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posted by martyb on Wednesday June 14 2017, @02:25AM   Printer-friendly
from the make-backups...-and-test-them dept.

Earth has been hit by objects in the past, with devastating effects. Scientists largely agree that it was an asteroid or comet impact that started the chain of events that wiped out the dinosaurs around 60 million years ago.

[...] impacts from objects in space are just one of several ways that humanity and most of life on Earth could suddenly disappear.

We are already observing that extinctions are happening now at an unprecedented rate. In 2014 it was estimated that the extinction rate is now 1,000 times greater than before humans were on the Earth. The estimated number of extinctions ranges from 200 to 2,000 species per year.

From all of this very worrying data, it would not be a stretch to say that we are currently within a doomsday scenario. Of course, the “day” is longer than 24 hours but may be instead in the order of a century or two.

So what can we do about this potential prospect of impending doom?

[...] But the threats we face are so unpredictable that we need to have a backup plan. We need to plan for the time after our doomsday and think about how a post-apocalyptic Earth may recover and humanity will flourish again.

How to backup life on Earth

As computer experts, you are familiar with backup plans. What should we do to backup human survival ?


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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:06AM (2 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Wednesday June 14 2017, @04:06AM (#525255) Journal

    Here's some from a link in the article post:
    Here’s how the world could end—and what we can do about it [sciencemag.org] (2016)

    Solar storms

    One pillar of the plan is to fortify the electric grid. Spurred by regulatory authorities, operators have already begun taking stock of vulnerable components and critical assets. The next step will be to protect the grid by installing current-blocking devices such as series capacitors, already common in the western United States because they aid long-distance power transmission, and by developing emergency procedures for manipulating power loads to limit transformer damage. Overbye says the power industry’s swift response has been encouraging.

    But full protection against a Carrington-like event might never be feasible, Overbye says, simply because of the cost. Instead, operators may react to an impending megastorm by preemptively shutting down large portions of the grid to save transformers, embracing short-term devastation to avert a long-term disaster.

    Cosmic collisions

    But some may see real-world tests in the next decade. NASA, the European Space Agency, and other partners are exploring a joint mission called AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment) to test the impactor method on the asteroid Didymos when it passes near Earth in October 2022. NASA has also announced plans to use an enhanced gravity tractor—in which the spaceship collects material from the asteroid to increase its mass—on its Asteroid Redirect Mission, which was set to launch in 2021 but now faces funding setbacks. In the event of an actual threat, many researchers favor a combination of these techniques, just to be safe.

    Supervolcanoes

    Researchers think that widespread clues such as earthquakes, increased outgassing, and ground deformation due to rising magma would precede a major eruption. This unrest would begin months, if not many years, in advance, theoretically affording ample time to evacuate residents and set emergency response plans in motion. However, scientists would struggle to decide when to sound the alarm,

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @08:38AM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @08:38AM (#525340)

    Cosmic collisions

            But some may see real-world tests in the next decade. NASA, the European Space Agency, and other partners are exploring a joint mission called AIDA (Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment) to test the impactor method on the asteroid Didymos when it passes near Earth in October 2022. NASA has also announced plans to use an enhanced gravity tractor—in which the spaceship collects material from the asteroid to increase its mass—on its Asteroid Redirect Mission, which was set to launch in 2021 but now faces funding setbacks. In the event of an actual threat, many researchers favor a combination of these techniques, just to be safe.

    I thought it stood for Attention, Interest, Decision, Action [youtube.com]. Silly me.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @10:06AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 14 2017, @10:06AM (#525352)

      And I thought it stood for an opera by Verdi. [wikipedia.org]