Radar looks at end-of-the-world scenarios
Radar Online has a rundown end of the world scenarios, including peak oil, bee colony collapse, supervolcanoes, genetic engineering disasters, bird flu, drought, telomere erosion, and Earth wobble.
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Generally speaking, officials at the World Health Organization and the Department of Health and Human Services try to avoid language that might spark a panic. So when experts from both agencies describe a devastating global pandemic as "overdue," it's probably time to pass the zinc supplements. Many scientists consider the most likely outbreak risk to be from H5N1, more commonly known as bird flu. It's not yet easily passed to humans, but 61 percent of those who've been affected have died. Virologists like Dr. Robert Webster, who heads a WHO bird flu research lab, estimate that if the virus mutates, the death toll could be in the billions. Maybe now's a good time to get that cough checked out?How to Survive: As there's no vaccine readily available, your best bet is to keep your eyes peeled for outbreaks and, like Dr. Webster, stow away three months' worth of food and water.
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But what about the ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE?!?!?
Feels like scaremongering from Reason to me. Your cough almost certainly isn't bird flu. Worldwide mortality rates for a bird flu pandemic are predicted to be closer to 5% of infected -- akin to the spanish influenza, but not going to wipe out humanity completely.
Check out gems such as:
"What happens if the stem cells turn into human sperm and egg and then the mice mate? Does anyone really want a human embryo growing inside a mouse?" (We certainly don't.) And yet, that's the sort of risk we're courting by carelessly toying with the building blocks of life. Even more dangerous..."
Incredibly improbable, and the resulting embryo would hardly be viable or expected to last. To suggest that such an incident would be either possible through routine experimentation or risky for humanity in some way is absurd.
@1: I've heard a lot about these lately. Sure, its meme fits well into our concerns about dehumanization, destruction of individual identity, etc., but how likely is this to happen, really?
It's mostly gags. They don't seriously address any of the issues and pass along some misinformation on top of it. Some of the scenarios don't deserve to be treated seriously but others do.
"Most of us believe that the North Pole is a firmly set axis on which the Earth spins. As it happens, however, a fringe group of geologists think it's gone a bit wobbly."
Actually, the wobble or precession of the axis is widely accepted. An immanent pole shift is not however. This article is everything that is wrong with journalism all wrapped up in one package.
It seems odd that they skip global warming. For the scare factor and realisticness, that's a pretty good one.
One of my students just told me that he's moving to Alaska because the Pole is about to shift and he wants to be someplace warm. Seriously. He mentioned the Mayan calendar, too, so I think that he must have seen this article.
Just started reading Philip K. Dick's Voices From the Street. It is being published for the first time although it was actually one of the first books he ever wrote.
Anyway, a fringe religious cult figures prominently in the story, complete with end-of-the-world scenarios and an urgency that the end times are upon us.
The prophet for the cult claims its new atomic weaponry that will do us in.... but I guess flu pandemic would work as well. The prophet figure stresses that some will survive... not all will perish... and that preparing oneself spiritually is the key. The tips on the website referenced here stresses the physical side of the preparations. Stock up on Evian vs. Get right with God.
Philip K. Dick seems to be saying that the cult and its claims of armageddon give some meaning to the life of the protaganist who is not satisfied in spite of having the wife, house, baby, car.
It is as thought the emptiness of (the American Dream?) is what drives these end of the world visions.
I hope to see some postings on this Voices from the Street. It is amazing.
The problem with infectious agents as end of the world causatives is at some point the population is too small to carry the contagion. Unless you posit some bioengineered abomination like a super weaponized smallpox that can drift through the atmosphere for years and years and begin infecting anew whenever it infects someone in a previously uninfected population, you will have at the very least small pockets of humans who will not be exposed as our civilization breaks down, taking with it air travel and other disease vectors. Basically, people in bumblefuck will live while those in the cities die.
One very good look at this was in Wired back in the late '90s. They had a great sequence of a multiyear AIDS/smallpox plaque, IIRC, which killed off about 5 billion people. Rural communities instituted sanitation zones, with orders to shoot on site.
Anyway, a mega pandemic might wipe out modern day civilization, but it is extremely improbable that it would kill off all of the human race.
Doomsayers have a long and well established history. Christianity has had a huge number of such prophets in the last 200 years alone - when the rate of change in society has been the highest.
I really liked what James Blish pointed out in his Flying cities books. Legends are meant to communicate - just not necessarily in the way you think.
I believe that doom sayers in general are expressing their strong discomfort for their present or future conditions. They find the change upsetting enough that they'd rather the world end instead.
Funnily enough, some of those folks seem to be in charge in the US and some western European countries.
Virtually every religion has some sort of end-of-the-world scenario. (Terence McKenna said that, I believe.)
The American Dream has nothing to do with the presence of that scenario. All the wondering about how it will happen might have something to do with quirks of our culture. Perhaps because it's less focused on the long term, or maybe even because it's more secular than most. ("Most" meaning compared to, say, India?)
I'm sick and tired of people using scare tactics to vilify GMOs to the point where the small risks are taken completely out of proportion and non-existent risks made to sound viable.
There's nothing wrong with the products - only the people who are handling them. The only way modified plant species would out-compete local species would be through improper handling of the plants.
Interestingly enough, there's no discussion of the pending food shortage expected to accompany the doubling of the earth's population in the next 50 years. GMOs are designed to yield more product (and in some cases, such as Golden rice, more nutritious products) so more people can eat. There are ideas in the works for plants that use less fertilizer as well as plants designed to be used as better sources of biofuels than corn or sugarcane (which addresses the pressing issue of oil consumption).
There is no chance that you'll acquire antibiotic resistance genes from GMOs. For one thing, those markers (used to select for transformed plants) are removed before the seeds hit the market. And in the off chance they're left in, the odds of it entering a cell (intact, mind you), traveling to the nucleus and then miraculously being integrated into your genome are infinitesimal. And even then, since when do the genes expressed in the lining of your gut have anything to do with mammary gland development?
And by the way, BT corn is absolutely delicious.
pollen blows where the wind takes it
"There's nothing wrong with the products - only the people who are handling them."
There's nothing wrong with nuclear weapons - only the people who are handling them.
Funny, I don't feel safer.
"Pollen blows where the wind takes it"
That illustrates my point exactly. These shouldn't be grown in areas where wind will be blowing transgenic pollen elsewhere in the first place. And besides, it's more profitable for Monsanto to sell infertile seeds to farmers so they have to keep buying more instead of harvesting. These plants are supposed to be infertile.
"There's nothing wrong with nuclear weapons - only the people who are handling them."
are you seriously comparing GMO crops with nuclear weapons? Will one transgenic seed destroy you, your home and everyone around you?
"Oh no! They're dropping tomatoes with a gene from fish in them to delay ripening on us - everybody, duck and cover!"
The point I was trying to make is that GMOs shouldn't be the target. There should be tighter restrictions and steeper penalty's for people mishandling the plants. If the folks involved in security at missile silos in the US were in charge of growing trangenic crops, I certainly would feel safer.
I'm amazed that nobody mentioned David Langford's _Earthdoom_...