The World Ends in approximately 24-28 months.

RyanC

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The moon has suddenly exploded and the fragments of the moon are slowly hitting each other at a slowly intensifying geometric rate.

Calculations by scientists around the world estimate that in 24-28 months from now a critical mass of fragmentation impacts will be reached, causing a quickly intensifying bolite shower that effectively will scour the surface of the earth clean of life as we know it, and that the bolite shower is estimated to last in varying intensity levels for 5-10,000 years.

You are POTUS.

Go.

[Ed note: This is the scenario in Neal Stephenson's Seveneves.]
 
Step 1: nuke the bejeebers out of irritating countries, and do so *now.* Link up with the Brits, Russians, Chinese to eliminate a good chunk of the planetary population right off the bat, specifically the populations that will spend the next two years raising a ruckus.

Step 2: round up the anti-nuke and anti-space activists. Send them to the forced labor camps where they will be chained to stationary bicycles hooked up to generators that are used to produce methane, hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants.

Step 3: Throw tanker trucks of money at Blue Origin, SpaceX, etc. Start shooting stuff to Mars. Anyone who interferes int he *slightest,* you put a bullet to them and their families.

Step 4: Promise whatever you like to the worlds bagrillionaires to get them to get stuff done. If that means their families get priority seats on the Mars arks, fine. Shove them into the compost mulchers the moment you get them set up on Mars if they're not actually otherwise useful.

Step 5: Crash program to develop nuclear thermal, nuclear electric systems. Your goal is to send the greatest mass possible to Mars. As many people as possible, and many plant and animal species as possible. Raid the seed ark in Norway, split the seeds up among the US, Brit, Russian, Chinese efforts. Even so the seats will be few. Limit them to the genetically healthy, the sane, the technically *useful.* Those who demand that you prioritize storytellers and poets and singers and painters along with the mechanics and the doctors and the farmer... well, you put them on the "B" ark.

Basically, you say "screw it" to civilized behavior and go straight to utterly pragmatic. If there was no hope whatsoever - the sun was gonna splode, say - then you let people do whatever, it doesn't matter. If DOOOOM was a few centuries out, then you can be civilized abut the evacuation. But when there's a chance *but* the time is limited, you gotta triage the situation, like chucking the screeching harpy off the lifeboat.
 
Has Stephenson forgotten to add in the impacts triggering at least one of the supervolcanoes? Might as well make it a real crowd-pleaser end of the world scenario. We've had worse, such as the Permian extinction.

By the by, what's the mechanism for the Moon exploding?

Chris
 
I do what Stephenson did, only I really push SpaceX to get as many BFR's built as possible; unlike the book (SPOILER ALERT); many of these would make it to Mars. Good luck after that.
 
There's no mechanism for moon destruction. One day, the moon suddenly blows up; and nobody ever finds out why in the book.

It's a macguffin I can live with to set the stage.
 
I announce the re-formation of the NDRC from World War II.

Division A deals with exotic stuff. Can we make a forcefield? The world ends in 24 months so why not have some physicists who will die anyway get a few billion to see if it's possible to make an energy or repulsor shield for the planet.

Division B1 deals with Conventional Space Launch. ULA, SpaceX, Blue Origin.

Division B2 deals with semi-unconventional Space Launch. Every shipyard in the country and across the globe suddenly gets orders for SEA DRAGON launchers. The problem of Sea Dragon launches eliminating all sea life for hundreds of miles via sound shockwaves...is not a problem when the oceans are going to boil anyway in 24+ months. The designs for NERVA are dusted off for second stage in atmosphere air light -- we got to a finalized design in the 1970s before NERVA was cancelled. We know it works, unlike Project Timberwind or the other NTR designs proposed over the years.

Division B3 deals with unconventional space launch. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion. Does it matter if we irradiate half of Antarctica or the North Pole if we all die in 24 months?

.....

Have scientists look at how deadly the bolide impacts would be through statistical modelling etc to see how deep we'd have to dig or dive to get a safety factor, leading to...

Division V for Vault-Tec stands for underground colonization.
Division S for SeaQuest stands for underwater colonization.

...

Division N for Nuke the Site from Orbit, will explore options of accelerating the bolide fragmentation -- if it's already a exponential function, can we force it to accelerate, so the "hard rain" will last 50-200 years instead of 5,000 to 10,000 years? Alternately, can we nuke the bolides? Get Los Alamos and whatever the Russian/Chinese/etc equivalents are looking into making 500 megaton X-Ray warheads to blast apart bolides or impart acceleration onto them....

-----------------------

Seveneyes is basically what happens when someone takes a shitty Star Trek planet of the week episode, or Doctor Who alternate timeline of the week episode and expands it into a 800 page book. I get the feelign Stephenson was more interested in exploring the fragmentation of humanity into different species than in actual scientific plausibility and solutions to problems.
 
RyanC said:
There's no mechanism for moon destruction. One day, the moon suddenly blows up; and nobody ever finds out why in the book.

It's a macguffin I can live with to set the stage.

Late 90's, Jack McDevitt wrote "Moonfall" based on a somewhat similar idea... moon asplodes, bits rain down. But here the cause as at least seen: something big and metallic plowed into the moon at Ludicrous Speed. As memory serves, it was implied to maybe be an alien starship, apparently one where someone cut the brake line. That's actually kinda cool... an interstellar worldship like Rama makes a navigational error. Whoopsie.
 
CJGibson said:
By the by, what's the mechanism for the Moon exploding?

Chris

I think this fine 'documentary' covers that issue.... ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999
 
Orionblamblam said:
Step 1: nuke the bejeebers out of irritating countries, and do so *now.* Link up with the Brits, Russians, Chinese to eliminate a good chunk of the planetary population right off the bat, specifically the populations that will spend the next two years raising a ruckus.

Step 2: round up the anti-nuke and anti-space activists. Send them to the forced labor camps where they will be chained to stationary bicycles hooked up to generators that are used to produce methane, hydrogen and liquid oxygen propellants.

Step 3: Throw tanker trucks of money at Blue Origin, SpaceX, etc. Start shooting stuff to Mars. Anyone who interferes int he *slightest,* you put a bullet to them and their families.

Step 4: Promise whatever you like to the worlds bagrillionaires to get them to get stuff done. If that means their families get priority seats on the Mars arks, fine. Shove them into the compost mulchers the moment you get them set up on Mars if they're not actually otherwise useful.

Step 5: Crash program to develop nuclear thermal, nuclear electric systems. Your goal is to send the greatest mass possible to Mars. As many people as possible, and many plant and animal species as possible. Raid the seed ark in Norway, split the seeds up among the US, Brit, Russian, Chinese efforts. Even so the seats will be few. Limit them to the genetically healthy, the sane, the technically *useful.* Those who demand that you prioritize storytellers and poets and singers and painters along with the mechanics and the doctors and the farmer... well, you put them on the "B" ark.

Basically, you say "screw it" to civilized behavior and go straight to utterly pragmatic. If there was no hope whatsoever - the sun was gonna splode, say - then you let people do whatever, it doesn't matter. If DOOOOM was a few centuries out, then you can be civilized abut the evacuation. But when there's a chance *but* the time is limited, you gotta triage the situation, like chucking the screeching harpy off the lifeboat.

This. It's about all you could do that would have a snowball's chance in hell of accomplishing anything.
 
shedofdread said:
CJGibson said:
By the by, what's the mechanism for the Moon exploding?

Chris

I think this fine 'documentary' covers that issue.... ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space:_1999

Always loved the Eagle spaceships. Buddy of mine had a giant toy of one when we were kids.
 
Read it,it's not joke,

according to the three Legions,there will be a small planet will kick the Earth and will destroyed
about 70 % from the land and will day about 80 % from people,and the magnetism of the Earth
will change and prevent all Modern devices from work,so we will fight the the Antichrist with
swords.

That exactly will happen in 2022 or 2023,and the rest which will lift is the about have of old world,
and after good account from our scientists,also there was a witness from Jews,when their country
formed in 1948,an old woman from them,knew and kept the Talmud,said that,it will be long for
76 years,but was by the Calendar of moon years,which less about 11 day from Calendar sun years,
if you count,you will see those years exactly.
 
hesham said:
Read it,it's not joke,

according to the three Legions,there will be a small planet will kick the Earth and will destroyed
about 70 % from the land and will day about 80 % from people,and the magnetism of the Earth
will change and prevent all Modern devices from work,so we will fight the the Antichrist with
swords.

That exactly will happen in 2022 or 2023,and the rest which will lift is the about have of old world,
and after good account from our scientists,also there was a witness from Jews,when their country
formed in 1948,an old woman from them,knew and kept the Talmud,said that,it will be long for
76 years,but was by the Calendar of moon years,which less about 11 day from Calendar sun years,
if you count,you will see those years exactly.

got-a-point.jpg
 
You seed the stratosphere thick enough to send the planet into a hard icy state. The bolides energy then defrost the planet violently back to where it was. I don't have enough climatological data to roughly calculate how many exajoules of energy it would take to superheat the atmosphere vs an inversely proportional freeze, but that would be a theoretically plausible solution.
 
sublight is back said:
You seed the stratosphere thick enough to send the planet into a hard icy state. The bolides energy then defrost the planet violently back to where it was. I don't have enough climatological data to roughly calculate how many exajoules of energy it would take to superheat the atmosphere vs an inversely proportional freeze, but that would be a theoretically plausible solution.

If you could build a solar shield big enough in the L1 point to completely block sunlight from reaching Earth, I don't think you'd cool off Earth far enough in the 2 years you've got to make Earth Moon-Proof.
 
Orionblamblam said:
Step 3: Throw tanker trucks of money at Blue Origin, SpaceX, etc. Start shooting stuff to Mars. Anyone who interferes int he *slightest,* you put a bullet to them and their families.

RyanC said:
The world ends in 24 months so why not have some physicists who will die anyway get a few billion

Surely in such a situation money becomes irrelevant. You are talking about species survival. Anyone who wanted money in return to do this instantly forfeits their chance to live.
 
There are two years left. People will fight for every last second of those two years. In order to make it those two years, they'll need to eat. One way to eat is to buy food. To buy food, you need money.

Yes, the economy is going to promptly collapse. But in order to keep a semblance of order for as long as you can, money - or the functional equivalent - is going to remain important.

This is why Da Gubmint would try to keep DOOOOOoooooooOOOOOM secret for as long as possible, to keep the economy humming along and people doing what they need to do. But if the moon has exploded into a slowly expanding cloud of debris, the secrets out.


In this situation, there will be a serious change in who's important. Musicians and actors? Hardly. Rocket scientists? Realistically... not important. Two years is too little time to develop *meaningfully* new systems that you can get put into production in time to make any difference. What you'll need in abundance are people who can *build* the rockets... factory workers and people who can build factories... and people who can keep the factories filled with the resources they need. What's to keep them working when they know that they and their families almost certainly can't go? Well, death threats might be nice, but as the Soviets and Nazis showed, that's a way to extract a whole lot of mediocre effort. Paying them a lot? That has always been a fantastic way to get good product. Pay can come by way of safety, comfort and food during the remaining two years. By way of, say, admittance for themselves and/or family onto a lottery for seats on the last few ships. By way of assuring the, ahem, "services" of now otherwise no longer needed people, who in turn can be paid with security in the remaining time.

Under this scenario, the governments of the world would have to be ready and willing to slaughter at the drop of a hat. But slaughter the *right* people, for the *right* reason. Those who threaten the evacuation need to be dealt with, swiftly, surely, ruthlessly, permanently and *publicly.* Those who are needed to make the evacuation possible, you treat as *well* as possible.
 
Orionblamblam said:
There are two years left. People will fight for every last second of those two years. In order to make it those two years, they'll need to eat. One way to eat is to buy food. To buy food, you need money.

Yes, the economy is going to promptly collapse. But in order to keep a semblance of order for as long as you can, money - or the functional equivalent - is going to remain important.

Such limited thinking. Any species that held themselves back in a survival of species situation such as this because of an abstract concept such as money deserves to be come extinct. What are you going to say: "Sorry, we could develop a fleet of rockets to escape or a system to save everyone but we don't have enough bits of paper with markings on it (i.e. money)." As I said, such limited thinking. If there is a law of physics that prevents something then fine but not a 'law of finance'. Please!

Orionblamblam said:
This is why Da Gubmint would try to keep DOOOOOoooooooOOOOOM secret for as long as possible, to keep the economy humming along and people doing what they need to do. But if the moon has exploded into a slowly expanding cloud of debris, the secrets out.

The scenario postulated here would not be able to be kept secret - people would just look up at the sky to know something bad was happening.
 
GTX said:
Such limited thinking. Any species that held themselves back in a survival of species situation such as this because of an abstract concept such as money deserves to be come extinct.

Ah. You get a seat on the "B" ark.

What are you going to say: "Sorry, we could develop a fleet of rockets to escape or a system to save everyone but we don't have enough bits of paper with markings on it (i.e. money)." As I said, such limited thinking. If there is a law of physics that prevents something then fine but not a 'law of finance'. Please!

So it seems that what you would want to have happen in such a situation as this is that suddenly, somehow, everyone important to the economy would suddenly become a devout communist, instantly turning over their full effort, in full contradiction to human nature. Yeah, well... no. Not gonna happen.

There are going to be a *lot* of people who will look up into the sky, see looming death and promptly decide that the thing to do is to run off into the hills, either to party like it's 1999 or to shoot themselves. A lot of these people will be people you might well *need,* not necessarily to build the rockets but to grow and distribute food. You will *need* a functioning economy for as long as possible. You can either rely on the sudden hive-mind-like altruism of the vast majority of everybody (fat chance), or you can hold guns to the heads of everyone (including, presumably, the guys with the guns), or you can figure out a way to pay them for their labors.

Your argument is much like the argument that says that we shouldn't pay people to donate blood or organs, that they should just do this purely out of the goodness of their hearts; that heart surgeons shouldn't get paid the big bucks because they should know to just use their gods-given talents for the betterment of mankind. Nope. Reality doesn't work that way. You get more of what you pay more for, whether it's blood or organs or food or labor.
 
Orionblamblam said:
suddenly, somehow, everyone important to the economy would suddenly become a devout communist, instantly turning over their full effort, in full contradiction to human nature. Yeah, well... no. Not gonna happen.

Stop twisting this with stupid political comments! This is not any such thing. If you cannot see that then you are just showing more limited thinking.

Orionblamblam said:
Your argument is much like the argument that says that we shouldn't pay people to donate blood or organs, that they should just do this purely out of the goodness of their hearts; that heart surgeons shouldn't get paid the big bucks because they should know to just use their gods-given talents for the betterment of mankind. Nope. Reality doesn't work that way. You get more of what you pay more for, whether it's blood or organs or food or labor.

That is not what I am saying. If you cannot see that then it is pointless even trying to have a discussion.
 
Actually, you started twisting his words first. You hardly have room for complaint.

"Such limited thinking. Any species that held themselves back in a survival of species situation such as this because of an abstract concept such as money deserves to be come extinct. What are you going to say: "Sorry, we could develop a fleet of rockets to escape or a system to save everyone but we don't have enough bits of paper with markings on it (i.e. money)." As I said, such limited thinking. If there is a law of physics that prevents something then fine but not a 'law of finance'. Please! "

All he was saying is you need to maintain order, and people listen to money/goods/value units. Effectively, there IS a "law of finance". People don't generally do something for nothing. If I came to you and said I wanted you to work 16 hour days for the next two year for nothing in return would you do it?
 
hesham said:
Read it,it's not joke,

according to the three Legions,there will be a small planet will kick the Earth and will destroyed
about 70 % from the land and will day about 80 % from people,and the magnetism of the Earth
will change and prevent all Modern devices from work,so we will fight the the Antichrist with
swords.

That exactly will happen in 2022 or 2023,and the rest which will lift is the about have of old world,
and after good account from our scientists,also there was a witness from Jews,when their country
formed in 1948,an old woman from them,knew and kept the Talmud,said that,it will be long for
76 years,but was by the Calendar of moon years,which less about 11 day from Calendar sun years,
if you count,you will see those years exactly.

To all the other theories to save what's left of the planet, instead of Quadrillions of $$'s to get off planet to Mars why not just build massive DUMBs, Deep, Deep huge underground bases with all the plant life, animals, Flora, Fauna, Hot Chicks...etc. down there. Can even move large amounts of Tech and equipment, computers, aircraft, trains...whatever you need. Supposedly the original Mars inhabitants did the same thing when Mar's 'sploded or got hit with giant lightning bolts Eons ago. That way you can take you're time and build a Mars ship or Ark underground when needed.

I'm totally burnt out on star wars, but why cant we fight the Antichrist with Light sabers instead of mundane metal swords? Can we put some money into that?
 
kcran567 said:
hesham said:
Read it,it's not joke,

according to the three Legions,there will be a small planet will kick the Earth and will destroyed
about 70 % from the land and will day about 80 % from people,and the magnetism of the Earth
will change and prevent all Modern devices from work,so we will fight the the Antichrist with
swords.

That exactly will happen in 2022 or 2023,and the rest which will lift is the about have of old world,
and after good account from our scientists,also there was a witness from Jews,when their country
formed in 1948,an old woman from them,knew and kept the Talmud,said that,it will be long for
76 years,but was by the Calendar of moon years,which less about 11 day from Calendar sun years,
if you count,you will see those years exactly.

To all the other theories to save what's left of the planet, instead of Quadrillions of $$'s to get off planet to Mars why not just build massive DUMBs, Deep, Deep huge underground bases with all the plant life, animals, Flora, Fauna, Hot Chicks...etc. down there. Can even move large amounts of Tech and equipment, computers, aircraft, trains...whatever you need. Supposedly the original Mars inhabitants did the same thing when Mar's 'sploded or got hit with giant lightning bolts Eons ago. That way you can take you're time and build a Mars ship or Ark underground when needed.

I'm totally burnt out on star wars, but why cant we fight the Antichrist with Light sabers instead of mundane metal swords? Can we put some money into that?

Figure out how to make a light saber and you will be a rich man.
 
GTX said:
Surely in such a situation money becomes irrelevant. You are talking about species survival. Anyone who wanted money in return to do this instantly forfeits their chance to live.
Nailed it. Any other adults left in the room?
 
Arjen said:
GTX said:
Surely in such a situation money becomes irrelevant. You are talking about species survival. Anyone who wanted money in return to do this instantly forfeits their chance to live.
Nailed it. Any other adults left in the room?

Sorry, but many "adults" have children to feed and a spouse to help support. Wanna tell the rest of us how you propose to do that with ZERO resources coming in, because we'd all like to know your secret. Hell, better yet, tell us how you plan to even EAT for two years with nothing coming in.
 
Some books to amaze and inspire
 

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why do i have this urge to Read "Moonseed" by Stephen Baxter ?
 
GTX said:
Orionblamblam said:
suddenly, somehow, everyone important to the economy would suddenly become a devout communist, instantly turning over their full effort, in full contradiction to human nature. Yeah, well... no. Not gonna happen.

Stop twisting this with stupid political comments! This is not any such thing.

What "political comment?" You suggested that when faced with inevitable death of themselves *and* all their offspring that somehow everyone would suddenly come together for the common good, without any expectation of compensation. How is this *not* "from each according to their abilities?"



Orionblamblam said:
Your argument is much like the argument that says that we shouldn't pay people to donate blood or organs, that they should just do this purely out of the goodness of their hearts; that heart surgeons shouldn't get paid the big bucks because they should know to just use their gods-given talents for the betterment of mankind. Nope. Reality doesn't work that way. You get more of what you pay more for, whether it's blood or organs or food or labor.

That is not what I am saying.

No? Then what are you saying, if not that in this time of DOOM that people should and *would* work together in a way that humans have demonstrated a complete inability to do all throughout human history?
 
The moon is slowly leaving us anyway and a moon impact that big would leave us little time to find the technology required. More likely would be a smaller crew for perhaps a dozen or more realistic Mars reaching projects. Carry eggs for cultural and genealogical and biological security and rebuild from that. Supporting a large number of people in one hit is way beyond us even given some real science in the film 'the Martian'. Most of the human race would be gone, along with the majority of other species and that is the real loss.
 
Arjen said:
GTX said:
Surely in such a situation money becomes irrelevant. You are talking about species survival. Anyone who wanted money in return to do this instantly forfeits their chance to live.
Nailed it. Any other adults left in the room?

Uh-huh. OK, let's try to work this out.
1: Moon explodes. Doom is apparent in two years.
2: Experts convene and determine that in order to save the species, we need Program X.
3: In order to pull off Program X, we need a bragillion experts in a bagrillion fields, down to and including truck drivers and plumbers.

Let me repeat that: we NEED these people. The species NEEDS them to do their job.

Let's say that *I* am one such expert. Say, I am the world's top and pretty much only expert in McGuffin Engineering. But I see the end coming and my view is that we're doomed, it's hopeless, I don't want to spend another day living through this nightmare. I want to eat a bullet and be done with it. Or let's say I just want to spend the next two years in an opium den. Or hunting down all my personal enemies. Or playing Call of Duty. What are *you* as Mr. Omnipotent Government Guy going to do, especially if you know that I could be bought off... by, say, opium or revenge or a truly kick-ass gaming system?

Now keep in mind that an Ark Project is going to require a *vast* number of people to do their jobs, and essentially all of them will be working knowing that they are *not* going to get to go. They all know they and their children are *going* to die. The trouble you have getting *me* to do my job, multiply it by a million.

Are you going to conclude that since people react to doom differently, and that many people can only be prodded into labor via payment of some kind, the whole species - and bunnies, and oak trees, and fruit bats, and stoats, and howler monkeys, and dolphins, etc. - they all deserve to go extinct because you are morally repulsed by filthy lucre?

Altruism and heroic self-sacrifice are fine. But it is criminally stupid to put all your faith in them, especially when you know just how effective bribery can be.


Or look at it this way: I'm Hugo Drax. My Mars base is up and running. It's just now at the self-sustaining point when the moon explodes. "Screw this noise, I'm outta here," I say, loading up the next colonization ship with me, my family and my trusted lieutenants. All we gotta do is *go,* and we'll be safe. Of course when we go the organization back on Earth will fall apart, but we're good. So what are you, Mr. Omnipotent Government Guy, going to offer me to stick around and keep things going, knowing that every day I delay in getting outta Dodge my chances of getting safely away decrease?
 
Orionblamblam said:
Arjen said:
GTX said:
Surely in such a situation money becomes irrelevant. You are talking about species survival. Anyone who wanted money in return to do this instantly forfeits their chance to live.
Nailed it. Any other adults left in the room?

Uh-huh. OK, let's try to work this out.
1: Moon explodes. Doom is apparent in two years.
2: Experts convene and determine that in order to save the species, we need Program X.
3: In order to pull off Program X, we need a bragillion experts in a bagrillion fields, down to and including truck drivers and plumbers.

Let me repeat that: we NEED these people. The species NEEDS them to do their job.

Let's say that *I* am one such expert. Say, I am the world's top and pretty much only expert in McGuffin Engineering. But I see the end coming and my view is that we're doomed, it's hopeless, I don't want to spend another day living through this nightmare. I want to eat a bullet and be done with it. Or let's say I just want to spend the next two years in an opium den. Or hunting down all my personal enemies. Or playing Call of Duty. What are *you* as Mr. Omnipotent Government Guy going to do, especially if you know that I could be bought off... by, say, opium or revenge or a truly kick-ass gaming system?

Now keep in mind that an Ark Project is going to require a *vast* number of people to do their jobs, and essentially all of them will be working knowing that they are *not* going to get to go. They all know they and their children are *going* to die. The trouble you have getting *me* to do my job, multiply it by a million.

Are you going to conclude that since people react to doom differently, and that many people can only be prodded into labor via payment of some kind, the whole species - and bunnies, and oak trees, and fruit bats, and stoats, and howler monkeys, and dolphins, etc. - they all deserve to go extinct because you are morally repulsed by filthy lucre?

Altruism and heroic self-sacrifice are fine. But it is criminally stupid to put all your faith in them, especially when you know just how effective bribery can be.


Or look at it this way: I'm Hugo Drax. My Mars base is up and running. It's just now at the self-sustaining point when the moon explodes. "Screw this noise, I'm outta here," I say, loading up the next colonization ship with me, my family and my trusted lieutenants. All we gotta do is *go,* and we'll be safe. Of course when we go the organization back on Earth will fall apart, but we're good. So what are you, Mr. Omnipotent Government Guy, going to offer me to stick around and keep things going, knowing that every day I delay in getting outta Dodge my chances of getting safely away decrease?
But of course you're right OBB there will have to be some medium of exchange.

The scientist might say "Sure I will help but I want you to feed my family" thereby making food what? Hey it's a payment. But instead of the food directly the company or government that wants to hire you says "We have our own food production that we put in a company store. Now what you can do is take these special ABC Aerospace Bucks down to the store to buy food"

Pretty soon it starts to look just like a modern free market economy again.
 
Back to mechanics for a moment.

The Space 1999 scenario doesn't wash in this case as there would be no nuclear dump on the Moon to explode. McGuffin maybe, but I can't see the Moon 'just exploding'. Seems to be a very Oddball attitude to take. (Younger readers might care to Google the Sage of Kelly's Heroes). Or perhaps the Vogons got their blueprints upside down and as suggested previously, a big ship hit it.

It's nearly 40 years since I did astrogeology (and not a lot) and much has changed since, but wouldn't the rubble from the Moon stabilise into a ring or sphere of rubble? OK, there would be an initial bombardment, but after that a ring.

If so, how would your ark ships pass through that rubble cloud on departure for Mars? (yeah, yeah, we'd be leaving before it happened.)

I'm afraid I find the basic premise implausible in geological terms just like that scene in The Last Jedi is implausible by the laws of physics.

It's just a story...and worse things have happened on Earth.

Enough pedantry, let's have some self-interest. Which Ark would we geologists go on and would it be called the Harrison H Schmitt?

Chris
 
CJGibson said:
I can't see the Moon 'just exploding'. Seems to be a very Oddball attitude to take. (Younger readers might care to Google the Sage of Kelly's Heroes). Or perhaps the Vogons got their blueprints upside down and as suggested previously, a big ship hit it.

The energy required to disrupt the moon enough so that a good fraction of it reaches lunar escape velocity is mind boggling, about 10^29 joules. That's a great big ol' antimatter bomb, or perhaps something screwy going wrong with the known laws of physics.

wouldn't the rubble from the Moon stabilise into a ring or sphere of rubble?

Depends. If the total energy is less than 10^29 joules, the rubble pile that once was the moon would puff up... and then collapse back down into a glowing sphere. More than that, the rubble pile will reach lunar escape velocity. But depending how much more than 10^29 j, it would either stay in Earth orbit or escape into solar orbit. It would take a *really* big explosion to toss stuff down to Earth itself. If the explosion is big enough to burst past lunar escape velocity but not enough to break out of Earth orbit, it'll form a crummy ring of sorts, then *eventually* coalesce back into a sphere. Possibly forming several moons. Depending on how things swing past each other, some might go into very different orbits, leaving Earth a multi-moon system.

Something Hollywood insists on getting wrong is the immediate effect on Earth. See the "Time Machine" movie from a decade-ish ago: moon goes blooey, and all of a sudden Earth is wracked with quakes. Well... nope. In the sort of explosion that leave the moon a rubble pile, the center of mass of the pile is in the same place the moons was, is in the same orbit, is of the same mass. Earth basically wouldn't notice the moon has been disrupted. As the moon spreads out, the tides might get a bit "mushy," but there'd be little in the way of visually exciting earthquakes.


If so, how would your ark ships pass through that rubble cloud on departure for Mars? (yeah, yeah, we'd be leaving before it happened.)

If the moon has turned into a cloud, most likelythere'd be a gradient: the bigger chunks in the middle, progressively smaller bits the further out. So a ship heading to Mars will know to stay hell and gone away from the big chunks, but the sky will be littered to some degree with dust and sand. Some amount of armor shielding would help, but under the circumstances it's not clear that ships would actually be able to afford them. So... in all probability the trick would be to shoot as many ships as possible and hope an adequate number get through.


Enough pedantry

Heresy! On the interwebs, there ain't no such thing as "enough pedantry."
 
I second the underground idea. Seems more likely to get done in a short amount of time. Spend all that manufacturing effort in digging big deep bunkers. Oxygen generators, reactors for power, food stuffs. The earth is pretty big-- a couple of them are bound to survive the bombardment.
 
_Del_ said:
The earth is pretty big-- a couple of them are bound to survive the bombardment.

Kinda depends upon the bombardment. If it's bad enough, it could potentially Venus-form the planet. And then you'd be permanently stuck underground, nowhere to go but further down.

As noted humanitarian and all-around sane guy George S. Patton once pointed out, "Fixed fortifications are monuments to human stupidity." You always need an escape route, a secret exit, a back door. Going underground really kinda doesn't do that for you. Going underground is an act of hope... you're hoping that the environment will clear up relatively soon allowing you to leave.
 
I like the chances of making it underground in time better than making it to Mars. Two years isn't enough time; you'll need a lot of innovation AND subsequent production to get there. Underground saves more people (your most important resource). Plus, you can take all the heavy industry with you. You have to worry about each spare ounce with a Mars trip, and anything that goes wrong takes a much larger percentage of your SavePeople effort down the toilet with it. IF you have to terraform earth after moongeddon, then at least you have tons of materials, supplies, and manufacturing in several enclaves to start working with and more brains saved to puzzle it out.
 

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