I believe its a pipe dream that you could hope to ‘protect’ lifeforms from nuclear fallout.
I’m not sure if you’re referring to large organisms either, humans are pretty fragile, but I’m pretty sure lots of bacteria, plants, and fungi will survive a nuclear conflict, there will be nuclear “nunatuks” where the effects are less severe, and there are probably some really robust organisms out there that could deal with their calcium being replaced by strontium, and maybe even thrive off it. Just not mammals…
I used to have nightmares as a kid about the nuclear situation, being well-read I had an idea of the stakes, and I had trouble sleeping until one of my friends tipped me off to the idea that aliens had already transmogrified the radioactive elements in the warheads down into less dangerous materials, so basically when the time came, everything would just go bzzt and a million dollar ICBM’s usefulness would be reduced as a weapon to the value of its kinetic energy as it hit the target…thats pretty pie in the sky though.
this discussion is all getting rather strangelovian…
Yes. Larger organisms have dealth with radiation in very different ways in the past. Information on the way that the human body reacts under immence radiation has come a long way. I’m not really interested in talking about this side of it though. I know that humans would survive a full scale nuclear war, the question is, how many and what would life be like after? The idea of bomb shelters has changed over the past fifty years also but who wants to live in an area the size of an appartment block for the rest of their lives and the lives of their kids? Reminds me of the idea of interstellar travel. Not a great way to spend a millenia.
I do want to discuss the idea of destroying the planet though. I believe that no matter what we do, the world will still survive. The question is, whether it will survive with the vast amount of diversity it has now. As guitar mentioned earlier, the biosphere system is delicate in its present form. After a nuclear winter and resulting period of green house heating culminating in overall temperatures rising over 20 to 50c we have to ask, how would the earth adapt life wise? I’m interested to know but not at all interested in finding out.
I do know that it would be a pity to eliminate bilions of existing life forms for the sake of human pride…
Well it depends on what sort of timescale you’re looking at, short-term, maybe humans who have planned incredibly well or are very lucky, they might have a go at it. Long term… well we can hope for the best.
This ties in with the Massey Lectures this year too, “A short history of progress”, and the orators opinion that each time the dominant paradigm has failed, the consequences have been greater and greater. Maybe, through unleashing the atom, we have crossed the point where the failure of the system no longer results in just a population bottleneck, it results in wholesale failure of humans as a viable species.
Some may believe that nuclear war is a foregone conclusion, I disagree. Current situation notwithstanding, there are enough intelligent, compassionate people in the world to make right on our current situation and salvage what we have without an atomic catastrophe.
I don’t think that the diversity would change much in the long run. The Cambrian era had amazing life diversity yet, towards the end, massive extinction reduced the diversity. Other eras brought other species.
I believe less complex life forms would survive fairly easily. From these, more complex life forms could evolved to occupy niche left void by the extinction.
Unfortunately, humans would not survive unless they do something about it prior to the cataclysm. The problem is we don’t know what is the right thing to do because we don’t have a crystal ball. (True that certain signs are upon the horizon.(http://www.worldviewofglobalwarming.org/index.html))
And because of that, it is difficult for most of us to change our ways.
I try to do my best in terms of recycling and related things but it seems my best is never enough (Our family of four has more than a quarter of a garbage bag on pick up days!) so you end up feeling guilty all the time then you give up until you start thinking about the planet again and the cycle starts over.
China is in full industrial expansion. Do you think they want to hear us telling them that they cannot try to achieve our standard of living because it’s bad for the planet? I don’t think so. So what can we do?
There is no end of the world the is only the end of one person. When they die there world is gone they may go to a new one or just not excist. But even if we all die in one big mushroom cloud the earth will go on without us maybe reproduceing a human like thing or a new complete set of animals.
Big thumbs introduction of China into this thread is a very realistic one, I was watching a program recently that was saying the world cannot possibly withstand the impact of china joining the western world and becoming a society of single family dwelling SUV driving over consummers and polluters to the extent we are in this country, but like thumb says who is going to tell them they can’t?
I really don’t think our biggest threat is from nuclear war and weapons, as much as from ourselves, it will not be a big bang as much as a slow fizzle with which we go out.
Also there are several theories out there which suggest that mankind has gone through this cycle before in our history and in fact we are presently in the the third or fourth ‘Age’ of humankind, and there exists much archealogical evidence out there to support this, pyramids and numerous ancient ruins proven to be much, much older that previously thought possible. check out several web sites of interest in particular the articles within and subsequent links from these the first one is www.nexusmagazine.com and go to links then see all the stuff on ‘earth changes and the future’ if you really want some more thought provoking material. Also loads of other great stuff on the nexus site. CHECK IT OUT
cough cough, I brought China into this, see the picture of stinky beijing on page 1 that was incorrectly linked as an url instead of a img.
Maybe we should be thinking of ways of dissuading china from trying to achieve our standard of living.
However, due to the cleansing of their culture through communism, there is probably no way we could use psy-ops to instigate some sort of reactionary chinese taliban that yearns for the days of old where China was doing their own thing and going in their own direction, isntead of recklessly following us gaijin down the path of raping the environment.
I dont know if the communist government, even if we mind-zapped them to believe in triple-bottom line accounting, would be powerful enough to undo the brainwashing of 50 years of western marketing that has pervaded its way into their world (all attempts of theirs to keep it out notwithstanding).
Am I totally out to lunch thinking that insulting a countries pride might be the way to influence them in a more environmentally sane direction?
“Nahh nahhh, american gaijin sooo stupid with car getting only 50 mpg! Chinese car gets 400 mpg, runs on liquefied newspaper classified ads, and can hit 80km/h steady in downtown areas due to our superior traffic routing schemes! suck on that western world”
" One little candle burning bright. Two little candles flickering light. If everyone lite just one little candle what a bright world this would be."
Same thing for the environment, if one person recycles then so will another and another. But then all it takes is one person to buy a gas eating car/truck and then someone else will buy one and then another person. And so on. So its a Fifty fifty split.
I personally couldn’t live with the guilt of knowing that my SUV is speeding up global warming so that is why I recycle and I am getting rid of the SUV. I especially feel even more guilty knowing that I maybe the cause of my child’s **short, unhappy **life.
If we in North America lead by expamle then there still is hope that China and other countries (US) will catch on.
[quote=“Astrothug”]My 2 cents
its not the end of the world its the end of humanity, No matter what we do to this plannet, Nuke it. strip mine, log all the forest, eat all the fish, when we are gone the plannet will grow again. support new life… life always finds away, it will be better with out us. then in a few billion years when the sun goes supernova then earth will be swallowed up. then life will be no more… [/quote]
Don’t worry dude. We’ve got about 5 billion years before the sun begins to die out. However, in just over a billion years, the Earth will be getting ~10% more energy than it does now… Ice caps will melt and so on… Should be interesting times for life on Earth, especially when the Sun enters it’s Red Giant phase and expands enough to swallow up the inner planets, probably including Earth. Sadly, no supernova for us.
I hope that in the coming years, as fuel becomes more and more expensive, it will increasingly pay to use more efficient forms of energy to power factories. Corporations will actually have to consider developing and using cheap green energy as a simple way to improve the bottom line and that would eventually trickle down to the Everyman. Pray the gas spike continues.
I’m not sure raising the price of gas this high will help anyone or anything, except make the cost of other products more expensive. Besides, consider the price (monetary and health) of smoking and alcohol. Both of these items currently cost far more than gas yet people willingly purchase them and willingly damage their bodies. Simply put: How can we be expected to deal with global issues (such as the environment) when we don’t do a very good job of dealing with issues in our own backyard (namely, smoking etc)?
I would love to see canada opt out of opec, as we have enough oil in canada to suite our needs, as do the americans, the americans could purchase our oil or from south america, then the rich Arab countries could keep there oil or sell to euorope. and not say we are after there oil and thats why those americans invade arabe counrties (even though its probable true)
when oil reaches $150.00 dollers a barrel, I bet there will be more trouble in the world. and we will see this in our life time. so sad …
thanks Mig
ok how does it work in canada, and why does our oil change in price then, something to do with being on the open market ?
or do we match what oil is being sold at, no under cutting?
What I was really getting as is that if Joe public can’t afford gas then he’ll be able to afford a better fuel. The main problem with gas is that it’s too cheap. That’s why we’re not switiching over to a renewable. Renewables are too expensive in comparison.
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