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What is the most catastrophic event that could poss devastate humanity in the future?

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  • #16
    Originally posted by Roy View Post
    A world-wide power cut still isn't going to be as devastating as an asteroid or similar impact that burns everything above ground, and then darkens the sky for more than a year so that neither land plants nor marine phytoplankton can grow.
    The point is the possibility of major solar storms even greater than previous 1859 solar storm are far more likely than a major meteor strike.
    Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
    Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
    But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

    go with the flow the river knows . . .

    Frank

    I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

    Comment


    • #17
      Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
      [ATTACH=CONFIG]36014[/ATTACH]
      . . . owned by Donald Trump and the 2% richest people in America.
      Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
      Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
      But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

      go with the flow the river knows . . .

      Frank

      I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by rogue06 View Post
        [ATTACH=CONFIG]36014[/ATTACH]


        ** gratin
        1Cor 15:34 Come to your senses as you ought and stop sinning; for I say to your shame, there are some who know not God.
        .
        ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛
        Scripture before Tradition:
        but that won't prevent others from
        taking it upon themselves to deprive you
        of the right to call yourself Christian.

        ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
          The point is the possibility of major solar storms even greater than previous 1859 solar storm are far more likely than a major meteor strike.
          We are very dependent on our technology. We had a city wide power outage after a hurricane passed through. The whole city was down for a week until they could get the power lines restored. No heat. Luckily it was near spring so people could do with blankets, but if it happened in the dead of winter, people would have died. I was lucky because my old house had a gravity fed furnace built in the 1940s that didn't use any electricity. It just used gas and the heat rose through the vents by convection.

          Comment


          • #20
            I have a sneaking suspicion that solar power might just go phht - and possibly battery storage along with it.

            Dark Angel was another TV series set against a backdrop of IT suddenly going west - but I don't know what the show attributed the cause to.
            1Cor 15:34 Come to your senses as you ought and stop sinning; for I say to your shame, there are some who know not God.
            .
            ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛
            Scripture before Tradition:
            but that won't prevent others from
            taking it upon themselves to deprive you
            of the right to call yourself Christian.

            ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛

            Comment


            • #21
              Implementation of the Green New Deal.
              That's what
              - She

              Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
              - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

              I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
              - Stephen R. Donaldson

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by Bill the Cat View Post
                Implementation of the Green New Deal.
                It failed in Congress.
                Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                go with the flow the river knows . . .

                Frank

                I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                Comment


                • #23
                  This was sort of an April Fool thread, yes, based on facts, but with the possible effects highly exaggerated. Lots of jokes. but no actually did research to contradict initial post.
                  Last edited by shunyadragon; 04-07-2019, 07:06 PM.
                  Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                  Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                  But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                  go with the flow the river knows . . .

                  Frank

                  I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                    It failed in Congress.
                    So shines a good deed in a weary world...
                    That's what
                    - She

                    Without a clear-cut definition of sin, morality becomes a mere argument over the best way to train animals
                    - Manya the Holy Szin (The Quintara Marathon)

                    I may not be as old as dirt, but me and dirt are starting to have an awful lot in common
                    - Stephen R. Donaldson

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                      This was sort of an April Fool thread, yes, based on facts, but with the possible effects highly exaggerated. Lots of jokes. but no actually did research to contradict initial post.
                      You yourself mentioned meteor impacts in the original post. We've modeled the dino-killing one, and it's clearly worse than just losing power. I'm pretty sure lighting every single tree on the planet on fire at once qualifies as more severe than a power outage. As would blocking out the sun for months and delivering massive acid rain.

                      In fact, i'm pretty sure all of this would cause a complete power outage in addition to the other horrific stuff.

                      So, given that the first post included an example that contradicted its own contention, you shouldn't be surprised that the discussion wandered off in random directions.
                      "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                        You yourself mentioned meteor impacts in the original post. We've modeled the dino-killing one, and it's clearly worse than just losing power. I'm pretty sure lighting every single tree on the planet on fire at once qualifies as more severe than a power outage. As would blocking out the sun for months and delivering massive acid rain.

                        In fact, i'm pretty sure all of this would cause a complete power outage in addition to the other horrific stuff.

                        So, given that the first post included an example that contradicted its own contention, you shouldn't be surprised that the discussion wandered off in random directions.
                        Not surprizing, but the point of the thread is that super solar storms are far far more likely to occur in frequency of more than one a century when compared to the frequency of a massive meteor strike, which occur in a frequency of millions of years or more.
                        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                        go with the flow the river knows . . .

                        Frank

                        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                          Not surprizing, but the point of the thread is that super solar storms are far far more likely to occur in frequency of more than one a century when compared to the frequency of a massive meteor strike, which occur in a frequency of millions of years or more.
                          What is the one/century based on?
                          "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                            What is the one/century based on?
                            History of recorded occurrences, and older projected occurrences.

                            Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solar_storms



                            Background
                            Active stars produce disturbances in space weather with the field of heliophysics, the science that studies such phenomena; itself primarily an interdisciplinary combination of solar physics and planetary science (long-term space weather patterns comprise space climate). In the Solar System, the Sun can produce intense geomagnetic and energetic particle storms capable of causing severe damage to technology including but not limited to large scale power outages, disruption or blackouts of radio communications (including GPS), and temporary to permanent disabling of satellites and other spaceborne technology. Intense solar storms may also be hazardous to high-latitude, high-altitude aviation[1] and to human spaceflight.[2] Geomagnetic storms are the cause of auroras.[3] The most significant known solar storm, across the most parameters, occurred in September 1859 and is known as the "Carrington event".[4] The damage from the most potent solar storms is capable of existentially threatening the stability of modern human civilization,[5][6] although proper preparedness and mitigation can substantially reduce the hazards.[7][8] Proxy data from Earth, as well as analysis of stars similar to the Sun suggest that it may be capable of producing so called superflares, those which are much larger than any flares in the historical record (as much as 1000x stronger every 5000 years),[9][10][11] but it contradicts the models of solar flares[12] and to the statistic of extreme solar events reconstructed using cosmogenic isotope data in terrestrial archives.[13] The discrepancy is not yet resolved and may be related to a biased statistic of the stellar population of solar analogs [14]

                            Notable events
                            Electromagnetic, geomagnetic, and/or particle storms.

                            © Copyright Original Source



                            See list in reference. Actually reviewing this source they consider it a possible catastrophic event. I did not consider it that bad.
                            Last edited by shunyadragon; 04-08-2019, 05:18 PM.
                            Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                            Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                            But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                            go with the flow the river knows . . .

                            Frank

                            I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by shunyadragon View Post
                              History of recorded occurrences, and older projected occurrences.

                              See list in reference.
                              We've been through a large number of the events on that list with our modern electrical grids intact, so the list isn't very helpful for this issue.

                              I'm looking for an indication of the frequency of events that could take out the grid, a prerequisite for this risk.
                              "Any sufficiently advanced stupidity is indistinguishable from trolling."

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by TheLurch View Post
                                We've been through a large number of the events on that list with our modern electrical grids intact, so the list isn't very helpful for this issue.

                                I'm looking for an indication of the frequency of events that could take out the grid, a prerequisite for this risk.
                                The lack of evidence is the reason it was an April Fool's thread, but some sources as referenced in my reference consider it a possibility based on ~1 in 1000 to 5000 years. Potentially huge events before contemporary technological history would not be noticed except for lighting up the whole sky with northern lights.
                                Last edited by shunyadragon; 04-08-2019, 07:07 PM.
                                Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
                                Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
                                But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

                                go with the flow the river knows . . .

                                Frank

                                I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

                                Comment

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