DOOM

[Lilith]

aw c'mon, Boogie Wonderland wasn't the best song ever but i wouldn't call it a disaster

[AethirWeb]

Mayan 1: Hey check this out Diskamoop

Mayan 2: What is it?

Mayan 1: I made this huge calendar

Mayan 2: Cool but, why does it end at December. 21st 2012

Mayan 1: I ran out of space.

Mayan 2: Imagine qsomeone thought that was the end if the world

Mayan 1: Haha, I know right!?

[Sarachim]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

Look at the East Coast of the US. They just had an earthquake and now hurricane Irene is bearing down on them. Earth, wind (air), and water all within a week. All they need is a forest fire for the big four of disasters.

The earthquake was hardly a disaster.

[Harehunter]

Matthew's Gospel, Chapter 24, Verse 36, in which Christ is quoted as saying:

"But of that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but the Father alone."

 

In other words, "Don't sweat it." If you think it's going to happen on a certain date or in a certain year, in all probability, it won't happen then.

 

Live each day as if it may be your last. Enjoy it to the fullest. Have fun. Share a joke with people you meet, even total strangers. Express your love to your family and friends daily. Tomorrow may be too late. One day you're fit as a fiddle, the next day you may be called to your maker. Each day is a blessing.

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Harehunter

One day you're fit as a fiddle, the next day you may be called to your maker. Each day is a blessing.

Oh no... My mum called me around to her house today. As one of my makers. I can only assume she plans to kill me with fine home cooking... D:

[Harehunter]

Cute.

[Necris Omega]

See, the tantalizing thing about predicting the end of the world is, even tough 100% of all such predictions have been historically wrong, you only need to be right once.

 

Ah well. Science, religion, whatever... either way, gruesome death awaits us all.

 

Eventually.

[Randomizer]

From Mel Brook's The Twelve Chairs:

 

Hope for the best, expect the worst,

Some drink champagne, some die of thirst,

No way of knowing

Which way it’s going,

Hope for the best, expect the worst

 

Hope for the best, expect the worst,

The world’s a stage, we’re unrehearsed,

Some reach the top, friends,While others drop, friends,

Hope for the best, expect the worst

 

I knew a man who made a fortune that was splendid

Then he died the day he’d planned to go and spend it

Shouting “Live while you’re alive! No one will survive!”

Life is sorrow — here today and gone tomorrow.

Live while you’re alive, no one will survive –There’s no guarantee.

 

Hope for the best, expect the worst,

You could be Tolstoy or Fanny Hurst.

You take your chances,There are no answers,

Hope for the best expect the worst!

 

I knew a man who made a fortune that was splendid

Then he died the day he’d planned to go and spend it

Shouting “Live while you’re alive! No one will survive!”

Life is funny — spend your money! Spend your money!

Live while you’re alive, no one will survive –There’s no guarantee.

 

Hope for the best, expect the worst,

The rich are blessed, the poor are cursed,

That is a fact, friends,The deck is stacked, friends,

Hope for the best, expect the –

 

Even with a good beginning, it’s not certain that you’re winning;

even with the best of chances,they can kick you in the pantses

Look out for the, watch out for the worst! Hey!

[*i]

There are indeed other manmade disasters that are more complex with more costly preventative measures. These are the ones dealing with unsustainable environmental practices that damages the environment so much that it can no longer support the civilization that depended upon it. We have indeed seen this again and again throughout human history.

 

I bring up Y2K as a means to illustrate a fundamental conundrum with addressing such problems. If your methods are successful, there will always be people who claim the investment was unnecessary, since there is no way to view the alternate history*. Conversely, a failure to adequately address the problems is a disaster that often leads to the end of a civilization. I

 

n other words, the cost of failure is what most would consider unacceptably high, but the costs of preventing the disaster are also quite high as well. The dilemma for society is how to assess and address these types of manmade problems.

 

* You can always look at similar examples throughout history, but individual situations are so complicated and unique, that it is always possible to argue that it would not have been an issue in this cause because of...

[Trenton.]

Examples? you mean like the Middle-ages?

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: AethirWeb

Mayan 1: Hey check this out Diskamoop
Mayan 2: What is it?
Mayan 1: I made this huge calendar
Mayan 2: Cool but, why does it end at December. 21st 2012
Mayan 1: I ran out of space.
Mayan 2: Imagine qsomeone thought that was the end if the world
Mayan 1: Haha, I know right!?

It's worse than that. It's as though we stumbled across a wall calendar and panicked because we reached the end of the month, not having bothered to flip the page and see that there's another month that follows.

—Alorael, who believes the Mayans references predicted occurrences well after the end of this long count. In fact, they references things coming absurdly far into the future, where absurdly is larger than the current age of the universe, lifetime of the solar system, or even projected lifetime of the universe for most meaningful values of "lifetime."

[Trenton.]

...Dude, that last part was filled with so many errors, it was beyond my reading ability. Though I think I get the jist of what your saying. Your saying that they reference things that are so far into the future that it is longer than the age of the universe, the solar system, and...I couldent get the last part.

[Slawbug]

Dude, it may be beyond your reading ability, but it isn't full of errors. If you put quotation marks around Alorael's second use of the word "absurdly," that may help.

[*i]

Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile.

Examples? you mean like the Middle-ages?

Let me dig out my copy of Collapse by Jared Diamond. Here are the historical examples:

Viking colony of Greenland. Driven by many complicated factors. Non-sustainable farming practices (disruption of thin layer of fertile soils that are very slow to replenish) and failure to adapt to natural climate changes as the Inuit did were major contributing factors.

The Anasazi of Chaco Canyon. Largely caused by rapid deforestation and overtaxing the land with agriculture, leading to overpopulation during wet spans. Agricultural practices lead to erosion and arroyo formation, making land lest fertile over time. Dry span hits, factions fight and consume more resources, society becomes unsustainable, and survivors abandon. Now a historical ruins.

The Maya Civilization. Similar problems as the Anasazi.

Various islands in Polynesia. Easter Island is the prime example. Archaeological evidence attests to diverse forests, flora, and fauna. The island is now desolate and can support a small fraction of what it once could.

Successes include Japan and, more dramatically, Iceland, the most ecologically damaged portion of Europe. Modern failure includes Rwanda, which largely stems from poor land management and exploding populations.

[*i]

To avoid TL;DR and miss my main point. Certainly, these examples are historical and the most spectacular given that human history is quite long indeed. Nonetheless, many trajectories in modern times are very similar to those we believe taken by those doomed civilizations.

 

Now you can say, in the modern world we are more knowledgable, have more resources available, and that "it will be different this time." That's exactly my point! We cannot know for sure until it is too late, and actions taken will never be vindicated because the dire predictions would not come and pass.

 

The fact is, while it is true we have more knowledge, we are not necessarily wiser than our ancestors at managing complex and dynamic ecologies. While we have more understanding, it is largely superficial with limited explanatory power and hardly any predictive power over how actions impact environments.

[Dikiyoba]

Originally Posted By: Stareye

The Anasazi of Chaco Canyon. Largely caused by rapid deforestation and overtaxing the land with agriculture, leading to overpopulation during wet spans. Agricultural practices lead to erosion and arroyo formation, making land lest fertile over time. Dry span hits, factions fight and consume more resources, society becomes unsustainable, and survivors abandon. Now a historical ruins.

Dikiyoba has seen it argued that Diamond did really sloppy research for this chapter and that isn't an accurate picture of what really happened, but only as an aside in another discussion, so Dikiyoba can't say anything about it. Not that it alters your main point.

[Skwish-E]

The Anasazi just went home. They are looking down on us now from many light years away. Elvis went to visit them later.

[*i]

I agree with you. Living within a few hours drive to Chaco, I'm aware he does get some things wrong. His main point, however, that the southwestern US is a very fragile environment is very true, even if he misses many details.

 

I doubt the modern living in that region would be possible without the interdependencies of trade. If such trade broke down as it did with the collapse of the Roman Empire, I suspect that region of the US would be one of the first to fail.

[Trenton.]

southwestern us Is very fragile? How do you mean that? It certainly has too many earthquakes.

[Callie]

Well, for one thing, there's a lack of water. If trade was cut off, there would be no way the people in the southwestern United States would be able to grow the food they need to survive. Even now, the Colorado river is just a trickle when it finally reaches the ocean.

[Trenton.]

But the south west us borders the pacific! how can they not have much water?

[Skwish-E]

Mountains intervene.

[Trenton.]

There cant be that many can there? I thought that the western us mountain range (cant remember name) only went down to like, halfway.

[*i]

Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile.

But the south west us borders the pacific! how can they not have much water?

To clarify, the southwestern US includes southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico. Yes, you have the ocean, but you can't drink that. Desalination is a possibility, but that is very energy intensive and requires large-scale industrial capacity -- you have to import fuel to run the power plants.

Visit New Mexico sometime and you will see precisely what I mean. Agriculture is a very marginal exercise and full out farms are few and far in between. Irrigation is tricky because the soil is very prone to erosion because the rain mostly occurs in strong downpours of monsoons. Ranches are widespread since they only require grass to sustain cattle, but require huge tracts of land to be cost effective. Even then, ranchers have to be careful not to let cattle overgraze or else irreversible erosion will set in.

[Niemand]

Originally Posted By: Trenton

But the south west us borders the pacific! how can they not have much water?

Also, ocean water isn't directly very useful to humans or their crops, due to its salinity. One can desalinate seawater, but it takes a substantial amount of energy.

[nikki.]

The Rocky Mountains go from Canada right down into Mexico, right?

 

(Never studied US Geography, but I'm pretty sure they take up like, the entire length of Northern America.)

[Trenton.]

NIEMAND JUST GOT SNIPED!

 

Anywho, the southwest is doomed then? They will be the first to go!

[Callie]

For one thing, you can't just drink water straight from the ocean: you have to desalinate it, which is a fairly expensive process. Plus, piping water from the ocean to places like Arizona, Nevada, and New Mexico would also be very expensive because of the distances involved, and the aforementioned mountains. And yes, the Sierra Nevada range does not extend all the way down south, but there are still plenty of mountains in southern California, for example (just not as tall).

 

Edit: majorly sniped

 

Edit 2: @ Nikki - the Rocky Mountains extend to places such as New Mexico, but not other southwest states such as Arizona.

[*i]

The Rocky's extend from Canada to central New Mexico. You also have the Sierra Nevada's that are a large portion of California. There are also other mountains too that are not part of large systems.

 

While this does make transportation more difficult, these actually help the ecology by providing water from snowmelt. The problem is the climate at the low-lying areas where humans live is quite arid.

[Sudanna]

Originally Posted By: *i

huge tracts of land

[Alorael at Large]

Lack of easy access to local food and water isn't a death sentence, but it's a logistical challenge and it's expensive. If infrastructure breaks down, everything collapses.

 

First to go? Who knows? That depends entirely on what goes, and why. If water transportation becomes too problematic, the southwest and large parts of the desert west will probably be abandoned by large parts of their populations.

 

—Alorael, who was saying before that the universe will come to an end of sorts. There are many ways: the Big Crunch if there's enough matter to pull the universe back together, the Big Freeze if there isn't, for example. There are projected times for this, on the order of trillions to quadrillions of years. The Mayans calendar included events that are farther in the future than that.

[Trenton.]

What if the japanese or russians help us out by sending some ships with pure water to the south east?

[*i]

Quote:

What if the japanese or russians help us out by sending some ships with pure water to the south east?

I'm not sure how you send enough fresh water via ships to satisfy the needs of millions of people. Besides, that implies either are able or willing to assist, which is a big "if" in such a world where that was necessary.

[The Ratt]

I would also like to add cryptobiotic soil to the list of things that the southwest needs to survive. It helps percent erosion, hold moisture, and allow plants to grow. Grazing, offroading, etc. destroy it, and it takes several decades to form a thin layer, and about 100 years to form a healthy layer.

[Alorael at Large]

Water is heavy, and it's needed in immense quantities. The city of Albuquerque, New Mexico uses something on the order of 300,000 tons of water per day. When you start exceeding local water delivery ability, there's really not any efficient way to keep up.

 

—Alorael, who sees water conservation, water treatment, and water use reduction as the winning strategies. But that's Jared Diamond's point: societies are likely to reject difficult, unpleasant, and costly measures to save themselves and keep on going as they have been until they collapse completely.

[*i]

Quote:

Alorael, who sees water conservation, water treatment, and water use reduction as the winning strategies. But that's Jared Diamond's point: societies are likely to reject difficult, unpleasant, and costly measures to save themselves and keep on going as they have been until they collapse completely.

Worse, even if the measures are taken and succeed, there is no way to prove that they were necessary in the first place. It's a frustrating dilemma societies face.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: I see you lurking there!

—Alorael, who sees water conservation, water treatment, and water use reduction as the winning strategies. But that's Jared Diamond's point: societies are likely to reject difficult, unpleasant, and costly measures to save themselves and keep on going as they have been until they collapse completely.

malthus was right

[Student of Trinity]

I lived in New Mexico for a few years in the mid-1990s, and even then there were often state messages on TV about how the water table in Albuquerque was steadily sinking. I expect that Albuquerque is indeed most likely doomed, in its present form. But I doubt its doom will be all that apocalyptic.

 

At some point its water table will have fallen so far that water will become really expensive. The city will charge businesses much higher rates at first than homeowners, because homeowners have more votes. Businesses will move away, the economy will crash, and residents will move away. Albuquerque will become something of a ghost city. For the small core of residual residents, life will go on, since the natural inflow of water will support them stably. Albuquerque used to be a laugh line for Bugs Bunny; it will recede to that level of obscurity once again.

 

Fortunately for all concerned, Albuquerque is not a whole society.

[The Mystic]

Originally Posted By: AethirWeb

2012 is coming up, I wanna hear my fellow Spiders what they think of this. you think it will be like Y2K?

If you're talking in terms of being massively overhyped, followed by being even more massively underwhelming, then yes, the two events will be nearly identical.

[Aran]

Originally Posted By: AethirWeb

2012 is coming up, I wanna hear my fellow Spiders what they think of this. you think it will be like Y2K?

It's going to wreak havoc on all Mayan-designed computers, that's for sure. Civilization is bound to collapse.

[ĐªгŦĦ Єяŋϊε]

switch to pc's then

[A less presumptuous name.]

As a resident of the Mid-Atlantic region, I find this whole 2012 stuff to be stupid. Clearly, the Mayans were off by a year. We had an earthquake and hurricane within a weak of each other, and we're now getting hit with the remnants of Lee. Meanwhile, Katia is off the coast tormenting us. Thankfully, it looks like she'll be content with giving us a threatening look.

[Trenton.]

Ok, we give the storms names. Now we have to give them genders and actions too?

[nikki.]

Originally Posted By: Trenton Uchiha, rebel servile.

Ok, we give the storms names. Now we have to give them genders and actions too?

The genders is actually part of the name - they alternate between male and female names, I believe.

(So you might have Hurricane Adam, Hurricane Belinda, Hurricane Charlie, Hurrican Diane and so on.)

[Randomizer]

I miss the good old days when hurricanes were only named after females.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

I miss the good old days when hurricanes were only named after females.

That would be problematic; I was named after the hurricane that blew through around (in terms of days) the time of my birth, so I'm glad that that was masculine.

[Tyranicus]

Originally Posted By: Goldenking

Originally Posted By: Randomizer

I miss the good old days when hurricanes were only named after females.

That would be problematic; I was named after the hurricane that blew through around (in terms of days) the time of my birth, so I'm glad that that was masculine.

Based on age-related comments you've made in the back to school thread, I'm guessing Andrew?

[Dantius]

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

Based on age-related comments you've made in the back to school thread, I'm guessing Andrew?

That's kind of scarily stalkerish.

[Goldengirl]

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

Based on age-related comments you've made in the back to school thread, I'm guessing Andrew?

Well done.

[Callie]

Originally Posted By: Dantius

Originally Posted By: Tyranicus

Based on age-related comments you've made in the back to school thread, I'm guessing Andrew?

That's kind of scarily stalkerish.

Not really. IIRC, when you see other people in real life your brain automatically categorizes them by gender and age. I can't imagine it's terribly different with a forum. So I don't find it odd that Tyranicus would remember his age.