction of civilization would require the international community to choose an area on the globe where an asteroid might be 'aimed.' Who would decide which nations get placed in the asteroid's crosshairs?"
What's your least favorite country: Italy or France?
We have a probability-to-miss-an-asteroid-hit gap here...
Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
As a teen I read lots of sci-fi, but then I grew up.
Thanks for clarifying that you are able to age. I was wondering whether or not to rule out this syndrome.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
-Can't be USA -- I'm writing this from there.
-Can't be Antartica -- We all love them Penguins
-Can't be the Artic -- Ditto for the polar bears
-Can't be France -- too obvious
-Can't be the Middle East -- Our oil comes from there.
-Can't be China -- We'd all die from the toxic dust cloud stirred up from the impact.
So, that pretty much leaves:
Quebec
I mean, sure, we all love Canada. Great comedy, good place for NFL up-and-coming players to practice (CFL for those who don't get it), and also home to many polar bears (See Antartic above).
But face it: even CANADA doesn't like Quebec!
I mean, what do they have? Good baseball? Nope. Good football team? Nope. Good comedy? Do Quebecois even HAVE comedy?
And best of all:
Quebec doesn't have UN veto power.
Problem solved!
How could you be so callous towards the massive loss of penguin life?! On Slashdot, no less!! You must be a Mac or *BSD fanboi. Or a Microsoft shill. Any truly free-thinking individual would obviously recommend somewhere else.
Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure everything I just said is completely wrong.
Antarctica? That'd be one hell of a curve shot to whip it underneath the Earth and up! Don't you know from all of those SciFi shows that asteroids come in perfectly horizontal and that the whole universe is like a plate. That's why ships can't avoid each other by flying higher or on a different plane - because there is only one plane that everything flies along!
So, step one: Kill all the politicians.
Well in the Uk Live near the Pennines and watch your house price soar - sod London let it drown.
Cartesian coordinates (0,0) on the axes of evil of course.
Keep in mind that a key duty of the US is to safely contain idiots such as yourself. Consider what would happen if you were let loose in a unprotected country like Finland or London. It'd be like the Black Death. They'd have Socialism in no time and the mass dying would suck. However, the US is immunized against your breed of idiocy, like a cask of highly radioactive material cared for by a horde of giant mutant ants.
Not if you put a heavy lid on the saucepan.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Even as a 13-year-old I was highly skeptical of those stories, not because of the technology or the distances or any of the practical difficulties, but because I knew that politics would never function to the point where a decision could have been reached, let alone acted upon.
That's not skepticism, that's cynicism. And if you thought that way when you were 13, you must have had a horrible childhood.