Hexagonal posted:Even accidents like Chernobyl had a serious threat to us. Chernobyl was so close to loving up a huge part of the world. No, they're not, and no, Chernobyl did not have the potential to annihilate most of Eastern Europe. Even a hypothetical second explosion wouldn't have done that. The humanitarian cost would have been gigantic, but there's a big difference between that and annihilation. There is no realistic situation in which a nuclear winter happens by accident outside of lovely thrillers.
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Apr 8, 2015 23:55
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| # ? Apr 24, 2024 01:12 |
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On the daily, bro
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Apr 8, 2015 23:55
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Effectronica posted:No, they're not, and no, Chernobyl did not have the potential to annihilate most of Eastern Europe. Even a hypothetical second explosion wouldn't have done that. The humanitarian cost would have been gigantic, but there's a big difference between that and annihilation. There is no realistic situation in which a nuclear winter happens by accident outside of lovely thrillers. Even with that, something will come along, could be nuclear or something completely different, that will be the end of us. Probably not in our lifetime, so it doesn't really matter to us anyway.
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Apr 9, 2015 00:26
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Not with a bang but with a whimper.ReagaNOMNOMicks posted:Austerity Also this.
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Apr 9, 2015 00:53
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So is Ebola still a thing or have we all gotten over that now?
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Apr 9, 2015 01:53
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Extreme0 posted:So is Ebola still a thing or have we all gotten over that now? 8 out of 9 of us got over it...
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Apr 9, 2015 01:54
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Economic collapse, mass starvation in the "civilized" world, but a continuation of life in a pre-industrial state across the globe until a meteor or gamma ray burst kills >99% of all life on earth.
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Apr 9, 2015 02:05
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Real talk. Climate change will gently caress over and possible kill hundreds of millions of people, but mostly in regions that are already hosed. Japan is going to collapse first, and will be an interesting test case to watch. The rest of the 1st world will continue to muddle on. Automation will probably force them towards more generous welfare in order to keep everything from collapsing too. Hopefully this will lead to a flourishing of arts and volunteerism as people seek routes to self esteem that don't involve full time employment. I feel kind of optimistic actually, but that might just be my medication working.
7c Nickel fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Apr 9, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 02:27
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You know they've got a Lord Humungus mask that they just take out every once in a while. Just to make sure it's still in good condition.
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Apr 9, 2015 02:50
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Concentrated austerity in the face of utter economic collapse leads to fascism, and we all know how fascism fucks people over.
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Apr 9, 2015 02:52
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WW3 will come and then zefram coochran makes warp drive, then everything goes great.
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Apr 9, 2015 02:53
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Automation will phase out human labor and in our desire to tie jobs to literal and figurative well-being, we will fail to adapt, leading to millions of deaths by disease and starvation. Only the rich will survive and they will move to what remains of paradise on earth when climate change fucks up the rest.
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Apr 9, 2015 03:57
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It's exceedingly unlikely but my scenario is Eta Carinae blowing up and nuking the planet with a gamma ray burst that rips off the ozone layer and kills pretty much every multi-cellular organism within seconds. If you're going to go out, go out big. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IAZkpyFEbLg But hey, even if explodes and the gamma rays go elsewhere, it'll still be a pretty great lightshow. 7,000 light years away and it'll be as bright in the sky as the moon for about a year.
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Apr 9, 2015 04:18
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Effectronica posted:Unless we trigger a nuclear winter or some much less likely catastrophic event, it's hard to imagine NBC weapons actually killing humanity below minimum viability given how such weapons have been intended to be used. Even the sort of full-scale nuclear exchange necessary to trigger nuclear winter is very unlikely to happen in the recent future. Former Defense Department employee and nuclear planner Stuart Slade (who is a horrible right-wing rear end in a top hat but a bona fide expert at this since it was his literal job to plan the nuclear apocalypse bomb by bomb) seemed to think that nuclear war would "only" wreck the urbanized superstructure of society. A huge, huge number of people would die (including basically every goon, sorry) but civilization would continue, just knocked back a couple hundred years. The real problem is that we've used all the easy sources of carbon so if we blow up all our industrial base and go back to a world of lovely agrarian mini-states, re-industrialization may be impossible. If you survive, hope you like subsistence farming, because it's going to be your job for the rest of your life. My prediction: capitalism spinning out of control like an ungoverned steam engine plus ecological disaster cause global economic collapse and the rise of fascism worldwide, with massive warfare that continues until the resources no longer exist for anyone to project power or the war goes nuclear (see above). If we're lucky and industry can recover, then people restart capitalism and hopefully we can keep it under control better next time (we probably won't). Another prediction: Whatever is left of the United States of America will be dirt loving poor in 2100. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 05:30 on Apr 9, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 05:23
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Omi-Polari posted:But hey, even if explodes and the gamma rays go elsewhere, it'll still be a pretty great lightshow. 7,000 light years away and it'll be as bright in the sky as the moon for about a year. I feel like we should have a contingency plan in place to find the child born at the exact moment that the light show begins and form a new monotheistic cult around the whole event.
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Apr 9, 2015 05:27
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Woolie Wool posted:Former Defense Department employee and nuclear planner Stuart Slade (who is a horrible right-wing rear end in a top hat but a bona fide expert at this since it was his literal job to plan the nuclear apocalypse bomb by bomb) seemed to think that nuclear war would "only" wreck the urbanized superstructure of society. A huge, huge number of people would die (including basically every goon, sorry) but civilization would continue, just knocked back a couple hundred years.
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Apr 9, 2015 08:30
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Mass impotence/infertility caused by overexposure to shitposts.
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Apr 9, 2015 09:09
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Omi-Polari posted:There was some effects-of-nuclear-war report from the 1970s that argued a war would shift the political power base of the United States to rural areas. What it didn't say, but what it basically meant, was that the GOP would benefit from a massive demographic shift in its favor, as nuclear bombs disproportionately kill city-dwellers (liberals). Funny how Americans can imagine the nuclear apocalypse but not an end to their two party system.
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Apr 9, 2015 09:14
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Omi-Polari posted:There was some effects-of-nuclear-war report from the 1970s that argued a war would shift the political power base of the United States to rural areas. What it didn't say, but what it basically meant, was that the GOP would benefit from a massive demographic shift in its favor, as nuclear bombs disproportionately kill city-dwellers (liberals). I think that after a nuclear war, the power would shift to rural areas (because the urban areas for all intents and purposes are gone) but for the current liberal/conservative divide, it would be completely irrelevant because American society and politics would be destroyed and the survivors would build a more primitive society (and the idea that the GOP could survive as an institution after the annihilation of the American state and the majority of the American people is  ). They certainly would be more "conservative", but more in the sense of medieval than the Tea Party.The Belgian posted:Funny how Americans can imagine the nuclear apocalypse but not an end to their two party system. The country itself would not survive, the remaining Americans would have to build new countries because the infrastructure and institutions of the United States of America would no longer exist. In time the very idea of an "American" would cease to exist as new cultural identities arise in the emerging successor states. American culture, society, values--all of these things would be gone and what comes out would be unrecognizable. I doubt we would even understand their languages (plural) after a few generations. But yes, the majority of the remaining population would be rural. Such things happen when everyone has to work the fields because all the cities and all the infrastructure needed to support intensive agriculture done got blowed up and you're restarting from a near-medieval technological base. Woolie Wool fucked around with this message at 14:41 on Apr 9, 2015 |
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Apr 9, 2015 14:33
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Woolie Wool posted:Former Defense Department employee and nuclear planner Stuart Slade (who is a horrible right-wing rear end in a top hat but a bona fide expert at this since it was his literal job to plan the nuclear apocalypse bomb by bomb) seemed to think that nuclear war would "only" wreck the urbanized superstructure of society. A huge, huge number of people would die (including basically every goon, sorry) but civilization would continue, just knocked back a couple hundred years. Haha, that guy's a naval architect with delusions of grandeur and psychopathy. If he was ever a nuclear planner, it was after it hasn't mattered. And no, I don't think that's what's going to happen.
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Apr 9, 2015 14:42
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Hexagonal posted:There would be no riots, no struggle for survival because everyones hosed anyway. Yeah. You have too much faith in mankind.
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Apr 9, 2015 14:50
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