Last chance to evacuate Earth...
 

I watched this really unsettling documentary about what would happen if Earth had to be evacuated. It really opened my eyes and also worried me a little. They spoke of this neutron star approaching Earth. It's unstoppable. It will destroy Earth. In this scenario it would get here in 75 years, so we build a spaceship, an ark that will take us to new worlds.

All well and good so far. BUT only so many people can fit on the ark, and they obviously want the best people to be able to propagate on the eighty-some years journey, and for their children to be able to colonise the new world.

So here are my questions: what is it, if anything, about you that you think would secure you a place on the Ark? I'd be screwed, I know: all I'm good at is writing and being able to take care of someone disabled, and neither are done in any sort of professional capacity. Anyway, my sis could not go, being disabled and I'd be damned if I'd leave her. I personally would buy some pills that we could take before the neutron star got here, because believe me, death will not come easy if you wait. This thing is literally going to tear our planet apart and vapourise it.

But what would YOU do? And if you couldn't get a seat, how would you face being left behind? What would you think? Should at least some humans make it off the planet, and how would you feel then that they are, quite literally, leaving you behind to die? What about a lottery? Would that be fair? And what about the rich scum who are no doubt going to bribe their way onboard?

Would you accept it and let the thing go ahead, or would you riot, try and destroy it, attack people who were chosen? How easy, or not, would it be for you to face death, knowing others are going to live, pretty much at your expense? And if you DID get a place on the ship, how do you think you'd feel, watching your planet explode into gaseous nothingness as you leave?

I'm interested as to how people think they'd react.


Oh yeah: the above, though it could happen, is just a fiction, a possible scenario for the future, but this bit is actually being considered: the serious plan to power the ship is to have nuclear devices detonated behind it, one every three seconds, in order to get up close to a fraction of the speed of light. How do you feel about that? Our first venture out into space and we're going to pollute it with radiation! Go Mankind!

Load it with bankers and shoot them at light speed into the nearest black hole. It won't solve much but at least it makes for some doomsday entertainment. And let's face it, you know it's only the mega-wealthy who are getting on board that thing.

Frankly I don't know that the human race is that deserving of a second chance. It's just a shame for the rest of the planet that it doesn't get another chance at a human-free world before it's demise. As for the irradiation of space I imagine there's already a fair bit of it out there. Still, talk about burning your bridges.

Next question... how are they going to steer at that speed?

I wouldn't worry, we're all likely going to be dead.

Admit it, that was Treehouse of Horror!

Yeah, I wish. Really, it was quite scary. As you say, who says we should get a second chance? But the idea of leaving millions of us behind while the "chosen few" feck off into the stars? And they really don't think the shipyards/factories wouldn't be bombed, attacked, wrecked? Best of luck. I'll be happy to end my days with someone I love, knowing I did my best and that we both took a painless way out. Real pity about the planet, though if you watch the doc it says it may end up as a ring of material around the n/s, so maybe it'll survive in one way or another. Couldn't do any worse than it has under our so-called stewardship!

Telephone sanitiser?



I think I would be pretty fatalistic. I would certainly want to make the whole thing easier for my kids. (Of course in 75 years they will be in their eighties and I will be long gone but let's ignore that for now.) If they wanted to go I would do whatever I could to secure their place, if not I would try to help them cope with their impending doom. I imagine an approaching star would make life pretty difficult long before any impact. I do grieve on occasion at the thought of Earth's eventual destruction when our own star burns out. Not so much for me but for life in general. There's just so much amazing life here on Earth it hurts to think how fragile and inconsequential it all is on a cosmic scale.

i think i would probably just watch. i'd save up money for like 3 decades just to buy a sick telescope and just watch it coming. the OP states that it would be a rather torturous death, but i think it would actually be relatively quick... certainly quicker than dying from cancer or something of the sort, anyway. there is no way that i could secure a spot on that thing. a neutron star (correct me if i'm wrong) is a star that has collapsed in on itself and has a density and gravity many thousands of times greater than that of a normal star or planet. as soon as it gets close enough to have any effect at all, it's probably going to be over relatively quickly. i would try to have a spot on top of a small mountain and make sure i had a good assortment of drugs and the best wine known to man, and raise my riedel to oblivion. nature is beautiful. what an honour it would be to even bear witness to a single moment of such monumental celestial change. pitch me into space or swallow me down into the core of the earth. either way, one hell of a way to go out.

as far as what i would think about being left behind, i'd rather be left behind. given, i would probably get on the ark if they invited me, but the unprecedented nature of the experiment is pretty much doomed and it would result in a wretched death, probably wrought with scenes of disease and cannibalism. if this was part of a 500- or 1000- year program with a background, i might feel more inclined to have more hope for it, but 75 years is not enough time to plan an 80 year trip at this point in our technological timeline. an 80 year space flight is pretty much synonymous with the ability to sustain life in space indefinitely and we are just way too far from that for me to entertain the idea that it's possible to pull this off. it's still going to be several years before we land on mars. LAND there. perhaps 100-500 years after we've done experiments in terraforming there i would consider this possible.

and even if it were possible, and even if by some miracle i did get a ticket, watching my planet explode from afar might be too much to bear. continuity of life is probably important, but i think i'd take one for the team on this one and just go down in the realm of familiarity and awe.

interesting thread trollheart. got my imagination going something fierce.

Some great replies there guys. You should probably watch the docu to get a sense of what would happen, and how unsettlingly real some of it is. I mean, a neutron star (you're right PAN, that's what it is basically) is NOT, so far as we know, approaching us yet (Come out of your shelter Batlord with all those metal albums and rocker chicks!) but it COULD, and they're laying plans for such an eventuality. I mean, they intend, at some point, to DO this if it needs to be done. Project New Horizon I think they're calling it. What bugs me most about it is that there was not even a smidgeon of discussion about the ethics of polluting space with nuclear radiation in order to provide ourselves a power source. All they were worried about was where would it come from and would we have enough, and could we protect ourselves from the blasts? I mean, three nuclear bombs PER SECOND? Do you have any idea what that is going to do to space? And we're just assuming there's no other life out there: there could be, and we could be endangering or even destroying it. Again, yay Mankind!

Though this would be a totally amazing premise for a TV series wouldn't it? If I had the contacts to pitch it I would; if I had the discipline to write the book I would. I'd see season one the building of the ship, the worry about who gets to go, the thing seen maybe through the eyes of those left behind versus the lucky few, maybe a family could be split up on that basis. Civil war across the Earth as the left-behinders try to wreck the plans to leave. New religions rise, one is called Fatalism and believes it is a sin to desert our planet and that God wants us all to die yada yada.

Then end of season one the ship is launched, Earth dies and for the next few seasons we're in space, facing all the challenges of a city/world in space, with people splitting into factions aboard the ship, law and order trying to be maintained (maybe one of the characters is a cop) and perhaps little wars breaking out across the ship and so on. Eventually the ship arrives and the next seasons take place on the new planet as Man tries to establish his new home.

Man, it could be huge! Where's Spielberg when you need him? Or JJ Abrams?
:)

If we are to send a limited number of us out into space, then there's the potential of a bottle neck effect which means you can clean out a lot of our genes that way. That can lead to a very low genetic diversity in the colonists. If I designed such a project, one of the first things I would think of would probably be that we should try to include as rich a variety of good genes as possible and try not to bring along bad genes, like those leading to genetic diseases like sickle cell disease. In a small population, those can really start to crop up.

It is also important that the people going are social, empathic and wont to cooperate rather than cause conflict. This is because the shuttle environment itself might promote conflict and so it's important to send people who are less likely to react to it in such a way. And, of course, cooperation is necessary for successful completion of their mission with resulting establishment of a human colony somewhere else in space.

So I think the perfect participants should be varied in genetic heritage, very healthy (genetically, physically, mentally, socially) and have great social skills. Whether I would be a good candidate, I'm not quite sure, but at least I might be suitable as someone who likes to cooperate, gets along nicely with others and who is not likely to start conflicts. Imo :)

edit :

Of course, with a diverse heritage, the people going would also represent more of earth's global human population on their journey for survival. I'd root for them, even if I wasn't on board. My genes would have a lot of close family on that ship anyways. ;)

One page in and we're already talking about eugenics. :laughing:

We're talking about the survival of the human race! The smaller the (colonising) population is, the more important it will be to make sure the common genome is in order.

But, I also mentioned that we need diversity - and stand by that - so from a PC point of view, I think I should be in the clear.

I just thought it was funny that your last post immediately singled out Africans for exclusion from the ship and that you followed that up by commenting that a lot of your genes' "close family" would be on board. I know you well enough to know that your comment wasn't intended to come off the way it did, which is why it was kind of humorous to me.

Maybe a happy compromise would be if every human being was allowed one vote, you could nominate one person that you wanted to be on the Ark. Some people would nominate themselves, others would nominate people like the Pope or the Dalai Lama, here comes the silver lining, millions of people would vote for Justin Bieber or Lady Gaga and possibly Greenday. I know it doesn't change the fact that you're still getting left behind to face certain death, but it does mean that you no longer have to live on the same planet as some of the people I mentioned earlier, every cloud. What if there's no youtube in space, its not a chance I'm willing to take.


My vote would go to Will.i.am, just out of pure spite.


It was a toss up between him and Thatcher, but the way I see it Thatchers going to be dead soon anyway, and I wouldn't want her to die in outer space, I wouldn't want to miss the party. I wouldn't miss it for the world.

How did I single out Africans for exclusion? Africa represents a wealth of humanity's genetic diversity and that should of course be represented in humanity's survivist colony.

The close family comment may be a little hard to get for people who don't study biology, but evolution rewards the procreation of genes. You give your genes to your kids which pass them on to their kids and so, in a way, some of what makes you you will still exist in the future. This has implications like we tend to be nicer to people whom we share genes with. Because humans are not that genetically diverse, that may well explain in part why we are so seemingly altruistic and good at cooperating and it also means that the people going away on that ship carry with them part of what makes you you. Probably more so if a representative from your nation, ethnic minority, etc, is on that ship.

So, if they are "sufficiently diverse", I would regard the group of colonists going as someone who ensures not just the survival of themselves (which I expect is what leads to comments like "shoot them into a black hole"), but all of us. Family, in a way, even if they aren't. Hence, my genes close family.

edit :

I understand the wish to have everyone's opinion matter, but in such specific circumstances (one ship to carry X amount of people), I think who gets to go would be better left up to experts rather than popular opinion. You should try to maximize the probability for mission success (humanity's survival) rather than maximize some short-lived satisfaction of having a say for all the people who are soon going to be dead.

edit :

I also know you were not completely serious. In before someone points that out. ;)

Because the only "bad genes" you mentioned were those that result in sickle cell disease, a condition that that primarily affects people of African decent.

Again, Tore, I just found it humorous because of how your comment sounded, not what you actually meant. I was joking with the eugenics comment, hence the laughing smiley.

It is more common in areas with malaria because being a (single allele) carrier for the gene helps make you malaria-resistant. But it's not something which exclusively affects black people of Africa and neither do I think it is regarded as something that makes someone typically african. And it's not like all africans carry sickle cell disease.

So I don't think excluding sickle cell disease from the ship means noone with african heritage gets to go. The imaginative length you'd have to go to in order to get that out of what I wrote is, in my opinion, very far. ;)

Once again, it was a joke. Relax.

this is such a cool thread. :)

trollheart, i will definitely be watching this doc in the next few days when i have time.

and personally, i think you should at least try to write a book or a screenplay or something. it might make a little gap in your MB legacy, but it would certainly be worth it.

I would think they'd have to. We'd kind of have to take a chunk of our ecosystem with us in order to survive in the long term.

You know why they didn't care to discuss polluting space? It's because there are already so many forms of radiation in space already that it would be like a raindrop into a well.


Nooooo, keep Abrams away from it. I'm tired of his overuse of lens flares. Other than that, it sounds like it could be a pretty good show.

We probably wouldn't have to take all animals. We could just take their DNA and clone them.

I doubt that I would get a spot on the ship, and I think that experts deciding who goes on the ship as tore said would be a good route to take. It could cause some dissent in the general public, though, since a fair amount of people assume corruption when big decisions are made. Not to mention the jealousy factor. Still, I'd say that it beats a popular vote.

How would I react to impending doom? I'd like to think that it'd be hard to deal with at first, but then I would come to accept it and cherish the time to spend with my family/friends, pursue things I haven't had the chance to do yet, plunder, pillage, etc. I wouldn't go to sleep like Trollheart, although I understand why he would want to do so, but I'd prefer to see it happen. Especially if I could see it coming straight on from my side of the planet, because imagine how incredible that would look.

I know. That's how Norwegians reply to jokes. And long-winded posts is how I relax.

:laughing:

So you would have Will.i.am live out of spite? That'll show him.

At least this isn't a thousand years ago. Or Janzsoon would be ****ed.

Women and children, okay, but I don't think the vikings were homosexual rapists!

But yeah, we just don't know how to stop arguing. It's had a colourful effect on our past.

Well obviously I'd get chosen because they'd need a blonde to party and drink with. Plus I'm easy to look at. Except today because I have conjunctivitis and look like a gumby.

For my serious answer, I will post that shortly after I watch the doco. Interesting thread Trollheart. :D

Yes I would, its a karma thing. Out of spite, out of mind.


Its not set in stone, I could have my mind changed.

I don't think you quite understand the point of raping and pillaging.

Thing about animals, I don't think (anyone watching the doc can correct me if I'm wrong: I only watched it this week but hey I'm an old man and can't be expected to remember everything --- what's your name again?) that they mentioned anything about animals, DNA or otherwise. They do say we can't eat or create meat in deep space, so from a food animals point of view that looks a no-no, everyone has to eat kelp or something (another reason for staying behind: I'd rather be torn apart by the gravitational forces of a neutron star than eat kelp!) and as for pets, well, you'd imagine they'd find it hard to adjust to life on a spaceship. "Spot! Get AWAY from that airlock! NO DON'T OPEN --- OOOPS!" :rofl:

:laughing:

Well, I'll get with a sexy macho guy who will defend my honor.

http://i44.photobucket.com/albums/f5...umbyDoll-1.jpg

I'll just stay on Earth, thanks. I don't really get to amped up about spreading future generations. Gone is gone, I guess.

If people remember me, killer. If they don't, expected. I'm not going to go into space just to appease my ego.

:laughing:

That really is a gumby.

i just watched the doc. it was pretty interesting to say the least, but i more or less think the same as i did with my first reply to the thread.

the only thing that might change my mind is advancements in nanotech. ray kurzweil wrote a book called The Singularity, in which he described the inevitability of humanity's merging with technology based on the exponential growth rate of information. he's basically convinced that we pretty much don't have an option as a species to avoid this occurring, and he makes some pretty interesting (if not strong) arguments to support his claim.

basically (like really basically) the idea is that the more we learn about the microcosm, the closer we get to a situation where we're given the choice on a personal level to adopt a body - or a fleet of bodies - which basically house the essence of the self. he thinks we can become robots with souls, essentially, made of of materials far yet from currently imagined. he also believes that leaps and bounds will be made in relatively short time, perhaps with the first to transcend biology doing so in the next 40-60 years.

if this were the case, i might think twice about sticking around on our doomed planet. but if this were the case, everything about this idea would be different. for instance, we would likely be able to engineer and construct our physical bodies in such a way which would negate the ship altogether other than to bring resources and building equipment to "Earth 2." "body rockets." or perhaps we could take all of the souls or essences or whatever you want to call them, convert them to a digital format and simply store all of them on a giant hard drive, and the ship would then only need to house a factory of some sort to churn out robotic bodies upon arrival, aside from essential personal who would run the thing. this would also limit the risks involved in not knowing exactly what our new planet is like and so on. but that being said, if we were robots, our atmospheric limitations would greatly decrease.

but this idea sort of changes the related questionnaire regarding this hypothetical situation, because, as kurzweil states in his book (and is also blatantly obvious) humans are likely to have some reservations with the notion of abandoning our physiology as we know it, to put it lightly.

for me though, i'd definitely be down for that. it would also mean being pretty much immortal, and i am more than interested in what humanity gets up to over the course of the next million years... though i am not bent on the idea to the point of obsession as some critics of kurzweil are convinced he is.

he's the guy who is the central figure in the documentary Transcendental Man, for anyone who has seen that or is interested in getting the scoop without haveing to read an epic tome filled with scientific jargon and what might come off as either brilliance or lunacy.

I do get that, but have no interest in that. Really, why should I want to live more than 90 years or so? Even if I'm able-bodied, I don't know what could occur to occupy my time. Just leave me on earth, genetically how I am, and let that be that.

There are of course a lot of pluses and minuses to essentially becoming immortal (how threads evolve, huh?) ;) the most important in some ways of which is the question of boredom as the years, centuries, millennia pass. HG Wells already tackled that in one form in the book "The time machine", where Man was so lazy and had everything done for him in the future that he basically became a slave to the tougher races that evolved along different lines. Star Trek of course built on this idea, but the central warning is that without anything to challenge or stimulate us, we may just bore ourselves out of existence.

There is of course, the "Vampire theory", where you get to see everything, do everything there is over the course of hundreds or even thousands of years, but again bordeom is likely to set in. Perhaps if we could manage to project our consciousnesses out into space and explore the galaxy without need of our bodies, but again, I don't know. Immortality definitely has its drawbacks.

But then, using these robot body things, certain fears and dangers are eliminated: no hunger (one would assume) no death, no disease (other than maybe rust!) and you would also hope no prejudice, though don't bet on it. Mind you, it would seem implicit that there would be no procreation and perhaps either no sex drive or unbridled sex, depending on how things worked out, so in my case I'd say the jury is spending a few more years in that hotel before coming to a verdict.

Must look for that doc, PAN, seems like it would be very interesting...

Somehow I think he is overestimating our capabilities. I can certainly see that we can enhance our abilities but to transfer our consciousness I find a bit fanciful. An interesting concept though. Much like the existence of an afterlife it's not something we will ever truly know. Even if we created a robot that mimicked us perfectly we would never know if it were truly conscious because we would remain in our fleshy coffin.

Humanity has predicted the apocalypse since our inception. The end is the end, why fear death?

My question is if your consciousness gets uploaded to a computer would that be me or just a perfect copy of me? It's like the idea of a transporter. Your body is basically being destroyed (killed) and an exact replica is being created somewhere else.

If we're talking about some magical form of immortality where I can't opt out, then I'd have my reservations, but if I can kill myself whenever life became too miserable, then I'd do it in a heartbeat. **** death.

from what i gather - and it's been a long time since i've read the book and at least a year or two since watching Transcendental Man - kurzweil seems to be under the impression that time will essentially make anything that we can dream up with our minds possible in reality. it's almost as though his outlook implies that everything which we imagine is an inevitability. so in his mind there are really no limits, and what we perceive as boundaries in the realm of how far we can go are really just stepping stones for those of us who refuse to stop pushing. he believes it's an inherent characteristic of the human spirit to feed our curiosity by way of creation. which is to say that in a way, it seems logical that creating copies would be a milestone of sorts, only to be succeeded by the eventuality of a total biological transcendence or reformatting of the human experience.

all of this of course does raise questions about the definitions concerning what it is to be alive. as in, just because it is a perfect copy, is there any difference, being that our memories and abilities and mannerisms and so on and so forth would all be included in the transfer? very interesting questions indeed, none of which i'm able to jump off the fence for as of yet.

and i would assume that there would naturally be a kill switch, even it meant getting a jetpack and flying into the nearest star. i really can't see (within some sort of democracy anyway) a member of humanity being obligated to stay alive and conscious for the rest of eternity. that just wouldn't make any sense.

i would seek solace in creation and exploration. we are basically talking about converting what it is to be a person into a data set. so as time went on, the need for a body or a vessel might altogether disappear, as you say, and any physical experience - in literally any part of the universe - could be travelled to via some sort of laser which would send said data set at the speed of light to an intended destination. and physical experiences themselves might be perceived quite differently at a point in our evolution such as this. i don't really see boredom becoming an issue when i could hang out on asteroids watching undulating nebula or stars being born... or a neutron star obliterating entire solar systems, which i must say, was some pretty awesome sh*t to see in that doc, trollheart.

something to consider is that we just refuse to stop digging deeper, and we're mapping out the intricacies of such statements as "we are all just light and vibration." according to kurzweil, all of what exists can be expressed digitally, and nanotech will pave the way to expressing the subtleties of that digital arrangement in a way we can work with, augment and manipulate as we so desire.

i don't want to hijack this thread, but it's all very interesting to me. ray kurzweil (he's ALSO the same guy responsible for kurzweil synthesizers, and is a major player in real-time translation tech for cell phones enabling people speaking any language to speak in real time) is one interesting cat to keep an eye on if you're interested in future tech, and his imagination (although one never knows whether or not to jump on board with him for the sheer fact that some of the stuff her says seems like it's coming straight out of left field) is kind of amazing, and his accomplishments are many and testament to this. i kinda wish we could have him here on this thread to add to this conversation which trollheart has started.

it's all very sci-fi, which is always neat, but it's also kind real feeling, because as they say in the doc TH posted, it's been a good long while since outer space has decided to throw a real challenge our way... so long the odds may not really be in our favour. :/