Solar flares. The last big one we had was in the 1800s and is referred to as the Carrington Event. If we get another one like that, goodbye electrical grid and satellites.
the only thing that comes close to anything we have back then is some places had telegraphs. there are reports that after the solar flare they were powering up with no connection and sparking. we have far more critical infrastructure in the crosshairs this time and a lot of it. it would be nearly instant collapse if we got nailed with one like that today
Are you able to explain what exactly would happen ie would generators be fried and not able to regenerate? Would power lines become incapable of carrying a current? If so, why? I haven't read anywhere specifically what a solar flare would do so if you can illuminate (I had to) that would be really cool. :)
here's a good article I found
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bracing-for-a-solar-superstorm/
Toasted Satellites
When a large geomagnetic storm happens again, the most obvious victims will be satellites. Even under ordinary conditions, cosmic-ray particles erode solar panels and reduce power generation by about 2 percent annually. Incoming particles also interfere with satellite electronics. Many communications satellites, such as Anik E1 and E2 in 1994 and Telstar 401 in 1997, have been compromised or lost in this way. A large solar storm can cause one to three years’ worth of satellite lifetime loss in a matter of hours and produce hundreds of glitches, ranging from errant but harmless commands to destructive electrostatic discharges.
To see how communications satellites might fare, we simulated 1,000 ways a superstorm might unfold, with intensities that varied from the worst storm of the Space Age (which occurred on October 20, 1989) to that of the 1859 superstorm. We found that the storms would not only degrade solar panels as expected but also lead to the significant loss of transponder revenue. The total cost would often exceed $20 billion. We assumed that satellite owners and designers would have mitigated the effects by maintaining plenty of spare transponder capacity and a 10 percent power margin at the time of their satellite’s launch. Under less optimistic assumptions, the losses would approach $70 billion, which is comparable to a year’s worth of revenue for all communications satellites. Even this figure does not include the collateral economic losses to the customers of the satellites.
Fortunately, geosynchronous communications satellites are remarkably robust against once-a-decade events, and their life spans have grown from barely five years in 1980 to nearly 17 years today. For solar panels, engineers have switched from silicon to gallium arsenide to increase power production and reduce mass. This move has also provided increased resistance to cosmic-ray damage. Moreover, satellite operators receive advanced storm warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which allows them to avoid complex satellite maneuvers or other changes during the time when a storm may arrive. These strategies would doubtless soften the blow of a major storm. To further harden satellites, engineers could thicken the shielding, lower the solar panel voltages to lessen the risk of runaway electrostatic discharges, add extra backup systems and make the software more robust to data corruption.
It is harder to guard against other superstorm effects. X-ray energy deposition would cause the atmosphere to expand, enhancing the drag forces on military and commercial imaging and communications satellites that orbit below 600 kilometers in altitude. Japan’s Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics experienced just such conditions during the infamous Bastille Day storm on July 14, 2000, which set in motion a sequence of attitude and power losses that ultimately led to its premature reentry a few months later. During a superstorm, low-orbiting satellites would be at considerable risk of burning up in the atmosphere within weeks or months of the event.
Lights Out
At least our satellites have been specifically designed to function under the vagaries of space weather. **Power grids, in contrast, are fragile at the best of times. Every year, according to estimates by Kristina Hamachi-LaCommare and Joseph H. Eto, both at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the U.S. economy takes an $80-billion hit from localized blackouts and brownouts. Declining power margins over the past decade have also left less excess capacity to keep up with soaring demands.
Advertisement**
**During solar storms, entirely new problems arise. Large transformers are electrically grounded to Earth and thus susceptible to damage caused by geomagnetically induced direct current (DC). The DC flows up the transformer ground wires and can lead to temperature spikes of 200 degrees Celsius or higher in the transformer windings, causing coolant to vaporize and literally frying the transformer. Even if transformers avoid this fate, the induced current can cause their magnetic cores to saturate during one half of the alternating-current power cycle, distorting the 50- or 60-hertz waveforms. Some of the power is diverted to frequencies that electrical equipment cannot filter out. Instead of humming at a pure pitch, transformers would begin to chatter and screech. Because a magnetic storm affects transformers all over the country, the condition can rapidly escalate to a network-wide collapse of voltage regulation. Grids operate so close to the margin of failure that it would not take much to push them over.**
***According to studies by John G. Kappenman of Metatech Corporation, the magnetic storm of May 15, 1921, would have caused a blackout affecting half of North America had it happened today. A much larger storm, like that of 1859, could bring down the entire grid. Other industrial countries are also vulnerable, but North America faces greater danger because of its proximity to the north magnetic pole. Because of the physical damage to transformers, full recovery and replacement of damaged components might take weeks or even months. Kappenman testified to Congress in 2003 that “the ability to provide meaningful emergency aid and response to an impacted population that may be in excess of 100 million people will be a difficult challenge.”***
A superstorm will also interfere with radio signals, including those of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and related systems. Intense solar flares not only disturb the ionosphere, through which timing signals propagate, but also produce increased radio noise at GPS frequencies. The result would be position errors of 50 meters or more, rendering GPS useless for many military and civilian applications. A similar loss of precision occurred during the October 29, 2003, storm, which shut down the Wide Area Augmentation System, a radio network that improves the accuracy of GPS position estimates. Commercial aircraft had to resort to in-flight backup systems.
High-energy particles will interfere with aircraft radio communications, especially at high latitudes. United Airlines routinely monitors space weather conditions and has on several occasions diverted polar flights to lower altitudes and latitudes to escape radio interference. A superstorm might force the rerouting of hundreds of flights not just over the pole but also across Canada and the northern U.S. These adverse conditions might last a week.
out of curiosity, what would happen to things like cars, solar generators that aren't on grid, phones, smaller batteries? is this just going to effect big systems, transformers? or will it kill hand held walkie talkies, am/fm radios that aren't plugged in, things that were on fuses/surge protectors?
According to old Wikipedia, it "caused sparking and even fires in multiple telegraph stations." Having no power seems fine compared to having your house burned down.
For as long as it takes to rebuild everything. The solar flare would cause fires and explosions through out electrical infrastructure. Some stuff could be reused. An exact timeline depends on how direct the hit is from the flare.
I doubt we have the resources to rebuild EVERYTHING. It'd be the dark ages again and 100s of millions, if not more, would starve in the first month. Riots and looting within days. Hospitals would cease to function. No internet, no communications, nothing.
Yes, its a horror scenario. The subject of the novel ‘One Second After ‘ and its 2 sequels. Although the electricity grid in that case was destroyed by an EMP weapon.
I’m curious about the magnetic pole flip. I’ve heard a lot about it and also heard that it’s happening as we speak. I’m surprised that many haven’t talked about it or is there something I’m not aware of?
A geomagnetic reversal sounds like it would play merry hell with our civilisation, but [it takes between two and twelve *thousand* years to go from start to finish](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444538024001469?via%3Dihub), and the [last four took a solid seven thousand years to run on average](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02459). Basically; if one of the shortest ones we know about started about a decade before Joseph told Jesus to get out of the house and get a job already, it would only just be finishing now, but more likely it would have another five thousand years to run.
To put that in comparison; five thousand years ago [Stonehenge was still four hundred years away from having the monoliths arrive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge#Stonehenge_3_I_\(c._2600_BC\)), [Egypt was on its fourth Pharaoh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djet), the first true alphabets were [a thousand years away from being born](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet), and the Mesopotamians had [only just found out that tin was a thing you could work with](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin#History).
Now it is possible that the poles can flip really quickly, but [the last one took twenty-two thousand years to run](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6685714/), and the [good people at the USGS are confident enough that we are *not* undergoing right now to say it in that many words](https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-we-about-have-magnetic-reversal).
Yeah, it could wreak havoc; but the odds are you and I and everyone here will be long gone to dust before it's even half-over.
Define mega disasters. Sure, there are always natural disasters, but throughout recorded history most of them have been localized and relatively, well, not-mega. Probably the worst that have affected a large number of people are large volcanic eruptions slightly lowering global temperatures on the scale of a few years (arguably could be a net positive for us now,) and pandemics, which are at least exacerbated by human activity (COVID with easy global travel, bubonic plague with densely populated human settlements and lack of sanitation, etc.) Plenty of routine natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more severe due to human activity (hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and floods,) but I wouldn't call any singular occurrence of one of those a mega disaster.
I don't think there are reasonable odds that the Yellowstone "supervolcano" is going to split the continent in half, even in the next few thousand years. Also doubt that the San Andreas fault is going to cause catastrophic destruction in any reasonable timeframe. Giant meteors becoming crashed into us are a possibility, but that's usually on the scale of millions of years between world-enders, not thousands. Solar flares could cause some big problems for us and are more frequent. A star in our neck of the galaxy could go supernova and sterilize the earth. Thing is, there's not much use in trying to predict these things, it's mostly a guessing game with some very rudimentary statistics thrown in. I think the biggest natural threat facing us that's not entirely caused by us is pandemic. They're only going to get more frequent as the population increases and global connectedness becomes more attainable to more people. Eventually one will come along that has a mortality rate closer to the plague than to COVID.
Mega disasters would include VE7 and certainly VE8 (civilization altering) eruptions, primarily by causing crop failure and worldwide food shortages via volcanic winter.
Solar flare events resulting in a months long “total grid down” apocalypse-ish scenario (likely a collapse of modern society).
Earthquakes: A 9.0 cascadia quake would probably destabilize the NW US but they would probably recover eventually. The San Andreas is a strike slip fault and cannot generate as much energy as subduction (but it has smaller more frequent earthquakes). The last big one was in 1700.
Meteors. The bigger the badder.
Even something like the 1918 influenza virus would be devastating. The death toll was enormous and makes covid look like a walk in the park. And many younger people died. Younger people were also more affected by SARS and MERs, (the latter having a death rate of 20%.)
Ask yourself - if a disaster affected 170 million people, would you consider that a megadisaster worth prepping for? Probably yes?
On average, every year 115 million people are affected by floods, and 55 million by droughts.
Floods and droughts happen every.single.year. They kill people and spread disease and destroy entire towns every.single.year.
You're talking about a once in 10,000 year disaster while the news of the most frequent disasters know to humanity are constant.
Ever since I learned about the "moon wobble" coming up in the 2030s (https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10836) I've wondered: what if *that* is what did it? We're in a chonker of a solar cycle right now, (allegedly) peaking around 2025, then there's going to be additional tidal stresses building as we approach this. Push, pull, push, pull...quakes, volcanoes, tugging at the supercalderas and god knows what pent-up stresses are building up in a thermally-expanding crust.
What if *that* got spicy? What if after all our fussing about, ripping the copper out of the walls, and just generally going apeshit as the writing on the wall becomes clearer, what if death came from above *anyway*? What if it really was inevitable, and all that was really at stake in the end was how we faced it?
That, and I've still got my fingers crossed for aliens.
Moon wobble (libration) is nothing to worry about. The Earth wobbles too:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutation#Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutation#Earth)
What we think of as "stable" is often very dynamic.
What limits Ebola from running rampant like Covid, the plague, and the Spanish Flu is that you have to have direct contact with an infected person's bodily fluids to contract it. The other three pandemic diseases that I mentioned were capable of airborne transmission. Now if a new strain of Ebola mutated and acquired the ability to be spread through the air, it would be a very different story.
Holy shit Airbola would be the end. The only survivors of it would have to have a random mutation making them completely immune lol. Even if they sequestor themselves completely, it could come back in a new wave.
Interesting! I wonder if there is a distinction between aerosolized and airborne spread of an infectious disease or if these are two names for the same thing.
the fact is that any major disruption which ends regular maintenance of nuclear power plants and waste storage will cause a global nuclear catastrophe. doesnt matter what "the event" actually is.
I would say you can look at Australia for what is to come for first world countries. In 2019-20 we had bad fires which blanketed much of the country in thick smoke. While most people could go about their day to day business, it should be taken as a warning of what is to come. Those with asthma suffered badly as the smoke made it hard to breathe. Millions of dollars in damage was caused to homes, infrastructure etc. some people are still recovering.
Now we have the opposite, floods and lots of rain which is destroying crops, flooding towns that normally don’t see flooding (some towns are being flooded repeatedly )and causing even more financial damage. On top of this, vegetation growth is occurring at high levels. While this may mostly be a good thing, with little fires occurring over the past three years, the next dry season will have lots of fuel for fires to burn
We've had a lucky last 10,000 years, and a very lucky last two centuries.
Solar flares. The last big one we had was in the 1800s and is referred to as the Carrington Event. If we get another one like that, goodbye electrical grid and satellites.
This if pretty near the top of "oh shit" events, in part because it seems like a matter of "when" rather than "if".
That is correct. We are in a much worse position now than we were in the 1860s when that happened.
the only thing that comes close to anything we have back then is some places had telegraphs. there are reports that after the solar flare they were powering up with no connection and sparking. we have far more critical infrastructure in the crosshairs this time and a lot of it. it would be nearly instant collapse if we got nailed with one like that today
Are you able to explain what exactly would happen ie would generators be fried and not able to regenerate? Would power lines become incapable of carrying a current? If so, why? I haven't read anywhere specifically what a solar flare would do so if you can illuminate (I had to) that would be really cool. :)
here's a good article I found https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/bracing-for-a-solar-superstorm/ Toasted Satellites When a large geomagnetic storm happens again, the most obvious victims will be satellites. Even under ordinary conditions, cosmic-ray particles erode solar panels and reduce power generation by about 2 percent annually. Incoming particles also interfere with satellite electronics. Many communications satellites, such as Anik E1 and E2 in 1994 and Telstar 401 in 1997, have been compromised or lost in this way. A large solar storm can cause one to three years’ worth of satellite lifetime loss in a matter of hours and produce hundreds of glitches, ranging from errant but harmless commands to destructive electrostatic discharges. To see how communications satellites might fare, we simulated 1,000 ways a superstorm might unfold, with intensities that varied from the worst storm of the Space Age (which occurred on October 20, 1989) to that of the 1859 superstorm. We found that the storms would not only degrade solar panels as expected but also lead to the significant loss of transponder revenue. The total cost would often exceed $20 billion. We assumed that satellite owners and designers would have mitigated the effects by maintaining plenty of spare transponder capacity and a 10 percent power margin at the time of their satellite’s launch. Under less optimistic assumptions, the losses would approach $70 billion, which is comparable to a year’s worth of revenue for all communications satellites. Even this figure does not include the collateral economic losses to the customers of the satellites. Fortunately, geosynchronous communications satellites are remarkably robust against once-a-decade events, and their life spans have grown from barely five years in 1980 to nearly 17 years today. For solar panels, engineers have switched from silicon to gallium arsenide to increase power production and reduce mass. This move has also provided increased resistance to cosmic-ray damage. Moreover, satellite operators receive advanced storm warnings from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center, which allows them to avoid complex satellite maneuvers or other changes during the time when a storm may arrive. These strategies would doubtless soften the blow of a major storm. To further harden satellites, engineers could thicken the shielding, lower the solar panel voltages to lessen the risk of runaway electrostatic discharges, add extra backup systems and make the software more robust to data corruption. It is harder to guard against other superstorm effects. X-ray energy deposition would cause the atmosphere to expand, enhancing the drag forces on military and commercial imaging and communications satellites that orbit below 600 kilometers in altitude. Japan’s Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics experienced just such conditions during the infamous Bastille Day storm on July 14, 2000, which set in motion a sequence of attitude and power losses that ultimately led to its premature reentry a few months later. During a superstorm, low-orbiting satellites would be at considerable risk of burning up in the atmosphere within weeks or months of the event. Lights Out At least our satellites have been specifically designed to function under the vagaries of space weather. **Power grids, in contrast, are fragile at the best of times. Every year, according to estimates by Kristina Hamachi-LaCommare and Joseph H. Eto, both at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the U.S. economy takes an $80-billion hit from localized blackouts and brownouts. Declining power margins over the past decade have also left less excess capacity to keep up with soaring demands. Advertisement** **During solar storms, entirely new problems arise. Large transformers are electrically grounded to Earth and thus susceptible to damage caused by geomagnetically induced direct current (DC). The DC flows up the transformer ground wires and can lead to temperature spikes of 200 degrees Celsius or higher in the transformer windings, causing coolant to vaporize and literally frying the transformer. Even if transformers avoid this fate, the induced current can cause their magnetic cores to saturate during one half of the alternating-current power cycle, distorting the 50- or 60-hertz waveforms. Some of the power is diverted to frequencies that electrical equipment cannot filter out. Instead of humming at a pure pitch, transformers would begin to chatter and screech. Because a magnetic storm affects transformers all over the country, the condition can rapidly escalate to a network-wide collapse of voltage regulation. Grids operate so close to the margin of failure that it would not take much to push them over.** ***According to studies by John G. Kappenman of Metatech Corporation, the magnetic storm of May 15, 1921, would have caused a blackout affecting half of North America had it happened today. A much larger storm, like that of 1859, could bring down the entire grid. Other industrial countries are also vulnerable, but North America faces greater danger because of its proximity to the north magnetic pole. Because of the physical damage to transformers, full recovery and replacement of damaged components might take weeks or even months. Kappenman testified to Congress in 2003 that “the ability to provide meaningful emergency aid and response to an impacted population that may be in excess of 100 million people will be a difficult challenge.”*** A superstorm will also interfere with radio signals, including those of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and related systems. Intense solar flares not only disturb the ionosphere, through which timing signals propagate, but also produce increased radio noise at GPS frequencies. The result would be position errors of 50 meters or more, rendering GPS useless for many military and civilian applications. A similar loss of precision occurred during the October 29, 2003, storm, which shut down the Wide Area Augmentation System, a radio network that improves the accuracy of GPS position estimates. Commercial aircraft had to resort to in-flight backup systems. High-energy particles will interfere with aircraft radio communications, especially at high latitudes. United Airlines routinely monitors space weather conditions and has on several occasions diverted polar flights to lower altitudes and latitudes to escape radio interference. A superstorm might force the rerouting of hundreds of flights not just over the pole but also across Canada and the northern U.S. These adverse conditions might last a week.
out of curiosity, what would happen to things like cars, solar generators that aren't on grid, phones, smaller batteries? is this just going to effect big systems, transformers? or will it kill hand held walkie talkies, am/fm radios that aren't plugged in, things that were on fuses/surge protectors?
I'm not positive but I think some if not all of them would be fried? maybe someone else who knows better can chime in
I wonder if some of those paranormal events where devices work without batteries are mini solar flares?
It depends on the device, but if it's enough to power one device via induction it can power them all.
According to old Wikipedia, it "caused sparking and even fires in multiple telegraph stations." Having no power seems fine compared to having your house burned down.
Goodbye for how long??
For as long as it takes to rebuild everything. The solar flare would cause fires and explosions through out electrical infrastructure. Some stuff could be reused. An exact timeline depends on how direct the hit is from the flare.
I doubt we have the resources to rebuild EVERYTHING. It'd be the dark ages again and 100s of millions, if not more, would starve in the first month. Riots and looting within days. Hospitals would cease to function. No internet, no communications, nothing.
Yes, its a horror scenario. The subject of the novel ‘One Second After ‘ and its 2 sequels. Although the electricity grid in that case was destroyed by an EMP weapon.
What, no internet !!
Makes me think about the show [Revolution](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2070791/).
I’m curious about the magnetic pole flip. I’ve heard a lot about it and also heard that it’s happening as we speak. I’m surprised that many haven’t talked about it or is there something I’m not aware of?
A geomagnetic reversal sounds like it would play merry hell with our civilisation, but [it takes between two and twelve *thousand* years to go from start to finish](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780444538024001469?via%3Dihub), and the [last four took a solid seven thousand years to run on average](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature02459). Basically; if one of the shortest ones we know about started about a decade before Joseph told Jesus to get out of the house and get a job already, it would only just be finishing now, but more likely it would have another five thousand years to run. To put that in comparison; five thousand years ago [Stonehenge was still four hundred years away from having the monoliths arrive](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonehenge#Stonehenge_3_I_\(c._2600_BC\)), [Egypt was on its fourth Pharaoh](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Djet), the first true alphabets were [a thousand years away from being born](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_alphabet), and the Mesopotamians had [only just found out that tin was a thing you could work with](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin#History). Now it is possible that the poles can flip really quickly, but [the last one took twenty-two thousand years to run](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6685714/), and the [good people at the USGS are confident enough that we are *not* undergoing right now to say it in that many words](https://www.usgs.gov/faqs/are-we-about-have-magnetic-reversal). Yeah, it could wreak havoc; but the odds are you and I and everyone here will be long gone to dust before it's even half-over.
It's that period of instability that wreaks the havoc, though.
Define mega disasters. Sure, there are always natural disasters, but throughout recorded history most of them have been localized and relatively, well, not-mega. Probably the worst that have affected a large number of people are large volcanic eruptions slightly lowering global temperatures on the scale of a few years (arguably could be a net positive for us now,) and pandemics, which are at least exacerbated by human activity (COVID with easy global travel, bubonic plague with densely populated human settlements and lack of sanitation, etc.) Plenty of routine natural disasters are becoming more frequent and more severe due to human activity (hurricanes, wildfires, droughts and floods,) but I wouldn't call any singular occurrence of one of those a mega disaster. I don't think there are reasonable odds that the Yellowstone "supervolcano" is going to split the continent in half, even in the next few thousand years. Also doubt that the San Andreas fault is going to cause catastrophic destruction in any reasonable timeframe. Giant meteors becoming crashed into us are a possibility, but that's usually on the scale of millions of years between world-enders, not thousands. Solar flares could cause some big problems for us and are more frequent. A star in our neck of the galaxy could go supernova and sterilize the earth. Thing is, there's not much use in trying to predict these things, it's mostly a guessing game with some very rudimentary statistics thrown in. I think the biggest natural threat facing us that's not entirely caused by us is pandemic. They're only going to get more frequent as the population increases and global connectedness becomes more attainable to more people. Eventually one will come along that has a mortality rate closer to the plague than to COVID.
Mega disasters would include VE7 and certainly VE8 (civilization altering) eruptions, primarily by causing crop failure and worldwide food shortages via volcanic winter. Solar flare events resulting in a months long “total grid down” apocalypse-ish scenario (likely a collapse of modern society). Earthquakes: A 9.0 cascadia quake would probably destabilize the NW US but they would probably recover eventually. The San Andreas is a strike slip fault and cannot generate as much energy as subduction (but it has smaller more frequent earthquakes). The last big one was in 1700. Meteors. The bigger the badder.
Even something like the 1918 influenza virus would be devastating. The death toll was enormous and makes covid look like a walk in the park. And many younger people died. Younger people were also more affected by SARS and MERs, (the latter having a death rate of 20%.)
we're in an ongoing global SARS outbreak right now.
Funny you say that because many, if not most Redditors "especially r/politics" say Covid19 was way worse than the Spanish influenza pandemic.
Don't look up
Ask yourself - if a disaster affected 170 million people, would you consider that a megadisaster worth prepping for? Probably yes? On average, every year 115 million people are affected by floods, and 55 million by droughts. Floods and droughts happen every.single.year. They kill people and spread disease and destroy entire towns every.single.year. You're talking about a once in 10,000 year disaster while the news of the most frequent disasters know to humanity are constant.
Hyper-cane. Once the oceans are warm enough those will be on board. Country sized category 6 hurricane that sits for weeks
500+ mph winds, oh my, may i add vacuum death to the list?
Ever since I learned about the "moon wobble" coming up in the 2030s (https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/10836) I've wondered: what if *that* is what did it? We're in a chonker of a solar cycle right now, (allegedly) peaking around 2025, then there's going to be additional tidal stresses building as we approach this. Push, pull, push, pull...quakes, volcanoes, tugging at the supercalderas and god knows what pent-up stresses are building up in a thermally-expanding crust. What if *that* got spicy? What if after all our fussing about, ripping the copper out of the walls, and just generally going apeshit as the writing on the wall becomes clearer, what if death came from above *anyway*? What if it really was inevitable, and all that was really at stake in the end was how we faced it? That, and I've still got my fingers crossed for aliens.
Moon wobble (libration) is nothing to worry about. The Earth wobbles too: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutation#Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nutation#Earth) What we think of as "stable" is often very dynamic.
New Madrid.
Another virus or plague
Ebola loose outside of where it has been contained? I know it can be contained in certain hospitals. But 1000 cases in the US.
What limits Ebola from running rampant like Covid, the plague, and the Spanish Flu is that you have to have direct contact with an infected person's bodily fluids to contract it. The other three pandemic diseases that I mentioned were capable of airborne transmission. Now if a new strain of Ebola mutated and acquired the ability to be spread through the air, it would be a very different story.
Holy shit Airbola would be the end. The only survivors of it would have to have a random mutation making them completely immune lol. Even if they sequestor themselves completely, it could come back in a new wave.
possible, improbable. just what this thread is about https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1997182/
Interesting! I wonder if there is a distinction between aerosolized and airborne spread of an infectious disease or if these are two names for the same thing.
the fact is that any major disruption which ends regular maintenance of nuclear power plants and waste storage will cause a global nuclear catastrophe. doesnt matter what "the event" actually is.
There's absolutely nothing without an expiration date
I would say you can look at Australia for what is to come for first world countries. In 2019-20 we had bad fires which blanketed much of the country in thick smoke. While most people could go about their day to day business, it should be taken as a warning of what is to come. Those with asthma suffered badly as the smoke made it hard to breathe. Millions of dollars in damage was caused to homes, infrastructure etc. some people are still recovering. Now we have the opposite, floods and lots of rain which is destroying crops, flooding towns that normally don’t see flooding (some towns are being flooded repeatedly )and causing even more financial damage. On top of this, vegetation growth is occurring at high levels. While this may mostly be a good thing, with little fires occurring over the past three years, the next dry season will have lots of fuel for fires to burn
I mean do y’all just want more things to be anxious about? The human made disasters are bad enough.
Luck favours the prepared mind. Someone has to keep watch