The Question Thread

[k9nanny]

There are only two ways out of the inevitable destruction of the planet:
Colonization in space.
Time travel.

[Vrede too]

True, but the dinosaurs hung in there for 165 million years. We're at about 200,000 years.

[rstrong]

Depends on how "civilization" falls. If it's the result of a major nuclear exchange, it'll be more like the Stone Age (and I don't mean The Flintstones) for a while, until the pitiful remnants in very isolated places die off of massive climate damage or radiation- whichever gets to 'em first.

There doesn't have to be a nuclear exchange to *look* like a nuclear exchange.

Even a minor collapse will feed on itself, because there's only a few days worth of food in the pipeline. Things get really bad once people start to starve. And with famine inevitably comes disease.

Once those fleeing the cities include the firefighters, it's over for the cities. Even without people causing fires, they often start on their own in cities. Glass focusing the sun's rays, lightning strikes, etc. Every city without firefighters soon burns, the fires spreading uncontrolled beyond the cities.

Assume every unmaintained reactor shuts down automatically and safely without any fuss. This is plausible. But next to most reactors you find a pool with all the spent fuel, because there's no political will to designate permanent storage. Hot water, heated by the spent fuel. A month later, lacking power, all those pools evaporate to the point where the fuel is exposed to the air. The fuel burns, and releases lots of radiation into the atmosphere. At scores of nuclear plants around the world.

It's said that there's a continuous line of supertankers running from the middle-east to Japan, where the captain of one tanker can see the smoke from the tankers just over the horizon ahead and behind him. There are similar lines for other countries, and similar lines of container ships.

In any breakdown - like the collapse of one of the world's largest shipping companies a couple months ago - they all drop anchor offshore at various ports. Eventually the crews would leave. And storms would move them - onto shore, or out into the ocean where they hit rocks elsewhere at random. So, thousands of major oil spills over just a few years. And no beach cleanup or people wringing the oil out of the otters.

The same eventually happens with American, Russian, British and French nuclear subs and carriers. Leaking radiation not just from reactors but from warheads.

Remember the Bhopal disaster, the chemical leak that killed thousands of people in India? Over the next few decades, as chemical storage tanks rust out and no-one maintaining them, that leak gets repeated a thousand times around the world at various chemical plants.

Railroad cars are much sturdier. For example the rail cars full of chlorine you'll find near every large town's water plant. By the dozens for a small city. And much larger numbers for larger cities. They'll take more decades to rust out, giving a second wave of Bhopals - where EVERYTHING downwind dies - repeatedly as the cars leak individually, the wind pushing the chlorine in a different direction each time. Everywhere there was a town or larger. Well, unless fires speed up that process.

So, no nuclear war needed.

[rstrong]

In retrospect I'm glad this isn't in the "Just For Fun" thread.

[Vrede too]

Not that I don't appreciate the always positive, optimistic and uplifting Canadian outlook on life, but I'm glad that rstrong is not my therapist.

[rstrong]

Don't worry. Trump and his team of experts are in control and won't let that happen.

[Vrede too]

Praise Jesus.

[k9nanny]

True, but the dinosaurs hung in there for 165 million years. We're at about 200,000 years.

The dinosaurs didn't hasten their own demise.

[k9nanny]

In retrospect I'm glad this isn't in the "Just For Fun" thread.

Well, slit my wrists.

We're doomed here. If the wind isn't blowing from Oconee, it's blowing from Oak Ridge.

Rabies... once the current population of vaccinated pets dies out, when the herd immunity fades away, rabies will be pandemic. There are 59,000 deaths world wide, and would be many more without the 15 million post-bite shots.

[O Really]

For anyone interested in a pile of prepper-works... http://www.prepperwebsite.com/
Posting the link is not an endorsement, but it is an interesting site.

[JTA]

In retrospect I'm glad this isn't in the "Just For Fun" thread.

Well, slit my wrists.

We're doomed here. If the wind isn't blowing from Oconee, it's blowing from Oak Ridge.

Rabies... once the current population of vaccinated pets dies out, when the herd immunity fades away, rabies will be pandemic. There are 59,000 deaths world wide, and would be many more without the 15 million post-bite shots.

You don't really think about rabies much nowadays, but it really is a pretty terrible disease.

[Vrede too]

Not to mention all the other diseases that we vaccinate for. The 1918 flu pandemic alone "resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100 million (three to five percent of the world's population".

[rstrong]

We're doomed here. If the wind isn't blowing from Oconee, it's blowing from Oak Ridge.

I wouldn't worry about that.

Not given the thousands of tons of sarin, vx, mustard gas and other chemical weapons dumped in barrels and sunken railroad cars and barges off your coast.

(The interactive map is no longer online.)

[k9nanny]

We're doomed here. If the wind isn't blowing from Oconee, it's blowing from Oak Ridge.

I wouldn't worry about that.

Not given the thousands of tons of sarin, vx, mustard gas and other chemical weapons dumped in barrels and sunken railroad cars and barges off your coast.

(The interactive map is no longer online.)

Gee, thanks. Now I have more to fear than jellyfish and crabs. Glad we decided not to go to the Outer Banks this year, because my imagination would run wild, and I would view every morsel of seafood as potential death.

We are 400 miles inland, and east winds aren't prevailing here, so we'll take our chances with Oconee and Oak Ridge.

[k9nanny]

[billy.pilgrim]

Can Muller subpoena cheeto's tax records directly from the IRS?

[billy.pilgrim]

1005751249 called me. Who has ten digit numbers that start with 100

[k9nanny]

1005751249 called me. Who has ten digit numbers that start with 100

Nobody in the US, or anywhere else, as far as I can tell.
Can you block the number? I've read that you can't block a number that isn't real.

[rstrong]

1005751249 called me. Who has ten digit numbers that start with 100

There's no area code 100 in the North American system. It's a spammer faking their caller ID.

[k9nanny]

1005751249 called me. Who has ten digit numbers that start with 100

There's no area code 100 in the North American system. It's a spammer faking their caller ID.

Those weird numbers are usually from out of country- Nigerian princes and Jamaicans.