Worse Than an Economic Collapse: Nuclear War and Dark Ages

This article was first published on Al Fin blog


A post-nuclear war collapse of civilisation and dark ages, perhaps?

We are entering a new nuclear age -- alien to previous thinking. Smaller and smaller states are aspiring to join the nuclear club. And at least some of these new players intend to use their new toys.

World map with nuclear weapons development statusrepresented by color.

  Five "nuclear weapons states" from the NPT

  Other states known to possess nuclear weapons

  States formerly possessing nuclear weapons

  States suspected of being in the process of developing nuclear weapons and/or nuclear programs

  States which at one point had nuclear weapons and/or nuclear weapons research programs

  States that possess nuclear weapons, but have not widely adopted them

Nuclear weapons are being acquired and built by more and more nations around the world. And it is the nature of modern nuclear proliferation that almost guarantees that nuclear weapons will be used in the future.

India vs. Pakistan. North Korea vs. South Korea or Japan. Iran vs. Israel. Saudi Arabia vs. Iran. And so on, as the wheel of proliferation rolls on and on -- with the cheerful assistance of Russia (and China), and the complaisant indifference of Obama's US.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s -- and with the ongoing collapse of Russia -- there is the promise of a huge nuclear arsenal with global reach coming onto world arms markets. Massive corruption infests every part of Russia's government and military -- everything is up for grabs, if the price is right. Suddenly nations do not have to develop and build their own nuclear weapons -- they can buy them or trade gold, diamonds, or other goodies.

The United Nations is certainly a failure, in terms of controlling global conflict. Given the utter corruption of the UN, that may be for the best.

China and Russia have shown no indication of wanting to step in to promote stability -- as opposed to their traditional role of fomenting instability. And as the ability and the will of the USA to block nuclear proliferation becomes blunted by America's own growing internal corruption, international incompetence, and domestic dysfunction, the nuclear aspirants of the emerging and third worlds will come out to play.

Once the US made the decision to allow itself to grow weaker internationally -- from 2009 onward and now at a more rapid pace -- any future threats of US intervention to prevent nuclear proliferation will likely be ignored. And if the US becomes too insistent on enforcing non-proliferation treaties, the ability to unleash an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) to disable the US (causing up to 90% US population casualties over one year) is coming within the easy reach of more and more of the US' enemies.

America was stunned after 9/11, with the loss of thousands of lives. New Orleans was knocked into pathetic helplessness by a tropical hurricane, and much of New York City was thrown into the dark, with rampant looting and lawlessness -- by a relatively small and transient tidal surge.

If the US power grid is knocked down by a large scale EMP attack, it would require several months at the least to restore full power. During that time, millions would die, and the US as a whole (and much of Canada) would be essentially paralysed.

And what would be happening outside North America all this time? Nothing good. With the removal of the moderating influence of the US, simmering hatreds and antagonisms would flare wildly. Europe itself would likely be the recipient of either EMP attacks or worse.

Within the dark zones, ethnic - religious - and cultural violence would ignite and spread. In the lieu of prompt intervention by well armed and organised forces, a flood of violent anarchy would flow like a bloody river.

Modern civilised people have no internal gauge or sense by which they can measure the true impact of such swiftly spreading chaotic events. And so they instinctively dismiss the possibility as absurd and impossible.

But a US growing rapidly weak and wobbly, combined with an increasingly bold and belligerent China -- and a Russia growing more desperate as it sees its future unfolding before it -- this particular evolution of the great nuclear powers along with a nuclear proliferation in the Muslim world, the third world, and the emerging world, could quickly convert the "inconceivable" into the present reality.

Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst.

And keep in mind that even the best armed and prepped personal, family, or community survival compound would be quickly overrun and destroyed by just a moderate-sized unit of the Los Zetas drug cartel para-military organisation, or the equivalent. Best think very deeply when you think "preparation," and keep your assets concealed.

The Road to an Insect Powered Apocalypse

'Nature has solved the problem of how to design miniature flying machines.

'By learning those lessons, our findings will make it possible to aerodynamically engineer a new breed of surveillance vehicles that, because they are as small as insects and also fly like them, completely blend into their surroundings.'

The insect manoeuvrability which allows flies the ability to land precisely and fly off again at speed may one day prove a crucial tactical advantage in wars and could even save lives in disasters.

The military would like to develop tiny robots that can fly inside caves and barricaded rooms to send back real-time intelligence about the people and weapons inside. _DailyMail

It starts innocently enough. Cameras mounted on flying insects, powered by energy from the insects' wing motion.

Minute cameras and microphones mounted on the backs of beetles will help emergency services find victims trapped or buried underneath rubble.

Researchers aim to power a tiny “backpack” of sensors by “scavenging” energy from the insect’s own wing movements to help create a lasting power source. The bugs can then be released into collapsed buildings or other areas seen as too dangerous for human rescue teams.

Professor Khalil Najafi, who is developing the new technology, said the insect’s own kinetic energy would act as a battery for a variety of communication equipment. _Telegraph_via_Dvice

Images via Dvice

But slowly, the darker side of insect cyborgs shows itself. Suddenly, instead of mounting cameras on insects, we see small lasers -- even miniature rocket launchers. What was once a humanitarian effort meant to save lives, slowly morphs into a stealth assassin's secret fantasy.

...it's well known that scientists are experimenting with insect-electronics hybrids, resulting in some rather interesting scenarios, including remote-controlled insect drones. _Dvice

Beyond the insect drone, will come observation drones and micro-assassins too small and fast to register by the human eye. And after those deadly and diminutive dynamos more sinister nano-devices will be on their way.

"What could be more sinister than tiny stealth assassins that kill in secret silence?" We are not at liberty to discuss that issue at present. But if you are thinking clearly, you should have at least an idea. More later.

Behind the Scenes in the Green Eco-Fascist Doomer Cult

This article was previously published on Al Fin Energy and the Al Fin blogs

Green doomer eco-fascist cultists all follow similar guidelines: Slash the human population of the planet, although they themselves are unwilling to go first.. Blame free markets and western civilisation for most of the world's problems. Eschew all viable forms of large-scale energy in favour of those which are exorbitantly expensive and innately unreliable. Hate advanced technology, and want to push the world toward primitive lifestyles and global poverty. They are essentially anti-individual and pro-collective.

Members of any doomer cult will recognise the litany, whether from the climate change catastrophe cult, the peak oil doomer cult, the overpopulation doom cult, the global pollution doom cult, the biodiversity doom cult, etc.

Here is more from one of the horses' mouths:

This is Finnish writer Pentti Linkola — a man who demands that the human population reduce its size to around 500 million and abandon modern technology and the pursuit of economic growth — in his own words.

He likens Earth today to an overflowing lifeboat:

What to do, when a ship carrying a hundred passengers suddenly capsizes and there is only one lifeboat? When the lifeboat is full, those who hate life will try to load it with more people and sink the lot. Those who love and respect life will take the ship’s axe and sever the extra hands that cling to the sides.

He sees America as the root of the problem:

The United States symbolises the worst ideologies in the world: growth and freedom.

He unapologetically advocates bloodthirsty dictatorship:

Any dictatorship would be better than modern democracy. There cannot be so incompetent a dictator that he would show more stupidity than a majority of the people. The best dictatorship would be one where lots of heads would roll and where government would prevent any economical growth .

We will have to learn from the history of revolutionary movements — the national socialists, the Finnish Stalinists, from the many stages of the Russian revolution, from the methods of the Red Brigades — and forget our narcissistic selves.

A fundamental, devastating error is to set up a political system based on desire. Society and life have been organized on the basis of what an individual wants, not on what is good for him or her.

As is often the way with extremist central planners Linkola believes he knows what is best for each and every individual, as well as society as a whole:

Just as only one out of 100,000 has the talent to be an engineer or an acrobat, only a few are those truly capable of managing the matters of a nation or mankind as a whole. In this time and this part of the World we are headlessly hanging on democracy and the parliamentary system, even though these are the most mindless and desperate experiments of mankind. In democratic coutries the destruction of nature and sum of ecological disasters has accumulated most. Our only hope lies in strong central government and uncompromising control of the individual citizen.

_azizonomics.com

H/T Zerohedge

This fellow is not actually so extreme, for a green. He may be a bit more honest and open about his convictions than most, but that is changing. Even the WWF -- which has written many of the supporting "studies" for the IPCC climate change reports -- has come out in support of policies which would ultimately result in a large scale human dieoff.

Is this also the face of the peak oil doomer cult? Certainly you find a lot of peak oil cult wankers fixated on doom porn, compulsively getting their doom fix whenever possible. It would be easy to assume that they actually want to see suburbia burning, that they would like to see the end of civilisation as we know it.

Not that most of the incompetent athols would survive very long after such an event. More: Europe as the canary in the coal mine

Early dissent among former believers in the CAGW orthodoxy and carbon hysteria warming cult

Sizing the Power Supply for Your Doomsday Bunker

After the Apocalypse
After the doomsday bell tolls, you will want to have a safe hideaway, packed with your favourite foods, beverages, people, and prescription drugs. But no matter how safely your bunker is designed, you cannot survive long without a source of heating and electrical power.

Issues of energy density dictate the need for a nuclear power and heat source -- either fission or fusion. The choice seems to come down to either a small modular nuclear fission reactor -- such as the NuScale or Wilcox and Babcock models, vs one of the new scalable fusion reactor models. The Lawrenceville Plasma Physics focus fusion device pictured below, appears to be the leader of the pack in terms of timeline for proof of concept, prototype, commercial demo, and mass production.

All images below taken from Lawrenceville Plasma Physics Inc (PDF) (via) NBF

Five megawatts baseload power should be enough to supply the power and heat needs of most medium-sized doomsday communities. When living in an underground environment, it is easy to underestimate needs for space lighting and grow-lighting, as well as power for supplying pumps, compressors, blowers, fans, filtration devices, and various electronic devices.

The diagram above attempts to illustrate energy flows and losses in the focus fusion system. Operation of the reactor will be highly automated, but a certain amount of oversight will be necessary, to assure smooth function and to limit any need for routine maintenance shutdown.

Baseload power generation means that the reactor produces 5 MW at all times. Any heat and power produced above the needs of the doomsday community will converted as needed, and routed to storage or to a sink. Since the reactor utilises hydrogen and boron as fuel, a significant amount of excess power will be used to maintain hydrogen stores. The hydrogen can be used as fuel in either the focus fusion reactor, or in backup fuel cell CHP generators.

The timeline for production of the LPP focus fusion reactors is particularly optimistic, with estimates for mass production as early as 2016.

Keep in mind that US federal and state regulators are unlikely to approve these devices for sale in the US anytime within the next decade. This means that any US citizen wishing to use these reactors as backup power supplies for their home, seastead, polar outpost, or doomsday bunker, will either need to locate outside the US, or will need to find extra-legal ways of installing their nuclear fusion (or SMR fission) reactors within the borders of the US.

In the event of doomsday, it is expected that nuclear enforcement by US federal or state officials will be suspended for a number of years. In such a case, issues of survival are likely to be paramount, over issues of bureaucratic red tape.

Large Comet Impact May Have Wiped Out Early Human Culture in North America

We have speculated here that seafarers from North America -- either Homo Neanderthal or Homo Sapiens -- arrived in eastern North America well before immigrants from Asia. But what happened to these early American settlers and their culture?

There is archaeological evidence that other cultures, possessing cruder tool technologies than the Clovis people, were present in North America before the earliest Clovis dates.

Is it possible that the culture of these "first Americans" was obliterated by a cosmic impact which led the the Younger Dryas cooling period?

A 16-member international team of researchers that includes James Kennett, professor of Earth science at UC Santa Barbara, has identified a nearly 13,000-year-old layer of thin, dark sediment buried in the floor of Lake Cuitzeo in central Mexico. The sediment layer contains an exotic assemblage of materials, including nanodiamonds, impact spherules, and more, which, according to the researchers, are the result of a cosmic body impacting Earth.

These new data are the latest to strongly support of a controversial hypothesis proposing that a major cosmic impact with Earth occurred 12,900 years ago at the onset of an unusual cold climatic period called the Younger Dryas. The researchers’ findings appear in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. _Astrobio_via_GlobalWarmingPolicyFoundation

AstrobioThe evidence is new, and supports an older theory that the Younger Dryas cold period was caused by a cosmic impact. It may also help explain what happened to the earliest North American cultures. More on this theory from back in 2007:

The Clovis people of North America, flourishing some 13,000 years ago, had a mastery of stone weaponry that stood them in good stead against the constant threat of large carnivores, such as American lions and giant short-faced bears. It's unlikely, however, that they thought death would come from the sky.

According to results presented by a team of 25 researchers this week at the American Geophysical Union meeting in Acapulco, Mexico, that's where the Clovis people's doom came from. Citing several lines of evidence, the team suggests that a wayward comet hurtled into Earth's atmosphere around 12,900 years ago, fractured into pieces and exploded in giant fireballs. Debris seems to have settled as far afield as Europe.

Jim Kennett, an oceanographer at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and one of the team's three principal investigators, claims immense wildfires scorched North America in the aftermath, killing large populations of mammals and bringing an abrupt end to the Clovis culture. "The entire continent was on fire," he says. _NewScientist

More from an earlier Al Fin article

More from an even earlier Donald Sensing article

The identity of "the first Americans" is shrouded in mystery. There is evidence that seafarers from Eastern Asia survived an early harrowing trans-Pacific voyage to settle on the Pacific Coast of North America. There is also evidence for early settlement of the South American Pacific coast from Polynesia. Evidence for early migration from Europe is also present, as noted here earlier.

But something seems to have disrupted the pattern of settlement for most of these immigrants. The pre-Clovis people disappeared mysteriously. The Clovis people disappeared mysteriously. The surviving descendants of the early people of North America do not have records of what happened to their ancestors, although some verbal accounts are suggestive of a cosmic catastrophe.

Scientists are slow to adopt new explanations for mysteries which their old theories do not admit to. But humans who are not attached to any particular theory, will often tug and pull at the threads of a mystery until it reveals itself.

Contingencies: Keeping Your Options Open

We would like to think that things can continue on as they have done, generation after generation. Through good and bad, humans have muddled through and survived -- even prospered in more advanced parts of the world. But there is always a niggling of a doubt in the back of the mind: "What if this happens, or that? How would we survive the ultimate catastrophe?"

Abandoned Missile Silo Home
Certainly a nuclear war, a worldwide fatal contagion, or a global zombie apocalypse would all be difficult trials to endure. An ice age might push civilisation to the very brink. But Earth abides, and humans could too. In the near future, the only catastrophe that might require the complete abandonment of the planet, would be an extraterrestrial strike -- a comet, asteroid, or equivalent large scale impact.

Space Station Fallback Option
Should such a planetary catastrophe occur, one would wish to have a convenient launch pad for an orbital craft capable of carrying one's self and significant others. One would also need a destination in orbit, where one could "freshen up" and restore one's natural vigour and vitality.

A missile silo home such as the one pictured at the top of this entry, provides both a rocket launching platform and a convenient aerocraft runway for quick access, if one is caught away from home base when news of the unthinkable arrives.

Contour Crafting a Lunar HabitatBut others will likely be thinking along the same lines, and before long the space station would begin to look and smell like a regular refugee camp. Humans are much more comfortable on planetary surfaces anyway, so you would probably want to re-locate to Luna or Mars fairly quickly.

Fortunately, robotic habitat-building apparatuses are being developed which will allow you to construct your Lunar or Martian habitat over a 24 hour period, using a robotic contour crafting robot.

Parenthetically, the same robotic contour crafter could also be used to build an underground missile silo home & retreat, if none were available. International treaties are causing such valuable properties to become scarce.

Regardless, try to keep all of your options open. Most types of apocalypse will allow you to continue to reside on the most beautiful and life-loving planet in the solar system. But some types of doom will not permit that.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

A Cornucopia of Doom from Wired.com

Presented here, for your discriminating perusal, is a veritable cornucopia of doom from the prolific producers of Wired.com. Contemplate at your leisure.

Supervolcano

The chances of an earthquake unzipping the world’s fault system are negligible, says seismologist Thorne Lay of the University of California, Santa Cruz.

This is because the energy released by a quake is related to the length of the fault that is ruptured during the event. For example, the 2004 magnitude 9.1 Sumatra quake that triggered the Indian Ocean tsunami and killed nearly 300,000 people, ruptured around 900 miles of a subduction zone fault, the longest ever recorded for a single quake. But the major fault zones that mark boundaries between tectonic plates are not continuous, and irregularities like changes in the type of faulting and the existence of smaller plates with shorter boundaries stop ruptures short of apocalyptic lengths.

But other geologic hazards may have more potential for doom.

“It’s more plausible that you have a truly mammoth eruption,” like an eruption of the supervolcano that lies beneath the Yellowstone National Park area, Lay said. Yellowstone has experienced colossal volcanic explosions in the past, most recently 2 million and 640,000 years ago. Another such mega eruption would be devastating for much of North America, he says.

Giant eruptions have contributed to mass extinctions, including the one that killed off the dinosaurs around 65 million years ago. At that time, volcanoes spewed out a roughly 2,000-foot-deep layer of lava to form part of the 10,000-foot-thick Deccan Traps of India, the world’s largest lava beds, geophysicist Anne-Lise Chenet of the Paris Geophysical Institute wrote in an email. And scientists have also shown that a Siberian volcano may have precipitated the largest extinction on record about 250 million years ago. These blazing behemoths belched out so much sulfur, carbon dioxide and ash that they may have altered the climate enough to collapse the food chain, Lay says.

Yellowstone's giant volcanic crater has risen about 10 inches in the last decade, suggesting molten rock may be building up underneath. During its lifetime, the megavolcano has probably experienced more than a dozen giant eruptions, Lay says. Lately, it’s been blowing off steam through little vents, but it’s unclear whether it’s gearing up for another Earth-shattering blast.

Image courtesy of NOAA / USGS

Asteroid Accident

Asteroids typically top the list of extraterrestrial objects that could hit Earth. A 9-mile wide asteroid that crashed into what is now Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula was partly responsible for the dinosaurs' extinction about 65 million years ago.

The 2004 announcement that 900-foot long Apophis had more than a 2 percent chance of colliding with Earth in 2029 revved up research on asteroid detection and defense, when scientists recalculated the odds down to 1 in 250,000.

Luckily, nothing of that size is in Earth’s path currently, so “we may be safe for at least a few million years,” said planetary scientist Jay Melosh of Purdue University.

But smaller threats may be looming.

NASA expects that roughly every 100 years, an asteroid larger than 55 yards wide will strike. The impact could cause local catastrophes like massive floods, destruction of entire cities and agricultural collapse. Around once every few 100,000 years, chunks of rock more than three-fifths of a mile wide — the equivalent of about 12 New York City blocks — could come tumbling through the atmosphere causing much more serious problems, on a global scale. Acid rain would kill crops, debris would shield Earth from sunlight, and firestorms would ensue, according to NASA’s Near Earth Object Program.

To understand our cosmic risks, scientists are inspecting the solar system to find asteroids that may be heading our way, said UCSC planetary scientist Erik Asphaug. They’ve discovered about 900 of an estimated 1,000 asteroids wider than three-fifths of a mile thought to have an Earth-crossing orbit. None appears to have Earth as its target.

“The plain vanilla odds are very low” that anything already discovered of that size will strike in the near future, Asphaug said. But that doesn’t mean Earth is 100 percent safe.

It’s close to impossible to find every asteroid that could be a threat to Earth.

“There’s always some uncertainty that we’re going to have to live with,” he said. “Or die with.”

Image courtesy of Don Davis / NASA

Comet Collision

Some of that uncertainty comes from asteroids’ sometimes forgotten cousins, comets. (Comets are made up of ice and dust, while asteroids are made up of rock and metals.)

Hartley 2 came within 11 million miles of Earth on Oct. 20, which was among one of the closest times a comet has gotten to Earth in centuries.

“Comets are especially dangerous because they are coming from farther distances, at higher velocities,” Asphaug said.

Comets zoom through space at almost 100,000 mph and pick up speed due to Earth's gravitational pull, he said. The faster an object moves, the bigger the force it exerts on whatever it happens to hit and the more energy it deposits. For Earth, that means more damage. For humans, it may spell out R.I.P.

To add insult to potential injury, finding comets in the outer solar system is very difficult because these dirty snowballs are extremely dark.

But when comet gets within about 390 million miles from Earth, the sun heats comets' dark surface and starts to warm its icy interior, making it spew out the dust and gas that form its distinctively bright tails.

Assuming astronomers developed the technology to discover Earth-bound comets farther away than Jupiter, scientists might have about 10 years before a comet hit Earth in a worst case scenario, Asphaug said.

But “if there’s a 10-kilometer (6-mile) hunk of ice and rock that’s heading straight toward the Earth," he added, "there aren’t very many options there, except to do the Bruce Willis thing,” and nuke it.

Image courtesy of National Science Foundation

Algal Apocalypse

Another big problem for Earth could come from a tiny source, according to Caltech geobiologist Joe Kirschvink. He raises the possibility that diatoms — a type of microscopic algae that inhabit moist surfaces, lakes, rivers, oceans and soil — could alter Earth’s atmosphere in a fatal way.

These microbes live off fuel produced through photosynthesis, a process that converts light energy (photons) from the sun into energy a cell can use to function (sugar). As they photosynthesize, diatoms break up water into hydrogen and oxygen other organisms can then use to breathe.

But if mutant diatoms couldn’t use water — or other substances in their environment, like iron or hydrogen — they might be tempted to pick salt (sodium chloride) off Earth’s menu of molecules. These diatoms would release poisonous chlorine gas. Assuming the chlorine didn’t kill them and nothing else limited their growth, the diatoms would grow exponentially, setting off a death-by-inhalation doomsday.

“The damn thing could take the world over in a couple of million years,” Kirschvink said.

If his diatomical predictions pan out, it would be the second time biology issued a molecular death sentence for most living organisms on Earth. A similar scenario played out about 2.35 billion years ago when cyanobacteria, a type of blue-green bacteria, learned how to photosynthesize. The bacteria dumped oxygen molecules into the atmosphere — which until then was mostly carbon dioxide — and killed off species that couldn’t tolerate oxygen, Kirschvink says.

“Oxygen molecules at the time were unheard of in the environment,” he said. Once diatoms set in motion the “oxygen apocalypse,” there was no stopping them. They had an advantage over creatures that didn’t like oxygen.

Fortunately for Earth's inhabitants today, the water microbes need to photosynthesize abounds, so it’s unlikely they’ll set off a chlorine apocalypse any time soon, Kirschvink said.

Image courtesy of Wikimedia commons / Wipeter

Killer Contagion

Lately, there's been a lot of movie-fueled worry surrounding the possibility of a devastating global pandemic. Currently science is contributing to these fears in the form of a highly contagious lab-made variant of the H5N1 virus.

In case you missed it, American and Dutch scientists studying the virus in ferrets made the already deadly virus that much more dangerous by mutating some of its genes. Before the genetic changes were made, the virus could only spread through touch, but the mutations let it survive in the air, allowing it to pass between ferrets without the need for contact. The results sparked panic that the pathogen could leak out of the lab and trigger a pandemic.

But could a virus bring about the end of days?

Probably not, said Peter Katona, whose research at UCLA focuses on biological terrorism preparedness, though it would "wreak havoc."

A single virus is unlikely to wipe out all humans or animals on Earth because there's enough diversity that at least some would be resistant, agreed Caltech virologist Alice Huang.

Even the new lab strain of H5N1 virus, which only has five mutations, is similar enough to other versions of the flu virus that people would have some protection against it and it wouldn't wipe out all life, Huang said.

"For a virus to kill all humans on Earth, it would have to kill rapidly, like a week or less," Huang said. If it took any longer, the immune system would have time to attack it.

And the virus would have to infect most of the world's population simultaneously.

Picture thousands of drones disseminating a killer virus with aerosols "to every nook and cranny" of the planet at once, she said.

Or "you would have to imagine some new (highly virulent) pathogen that lived and reproduced in some unlikely place, like under ice caps or in deep sea water near hydrothermal vents," she said. Then, the tiny predators would have to be spread far and wide, say by some huge natural disaster.

Because this is highly unlikely, Huang added, even science fiction usually imports apocalyptic pathogens from outer space.

Image courtesy of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Suicidal Supernova

Supernovas are among the most powerful explosions in the universe and can rival the strength of a few octillion nuclear warheads, according to NASA.

These super-booms come in two varieties: core-collapse supernovas, which happen when a giant star’s core collapses after 5 million to 20 million years of life; and type-1a supernovas which occur when a white dwarf star detonates after its core gets too dense.

In our galaxy, core-collapse supernovas occur two to four times more frequently than type-1a supernovas, says astronomer Todd Thompson of Ohio State University. And in the Milky Way, a core collapse tends to happen every 100 years or so, he says. Luckily, most will happen at a safe distance of 5 to 10 parsecs, or 16.5 to 33 light-years — too far away to do any real damage.

If supernovas occurred randomly throughout the Milky Way, Earth could expect one every 5 billion years. But because they congregate near the Milky Way’s spiral arms, “we would in fact expect to come within 10 parsecs of a supernova nearly every time we pass through a spiral arm, which is about every 100 million years,” Thompson said.

These stellar fireworks produce x-rays, cosmic rays — electrons, protons and nuclei zooming through space at nearly the speed of light, and gamma rays -- light waves so powerful they’re capable of killing cells.

A supernova’s radiation would destroy the ozone in the atmosphere, increasing the amount of ultraviolet light that gets through. The UV flash could increase skin cancer rates; set off mass die-offs of bacteria and plankton; and precipitate another ice age, Thompson said.

Image courtesy of NASA / JPL

Orbital Obliteration

Changes in how the planets circle the sun could also knock out Earth.

Jupiter is the most massive planet in the sun’s posse. As such, it tugs at the orbits of the other planets. Over millions of years, the gaseous giant could bully tiny Mercury’s elliptical orbit so much that the farthest distance it travels away from the sun increases, and the closest point gets closer.

As Mercury’s orbit stretches, the swift planet could crash into the sun, according to a 2008 study in the Astrophysical Journal. Alternatively, Mercury could cross Venus’ orbit and then “there’s a very short time until there’s a real disaster,” said UCSC astronomer Greg Laughlin, one of the study’s authors. Venus and Mercury’s kiss of death, he said, “could eject Mars from the solar system.”

But in the worst-case scenario, Mercury and Earth could collide. The impact would destroy Earth even though our planet has about 20 times the mass of Mercury.

Thinking about “orbits going unstable adds a little spice of danger” to planetary science, Laughlin said. But there’s only about a 1 percent chance any of these situations will pan out in the next 5 billion years.

mage courtesy of Lynette Cook for the Gemini Observatory/AURA

Solar Slaughter

Even if the Earth dodges Mercury, the blue planet eventually will be turned into an oven by the sun, says NASA planetologist Chris McKay.

As the sun burns, the hydrogen in its core converts to helium by fusion, a process through which the nuclei of atoms meld together. Fusion produces a tremendous amount of heat. So as time passes, the 5 billion-year-old star gets hotter and brighter.

In about 1 billion years, scientists predict the sun will shine about 10 percent brighter than it does now. The extra energy will heat Earth to well over 200 F. The oceans will boil off, the climate will collapse and “any kind of real estate won’t be worth anything anymore,” said astrophysicist Klaus-Peter Schrœder of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.

“We’ll have to look for a new planet."

Those who don’t want to leave home will have to hope that Schrœder’s colleague, astronomer Robert Smith of the University of Sussex, is right. Smith suggests scientists may be able to enlarge Earth’s orbit by manipulating asteroids visiting our solar system.

Shifting the path of these rocky passers-by so that they move in front of Earth should create a slight pull on the planet and help to speed it up. Earth’s quicker pace would make its orbit slightly larger. If done enough times over millions of years, Earth’s orbit could swell by about 5 percent, which would translate into about 10 percent less solar energy reaching our planet, Schrœder said.

That may only buy the planet time, however. In about 7 billion years, Schrœder says, the sun will bloat into a red giant, a much brighter and voluminous version of its current self.

“It will be so big that the Earth will be inside the sun,” McKay said.

In the meantime, unless Smith’s orbital expansion works out, Earth will almost certainly cook and steam under the sun’s powerful rays.

“Not that I’m a great believer, but credit needs to be given sometimes,” Schrœder quipped. “The Bible’s predictions that we’ll end up in an eternal fire are somewhat accurate.”

Image courtesy of American Museum of Natural History's space show "Journey to the Stars"

Full article at Wired.com

The Easy Path to Apocalypse: High Altitude EMP

...what do you think would happen to society without power, water, food, and fuel? It’s not a pretty picture. People will begin dying off by the end of the first week, those without a minimal storage of water or those who live in regions where water is not immediately available to them. Desperation will result in a rampage of crime with hoards searching for food and water. Within several weeks, a complete civil breakdown will be underway as mass migration out of the major cities creates extremely dangerous conditions while people search for food, water, and supplies. _ModernSurvivalBlog

In addition to causing the immediate damage and failure of transformers, there is also evidence that GIC may be responsible for the onset of long-term damage to transformers and other key power grid assets. Damaged transformers require repair or replacement with new units. Currently most large transformers are manufactured in foreign countries and replacements would likely involve long production lead times in excess of a year. _EENews.net PDF

In excess of a year? After a year, it is estimated that as many of 90% of the residents of a high tech society would have lost their lives to the wide range of complications and repercussions of a long-term power outage.

EMP Commission Report 7MB PDF Download

An EMP attack is different since it only requires but one nuclear weapon, detonated 300 miles above the middle of the United States. One bomb. The launch could even be done from a container ship somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico and in that instant, the war is already over and won.

...The first few million deaths are tragically obvious. Those aboard commercial flights, and even most private flights, those in nursing homes, hospices, and hospitals. The next few million are obvious as well. Those with severe aliments requiring careful daily medication or treatment, such as those awaiting transplants, people undergoing dialysis, those with severe heart ailments both known and not yet realized.

...Our interstate highways will become nightmare paths of exile as our largely urban population tries to fan out to find food that once was shipped in. Millions could and will die on that road. Where do they get safe water? The nearby stream or river is now a dump for raw sewage since purification plants are off line.

...Within a month the next level of die off will be in full development. Those who survive the initial onset of illnesses from polluted water and food, and survive, will nevertheless be weakened, knock down a level...At what point do we begin to kill each other for food, water, shelter? At what point does a small town mobilize, barricade itself in and make clear that any who enter will be shot because there is not enough food to share

...By sixty days true starvation will be killing off millions and by 120 days mass starvation will be the norm. Those lucky enough to be in rich farm producing areas, with the knowledge of how to gather food by hand, and then preserve it, will have a temporary surplus, but even then, if they do not ration it out wisely, as did our colonial forefathers, they too will starve before the next crop is in the ground come spring... _Forstchen

Over 250 million North Americans are likely to die of various causes over the first 6 to 9 months, unless massive assistance arrives from the outside. But since the outside is likely to be at war with itself, how likely is North America to receive foreign aid? After all, it is usually North America that is the source of most foreign aid to the outside.

EENews.Net PDFDuring an overnight power blackout one hot July night in 1977 in New York City, dozens of city blocks were destroyed by fire, almost 2,000 stores were looted and vandalised, and most of the tragedy that occurred that short summer night will never be known. That is from one night without power in a modern city. Imagine 6 months to a year without power over most of an entire continent.

The map above focuses upon the most vulnerable areas in the US grid. But if advocates of the highly vulnerable smart grid have their way, the entire map will be the vulnerable area.

One reason that Al Fin Energy blog often focuses on decentralised production of power and fuels, is because of the enormous vulnerability of a massively interconnected system which has inadequate backups and a rapidly depleting supply of human capital which would be capable of instituting needed immediate repairs and workarounds.

You might think that having a lot of big solar electric plants and wind farms hooked to the grid would be helpful at such times. But no, they would make the situation even worse. Think about it a bit, and if you have any knowledge of the systems involved, you will see what I mean.

Where would the fatal strike arise? Most EMP activists are concerned about an attack from rogue states such as Iran or North Korea -- perhaps via an intermediary such as Venezuela, Cuba, or a ship-launched missile offshore. Al Fin analysts suspect that a more likely scenario involves a dual function space launch by the space services of an established space power such as China or Russia. With the simultaneous orbital placement of multiple satellites, a small yield nuclear device or two might wander off into the night to await subsequent orders to detonate in a particular orbital location. Or such a device might exist in conjunction with a conventional satellite that "fails", and is accepted as "space junk" until needed to fulfill its primary mission.

There a number of possible scenarios which would leave the target of the attack defenseless to stop the initiating event, the high altitude orbital EMP.

As the US falls more deeply into entitlement debt, makes itself more vulnerable to uneducable and unassimilable illegal immigrants, makes war on its own private sector business and commerce, cuts its defenses against foreign threat, shuts down its energy infrastructure due to faux environmental concerns, and moves closer to a catastrophic energy infrastructure of vulnerable "smart" grids paired with unreliable big wind and solar -- you may begin to see a society rotting from within. Such a society is not resilient to the type of attack and damage which is described in the links above.

Make your plans accordingly.

What Happens to the Planetary Power Supply When Sol Erupts?

SolarFlare NASA
What would happen to electrical infrastructure on Earth if the sun passes through a period of massive solar flaring as occurred in 1859 or 1921?

On Earth, power lines, data connections and even oil and gas pipelines are potentially vulnerable.

An early warning of the risk came in 1859, when the biggest CME ever observed unleashed red, purple and green auroras even in tropical latitudes.

The new-fangled technology of the telegraph went crazy. Geomagnetically-induced currents in the wires shocked telegraph operators and even set the telegraph paper on fire.

In 1989, a far smaller flare knocked out power from Canada's Hydro Quebec generator, inflicting a nine-hour blackout for six million people.

...Recurrence of a 1921 event today would fry 350 major transformers, leaving more than 130 million people without power, it heard. A bigger storm could cost between a trillion and two trillion dollars in the first year, and full recovery could take between four and 10 years. _Breitbart

Here's the scary part: if government leaders follow through on their threat to install a "smart grid" in order to facilitate "green energy", the power grid will become up to 100 times more vulnerable to solar flares, EMP attacks, and computer hacker attacks. Think about that at your next Sierra Club outing.

Previously published at Al Fin the Next Level

3 Meals from Anarchy

Things can fall apart for many reasons, and at astoundingly rapid speeds. Whether you are 3 meals from anarchy or 9, the distance between you and deadly threat is alarmingly small. Natural disaster, epidemic disease, power failure, terror attack, or outright warfare -- potential triggers are more numerous than you can imagine.

You won't be able to leave the city by freeway -- they will all be jammed by wrecked, abandoned, and burning vehicles. Better have several alternate routes and fallback plans. Is your bugout kit packed and ready? Does your bugout vehicle have a full tank of fuel and is it well maintained? Do you have a bugout destination?

I recommend the links and the postings at PreparednessPro.com. A good site for daily browsing is SurvivalBlog. Unfortunately, membership in the Society for Creative Apocalyptology is currently closed, but several online forums of a similar nature are available.

You have a much better chance of surviving a short, medium, and long-term catastrophe if you are a member of a cooperating group of survival-oriented individuals and families with complementary skills.

First published at Al Fin

Nuclear Jihad Heats Fallout Shelter Market

Welcome to the world of nuclear hyper-proliferation--where nuclear war is a virtual inevitability, sometime. This time the nuclear threat will not be the Soviet Union, whose leaders wished to live every bit as much as the leaders of the free world. This time there will be no deterrence. The weapons, once acquired, will be used. So---what colour is your fallout shelter? Here is more speculation on a possible nuclear threat from Stanley Kurtz:

Once Iran gets the bomb, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are likely to develop their own nuclear weapons, for self-protection, and so as not to allow Iran to take de facto cultural-political control of the Muslim world. (I think you’ve got to at least add Egypt to this list.) With three, four, or more nuclear states in the Muslim Middle East, what becomes of deterrence?

A key to deterrence during the Cold War was our ability to know who had hit whom. With a small number of geographically separated nuclear states, and with the big opponents training satellites and specialized advance-guard radar emplacements on each other, it was relatively easy to know where a missile had come from. But what if a nuclear missile is launched at the United States from somewhere in a fully nuclearized Middle East, in the middle of a war in which, say, Saudi Arabia and Iran are already lobbing conventional missiles at one another? Would we know who had attacked us? Could we actually drop a retaliatory nuclear bomb on someone without being absolutely certain? And as Rosen asks, What if the nuclear blow was delivered against us by an airplane or a cruise missile? It might be almost impossible to trace the attack back to its source with certainty, especially in the midst of an ongoing conventional conflict.


We’re familiar with the horror scenario of a Muslim state passing a nuclear bomb to terrorists for use against an American city. But imagine the same scenario in a multi-polar Muslim nuclear world. With several Muslim countries in possession of the bomb, it would be extremely difficult to trace the state source of a nuclear terror strike. In fact, this very difficulty would encourage states (or ill-controlled elements within nuclear states — like Pakistan’s intelligence services or Iran’s Revolutionary Guards) to pass nukes to terrorists. The tougher it is to trace the source of a weapon, the easier it is to give the weapon away. In short, nuclear proliferation to multiple Muslim states greatly increases the chances of a nuclear terror strike.

Source.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, worrying about nuclear war was said to be quite common. Students were shown films in school of what to do in the case of a nuclear strike. Thinking and talking about installing a fallout shelter was not seen as extreme in certain locations of North America. Then came detente, and fears of nuclear war subsided significantly. After detente, only extreme survivalists were still talking seriously about fallout and survival shelters.

That was then, this is now. Now there is an end-of-the-world disaster to suit every taste and political/religious persuasion. You say you are an extreme leftist to the point of moonbattery? No problem. Global warming and peak oil are sure to destroy the world economy, triggering wars of survival that will certainly escalate to nuclear exchanges. You had better get your fallout shelter. You say you are an anti-Bush democrat? Better yet. You know that Bush ordered the strike on the WTC towers in NYC, but that only got him so far. Now he needs something more potent. What better than a nuclear strike on a large city in a predominantly Democratic Party controlled area? We take cash or credit cards. But, you say, you are really a religious right wingnut? Excellent! The muslim fanatics will not rest until you are forced into converting to Islam, taken into slavery, or killed. If you refuse, they will simply nuke your cities until you are all dead. Better order your shelter today!

Here is one place to get your shelter, conveniently named bomb-shelter.net. Here is another site for more information. This site provides information about a large group shelter within easy driving distance of Toronto. Here is Wikipedia's Fallout Shelter page. Here is yet another information packed source for the truly anxious.

What cities are likely to be hit? New York City, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles are almost certain to be targets eventually. Several others come to mind, but it is not my wish to trigger a stampede. :-)

I should mention that fallout shelters are not just for nuclear attacks. If you install one that is big enough, you can hold quite a party, and as long as the shelter is buried underground, your neighbors should not complain about anything except perhaps all the cars.

One thing is very likely. If there is a nuclear attack by muslim extremists, it is likely to be an attempt on several cities simultaneously. That means that it will be no small disaster like Hurricane Katrina, and any local city/county/state government that is as incompetent as the Nagin/Blanco team will be out of luck. With federal resources demanded by several sites--all with at least tens of thousands of casualties--there will be no world wide media obsession with one crime-ridden waterlogged city. Every city and country in the entire world will be worried about their own sorry backsides if it ever comes to that point, because all bets will be off.