This is a remarkably bad idea presented at the direction of that fount of crazed ideas none-other than president Donald J Trump and his team of crackpots, crazies, and utter incompetents. This sort of poorly thought out operation is how Trump bankrupts his investments
In point of fact, a lunar "colony" will require vast investments which will mostly be spent on transportation to and from the colony. Mars is much worse cost wise, and offers major provisioning problems as well because expeditions there pretty much **CAN'T** be supplied from Earth except with what they take along or preposition. Earth is only days away from the moon. Pragmatically, a damaged solar panel or broken drill bit on the moon can be replaced in weeks or months depending on urgency. But Mars is years distant and it's going to stay that way for a long time.
Once one gets to the "lunar colony", they are going to have to live underground for radiation protection. There's little point in going outside anyway. There's no air and providing an atmosphere is way beyond current technologies. Even with an atmosphere, surface temperatures would, due to the slow rotation rate, be either very hot, really cold, or rapidly transitioning from one to the other. What's the point in living underground on the moon? One can live underground far more cheaply and conveniently in Kansas, the Sahara, the Gobi, or the Australian outback. Moreover, because of the very low gravity, any long term resident is likely to be a permanent resident. They won't be able to return to Earth without years of painful readaption to our higher gravity.
What would make sense would be to cancel this idiocy as well as its less expensive, but still wildly expensive and quite unproductive cousin, the International Space Station Spend the funds liberated thereby on many decades of lunar rovers, Mars rovers, Mercury rovers, Venus rovers (once we figure out how to build one) and automated missions to the asteroid belt, and Jovian moons. If and when a affordable target where a human presence would be useful is found in space, then, and only then, is it time to consider sending people.
In the meantime, how about exploring and colonizing the 70% percent of our planet that is under water? It'll be vastly cheaper. It's no more hostile. It probably has far more useful, economically exploitable, resources than interplanetary space will have (in this century).
There will quite likely be a time for man to move into space someday. Now isn't it.
Yes and No? I believe that "Short" antennae tend to have very high impedance output. Lot's of voltage, miniscule amperage -- lots of bite, but not much power. Which is why we're here to talk about the shocks.
Now if you were to aim a resonant receiving directional antenna into the beam of a high powered directional antenna from a few tens of meters away, I wouldn't be surprised that you could transmit a respectable amount of power. But If you just want to send power a short distance, why not just string a wire?
Not to dampen your enthusiasm, but there are numerous radio transmitters around the world operating with powers on one megawatt or more on frequencies as low as 24Khz. Not to mention millions of kilometers of power transmission lines unintentionally radiating at bit of RF energy at 50 or 60Hz. You're welcome to string an antenna and try to make use of the "free energy". I suspect if you work at it, you might be able to extract enough energy to operate a simple amplifier. Maybe even enough to dimly light an LED. Not enough, I think, to power your computer, your TV, your microwave, or your electric car unless perhaps you live next door to the transmitter's antenna farm.
One possibility is that the price of Bitcoin is being manipulated. Ordinarily, I don'r find conspiracy theories very credible. But because of the poor visibility into who "owns" (i.e. controls) which units of Bitcoin it appears at least theoretically possible for malevolent individuals/organizations to manipulate Bitcoin markets. e,g https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/1...
Would "they" do that? If "they" can, "they" probably would.. The world of cryptocurrency is for sure a digital bad neighborhood.
Latency is indeed a bitch. But Musk's proposed satellites will be in much lower orbits than geosynchronous satellites. Result: much lower latency. My cocktail napkin (which isn't always right) says maybe 5 to 10 ms added to whatever pings one would experience from a wired connection. As with many of Musk's notions, there are a bunch of other potential problems, and I'm skeptical that Musk-net will ever be deployed or will work all that well if it is. But if it does come about, latency may not be a major issue.
Pretty much. A modern patent is typically a mass of deliberately Incomprehensible, usually overreaching, assertions tossed into what is effectively a lottery system where manufacturers face a choice of paying Danegeld to patent holders or turning to the legal system where patent metaphysics will be debated by lawyers until an arbitrary decision about scope and validity is reached.
Shutting the system down would be one small step for mankind.
You're right. It doesn't HAVE to be batteries. There are other energy storage options, but to date only pumped storage has been able to actually deliver acceptable performance -- 70-plus percent efficiency, costs as low as a few cents per kwhr. Problems with pumped storage -- shortage of good sites, storage costs are a function of frequency of use (i.e. it's cheap to store energy for a few hours, not as cheap to store energy for weeks/months), difficult to scale to small installations..
On the bright side, there are a zillion battery technologies -- each with it's own unique combination of capabilities and problems. Tesla would presumably use Lithium-ion because Lion is what they do. But grid storage doesn't really need Lion's high energy density. For example multi-megawatt Sodium-Sulfur installations have been deployed here and there around the world in grid backup applications. Strong point -- Sodium and Sulfur are abundant and cheap. Drawback -- tanks full of molten sodium and sulfur probably aren't something you want to live in close proximity to.
You understand very little about power apparently. Pumping water uphill is at best about a 30% energy conversion.
Closer to 70%. The New York State Power Authority has been operating pumped storage facilities for power generated in off hours at Niagara Falls for decades. If it didn't make economic sense, they wouldn't be doing it.
BUT the economics only work if you use the facility every day and there are not a lot of sites suitable for pumped storage.in typical terrain.
Google Gilboa-Blenheim for more information on an actual facility that has been in operation for about half a century.
Good idea -- if she has a preference. If she doesn't, it may be better for you to tell her (as generally or specifically as seems appropriate) what to buy than to have a salesdroid do the selection.
Who is going to be her tech support? Husband? Boy/Girl Friend? Roommate? You? Whoever it is, their preferences/capabilities may be worth considering
Although Unix is a superior OS in almost all ways, I'm not sure Linux is a great choice for a non-techie coworker in a distant city. If she can be educated on doing regular backups, I'd maybe go with a Windows computer that will run Linux satisfactorily if Windows turns out to be too fragile for her needs. Microsoft Office? Only if she somehow has a bunch of Office macros she plans to use. Otherwise Libre Office should be fine. Browser? Who the hell knows? Thanks to the total irresponsibility and incompetence of Google, Microsoft, the advertising industry, and just about every other major player, the Internet is becoming more screwed up by the day. I'd go with whatever she's used to unless you have a good reason to insist on something else.
Maybe a bit more than that. An Alexa thingee of some sort turned up here a couple of years ago and I admit, I was kind of impressed with its verbal comprehension and the quality of its responses. But, we couldn't really come up with a use for it. So it got given away. Or maybe it was pushed back into a corner and continues to lurk there spying on us. Don't know. Truthfully, I don't care.
On the other hand, I recently visited an old friend who has programmed some digital assistant or other to run his home entertainment system. It works well enough, but I found it kind of creepy.
If you ask me, the Europeans would have to be crazy to allow themselves to be overly dependent on any of the US, Russia, North Africa, or the Middle East for fuel to keep warm in Winter. But they are capable of figuring that our for themselves I think.
If you ignore NPR's sloppy reporting of environmental issues and go find a less inept news source, you'll find that the TEPCO executives are on trial for "Professional Negligence", not murder or manslaughter. Even the Guardian -- not known for its objective reporting on climate and environment -- gets that right. The financial damage done by the loss of six reactors runs to many billions of dollars. (Two of the reactors are undamaged and a third is probably repairable. But the site is a mess and restart of any of the reactors appears unlikely). There are also huge social and monetary costs associated with the evacuation of areas near the Fukushima-dai-ichi facility.
There's no question that geologists knew a lot more about subduction zone mega-earthquakes by 2000 than they did when the facility was designed. The questions would seem to be.whether TEPCO executives knew, or should have known, there was a potential problem. And of course what constitutes "Professional Negligence" under Japanese law.
1) is there surfing in Vermont?.
No. But you'll learn to love ice-fishing
2) will I have to wear socks when I go outside in December?
No. But many people do.
3) is pot legal?
Yes
Can you get decent internet speeds in Vermont? Probably not. And if you can, you may have to deal with -- may the lord have mercy on your soul -- Comcast.
Material Design: "The visual details are delightful, and the paradigmatic underpinnings — that interfaces are three-dimensional constructions, composed of layers of “physical” components — are refreshingly novel. But I’ll spare you more “oohs” and “aahs” over the language’s use of bright colors, large images, and depth. If we take anything from Material Design it isn’t how to use color,how your ease timing should be set, or what the resting elevation of an object should be.It’s not the details themselves we take away, it’s how the details combine to create purposeful brand experience...." https://www.wired.com/insights...
And that, unlikely as it might seem, is the most comprehensible of the first page of links a quick search turned up.
Now that you've been enlightened, you are no doubt ready to embrace those paradigmatic underpinnings (whatever that means). Good luck to you on your journey into this fantastic new technology.
There are so many sources of free tutorial material on the Internet, that I'm not sure lists of the most popular courses are all that meaningful. For example, the Feynman Physics Lectures are available at http://www.feynmanlectures.cal.... That's years worth of study material. It may just be an issue of not looking in the right place for basic science and math courses
For the US and Russia they are more of an indication of legislative and budget priorities.
More accurately, legislative and budget priorities in past years. It typically takes a number of years to design, build, and test both launch platforms and payloads For example, the James Webb Space Observatory has been under development for TWO DECADES and won't launch until 2021. And that's only if the launch date doesn't slip (again).
I agree with you. Windows 3 or 95 might be simple enough to be safe and securable. But modern Windows Systems operate more or less by magic. OTOH, I think (hope) that modern Windows systems are confined to administrative systems -- how many unused days of leave does Sgt Jones have?, how many spare tires are in the motor pool? -- and aren't used for combat systems.
Yes, the military uses old technology. By design. They like their stuff to work. Reliably, Which it often does. It's hard to imagine a dumber idea than applying a mess of half baked "modern" technologies that routinely don't work to a problem quite different than that the ones that they don't solve. (Hint: Type "lists of data breaches" into your favorite search engine. **THAT** is what nifty modern technology buys you.)
Suggested reading, for anyone who thinks the authors of this study have a point -- "Superiority" by Arthur C Clarke. https://www.freesfonline.de/au...
Note that active military facilities typically have elaborate physical security measures including guys with guns in place and that the militaries of the world have been using encrypted communications since biblical times and relatively modern techniques for data protection about a century. On the whole, their approaches have a decent record except when someone inside leaks data or massive state level attacks are made on their technologies.
Not that I'm a fan of spending billions to deploy Ballistic Missile Defense. Ever so long ago -- before most folks posting here were born -- I knew quite a lot about some aspects of the problem. It's an enormously difficult problem and I doubt that it's really been solved although it MIGHT -- and I emphasize MIGHT -- be able to intercept a single missile that doesn't deploy sophisticated countermeasures.
and then develop its own plan for a "compact power plant.
Might it not be a good idea to wait until a self sustaining fusion reaction has been achieved before setting out to design fusion power plants?
My guess is that once it becomes clear that a fusion power plant is doable and the economics are viable, getting funding -- private and/or public -- is unlikely to be all that big a problem.
I'll bet you a six-pack that the intellectual descendants of the geniuses who built the Chernobyl reactor can blow a fusion reactor up. But I'll give you that the explosion probably won't be all that big and the radioactive debris will probably be a lot less long lived and noxious than those from a damaged fission reactor.
I certainly hope they engineered the car to isolate it's entertainment console from the controls (and computer control systems)...
Probably that was their intent. But things don't always get implemented according to the original vision.
I'm ordinarily in favor of hacking and tinkering. But I'd suggest that messing with the software/firmware in a vehicle that weighs about 2 tonnes, can travel at 140mph and has a battery pack likely containing about 150megajoules. is something that ought to be approached with EXTREME caution. I think it can be done safely and sanely. But it looks like a multiyear project for someone who has a lot of experience with vehicle electronics and software. And it needs to be tested extensively in an isolated location, not a city street.
"Plenty of older concrete buildings are deadly traps waiting to pancake though."
Agree. Those older buildings, and especially 19th and early 20th century unreinforced brick structures are mostly what I had in mind. California banned unreinforced masonry construction in the 1930s after major damage was done to many schools by the Long Beach earthquake. And they retrofitted a lot (not all) of them in the late 20th century. Modern construction is much better earthquake wise, but I don't think anyplace in the US other than California went back and did something about vulnerable existing structures,
It's interesting that Japan and California actually plan for major earthquakes whereas planning for a repetition of the 1811 New Madrid earthquakes in SouthEast Missouri seems to be virtually nonexistent.
Slashdot Mirror
This is a remarkably bad idea presented at the direction of that fount of crazed ideas none-other than president Donald J Trump and his team of crackpots, crazies, and utter incompetents. This sort of poorly thought out operation is how Trump bankrupts his investments
In point of fact, a lunar "colony" will require vast investments which will mostly be spent on transportation to and from the colony. Mars is much worse cost wise, and offers major provisioning problems as well because expeditions there pretty much **CAN'T** be supplied from Earth except with what they take along or preposition. Earth is only days away from the moon. Pragmatically, a damaged solar panel or broken drill bit on the moon can be replaced in weeks or months depending on urgency. But Mars is years distant and it's going to stay that way for a long time.
Once one gets to the "lunar colony", they are going to have to live underground for radiation protection. There's little point in going outside anyway. There's no air and providing an atmosphere is way beyond current technologies. Even with an atmosphere, surface temperatures would, due to the slow rotation rate, be either very hot, really cold, or rapidly transitioning from one to the other. What's the point in living underground on the moon? One can live underground far more cheaply and conveniently in Kansas, the Sahara, the Gobi, or the Australian outback. Moreover, because of the very low gravity, any long term resident is likely to be a permanent resident. They won't be able to return to Earth without years of painful readaption to our higher gravity.
What would make sense would be to cancel this idiocy as well as its less expensive, but still wildly expensive and quite unproductive cousin, the International Space Station Spend the funds liberated thereby on many decades of lunar rovers, Mars rovers, Mercury rovers, Venus rovers (once we figure out how to build one) and automated missions to the asteroid belt, and Jovian moons. If and when a affordable target where a human presence would be useful is found in space, then, and only then, is it time to consider sending people.
In the meantime, how about exploring and colonizing the 70% percent of our planet that is under water? It'll be vastly cheaper. It's no more hostile. It probably has far more useful, economically exploitable, resources than interplanetary space will have (in this century).
There will quite likely be a time for man to move into space someday. Now isn't it.
Yes and No? I believe that "Short" antennae tend to have very high impedance output. Lot's of voltage, miniscule amperage -- lots of bite, but not much power. Which is why we're here to talk about the shocks.
Now if you were to aim a resonant receiving directional antenna into the beam of a high powered directional antenna from a few tens of meters away, I wouldn't be surprised that you could transmit a respectable amount of power. But If you just want to send power a short distance, why not just string a wire?
Not to dampen your enthusiasm, but there are numerous radio transmitters around the world operating with powers on one megawatt or more on frequencies as low as 24Khz. Not to mention millions of kilometers of power transmission lines unintentionally radiating at bit of RF energy at 50 or 60Hz. You're welcome to string an antenna and try to make use of the "free energy". I suspect if you work at it, you might be able to extract enough energy to operate a simple amplifier. Maybe even enough to dimly light an LED. Not enough, I think, to power your computer, your TV, your microwave, or your electric car unless perhaps you live next door to the transmitter's antenna farm.
One possibility is that the price of Bitcoin is being manipulated. Ordinarily, I don'r find conspiracy theories very credible. But because of the poor visibility into who "owns" (i.e. controls) which units of Bitcoin it appears at least theoretically possible for malevolent individuals/organizations to manipulate Bitcoin markets. e,g https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/1...
Would "they" do that? If "they" can, "they" probably would.. The world of cryptocurrency is for sure a digital bad neighborhood.
Latency is indeed a bitch. But Musk's proposed satellites will be in much lower orbits than geosynchronous satellites. Result: much lower latency. My cocktail napkin (which isn't always right) says maybe 5 to 10 ms added to whatever pings one would experience from a wired connection. As with many of Musk's notions, there are a bunch of other potential problems, and I'm skeptical that Musk-net will ever be deployed or will work all that well if it is. But if it does come about, latency may not be a major issue.
The patent system is a farce
Pretty much. A modern patent is typically a mass of deliberately Incomprehensible, usually overreaching, assertions tossed into what is effectively a lottery system where manufacturers face a choice of paying Danegeld to patent holders or turning to the legal system where patent metaphysics will be debated by lawyers until an arbitrary decision about scope and validity is reached.
Shutting the system down would be one small step for mankind.
You're right. It doesn't HAVE to be batteries. There are other energy storage options, but to date only pumped storage has been able to actually deliver acceptable performance -- 70-plus percent efficiency, costs as low as a few cents per kwhr. Problems with pumped storage -- shortage of good sites, storage costs are a function of frequency of use (i.e. it's cheap to store energy for a few hours, not as cheap to store energy for weeks/months), difficult to scale to small installations..
On the bright side, there are a zillion battery technologies -- each with it's own unique combination of capabilities and problems. Tesla would presumably use Lithium-ion because Lion is what they do. But grid storage doesn't really need Lion's high energy density. For example multi-megawatt Sodium-Sulfur installations have been deployed here and there around the world in grid backup applications. Strong point -- Sodium and Sulfur are abundant and cheap. Drawback -- tanks full of molten sodium and sulfur probably aren't something you want to live in close proximity to.
You understand very little about power apparently. Pumping water uphill is at best about a 30% energy conversion.
Closer to 70%. The New York State Power Authority has been operating pumped storage facilities for power generated in off hours at Niagara Falls for decades. If it didn't make economic sense, they wouldn't be doing it.
BUT the economics only work if you use the facility every day and there are not a lot of sites suitable for pumped storage.in typical terrain.
Google Gilboa-Blenheim for more information on an actual facility that has been in operation for about half a century.
let her go buy what she likes.
Good idea -- if she has a preference. If she doesn't, it may be better for you to tell her (as generally or specifically as seems appropriate) what to buy than to have a salesdroid do the selection.
Who is going to be her tech support? Husband? Boy/Girl Friend? Roommate? You? Whoever it is, their preferences/capabilities may be worth considering
Although Unix is a superior OS in almost all ways, I'm not sure Linux is a great choice for a non-techie coworker in a distant city. If she can be educated on doing regular backups, I'd maybe go with a Windows computer that will run Linux satisfactorily if Windows turns out to be too fragile for her needs. Microsoft Office? Only if she somehow has a bunch of Office macros she plans to use. Otherwise Libre Office should be fine. Browser? Who the hell knows? Thanks to the total irresponsibility and incompetence of Google, Microsoft, the advertising industry, and just about every other major player, the Internet is becoming more screwed up by the day. I'd go with whatever she's used to unless you have a good reason to insist on something else.
because the AI we have now are parlor tricks ...
Maybe a bit more than that. An Alexa thingee of some sort turned up here a couple of years ago and I admit, I was kind of impressed with its verbal comprehension and the quality of its responses. But, we couldn't really come up with a use for it. So it got given away. Or maybe it was pushed back into a corner and continues to lurk there spying on us. Don't know. Truthfully, I don't care.
On the other hand, I recently visited an old friend who has programmed some digital assistant or other to run his home entertainment system. It works well enough, but I found it kind of creepy.
That, or a US Air Force Base in NorthWestern Greenland.
If you ask me, the Europeans would have to be crazy to allow themselves to be overly dependent on any of the US, Russia, North Africa, or the Middle East for fuel to keep warm in Winter. But they are capable of figuring that our for themselves I think.
If you ignore NPR's sloppy reporting of environmental issues and go find a less inept news source, you'll find that the TEPCO executives are on trial for "Professional Negligence", not murder or manslaughter. Even the Guardian -- not known for its objective reporting on climate and environment -- gets that right. The financial damage done by the loss of six reactors runs to many billions of dollars. (Two of the reactors are undamaged and a third is probably repairable. But the site is a mess and restart of any of the reactors appears unlikely). There are also huge social and monetary costs associated with the evacuation of areas near the Fukushima-dai-ichi facility.
There's no question that geologists knew a lot more about subduction zone mega-earthquakes by 2000 than they did when the facility was designed. The questions would seem to be.whether TEPCO executives knew, or should have known, there was a potential problem. And of course what constitutes "Professional Negligence" under Japanese law.
1) is there surfing in Vermont?.
No. But you'll learn to love ice-fishing
2) will I have to wear socks when I go outside in December?
No. But many people do.
3) is pot legal?
Yes
Can you get decent internet speeds in Vermont? Probably not. And if you can, you may have to deal with -- may the lord have mercy on your soul -- Comcast.
Material Design: "The visual details are delightful, and the paradigmatic underpinnings — that interfaces are three-dimensional constructions, composed of layers of “physical” components — are refreshingly novel. But I’ll spare you more “oohs” and “aahs” over the language’s use of bright colors, large images, and depth. If we take anything from Material Design it isn’t how to use color,how your ease timing should be set, or what the resting elevation of an object should be.It’s not the details themselves we take away, it’s how the details combine to create purposeful brand experience...." https://www.wired.com/insights...
And that, unlikely as it might seem, is the most comprehensible of the first page of links a quick search turned up.
Now that you've been enlightened, you are no doubt ready to embrace those paradigmatic underpinnings (whatever that means). Good luck to you on your journey into this fantastic new technology.
There are so many sources of free tutorial material on the Internet, that I'm not sure lists of the most popular courses are all that meaningful. For example, the Feynman Physics Lectures are available at http://www.feynmanlectures.cal.... That's years worth of study material. It may just be an issue of not looking in the right place for basic science and math courses
For the US and Russia they are more of an indication of legislative and budget priorities.
More accurately, legislative and budget priorities in past years. It typically takes a number of years to design, build, and test both launch platforms and payloads For example, the James Webb Space Observatory has been under development for TWO DECADES and won't launch until 2021. And that's only if the launch date doesn't slip (again).
I agree with you. Windows 3 or 95 might be simple enough to be safe and securable. But modern Windows Systems operate more or less by magic. OTOH, I think (hope) that modern Windows systems are confined to administrative systems -- how many unused days of leave does Sgt Jones have?, how many spare tires are in the motor pool? -- and aren't used for combat systems.
Yes, the military uses old technology. By design. They like their stuff to work. Reliably, Which it often does. It's hard to imagine a dumber idea than applying a mess of half baked "modern" technologies that routinely don't work to a problem quite different than that the ones that they don't solve. (Hint: Type "lists of data breaches" into your favorite search engine. **THAT** is what nifty modern technology buys you.)
Suggested reading, for anyone who thinks the authors of this study have a point -- "Superiority" by Arthur C Clarke. https://www.freesfonline.de/au...
Note that active military facilities typically have elaborate physical security measures including guys with guns in place and that the militaries of the world have been using encrypted communications since biblical times and relatively modern techniques for data protection about a century. On the whole, their approaches have a decent record except when someone inside leaks data or massive state level attacks are made on their technologies.
Not that I'm a fan of spending billions to deploy Ballistic Missile Defense. Ever so long ago -- before most folks posting here were born -- I knew quite a lot about some aspects of the problem. It's an enormously difficult problem and I doubt that it's really been solved although it MIGHT -- and I emphasize MIGHT -- be able to intercept a single missile that doesn't deploy sophisticated countermeasures.
and then develop its own plan for a "compact power plant.
Might it not be a good idea to wait until a self sustaining fusion reaction has been achieved before setting out to design fusion power plants?
My guess is that once it becomes clear that a fusion power plant is doable and the economics are viable, getting funding -- private and/or public -- is unlikely to be all that big a problem.
a fusion reactor can't explode
I'll bet you a six-pack that the intellectual descendants of the geniuses who built the Chernobyl reactor can blow a fusion reactor up. But I'll give you that the explosion probably won't be all that big and the radioactive debris will probably be a lot less long lived and noxious than those from a damaged fission reactor.
I certainly hope they engineered the car to isolate it's entertainment console from the controls (and computer control systems) ...
Probably that was their intent. But things don't always get implemented according to the original vision.
I'm ordinarily in favor of hacking and tinkering. But I'd suggest that messing with the software/firmware in a vehicle that weighs about 2 tonnes, can travel at 140mph and has a battery pack likely containing about 150megajoules. is something that ought to be approached with EXTREME caution. I think it can be done safely and sanely. But it looks like a multiyear project for someone who has a lot of experience with vehicle electronics and software. And it needs to be tested extensively in an isolated location, not a city street.
"Plenty of older concrete buildings are deadly traps waiting to pancake though."
Agree. Those older buildings, and especially 19th and early 20th century unreinforced brick structures are mostly what I had in mind. California banned unreinforced masonry construction in the 1930s after major damage was done to many schools by the Long Beach earthquake. And they retrofitted a lot (not all) of them in the late 20th century. Modern construction is much better earthquake wise, but I don't think anyplace in the US other than California went back and did something about vulnerable existing structures,
Sure -- Four times the (kilo)calories the seller claims. A 285 "calorie" pizza slice would come in around 980 BTU.
It's interesting that Japan and California actually plan for major earthquakes whereas planning for a repetition of the 1811 New Madrid earthquakes in SouthEast Missouri seems to be virtually nonexistent.