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UN Mounts Asteroid Defense Plan Following Chelyabinsk Meteor
Philip Ross writes "Astronomers have warned that our planet is long overdue for a defense plan against catastrophic asteroid collisions. When it comes to deflecting Earth-obliterating celestial bodies, short of a superhero capable of punching the approaching rock back into outer space, there is no single force dedicated to stopping cosmic bullies from striking our little blue planet straight in the eye. That's why the United Nations said it will establish an International Asteroid Warning Group to intercept and divert dangerous asteroids."
Because nothing is as effective at deflecting tons of rock coming towards Earth at extremely high speeds as... a committee.
Hit Earth with a massive asteroid once; shame on me.
Hit Earth with a massive asteroid twice; shame on the few surviving cockroaches.
Cue American sovereignty tinfoilers in 3...2...
The main issue we've got is the lack of warning we have. Even a year is too late if you want to divert large lumps of rock.
Once you're going to divert something then you have to work out where its going to end up - no point diverting it from the earth this year, to have it end up crashing into something else which ends up sending 100 rocks at us.
And here's the same tired old argument that we see when a third world country plans a satellite launch. Oh noes ... they don't have enough toilets ... and while they are sorting that, they should just sit around for the next couple of hundred years doing nothing else!
The UN does have specific hunger and poverty eradication goals and organizations that look into those issues. See these:
http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml
That doesn't mean the UN shouldn't have unrelated committees/arms investigating other issues and see if something can be done to address those.
This program sounds like a good excuse for the UN to waste tons of money on another boondoggle slush fund. It's especially awesome for them because if noone dies they can take credit, and if everyone dies then there won't be anyone around to complain.
- Nuke it -- not ideal, as we'll probably lose a few satellites, however the smaller pieces won't cause nearly so much damage. Most of the fragments will burn up in the atmosphere. Many will miss the earth entirely.
- Send a probe out to it when it's still far away. Position the probe close to the asteroid for a long time (months) -- the pull of gravity exerted by the probe will nudge the asteroid off its collision course.
- Wrap it in a giant piece of plastic, and mount some engines on it, so we can capture it into a nearby orbit. That much mass *in orbit* would be immensely valuable, even if it's just rock. (this one is probably unworkable due to the sheer quantity of fuel that would be required)
A manned mission is laughable, and only fit for the movies.
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I don't think a strongly worded protest/condemnation and/or sanctions will be noticed by an incoming asteroid. ;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
I I beg to differ.
UN should focus on basic / REAL people problems, not playing star wars.
1 - Being well fed doesn't stop meteorites.
2 - The UN's objective is to defend against basic/REAL threats against humanity (which essentially boils down to assuring world peace to avoid a third world war). Millions of people dying of hunger, sad as it may be, doesn't threaten the humanity unless those people also have an army with nuclear power.
3 - (the most important one) The UN is perfectly capable of doing several things at the same time.
You don't have to put the nuke right next to it as to smash it. With a reasonable distance you should be able to sublimate the meteor's dark and dust-covered surface surface, which creates quite a bit of pressure which can be further increased with additional detonations.
The risk to satellites is very real though. Just like the gravity probe you have to have an early detection and launch. A nuke in space too close to Earth will over-excite the van Allen Belt, which then damages satellites over a period of many months.
It may be an alternative to give the meteor a slight spin with a simple collision. The sun will heat up the surface and as the surface spins it creates a thrust to one side as it cools. You basically turn it into a solar-powered curveball.
This is also why predicting meteor paths is difficult; it's hard to tell if it's spinning unless one side is naturally brighter.
I wonder if there are any junior positions job openings for this...
All rites reversed 2010
A manned mission is laughable, and only fit for the movies.
Actually, going from past experience, not even that.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
At least we'll have some time to try and divert asteroids coming from where we can see them. It's the ones we don't see that keep me awake at night.
the UN can send a diplomat in to space to negotiate with the asteroid
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
This was ordained long ago by the elite. They make very long-term plans which is why they often get what they want. First it was Communism, now it is Terrorism, then Asteroids, and after that, Extraterrestrials. Long as the masses are scared shitless of something. Doesn't matter what that is. Fear -> power. They're lying cocksuckers, the media is bought and paid for, don't believe them.
I was secretly referring to Carol Rosin's relaying of Werner von Braun's warning about the militarization of space. I felt I'll probably earn the Troll mod just for thinking about it... But both of these people are to be considered reliable non-cranks and respected scientists.
However, if we don't have any tactical ability in space it means we are relying on the presumed aliens for our safety. - That would be the same aliens which let 1000 people get hurt in Chelyabinsk. - If meteor-deflecting aliens did ever exist, perhaps this means they think we are ready to handle it ourselves?
All rites reversed 2010
UN Official #1: "Sir! An asteroid on a direct collision course has been spotted! Impact in 5 days!"
UN Official #2: "Plenty of time. We've fired the missiles, each loaded with a STERNLY-WORDED letter ..."
Cogito, igitur comedam pizza.
We need some real numbers. If there is only a 50% chance of being hit by a city shattering meteorite in the next 10,000 I don't think it is worth bothering. I know it will suck if it landed in my backyard or even my front porch, but it is not worth it. There are other things we should spend money on like super volcanoes or massive earth splitting earthquakes or even rogue killer bees that spread zombie viruses.
Thank you for your uninformed, knee-jerk anti-UN comment.
They did eradicate smallpox, you know.
The New Scientist had an article about this. If it's just big enough to destroy a city, but not to destroy the planet, the most practical solution would be to evacuate the city.
That's what they want you to think.
sudo ergo sum
We would need:
1. A system to track "anything larger than a certain size"(tm) moving within out solar system and within "a certain maximum amount of time"(tm)
2. A reliable way to deflect/destroy "anything larger than a certain size"
3. A system to implement that way within "a certain maximum amount of time"(tm) available 24x7
4. The same as above multiplied by 2 or maybe 3, just in case.
It would take not less than 100 or 200 years, just to reach the agreement about who is going to look into it.
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
To me this looks like an agreement by the UN to help fund NASA's existing NEO program ( http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ ).
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Thank you for your uninformed, knee-jerk anti-UN comment.
They did eradicate smallpox, you know.
The UN did not eradicate smallpox. It was the WHO. No, not Pete Townshend. The World Health Organization. The WHO is not the UN.
Moron.
"They" didn't. They didn't even provide the money for it. The eradication of smallpox was a huge effort which spanned more than a century. The part that WHO played in it happened in the last two decades, and that was more than 50 years ago.
...an agency of the UNITED NATIONS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization
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That "pull of gravity" thing is so fucking ridiculous. You're going to have a probe being pulled toward a massive rock much more than the rock is being pulled toward the probe. The only reason it doesn't get laughed out of science entirely is you can't just land the probe on a pile of loosely coherent gravel and fire boosters, so you need to gravity-drag it. Otherwise, you're going to expend a ton of fuel keeping a distance that should be close, but not too close that expending fuel will create thrust against the rock and push it away.
Or... you could just couple to it and fire boosters. Enough boosters to move a 400 ton rock.
Also sometimes movies are right: Lunking a nuke at the surface of a giant rock won't do much.
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Then we shouldn't do it. While your at it, please turn over all technology in your possession that didn't exist 200 years ago and, at the time, would have been considered impractical or impossible. Cell phones, automobiles, computers, implanted medical devices, plastics and synthetic fibers, electric lighting and refrigeration... to name a few items.
Now I'm more worried that a huge UN committee will slam into the earth causing devastation!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
Also sometimes movies are right: Lunking a nuke at the surface of a giant rock won't do much.
We have thousands of them and they aren't much good for anything else. Most of us would be happy just to get them off the face of the planet and somehow imagine the nuclear arms race wasn't just an economic holocaust.
All rites reversed 2010
"Astronomers have warned that our planet is long overdue for a defense plan against catastrophic asteroid collisions"
Meanwhile, we do nothing about all those earthquakes, which actually kill people.
Man against Nature! On to Victory!
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It's like saying Cambodian children aren't much good for anything else, so we should use them for sex tourism and somehow imagine that at least they won't all starve when they've got all that semen to swallow.
The only thing you'll end up with is a bunch of starving, exploited eight year olds. Just like you'll end up with a heated ball of nickle-iron instead of a cold one. It might weigh slightly less. If you want to use that nuke power to move the thing, you're going to need to produce thrust; you'll need to redo the nukes to produce cigar-shaped blasts and turn the surface of the meteor... into... an... orion drive that's brilliant! The first nuke will blast away any surface protrusions and set a general shape--like a demolition blast used for sculpting a rock face (Mt Rushmore was carved with explosives)--while the following will provide thrust!
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America (specifically NASA) is no longer capable of dealing with incoming rocks. What chance does the UN have? Zero, absolutely zero.
Circle the wagons and fire inward. Entropy increases without bounds.
UN-SPIDER?
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How about a non-knee-jerk anti-UN comment?
I've believed the UN to be as worthless as teats on a boar hog for almost as long as I've appreciated a nice pair of teats on a female homo sapien. That's almost fifty years of careful consideration for you, rather than a knee-jerk.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/timelines/smallpox
Actually, the effort spanned three centuries.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
My parents and grandparents remember the time before the existence of the UN, and the two world wars that prompted its creation. Having an outlet to vent disagreements publicly helped prevent their being vented privately and exploding into the conflict that would have left Earth uninhabitable by life forms higher than moles. It that's worthless to you, so be it. I'm glad it was there so Khrushchev (?) could bang his shoe on the table and Reagan could play to his base and no one started shooting.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
You don't detonate on the surface, nor do you detonate a low altitude. You hit it with a penetrator. The deeper you can penetrate, the better. If you can actually SPLIT the huge ass rock, the several largest parts begin moving away from each other, at fairly rapid speeds. If it's so huge you can't split it, you at least launch many tons of debris in one direction at high speed, while the remaining larger body moves in the opposite direction at a much slower speed. And, that much slower speed is precisely the reason you need to detect, then act, MONTHS in advance. Waiting until impact minus 10 days is pretty much the same as not acting at all. A detonation that late might change the point of impact on earth be a few thousand miles, but it can't ensure a miss.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
/sarcasm/ Oh yes, I forgot - the UN has prevented the US from invading literally DOZENS of countries, for fun and profit. In 2002, the UN put it's foot down, and firmly denied permission to invade Iraq. Yep, I remember now.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
You won't make tons of high speed debris as a thrust source. Consider if you split the rock 50/50 mass-wise, you have to launch one 50% size chunk at a velocity V to produce enough thrust to launch the other 50% chunk at -V. If you launch a proportionally smaller piece--say a 1% chunk, 1/99--you have to launch that chunk at velocity V to launch the other chunk at -V/99. So if you want to move a 200 ton rock by launching 2 tons of rock off it, to get it moving 100mph you need to mechanically launch the dislodged 2 tons of rock at 10,000mph in the opposite direction. You can launch many pebbles at 10,000mph instead of one 2 ton chunk, but you will need to do that.
If you dig a hole deep enough and just set off a nuke, a big ass rock might not crack. Nickle-iron probably won't. You might get a canon.
How do you engineer a penetrator? I assume it uses a nuclear power source.
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So you are thinking that if either the U.N. or some similar body existed before either WWI or WWII that possibly either/both wars would not have happened....well, I am pretty confident in stating that the League of Nations sure didn't due the trick preventing a world war. Yes, the League of Nations is not exactly like the U.N., but they sure try to operate in the same capacity.
Crazy people typically can't be talked off the ledge or taught that world domination is a bad thing.
Just my $0.02.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator
If the big ass rock doesn't crack, you still ejected material in one direction at extremely high speed. Did you actually read my post? And, how many asteroids are pure nickle/iron?
And, what is this "100 mph" nonsense? We don't NEED to make any delta changes that drastic. Try to visualize this now. A quarter million miles out, there is a big rock aimed DIRECTLY at earth. It's going to take six weeks to get here. We detonate a warhead, which launches only a single ton of debris in a sun-ward direction, at extremely high speed. Your 200 ton rock is now 199 tons, which has absorbed the same amount of energy that launched the one ton of rock, well in excess of 1000 mph. That 199 tons is still going to come near earth, but it has six weeks to move OUTWARD from the sun.
Better still, to detect that threatening asteroid a million miles out, or multiples of millions of miles. The earlier you detect, the earlier you detonate, the larger the CUMULATIVE effect of even a very small change in course.
Unfortunately, It seems most people visualize a straight-on missile strike, as if they expect an explosion to just STOP the asteroid. We don't want to stop it - we merely need to deflect it a few fractions of a degree.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
Could I say, "Ea is my copilot"? Ea, the clever prince, Ea, the one who said that to rescue the dead, an immortal would have to give up his immortality? Ea -- ummm, EaShua, 'salvation of Ea' --- who did exactly that, 2000 years ago?
We've already been hit with a massive asteroid, and it made the Chevrons of Madagascar; it caused the few survivors around the world to focus on building pyramids; and it is recorded in the stores of Noah.
Excerpt from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI:
Ea, the Clever Prince(?), was under oath with them ... the men ... ...into it, ... and I set my hand to the oiling(!).
so he repeated their talk to the reed house:
'Reed house, reed house! Wall, wall!
O man of Shuruppak, son of Ubartutu:
Tear down the house and build a boat!
Abandon wealth and seek living beings!
Spurn possessions and keep alive living beings!
Make all living beings go up into the boat.
The boat which you are to build,
its dimensions must measure equal to each other:
its length must correspond to its width.
Roof it over like the Apsu.
I understood and spoke to my lord, Ea:
'My lord, thus is the command which you have uttered
I will heed and will do it.
But what shall I answer the city, the populace, and the
Elders!'
Ea spoke, commanding me, his servant:
'You, well then, this is what you must say to them:
"It appears that Enlil is rejecting me
so I cannot reside in your city (?),
nor set foot on Enlil's earth.
I will go down to the Apsu to live with my lord, Ea,
and upon you he will rain down abundance,
a profusion of fowl, myriad(!) fishes.
He will bring to you a harvest of wealth,
in the morning he will let loaves of bread shower down,
and in the evening a rain of wheat!"'
Just as dawn began to glow
the land assembled around me-
the carpenter carried his hatchet,
the reed worker carried his (flattening) stone,
The child carried the pitch,
the weak brought whatever else was needed.
On the fifth day I laid out her exterior.
It was a field in area,
its walls were each 10 times 12 cubits in height,
the sides of its top were of equal length, 10 times It cubits each.
I laid out its (interior) structure and drew a picture of it (?).
I provided it with six decks,
thus dividing it into seven (levels).
The inside of it I divided into nine (compartments).
I drove plugs (to keep out) water in its middle part.
I saw to the punting poles and laid in what was necessary.
Three times 3,600 (units) of raw bitumen I poured into the bitumen kiln,
three times 3,600 (units of) pitch
there were three times 3,600 porters of casks who carried (vegetable) oil,
apart from the 3,600 (units of) oil which they consumed (!)
and two times 3,600 (units of) oil which the boatman stored away.
I butchered oxen for the meat(!),
and day upon day I slaughtered sheep.
I gave the workmen(?) ale, beer, oil, and wine, as if it were river water,
so they could make a party like the New Year's Festival.
The boat was finished by sunset.
The launching was very difficult.
They had to keep carrying a runway of poles front to back,
until two-thirds of it had gone into the water(?).
Whatever I had I loaded on it:
whatever silver I had I loaded on it,
whatever gold I had
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
400 ton rocks are small potatoes. We still don't know the whereabouts of every 10000000 ton rock that's got a potential earth orbit intersection.
Also FatPhil on SoylentNews, id 863
Thank you for your stupid, uninformed anti-UN comment.
As usual - when you've run out of arguments, resort to insults. Thanks for playing!!
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
If meteor-deflecting aliens did ever exist, perhaps this means they think we are ready to handle it ourselves?
Why is everyone so sure aliens exist?
Free Martian Whores!
I don't know about that, we somehow managed to keep Ronnie Raygun from starting the nuclear war in Europe that he seemed to think was "winnable". That was even with Wolfowitz whispering "Nuke them now" in his ear.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Because it seems like at least some form of life in the universe besides us is a near statistical certainty.
We used to think stars with planets would be pretty rare. Now we find planets all over the place, and find them at an ever increasing pace.
Are you telling me that across billions and billions of galaxies, each with billions and billions of stars, leading to billions and billions and billions (and billions) of planets, that life in the universe evolved on only one single planet sounds plausible? Because it sure doesn't to me. In fact, it sounds outrageous.
Besides, to quote Monty Python ... And pray that there's intelligent life somewhere up in space,
'Cause there's bugger all down here on Earth.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Bunker busters don't split the earth; they penetrate an outer shell to damage something squishy inside. Still, the 'digging' part of this is useful. This one goes 200 feet.
A quarter million miles out there is a rock traveling in excess of 30,000mph (YU55 was traveling at 29,000mph; Chelyabinsk was traveling 41,750mph). The earth is 8000 miles in diameter, so we need to move this rock 4000 miles in about 8 hours. We can consider that for each 30,000 miles it approaches us we need it to move 500 miles perpendicularly. That means with this rock 1/4 million miles away, we need to immediately give it 500mph velocity perpendicular to its approach. Given that acceleration takes time, the actual final velocity will be much higher.
Consider that the distance to the moon is 1/4 million miles; while to mars the distance is between 36 million miles and 250 million miles. Let's say we can see something as far away as Mars at 100 million miles--we're looking for a spec of space dust, it's hard to see. At 30,000mph that gives us 3,333 hours to move 4000 miles--about 1.2mph sideways instantaneously; however we're going to approach the rock at like 17,400mph (Space Shuttle Discovery's top speed), so 47,400mph approach gives interception at 2,109 hours with the rock about 36.7 million miles away instead of 100 million--2/3 of the time gone, leaving us 1224 hours to move 4000 miles, a good 3.25mph required.
So you need 3.25mph, or over time who knows? To move a 10,000 tonne (10 million kilogram) meteor like Cheylabinsk, a city-destroyer, you need to accelerate it more than that but let's go with 3.25mph over 1224 hours. F=ma, so 10,000,000kg * 1.45m/s / 1224hr = 3.3kgm/s^2. 3.3 newtons applied for a continuous 1224 hours.
The S-IC used 700,000L of RP-1 at 0.81g/mL and 1,305,000L of liquid oxygen at 1.141g/mL to produce 33MN of thrust for 150 seconds with 567,000kg fuel and 1,840,050kg of oxidizer (total payload: 2,407,050kg of fuel). If we divide that 33MN down by 10 million to 3.3N and then multiply that 150 seconds to 1224 hours, we need roughly .003 times as much fuel needed: 7,068kg
You need 7,000kg of fuel to deflect a city killer detected 100 million miles away moving at 30,000mph, in addition to launch fuel, and assuming you can spot and immediately deploy countermeasures. Or, yeah, use a nuclear generator to dig and throw rocks away.
At this point we're at "evacuate the city" territory. The risk and expense are bigger than the expense of building a city--and you'll have all that nickle-iron material to use too!
Something with 100 times as much energy will take 100 times the energy to deflect ... or more: if it's moving much faster, you'll need to apply a lot more force. A meteor moving twice as fast is moving faster than your probe, so it will reach your prior interception point before your probe.. you'll land on it when it's closer. If it's 10 times faster, you'll barely be off the ground; you have hours, not weeks. If it's 10 times as big, you only have to push it 10 times as hard.
And then there's the whole "it's hard to see something that small 100 million miles away" problem. It'll probably start weeks out, not months out. If it comes from the direction of the sun, or obscured by the moon, it could be invisible. A lot of non-obscured space rocks are invisible most of the time even when you know exactly where they are.
Good luck, Solar Jetman!
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A nuclear weapon detonated in space is far less powerful than one detonated within the atmosphere. The shockwave produced is far less powerful then what is needed to alter a fast moving mid-size asteroid trajectory. Depending on how much advance time you have a mission to place nukes directly on the asteroid would probably be the best option we currently have. And if we are ever faced with an incoming asteroid the last thing anyone needs is the UN getting in the way. There are 2 and possibly 3 countries capable of destroying an incoming asteroid and those 3 countries are not subservient to the UN in any meaningful way. A potential asteroid disaster would help move space technology development into high gear with little regard to cost. After all it was ICBM rocket technology development that provided the launch vehicle needed to go to the moon.
Actually - most of the stuff that can hit the earth has already been seen one or more times, their trajectories roughly plotted, etc. We already know to watch for much of it. The asteroid that is going to hit us may or may not hit us on the first pass. We get time to prepare, to calculate how much thrust, and in which direction. The one that intersected our lunar orbit? We have an idea when it will be back again, and from which direction it will approach. We already have warning - all we need do is watch for it. Will it return in ten years, or fifty years, or 150 years? I dunno - haven't bothered to check on that.
Additionally, not all heavenly bodies move at the same speed. Some rock moving at 200,000 mph relative to the earth is going to be a lot harder to detect, or to deflect. Another rock moving at a mere 100 mph relative to the earth will give lots of warning, and be relatively easy to deflect.
Each and every instance will be different. How 'bout we make an attempt to deflect the ones that we have some chance of deflecting - and in the process learn more about how things work?
Or - we can choose to do nothing, like you suggest.
My dad always said, "Do something, right or wrong." I don't know how to sit passively and wait for disaster.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
From what I understand involving the UN limits the liability of any nation that tries to divert an asteroid and it hits the Earth anyway. Whoever it then hits (if anyone is left) could sue claiming that they wouldn't have been hit if the asteroid's trajectory hadn't been altered.
As if anything will happen anyway. First thing will be to set up a commission and staff it with representatives mostly from the Earth-destroying asteroids (Human Rights Commission) or they will endlessly discuss whether the asteroid really represents a danger or not (Security Council).
A rock moving at 100mph relative to the earth is going to come down with a thud. You should worry about it landing in the ocean more than anything.
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What's the point of not being killed by hunger, when you get killed by an asteroid?
I think it's unlikely that this is the only (or first) planet to have life, bot otoh so much has to be just perfect for it to begin that I do think it's rare.
But no way am I certain one way or the other.
Free Martian Whores!
they don't use any Microsoft products for anything important..Otherwise this plan is doomed! But then again, it's a committee..
You really need to get a grip of yourself.
All rites reversed 2010
Look, first off, I'm a fucking genius. This sucks because savant-level genius necessarily means you're not really good at anything and have no social life. Directed specialists are much better off.
Second, I've figured out how to reliably induce hypomania, so fuck you I feel great. Look guys, I played bipolarism and won!!! (Bonus: I'm so used to depression that it's preferable to baseline, so if I ever swing back or miss and land in a depressive state I'm better off anyway; heads I win, tails you lose!)
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But for the first two centuries of that, no one anywhere had a coherent idea of what the progress of pathogen-borne diseases was, and it took about another 3/4 (maybe 2/3) of a century after the development of germ theory (and it's later extension to recognising very small infections agents called viri) for someone to seriously propose the eradication of an entire natural virus in the wild. Now we're teetering on the edge of success against a second virus (polio ; you probably have relatives who were injured by it), but a combination of religion and warfare are trying to bring it back from the brink of eradication.
Talk about cooperation against a common enemy : War lending a helping hand to save Plague, under the helpful oversight of Religion. Those anthropomorphised incarnations of psychological terrors must be feeling really threatened by the progress of humans and their sciences.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"