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End of Days
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15-07-2001 12:17am#1
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perhaps even a bit of the sun going supernova and turning into a black hole.. then we'd all be sucked into that and matter would be compressed to the point where it ceased to exist.. but hey, look on the bright side, this probably wont happen for another 150 million years. if the boffins are correct a bigass chunk of rock will land in the pacific in 2028 (or was that 2030?) and hay presto, we have another event like the one that killed off the dino's. Failing the above, I'd agree with dev. something nice and nasty.. mutates often and impossible to cure.. in fact u wouldnt know u had it till all ure organs liquified and u died
long incubation, fatal attack.. hmmm, I think we already have something like that.. variant cjd. so the next time ure out at dinner, order the beef!
Its the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine 0 -
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Oh no, purely either by Man's own hand or Nature dealing from the bottom of the deck. This is a science forum<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Farls:
Whats the chances of it being biblical???
Farls</font>.
I basically starting thinking of this subject in the lead up to the the American's SDI missle testing.0 -
An astronomic or geological event. An incredibly oversized solar flare, precipitating a magma flow reversal, which in turn is accelerated by the poles changing place, all in tandem to create a simultaneous volcanic event large enough to plunge us into darkness for a thousand years- during which time a natural nuclear winter of ash kills off our arable farmland and causes us to die out in slow, agonizing fashion...
That, or an asteroid hitting us with the force of 3000 times the world's nuclear arsenal. IE- enough to smash this rock to a messy little bunch of quarks, leptons and hadrons.
The evolution of a virus such as the one DeVore describes is very very unlikely. For the simple reason that a virus wants to survive and propagate as much as possible. The AIDS virus actually survives an incredibly long time in its host before killing it, and the flu virus is not fatal. Those are the only two hyper mutagenic viruses that are populous enough at the moment to warrant our attention.
The Ebola virus isn't mutagenic, and even as it is, it's a poorly evolved freak of a virus. It kills its host too quickly to survive for any meaningful period of time- it's only means of long term survival is an incubative state in the African green monkey. This isn't impossible- just very very unlikely to evolve. It's more likely that an asteroid would wipe out our entire solar system- which shows you just how unlikely it is.
But the idea gives Michael Crichton a living, so we might as well keep the ficticious dream alive on the literature front
Bob the Unlucky Octopus0 -
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Hmmm...is this a question about how our planet will die, or how mankind will b ewiped out. Shinji's uber-virus wont end the world....just us<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">The Ebola virus isn't mutagenic, and even as it is, it's a poorly evolved freak of a virus.
<snip>
This isn't impossible- just very very unlikely to evolve. </font>
Heh. Tom Clancy had, in one of his books, a manufactured virus which was a cross of AIDS with Ebola. Scientific possibility - highly unlikely in the real world. However, it does make the very valid point (as did The Stand) that any killer virus is likely to be man-made.
Occy is right in that virii by their nature don't want to get rid of the "happy meals on legs" which keep them around. However, a science lab can change that to some extent.
I tend to side with Occy on how human civilisation will end. My money is on a geological event - perhaps a superstorm leading into a new ice age, or maybe the poles' polarity will reverse again.
Basically, despite our gross estimation of mankinds abilities, I believe that we will not kill the planet, nor will we even kill off ourselves. Mother Nature will show us real power, and destroy what we know as civilisation, but there will still be vestiges of humanity left around. Who knows from there.
jc0 -
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Gah Dav!! Keep your ugly lil' Vogons(and their Gag Halfrunt-prompted hyperspace bypasses) OUT of my board
Or I'll set Agrajag on ya- and we both know just how hard he is to get rid of...
Back on topic- sure, a manmade virus might cause trouble- but I highly doubt we could create a stable yet mutagenic virus in such an insignificant period of time on an evolutionary scale. There is no RNA sequence that makes a virus mutagenic- it's far more complicated than that, and involves repressor proteins, disulfide cross-bridge avulsions and other obscenely complicated conformational biochemistry.
What can be said with reasonable certainty is:
1) Executive Orders the Tom Clancy-authored airport novel alluded to by bonkey- is a crap book
2) It's highly unlikely that a man-made virus would ever have the capability to wipe us all out
and
3) A massive geological event precipitated by climate change isn't science fiction- and honestly can't be far off at the rate we're going. Some of the most violent, random and inclement weather ever recorded has been consistently creating unbelievably iterative weather systems across the planet. And George Dubyah's wondering about whether climate change is really happening
That aside, here's proof that an Alzheimer's retrovirus is affecting us all (especially math-loving software engineers) and will eat our brains slowly:<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by jc:
Shinji's uber-virus wont end the world....just us </font>
Would you mean DeVore's virus there jc? Or is my Alzheimer's theory gathering momentum?
Bob the Unlucky Octopus0 -
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Very crap book. I was wondering of hte practicality of building a mutagenic virus tho - thanks for the additional info.<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Bob the Unlucky Octopus:
Executive Orders the Tom Clancy-authored airport novel alluded to by bonkey- is a crap book
</font>
*Cough*Splutter*Cough* Of Course I meant DeVore. I was just, ummm, testing you. (BTW is deVore taken from David Wingrove's novels?)<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">
Would you mean DeVore's virus there jc? Or is my Alzheimer's theory gathering momentum?
</font>
As for the big space rock vs climactic event, I think I put my odds on the latter. While earth has been drastically affected by both during its history, it would appear that the space rocks are far rarer than the climate-shifts. In fact, the space rocks are occurring with diminishing frequency, while it would appear that the climatic events are relatively stable in their periodicity.
I read a "pseduo science" book recently called "The Coming Global Superstorm". I call it pseudoscience cause it is so badly written it is hard to believe that there was any serious investigation done by the authors, and they pull in some weird and wacky ideas which has no impact on their core theory, but manages to weaken their position by making them look like slightly more credible versions of Von Daniken.
However, the ideas they present are fundamentally sound, and the scientific community have been growing more and more concerned with the topic presented - that the current warming cycle was due anyway, and mankind has just accelerated it.
The theory goes that global warming will cause massive melting at the poles - which it is. This has the effect of desalinating the large bodies of water (North Atlantic, South Pacific) which in turn will make them more susceptible to temperature changes.
In catastrophicly short order, this could have a cascade effect which "reroutes" the North Atlantic drift (as there is no cold water coming from the North to perpetuate the cycle, and similarly effect the weather patterns in the South Hemishpere.
Net result - a massive self-sustaining storm which could wipe out the Northern hemisphere as far south as Southern Spain. This would last several weeks, and cuold potentially cause a new ice-age (or mini-ice-age) depending on the time of year these events occurred.
There is evidence to *suggest* that a similar storm occurred about 10,000 years ago. This is backed up by the profileration of flood-stories from ancient beliefs (from the Christians to the North American Indian beliefs).
It also lends credence to the prophecies like Ireland being submerged, which most people discard as ravings. The superstorm, were it to happen, would either flood most of Ireland, or cover it in several metres of snow (and temperatures of about -60 deg C). It could do both, in either order.
Funnily enough, a superstorm would be preceeded by large climactic shifts (mostly heating) similar to those seen recently, as well as unusual weather patterns, and rising ferocity of storms.
Makes you think....
jc0 -
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Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh......... but nostradamous got quite a bit right, even though its a bit vague, a lot of it is quite unsettling if you took the time to read through some of what he wrote. I wouldnt completly dismiss it
Moriarty
mrmoriarty@eircom.net0 -
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Perhaps. But perhaps not.<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by Moriarty:
Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhh......... but nostradamous got quite a bit right, even though its a bit vague, a lot of it is quite unsettling if you took the time to read through some of what he wrote. I wouldnt completly dismiss it
</font>
I am not aware of a single prediction of Nostradamus' which has been used to successfully predict anything. It has all been retroactively applied to events, where people have looked and said "ah - this is what he meant".
For Nostradamus to be considered in any way prophetic or predictive, there would need to be a number of predictions interpreted to forecast events beyond the immediate future, and then show that these were correct.
For example, isnt one of his being used to show how Dubbya was elected (vilage fool). I dont believe for a second that someone could have told us in (for example) 1990 that Nostrdamus was predicting the events of a decade in the future. On the other hand, how many "greatest nations" have been ruled by idiots in their time....quite a few I would hazard.
I am not discounting Nostradamus....simply questioning his accuracy.
jc
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It won't be that hard for the human race to destroy itself either. A simple exchange of less than a third of the nuclear arms of two superpowers would render most of the planet a radioactive wasteland for thousands of years. Cropland would dwindle to nothing, the very soil would be poisoned, and rad levels would persist for a lot longer than people think, wiping the survivors out slowly and painfully via mutative radiation sickness. Climate change could cause such destructive weather changes that the human race may not survive. It's worth remembering that drastic weather patterns occur naturally(we barely survived the last Ice Age)...with our assisting with the exodus of greenhouse gases, the effect could well become so great that we'd see Jupiter-level continental storms.
Pretty disturbing stuff. I wouldn't worry about a supernova though...there are none likely to occur near our solar system for a few million years yet, and a distant one would just about stop at frying satellites. The only losses would be a few distressed military commanders a couple of GPS enthusiasts and brain-rotted satellite-TV-watching kids. Though it would be a shame about the Discovery Channel&NG going kaput
Bob the Unlucky Octopus0 -
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<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by ThrAx:
but the super nova thing WILL kill everything if it happens, so will the big crunch, IF it happens.
nobody mentioned aliens wiping us out yet
</font>
Apart from the fact that the sun would need to be about 8 times more masive than it is to go supernova.
Assuming that a cosmological impact dosen't knock us spiriling into the sun frist, then the World ie Earth will be destoryied when (In 6-20 billion years) the Sun runs out of Hydrogen to full its Fusion reaction. with out the heat of fusion the sun will colapse a little until the presure causes heavier Elements to Fuse. The Energy from this Heavy Fusion will cause the Sun to swell into a red giant. At that point the surface of the sun will be a little further out than Mars and the Earth will have been demolished. Then as Te sun runs out of the Fusionable Elements It will colapse again. This time much further. The Preasure will cause Even Heavier Elements to start Fusing Realising so much energy that the outher layers of the Sun (60-80% of its mass) will be ejected to form a planetry Neblua about the size of our soloar system. The core will be left as a smlodering ball of Heavy Elements called a Brown Dwarf. But The explosion will be no-where near as spectacular as a superNova.
8¬)0 -
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