quote:

Originally posted by Mr.Push:
symmetry's apocalypse is going to be awesome chaps. so there you are the zombie hordes, quelle yawn, outside.

Hey, I was just trying to de-de-rail the thread. Zombie hordes at oxbridge are nothing new, are they? And the loos in the halls were quite grim, at least the couple that I saw.

Interesting thread. Perhaps we ought to distinguish between what might indicate a coming apocalypse and how people would react to the knowledge of impending armageddon. In terms of the latter, I thought "Children of Men" did a terrific job: a few cast aside their morality and humanity, fewer still devote their energies to preserving some legacy of mankind or preventing our death, but most just shuffle towards extinction, because they don't know what else to do.

quote:

most just shuffle towards extinction, because they don't know what else to do.

More true words were never spoken.

As far as I know, the world ends this coming Wednesday.

Apparently that's when the Large Hadron Collider is switched on for the first time.

I'll be at work with a hangover, so I'm kinda cool with it.

Interestingly, a Robert G Barratt book I just read, and also the game Deus Ex (in one of its several possible endings) seemed to consider the idea of a total communications breakdown as in some way a Good Thing, or at least a desirable step back toward a simpler time.

I think that's a privileged position, though, since stepping back to a simpler time probably implies getting ride of 80% or more of the world's current population. The assumption in far too many of our imagined apocalypses is that the bad shit happens to other people (I blame movies).

But yeah, a few serious EMP blasts over your major cities would definitely slow things down.

But writing the textbook hipped me to half a dozen possible world-enders, some of which would end up with a few survivors, many with none:

1. large meteor strike - large enough it's all over, slightly smaller it's nuclear winter and lots of starvation
2. random gamma ray burst from space - it happens, and could basically destroy all life on earth (not just human life) instantly with no warning
3. pandemics - pick your fave: even just imagining a single Ebola character making it into any city of millions is plenty to give you the jibblies - 90% kill rate in a period of days, no cure
4. global thermonuclear war - we act is if it's off the table and it ain't
5. unforeseen dramatic positive climate forcings - if the ice sheet on Greenland melts underneath enough to get lubed and slide off the island, rapid 60-70 foot sea height increases would devastate basically all coastal cities. If there are massive methane pockets in the tundra and they start to outgas, dramatic heating would be very rapid. And so on.
6. changes to ocean current and heat circulation lead to a rapid new ice age
7. a mega computer virus that uses the distributed nature of the net and is able to physically damage every processor it hits - total web shutdown in a day, with all the things that are now web-controlled going with it
8. the 'gray goo' problem of runaway nanomachines
9. some unanticipated rupture in reality - or, less dramatically, massive explosion, massive gamma ray burst or the creation of a small but rapidly-growing black hole - due to the Large Hadron Collider or whatever other tinkering we're doing
10. ceased rotation of the earth's core, collapsing the magnetic field and allowing in a lethal storm of solar radiation

But the one that gets us will most likely be one we haven't even imagined.

Have a nice day.

Although the Large Hardon Hadron Collider gets a lot of bad press for possibly bringing about the end of the world, physicists say that anything the LHC could do has already been done to the Earth many times, by nature. The quote I heard, though I can't remember where now, was, "It's a 10^-19 chance. Come on. You have a 10^-11 chance of evaporating while you shave in the morning."*

_{* Although, I think somebody's numbers are off, as that would suggest, conservatively, one person on Earth would evaporate while shaving every six years or so. So, maybe we don't want to trust these physicists after all.}

quote:

Large Hardon Hadron Collider

would that look like this>?



or



or

50,000 Quatloos on the Hadron!

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
Although the Large Hardon Hadron Collider gets a lot of bad press for possibly bringing about the end of the world, physicists say that anything the LHC could do has already been done to the Earth many times, by nature. The quote I heard, though I can't remember where now, was, "It's a 10^-19 chance. Come on. You have a 10^-11 chance of evaporating while you shave in the morning."*

_{* Although, I think somebody's numbers are off, as that would suggest, conservatively, one person on Earth would evaporate while shaving every six years or so. So, maybe we don't want to trust these physicists after all.}

Here's a hypothetical situation: some guy grabs an assault rifle, rounds your family up, points the rifle at them and says, "There's a 10^-19 chance I'll blow their fucking heads off."

Still cool, or not?

Lith, you don't need reminding that 10^-19 is a bloody small number. To get odds like that, the guy with the assault rifle would have to be standing on the other side of the fucking *galaxy*. I'll take those odds.

The hysteria over the LHC was bad enough when I was ranting about it last month, this is only making things worse.

Edit: Oh, and Colin, here's your quote...

best,
Chris H

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Chris H,

(OK, I only put it in there to get the list to 10)

quote:

Originally posted by Boogerhead:
Random Acts of Senseless Violence, by Jack Womack pretty much covers it.

New president every week, always due to assassination.
Constant, sustained rioting.
11 year olds with automatic weapons.
Fire and smoke, always.
Public utilities aren't public.
Etc.

Science fiction writers unable to get their scripts through Hollywood.

End is near.

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:
Here's a hypothetical situation: some guy grabs an assault rifle, rounds your family up, points the rifle at them and says, "There's a 10^-19 chance I'll blow their fucking heads off."

Still cool, or not?

As Chris H says, yes indeed.

Not cool that he's threaten my family (even with an infinitesimally small chance of harm), but he'd have a better chance of killing them, by many orders of magnitude, if he fired the gun away from them. There's also much higher chance they'll be struck by lightning while he's talking about it-- on the order of at least a billion times more likely.

But actually, there's a much better quote in the article Chris H linked to:

quote:

Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth – and the planet still exists.

quote:

Originally posted by colin:
As Chris H says, yes indeed.

Not cool that he's threaten my family (even with an infinitesimally small chance of harm), but he'd have a better chance of killing them, by many orders of magnitude, if he fired the gun away from them. There's also much higher chance they'll be struck by lightning while he's talking about it-- on the order of at least a billion times more likely.

So you're cool with it?

quote:

Nature has already conducted the equivalent of about a hundred thousand LHC experimental programmes on Earth – and the planet still exists.

Ah, Tunguska - fun for all the family.

I wonder if any of the scientists will quote the Bhagavad Gita when the LHC fires up for the first time.

I watched Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends - "Black Nationalism" from 1999.

He's a BBC reporter who tackles left of centre themes with a slant on exposing topics that aren't that well covered here in the UK. The wiki episode write-up:

American black nationalist groups have been branded anti-Semitic, homophobic, misogynist and even racist by the mainstream press. Louis Theroux goes to Harlem in New York to meet its proponents, and meets the Reverend Al Sharpton, the main point of contact in the black nationalist movement. Theroux also meets Khalid Abdul Muhammad, dubbed by the media 'the most dangerous man in America' and visits the Israeli School of Universal Practical Knowledge, who believe that blacks are the true Israelites and that all English monarchs until early modern times were black. Theroux also joins Al Sharpton on a march on Wall Street to protest at the shooting by New York police of Amadou Diallo, who was shot 19 times.

He never trivialises his subjects and to that end I really enjoy his shows.

What struck me at the time was just how these people will react if/when Barack Obama becomes 'the empowered black man".

Please don't read any racism into this post - I'm not racist or predjudiced at all. But I wonder just how the black nationalists will react. My fear is that they will treat him as a "black white man" and he'll be chastised from all quarters.

quote:

Originally posted by lithos:
I wonder if any of the scientists will quote the Bhagavad Gita when the LHC fires up for the first time.

No, but I will when I turn you over my knee for being willfully obtuse. And note that I am granting you the benefit of a 'willfully' there, unlike the rest of the mouthbreathing hoi polloi who show a demonstrable lack of understanding of probabilities and/or particle physics. I mean, come on, gauge theory, trivial stuff.

I am currently looking for a first light party in the vicinity of london.

Another marker of the apocalypse: generally abysmal math skills.

Bik: a lot of people already think obama is an Oreo.

quote:

Originally posted by Bictaker:
But I wonder just how the black nationalists will react. My fear is that they will treat him as a "black white man" and he'll be chastised from all quarters.

Considering that Al Sharpton has been actively campaigning (on his own, I believe) for Obama, I think that's unlikely, even if we take the Beeb's position that Rev Al is the "main point of contact for black nationalism". Obama will no doubt be in a tough position because of his identity, but he's so far shown that he's a virtuoso of occupying difficult positions.

And it's true what Symmetry sez, though I'm not a fan of the term she uses: some have already criticized him for being "not black enough", or have pointed out that he's properly "African" rather than "African American".

(Semantics, sez I.)

I'm fairly up on Obama's persona but think I'll defer judgement for 12 months or so. I really hope he makes it. His policies are agreeable to me and I think it would be a triumph for humanity.

Having recently been HOME home, I am not optimistic. I didn't say oreo to be offensive, merely channeling things I hear on the ground.