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  1. #1

    Evacuating Earth



    I recently watched this program on NGC. Basically a neutron star is collision course with earth and it was discovered 75 years in advance.
    Then the program lays out a scenario of what could potentially happen and how our reaction would be.

    It is hugely interesting to watch but i would also like to hear what others think. Do you find this solution they found plausible? Do you think it would be the way the world would do it. How would the government be in the spacecraft is very interesting as well. Whatever you think about it.

    PICTURES!




    It is well worth the time to watch because it is both hugely entertaining as well as thought provoking. It is not just a doomsday scenario but touches on the matter of interstellar travel as means of the continuation of the human race.
    Last edited by Catta; 2012-12-31 at 04:34 PM.

  2. #2
    Quote Originally Posted by Tommo View Post
    Is this a mockumentary?
    Well its not a documentary as it hasnt happened (duh). But it explores a possible scenario where Earth is destroyed. Why it is and how isn't very important in the story - except for some changes to the planet affecting food and life - but rather how humanity would react.

    Docufiction would be more applicable.

  3. #3
    If there ever is a time that the earth needs evacuated, humanity will likely fail, and die. We have nowhere to go.

  4. #4
    Pit Lord lokithor's Avatar
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    Watched this and it was freaking awesome lol.

  5. #5
    LOAD"*",8,1 Fuzzzie's Avatar
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    I lot of people would likely not want to leave, even if they knew they would die.

  6. #6
    Scarab Lord DEATHETERNAL's Avatar
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    Any ship to be built would never be that big with anything resembling modern technology. A ship that big would absolutely have to be built (or at least assembled) in space, and just the recourses and logistics to get the materials to construct it into space from earth (much less actually harvesting the recourses to build the pieces at all) would be insane to an impossible level. The ship would need to be vastly smaller. We wouldn’t be talking about hundreds of thousands of people; we would be talking about single digit thousands at the most with hundreds being a more likely number.

    EDIT: Further into the video now and they even say it would have to be built in space and talk about how we can lift all of 130 tons into low orbit with a single launch. The shear mass of the ship would make it impossible to get it all into space. There would need to be hundreds of thousands of such rocket launches to accomplish this (we may as well aim to build the Death Star like that one petition to the White House that has been posted on this forum before). I dislike fictional documentaries like this that seem to assume the audience is a bunch of complete idiots (even if the general populous actually is).
    Last edited by DEATHETERNAL; 2012-12-31 at 12:19 AM.
    And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
    Revelation 6:8

  7. #7
    Thanks for link. I love these sort of edutainment shows Even if they are often too silly to take seriously.

  8. #8
    Quote Originally Posted by DEATHETERNAL View Post
    Any ship to be built would never be that big with anything resembling modern technology. A ship that big would absolutely have to be built (or at least assembled) in space, and just the recourses and logistics to get the materials to construct it into space from earth (much less actually harvesting the recourses to build the pieces at all) would be insane to an impossible level. The ship would need to be vastly smaller. We wouldn’t be talking about hundreds of thousands of people; we would be talking about single digit thousands at the most with hundreds being a more likely number.

    EDIT: Further into the video now and they even say it would have to be built in space and talk about how we can lift all of 130 tons into low orbit with a single launch. The shear mass of the ship would make it impossible to get it all into space. There would need to be hundreds of thousands of such rocket launches to accomplish this (we may as well aim to build the Death Star like that one petition to the White House that has been posted on this forum before. I dislike fictional documentaries like this that seem to assume the audience is a bunch of complete idiots (even if the general populous actually is).

    They do touch on that. Something about thousands of launches a week all over the world. Its not that far fetched really when you consider that money is not an issue - nor pollution. Basically everything would go towards building this. They talk about how the world economy had to be completely changed and all that.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 01:22 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Caninese View Post
    If there ever is a time that the earth needs evacuated, humanity will likely fail, and die. We have nowhere to go.
    They actually do show how some rich people built their own spaceship that could only hold about a thousand people but with a very expensive and dangerous anti-matter propulsion engine. It exploded on launch and they explain it by the ignition failing - the engine then releases a second particle into the blast chamber which then explodes together with the first causing a crack in the fuel storage that lets in air. This air touches the anti matter and BOOM!

  9. #9
    Deleted
    Meh, kinda fun but really there isn't much quality nor research to it. Any science fiction fan could have written this scenario - in fact, one of their main narrators is a science fiction author (since they're the only ones to consider the thing). They don't go into details about the science behind the ship, nor do they describe much of what life would be on it. I at least expected to hear something about recycling but no.

    Plus they have this giant glass window at the end of the ship. That just had me laughing.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 01:25 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by Cattaclysmic View Post
    They do touch on that. Something about thousands of launches a week all over the world. Its not that far fetched really when you consider that money is not an issue - nor pollution. Basically everything would go towards building this. They talk about how the world economy had to be completely changed and all that.
    Actually it's likely that the world would kinda stay the way it currently is. Sure we wouldn't have to project ourselves into the future as much, but that's no reason to get into space communism. And you would have a hard time convincing people to have tax money going towards a project that they will get no benefit from.

  10. #10
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    I've not watched it, but surely the human population would rapidly shrink in the period before the collision. Why would anybody have kids knowing that they'd have this to cope with in sixty years? As all the scientists from our generation die who would replace them? Or would everybody try to become a scientist purely to try and secure a spot on the ship? Society would simply break down in my opinion. Why save for a pension for a future that isn't going to happen? Why work a crummy call centre job when your life is almost guaranteed to end in 50 years?

  11. #11
    Titan Frozenbeef's Avatar
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    I'll watch it tomorrow bed time :S (just posting here so i can get to it in my recent posts >.<)

  12. #12
    Quote Originally Posted by DEATHETERNAL View Post
    Any ship to be built would never be that big with anything resembling modern technology. A ship that big would absolutely have to be built (or at least assembled) in space, and just the recourses and logistics to get the materials to construct it into space from earth (much less actually harvesting the recourses to build the pieces at all) would be insane to an impossible level. The ship would need to be vastly smaller. We wouldn’t be talking about hundreds of thousands of people; we would be talking about single digit thousands at the most with hundreds being a more likely number.

    EDIT: Further into the video now and they even say it would have to be built in space and talk about how we can lift all of 130 tons into low orbit with a single launch. The shear mass of the ship would make it impossible to get it all into space. There would need to be hundreds of thousands of such rocket launches to accomplish this (we may as well aim to build the Death Star like that one petition to the White House that has been posted on this forum before). I dislike fictional documentaries like this that seem to assume the audience is a bunch of complete idiots (even if the general populous actually is).
    You'd be amazed what opens up when pollution and collateral damage are no longer an issue and you have a solid moral imperative to simply take whatever is needed to accomplish the task at hand.

  13. #13
    Quote Originally Posted by Guilu View Post
    Meh, kinda fun but really there isn't much quality nor research to it. Any science fiction fan could have written this scenario - in fact, one of their main narrators is a science fiction author (since they're the only ones to consider the thing). They don't go into details about the science behind the ship, nor do they describe much of what life would be on it. I at least expected to hear something about recycling but no.

    Plus they have this giant glass window at the end of the ship. That just had me laughing.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 01:25 AM ----------

    Actually it's likely that the world would kinda stay the way it currently is. Sure we wouldn't have to project ourselves into the future as much, but that's no reason to get into space communism. And you would have a hard time convincing people to have tax money going towards a project that they will get no benefit from.
    How would they know they had no benefit from it from the beginning? And do you really imagine the world economy to continue the way it is when the Earth has 25 years left? I personally think that all the electronics companies would switch to different kinds of tech that can be used in space. The medicine companies going away from cures for diabetes, aids and the likes to focus on radiation treatments and other space related "diseases".

    Furthermore most of those people they have talking are professors iirc from the TV version where it says where they are from.

    ---------- Post added 2012-12-31 at 01:50 AM ----------

    Quote Originally Posted by tommypilgrim View Post
    I've not watched it, but surely the human population would rapidly shrink in the period before the collision. Why would anybody have kids knowing that they'd have this to cope with in sixty years? As all the scientists from our generation die who would replace them? Or would everybody try to become a scientist purely to try and secure a spot on the ship? Society would simply break down in my opinion. Why save for a pension for a future that isn't going to happen? Why work a crummy call centre job when your life is almost guaranteed to end in 50 years?
    People still have survive day to day. They can still hope for a spot on the ship so they will probably go as far as they can. I think you would see an increase in scientists yes - as they would probably work to make themselves as indispensable as possible to secure a spot - but they still need to be physically healthy though. Others might work to have their children on the ship or whatever. I agree that certain jobs would become irrelevant when faced with the end of the world but i dont think the majority would just lie down in the streets and die rather than finding another job. You dont have to save the pension - spend baby spend!

  14. #14
    Scarab Lord DEATHETERNAL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cattaclysmic View Post
    They do touch on that. Something about thousands of launches a week all over the world. Its not that far fetched really when you consider that money is not an issue - nor pollution. Basically everything would go towards building this. They talk about how the world economy had to be completely changed and all that.
    Whether money exists or not is irrelevant. I talk in terms of money because it is a unit of measurement that we can all understand the scale of, but what it really represents is recourses and manpower which are the concern. If you don’t leave enough for the population at large to subside on and consume, then the world order would just fall apart into revolution and chaos. People aren’t just going to sit by and be happy with a radically reduced standard of living so that humanity can survive when they and their children are going to die anyway.

    A very low end estimate on how much it costs to get one pound of material into space is $10,000. The cost would be significantly higher because of the size and geometry of what would need to be taken up, but I can set that aside for now. Taking the size of just the life cylinder described here and assuming one fifth of its volume is steel (ignoring the entire rest of the ship so in reality it would be significantly more than that) would result in a cost of $680 trillion. That $680 trillion is only the cost of physically launching that much material into space. World GDP for 75 years is $5.25 quadrillion. Just physically launching this much material into space used up 13% of the total production capacity of the entire planet for those 75 years. Add on top of that that you are actually launching more material than that and that the material you are launching is massively expensive to produce in the first place (for such a high tech product that needs to be extremely safe) and you are going to need to suck up easily a quarter of the planets production capability to make this thing.

    Not only will people simply not stand for that kind of reduction in their standard of living, but the strain that would place on the world economy (taking that much production capacity and putting it toward something that doesn’t actually produce anything appreciable for benefiting the global economy which is being strained).

    Also you have to consider that for the first decades, construction of the ship could not begin as it has not been planned. That places the cost of transport from earth to space not within a 75 year window, but possibly within a 45 year or less window. At that point you are using up 22% of the total production capacity of the entire planet for those years. Even if we assume that GDP increases by half because we don’t have to care about the environment and whatnot (FINALLY, it literally took the world ending to shut up all the ecofascists ), that would still be a stretch thinking that the population would tolerate 15% of global production capacity being used just on this one step in building the ship that they benefit nothing from.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    You'd be amazed what opens up when pollution and collateral damage are no longer an issue and you have a solid moral imperative to simply take whatever is needed to accomplish the task at hand.
    Ok, sure. That may be the one way this could get done. A coalition of the most powerful nations (read the US, China, Russia, and a handful of European nations (maybe India as well)) essentially take over the world in military totalitarianism basically enslaving most of humanity. If they could pull that off effectively, doing this might have a chance since such things as the population being unhappy with the shrinking standard of living wouldn’t be as much of a concern since they have already lost their freedom in the first place.
    Last edited by DEATHETERNAL; 2012-12-31 at 01:06 AM.
    And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
    Revelation 6:8

  15. #15
    Who said anything about taking away their freedom?

  16. #16
    Scarab Lord DEATHETERNAL's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Who said anything about taking away their freedom?
    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    to simply take whatever is needed to accomplish the task at hand.
    Without economic liberty, there is no freedom. Freedom of thought and economic liberty are the cornerstones of freedom. Without a certain degree of either, there is no freedom. I'm hesitant to take the convo in this direction since it is completely off topic so I'm not going to make further new posts along this line of thinking and if you disagree, we can agree to disagree for the purposes of keeping this thread on topic.

    Quote Originally Posted by Wells View Post
    Oh please. The government already has the power to take things from you. You're still pretty damn free.
    I'm sorry the words "certain degree" seem to be lost on you.

    Quote Originally Posted by Cattaclysmic View Post
    In the face of imminent annihilation, I really don't see a problem in expropriation.
    Neither do I to a degree. I was not stating that I would oppose all sorts of such a thing because it removes freedom from some or most, I was just answering Wells' question.
    Last edited by DEATHETERNAL; 2012-12-31 at 02:12 AM.
    And I looked, and behold a pale horse: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.
    Revelation 6:8

  17. #17
    Quote Originally Posted by DEATHETERNAL View Post
    Without economic liberty, there is no freedom. Freedom of thought and economic liberty are the cornerstones of freedom. Without a certain degree of either, there is no freedom. I'm hesitent to take the convo in this direction since it is completely off topic so I'm not going to make further posts along this line of thinking and if you disagree, we can agree to disagree for the purposes of keeping this thread on topic.
    In the face of imminent annihilation, I really don't see a problem in expropriation.

  18. #18
    Quote Originally Posted by DEATHETERNAL View Post
    Without economic liberty, there is no freedom. Freedom of thought and economic liberty are the cornerstones of freedom. Without a certain degree of either, there is no freedom. I'm hesitent to take the convo in this direction since it is completely off topic so I'm not going to make further posts along this line of thinking and if you disagree, we can agree to disagree for the purposes of keeping this thread on topic.
    Oh please. The government already has the power to take things from you. You're still pretty damn free.

  19. #19
    Deleted
    Now I'm gonna have to spend an hour and a half watching this because I can't see something like this and NOT watch.

    Thanks....

  20. #20
    Quote Originally Posted by SuperMechatronGamer View Post
    Now I'm gonna have to spend an hour and a half watching this because I can't see something like this and NOT watch.

    Thanks....
    You're welcome!

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