Category: science

Apocalyptic

@atoponce@fosstodon.org posted a poll earlier:

What is your preferred “end of the world” apocalyptic scenario?

– Aliens

– Nuclear fallout

– Pandemic

– Zombies

Assume strict science fiction and not fantasy fiction in the scenario (no supernatural magic).

The last time I looked Aliens was comfortably in the lead with 61% of the vote.

Quite naturally given that the world is undergoing an unprecedented period of stability and equality and… I took the question seriously and replied thus:

Feel free to accuse me of overthinking this 🙂 but is this based on the likely survivability of my family and me (ark ship, bunker, isolated cottage) or a quick and easy demise free from watching the inevitable dismantling of our, er… civilisation?

*Or* (cue spooky music) something painful in between, something extraordinarily painful?

Maybe I should think of the bigger picture. 🙂

Aaron’s response?

There aren’t really any rules other than no supernatural mumbo jumbo. I think that’s part of what makes this question kind of fun.

Are zombies animated only for a limited few days/weeks before decay makes them immobile?

Will the cancer from nuclear fallout kill you quickly, or will it be a slow painful death?

Are you food for the aliens or a science experiment?

Me, after a bit of thought:

I’ve voted for aliens on the basis that my preferred scenario involves the destruction of Earth for a hyperspace bypass, and it happens not long after the announcement. I’ve never been keen on prolonging things. 🙂

Ok, I’m not at all keen on the destruction of anything but if it has to happen I’d like my participation in it to be over quickly. Incidentally, the hyperspace bypass thing is borrowed from the novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy1, a trilogy in five parts.

So, why did I not choose any of the other worthy contenders?

Nuclear fallout?

I’m thinking of Chernobyl.2 I’ve watched dramatised documentaries34 and actual documentaries of the nuclear meltdown incident. That’s accidents. Thoughts on the intentional use of nuclear weapons leads me right to Threads – a film I cannot bring myself to watch but that I’ve read lots about.5

Not sure, but I don’t think I’d want to survive in a bunker, to see out my days cut off from ‘life’.

Pandemic?

2019- COVID-19. Everyone who reads this will have a memory of the 2019- pandemic. But not everyone died, and civilisation didn’t collapse, so that’s alright then.

1981- HIV/AIDS. Mostly under control, and it’s a good thing global outreach programmes are still well-funded isn’t it.

1918-1920 Spanish flu. Pretty much no-one who lived through this is alive now. A 100% mortality rate by now should annoy most people, right?6

1331-1353 Black Death.

Heck no, it’s not an exhaustive list, but this is only a blog post, I’m no academic!

Pandemics vs epidemics though, it’s all a matter of scale, excess mortality rates, pre-existing medical conditions, demographics, isn’t it.

So, a world-ending virus, bacteria, biological thing, has to be pretty, er… virulent, right?

Zombies

Watch the film ‘Shaun of the Dead’.7. That’s all.

It won’t be enough to prepare you for zombies, but it’s a good start.

I can’t choose this way to go because I wouldn’t want people I know and love to be consumed by or turn into zombies and want to eat my face off. Er… whether they consciously want to or not. I see enough of that with the increasing reliance on social media and propaganda shaping opinions instead of taking the time to have views shaped by ‘hard’ news organisations. So much for my 1997 dream of a golden age of information availability.

And, like most people, I rely on infrastructure spanning the turn of the 21st century for my survival. Were not ready for bartering and butchering and bravery.

So…

Aliens

Right. I’ve read and watched a good amount of science fiction. The ones that stand out, plot themes from memory:

‘Footfall’, novel by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle; conquest, assimilation, kinetic energy weapons.

‘The War of the Worlds’, novel by H.G. Wells; mass killings, enslavement, nourishment, climate change (in the grossest of senses).

‘Battlefield Earth’, large novel by L Ron Hubbard; mass killings, enslavement. Great book, dire film worth watching only after reading the book and then never again.

‘Doctor Who’, TV series; particularly extermination by the Daleks.

‘V’, TV series; sneaky extermination, eating us.

‘To Serve Man’, Twilight Zone TV episode; misunderstandings, a cookbook for humans.

There’s a theme that pervades (is that the right word?) most of these works, that humanity will somehow prevail against the might of space-going aggressors. Sure millions die along the way, but…

And that’s the problem. I’d still want to ‘go’ quickly. I’m not prepped and ready, not even for probing by little green men

Hyperspace bypass then. I don’t even want to know of the planning application. Ignorance is bliss.

Or is it…

Links:

  1. ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guidevto the Galaxy’ by Douglas Adams, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheHitchhiker%27sGuidetotheGalaxy. ↩
  2. ‘Chernobyl disaster’, Wikipedia link:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster ↩
  3. ‘Surviving Disaster review Chernobyl’, brief Aerial Telly review, 2006: https://aerialtelly.co.uk/surviving-disaster.php. (Page is broken but the review still stands).
    ‘Chernobyl Nuclear – Surviving Disaster (BBC Drama Documentary) FULL COMPLETE 1hr – ADE EDMONDSON’, video on DailyMotion: https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x6tufjj ↩
  4. ‘Chernobyl (miniseries)’, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_(miniseries) (Jared Harris is superb in this). ↩
  5. ‘Threads (1984 film)’, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Threads_(1984_film). (One of the most terrifying things the BBC has ever shown). ↩
  6. Please note the sarcasm here, sorry! ↩
  7. ‘Shaun of the Dead’ film, Wikipedia link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaun_of_the_Dead ↩

Flush

It sometimes takes the smallest of things to spark my interest. The combination of the Artemis II toilet situation1 and this Mastodon post about returning home by @sundogplanets@mastodon.social did that. Big time.

In 1992 mum and I went on our first foreign holiday, to the west coast of the USA. I had enough time to research what differences we were likely to find, but my biggest fail was not anticipating mixer taps and toilet flushes.

A tap is a faucet in the ‘States. But that’s not it.

San Diego and Phoenix had cards by the handbasins asking patrons to save water directly, and save water by cutting down towel change requests. Makes a lot of sense there due to the region’s climate.

In the United Kingdom taps were, in my experience at least, two at a time, a hot and a cold. No mixers. Toilet flushes were either a pivoting handle on the front of the cistern or a chain pull when the cistern was suspended just below ceiling level.

And, right through until 2007, that’s just how it was. Pretty much.

And then my wife, first daughter and I moved house.

The previous owners – we called them ‘The Bastards’ for various reasons throughout the period of negotiation, the legal stuff, and for the issues we found after moving in – had installed ‘luxury’ features such as single push button low-capacity-cistern flushes, mixer taps in the en-suite (did we become posh buying the place?) and bathroom (the place with a bath).

Oooo… nice.

The utility room (yeah, we’re posh) and downstairs toilet (we have 3 toilets!) had a hot and cold tap and a handle flush. Fine, we’re not in those for long, and it was familiar.

A pair of taps, left-cold, right-hot, with a box of Bold washing machine capsules behind and a pack of Fairy Big One capsules on top of that. Chances are these taps have been in the house since it was built in 1988. We have no sentimental attachment to them.
A pair of taps, left-cold, right-hot, with a box of Bold washing machine capsules behind and a pack of Fairy Big One capsules on top of that. Chances are these taps have been in the house since it was built in 1988. We have no sentimental attachment to them.

But time passed and upgrades happened. So now we have push button flushes through and mixer taps everywhere apart from the utility room.

It’s not fashion. We save money with each flush – the designs have been updated to use less water. I get it. But…

Work installed new toilets, stand-up urinals and handbasins within the last year. The toilets have a dual-button flush. The taps have proximity detectors, the urinals work off a timer. (I don’t go in the Ladies). Every time I use the flushes I must think – which button?

I need an acronym thingy, because ‘small for yellow and big for brown’ doesn’t somehow work.

  1. Great head and tag lines! ↩

Space

I watched a NASA moon launch live last night (UK time). Artemis 2. This mission sends a crewed spacecraft around the moon1 but you probably already knew that.

Cannot remember anything of Artemis 1. Still sinking in that I’m old enough to at least have been alive during the Apollo mission programme. I do not remember any of that either but I am lucky enough to know someone who does.

And as I have the Pale. Blue. Dot. feels right now I’ll go to bed thinking of great things.

A grainy low-resolution scan of a 35mm film photo of the moon, taken many years ago using a series of lenses and teleconverters.
A grainy low-resolution scan of a 35mm film photo of the moon, taken many years ago using a series of lenses and teleconverters.
  1. I wanted so badly to say “fly” but it just does not sound right somehow. Need to refresh my nerd creds. ↩