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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: 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]