View Full Version : Black hole, strangelets and space phase transition at LHC?
vantuyll@gmail.com
Sep23-05, 03:58 PM
<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>CERN\'s LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.\n\nOur Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees\n(http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable\ncredentials, describes the following extreme risks:\n\nCrashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could\nresult in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a\nstranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could\nexpand at the speed of light.\n\nIs this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form"> View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>CERN's LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.
Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees
(http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable
credentials, describes the following extreme risks:
Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could
result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a
stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could
expand at the speed of light.
Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?
Rees is an astronomer, I didn't know he was into high energy particle physics.
I have strong doubts an implosion would occur because the particles momentum would be very high and in mostly opposing directions. The rest masses are nowhere hear enough to cause such an intense gravitational field as to create a black hole. The garvity would not be able to overcome the momentum and inertia of the particles.
A 'phase transition of space' has not yet been observed under any conditions. If a multi megaton H-bomb can't cause one I doubt two atoms are going to do it.
Sounds like he's pandering his latest book to me.
Dirk Bruere at Neopax
Sep24-05, 12:10 PM
<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>vantuyll@gmail.com wrote:\n\n> CERN\'s LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.\n>\n> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees\n> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable\n> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:\n>\n> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could\n> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a\n> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could\n> expand at the speed of light.\n>\n> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?\n\nThe BH is probably not worth worrying about, since depending on your POV it\nwould either be too small to do any damage in any reasonable time or it would\nevapourate too quickly.\n\nThe phase transition also seems unlikely given that far greater energies exist\nin various parts of the universe and we are still here.\n\nNot too sure about strangelets, however.\n\nIt would explain the Fermi Paradox however...\n\n--\nDirk\n\nThe Consensus:-\nThe political party for the new millenium\nhttp://www.theconsensus.org\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form"> View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>vantuyll@gmail.com wrote:
> CERN's LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.
>
> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees
> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable
> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:
>
> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could
> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a
> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could
> expand at the speed of light.
>
> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?
The BH is probably not worth worrying about, since depending on your POV it
would either be too small to do any damage in any reasonable time or it would
evapourate too quickly.
The phase transition also seems unlikely given that far greater energies exist
in various parts of the universe and we are still here.
Not too sure about strangelets, however.
It would explain the Fermi Paradox however...
--
Dirk
The Consensus:-
The political party for the new millenium
http://www.theconsensus.org
stargene@sbcglobal.net
Sep27-05, 02:39 PM
<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>Hi -- An interesting question ...\n\nFor what it\'s worth, the danger of an ultra-tiny mini-black-hole\nforming\nin a modern lab and engulfing the world, say after the collision of two\nvery high mass atomic nuclei, seems vanishingly small to me. Once\nsuch a BH forms, it immediately proceeds to evaporate via Hawking\nradiation, and the time scale needed for it to disappear this way is\nalso ultra-tiny compared to the time needed for it to grow larger by\ngravitationally engulfing even the nearest matter to it.\n\nThe only regime which is at all able to supply such a mini-BH with\nmore matter than it can radiate in a given time frame is that of the\nsuper-nuclear density environment which would exist at the center\nof a maximum mass neutron star. And that, after all, would be the\ntrigger point for the final collapse of that neutron star into a large\nstellar mass BH. This is the only kind of situation which would\nallow the mini-BH to \'grow up\', as it were. One can imagine that\nin the neutron star\'s accretion period just before collapse, mini-\nBHs are forming at an increasing rate near its center and always\nsucceeding in evaporating before absorbing enough nearby mass\nto get larger. Then some point is reached at critical mass, when\nthe local mass-energy density is just enough to cause a single\nrunaway mini-BH formation event which then propagates outward\nand engulfs the entire star as a BH.\n\nregards,\nGene\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form"> View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>Hi -- An interesting question ...
For what it's worth, the danger of an ultra-tiny mini-black-hole
forming
in a modern lab and engulfing the world, say after the collision of two
very high mass atomic nuclei, seems vanishingly small to me. Once
such a BH forms, it immediately proceeds to evaporate via Hawking
radiation, and the time scale needed for it to disappear this way is
also ultra-tiny compared to the time needed for it to grow larger by
gravitationally engulfing even the nearest matter to it.
The only regime which is at all able to supply such a mini-BH with
more matter than it can radiate in a given time frame is that of the
super-nuclear density environment which would exist at the center
of a maximum mass neutron star. And that, after all, would be the
trigger point for the final collapse of that neutron star into a large
stellar mass BH. This is the only kind of situation which would
allow the mini-BH to 'grow up', as it were. One can imagine that
in the neutron star's accretion period just before collapse, mini-
BHs are forming at an increasing rate near its center and always
succeeding in evaporating before absorbing enough nearby mass
to get larger. Then some point is reached at critical mass, when
the local mass-energy density is just enough to cause a single
runaway mini-BH formation event which then propagates outward
and engulfs the entire star as a BH.
regards,
Gene
Greysky
Sep27-05, 03:36 PM
<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE><vantuyll@gmail.com> wrote in message\nnews:1127410798.778092.140040@g44g2000cwa .googlegroups.com...\n> CERN\'s LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.\n>\n> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees\n> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable\n> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:\n>\n> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could\n> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a\n> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could\n> expand at the speed of light.\n>\n> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?\n>\n\nThe creation of strangelets is a cause for worry. The major reasons given\nfor the difficulty of strangelet production at our near future levels of\nenergy manipulation seem to be evaporating. See:\nhttp://focus.aps.org/story/v16/st Though it isn\'t stated directly in\nthe article, it does indicate, between the lines, that strangelets are\n500% - 1000% easier to\ncreate than had been previously assumed. I suspect the picture will worsen\nas we learn more...\n\nThere is also some good evidence in the seismic record for 1993, that the\nearth was in fact hit by two of these beasties. They were moving so fast\nthey sailed right through us without stopping.\n\nGreysky\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form"> View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky><vantuyll@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127410798.778092.140040@g44g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> CERN's LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.
>
> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees
> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable
> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:
>
> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could
> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a
> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could
> expand at the speed of light.
>
> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?
>
The creation of strangelets is a cause for worry. The major reasons given
for the difficulty of strangelet production at our near future levels of
energy manipulation seem to be evaporating. See:
http://focus.aps.org/story/v16/st Though it isn't stated directly in
the article, it does indicate, between the lines, that strangelets are
500% - 1000% easier to
create than had been previously assumed. I suspect the picture will worsen
as we learn more...
There is also some good evidence in the seismic record for 1993, that the
earth was in fact hit by two of these beasties. They were moving so fast
they sailed right through us without stopping.
Greysky
tessel@um.bot
Sep28-05, 10:15 PM
<jabberwocky><div class="vbmenu_control"><a href="jabberwocky:;" onClick="newWindow=window.open('','usenetCode','toolbar=no, location=no,scrollbars=yes,resizable=yes,status=no ,width=650,height=400'); newWindow.document.write('<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Usenet ASCII</TITLE></HEAD><BODY topmargin=0 leftmargin=0 BGCOLOR=#F1F1F1><table border=0 width=625><td bgcolor=midnightblue><font color=#F1F1F1>This Usenet message\'s original ASCII form: </font></td></tr><tr><td width=449><br><br><font face=courier><UL><PRE>If you are logging in from Pluto and just want to check whether the Earth\nhas been destroyed recently :-/ try\n\nhttp://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/geocide/board.html\n\nHmm... I just checked and it looks like the mad scientists are -still-\nbatting zero :-/\n\nAnyway, for a concise discussion (by a math student at Oxford, I think) of\nvarious methods which have been suggested for destroying the Earth, try\n\nhttp://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html\n\nThe very first entry discusses strangelets. Not sure I completely agree\nwith his miniblack hole scenario, but I can\'t argue with his overall\nconclusion: "the Earth was built to last", and is not likely to be reduced\nto rubble anytime in the next hundred years.\n\nI seem to recall that a few years ago Livermore Labs wanted to try to\nignite the atmosphere with X-ray lasers as a test of a Star Wars scheme.\nWell, -part- of it, anyway. Congress turned them down, possibly more out\nof budgetary concerns than safety concerns. Aye, there\'s the rub for mad\nscientists: even if you can figure out how to destroy the Earth (or Life\non Earth) -in principle-, it\'s presumably much harder to figure out how to\nsterilize the Earth without spending trillions of dollars. Particularly\nif you haven\'t been able to, er, gain experience with less clever methods,\nlike nuclear armageddon.\n\nWhich, btw, would not in fact sterilize the Earth, or even -entirely-\neradicate humans, not that this should be much comfort. See the map in\nthe current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some insight into just\nhow "hot" the continental U.S. would be post-armageddon. Any colored\nregions would be uninhabitable by current standards (think Chernobyll)---\nbut the darned whole country gets colored -something-. Talk about "moving\nto Canada", sheesh--- any survivors would probably want to move to\n-Siberia-, since Canada would be pretty "hot" too. Recalling what\nrecently happened in Texas, just imagine trying to evacuate -North\nAmerica-.\n\nTurning serious (sorry, this will be off-topic, except as an alternative\nperspective on fears that mad scientists are likely to do serious harm in\nthe near future): At present, Mother Nature, via the next mutant of H5N1\nor another "avian flu" strain), may be far more likely than humans to kill\noff a substantial fraction of the human population sometime during the\nnext decade.\n\nIf you -really- want to worry about something, worry about this: some\nstrains of avian flu have a 50% mortality rate, and the newest strains\nhave been getting -more- deadly. That\'s right up there with Ebola.\nCompare the H1N1 flu strain ("Spanish flu"), which killed 25-50 million\npeople around 1918, but achieved "only" something like a net 5% mortality\nrate.\n\nIn fact, this discrepancy is only to be expected: over the long run, the\nmost transmissible illnesses (like the common cold) cannot be the most\ndeadly; for a virus, killing your host in a spectacular manner is\ngenerally not a good strategy for long term survival :-/ Natural selection\nis very effective at finding workable compromises between transmissibility\nand mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and syphilis always\nbecome far -less- virulent over time: possibly they still kill everyone\nwho contracts the illness, but eventually they no longer kill -rapidly-.\n\nThe earliest H5N1 strains tended to kill victims before they could infect\nvery many new victims; an alarming trend is that the latest strains seem\nto have a longer incubation period and a mortality of more like 20% and\n50%. Expert say that the next generation of H5N1 strains is likely to be\ncapable of igniting a global pandemic.\n\nThe trouble is that in the short run diseases sometimes very suddenly\nbecome both very deadly (5-20% mortality) and highly transmissible, before\nthe host and disease organisms can "redjust the tradoff" between virulence\nand transmissibility. This natural process can be very unpleasant for the\nhost species in the short run.\n\nIn the case of the avian flu, the fear for the human host species is that\na new mutation could result in a strain which is far more transmissible by\nsneezing. Even if this strain had a mortality rate closer to 5% than 50%,\nit would still kill far more people than even the 1918 flu pandemic.\nSurvivors would be better equipped to fight off subsequent avian flu\nstrains, but the point is that spectacular die-offs due to epidemics are\nnot -terribly- uncommon in Nature, particularly in the case of highly\nmobile species, such as 21st century humans.\n\nThis is fine for future generations, I guess, but presumably a very\nundesirable outcome for the victims of a pandemic. I\'ve seen mortality\nestimates for an avian flu pandemic ranging up to 20% of the world\npopulation (again, compare 5% of the global human population dying in the\n1918 flu pandemic), a figure for which there is a possibly relevant\nhistorical precedent (the black death). In raw numbers, that would be\nmore than one -billion- deaths in one or two years, worldwide, with\nperhaps 80% of the entire human population falling seriously ill at some\npoint. Even for survivors, it would be a very protacted "near-death\nexperience".\n\nI understand that in the U.S., FEMA experts currently rate a flu pandemic\nat the very top, higher than terrorism, hurricanes, tsumanamis, lehars,\netc., combined. IIRC, the director of the NIH has stated that if we ever\nsee more than a thousand clustered cases of avian flu -anywhere in the\nworld-, we will know that the next great pandemic has begun and will\ninevitably run its deadly course. And we\'ve already come close to that in\nthe last year.\n\nThese considerations should perhaps provoke a re-evaluation of current\nspending priorities. For example, the U.S. currently has -no- stockpiles\nof H5N1 vaccine. The stuff now being manufactured is only helpful against\nordinary flu strains and is thought to offer -no protection whatever-\nagainst avian flu strains. Furthermore, the U.S. has no means of making\nor acquiring the tens of millions of doses of vaccine against a new flu\nN5N1 strain which would be needed in the first few weeks or months to help\ncontrol a flu pandemic. (The goal would be keeping the population alive,\nnot from keeping people from falling ill at all. Even in the best\nscenario, the economy would take a bit hit from absenteeism.) The same\ngoes for certain antiviral drugs thought to have some effectiveness in\nsome avian flu patients: no stockpiles, and no plans to acquire any.\n\nThis leaves us utterly helpless to offer more than palliative measures\n(e.g. oxygen in an ICU) in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Indeed, if\nsay 50% of the population were ill with flu (by no means an outrageous\nassumption), it\'s very, very unlikely we could even offer -palliative-\nmedical care to the sick and dying. Indeed, the authorities might well be\nforced to order -everyone- to stay at home (enforced 24 hours curfews),\nand might well -close- all the hospitals because a completely inadequate\nnumber of beds in isolation wards could quickly result in hospitals being\nnothing but the most likely places to -catch- the flu, if you are not\nalready ill.\n\nThus, many or most Americans could be entirely on their own to cope with\nsevere food shortages, in addition to being seriously or even mortally\nill, or trying to nurse dying family members, possibly with little or no\nheat. (Because long-haul trucking of food and fuel would probably be\ncurtailed, certainly because many truckers would fall ill and possibly\neven because authorities might be forced to close highways to quarantine\nthe most severely affected areas.) There would probably be only limited\nemergency or trash services for many months in many large American cities.\nAll these factors would greatly compound the challenge of surviving.\n\nI\'ve noticed that in recent days the U.S. government has cautiously sent\nup a few trial balloons (admissions that they know they are completely\nunprepared to cope with a flu pandemic). One of the least attractive\nfeatures of American emergency management is that agency heads seem to\nalways be terrified of "possibly causing a panic", when in fact Three Mile\nIsland and even Katrina suggest that the American population would\nprobably prove more stoic in the face of unpleasant news/events than our\nleaders tend to believe.\n\nThe lack of vaccine, antiviral, food and fuel stockpiles and other urgent\nshortcomings in our preparation for a global flu pandemic could be\nameliorated by expenditures which, while not cheap, seem modest in\ncomparision to re-establishing a large human habitation in the Gulf coast\n(particularly if we seriously try to protect them from future major\nstorms). However, Congress is apparently too bewildered by a spate of\nrecent national setbacks to muster the political will to try to address\nthis issue.\n\nIt is of course ironic that the latest American "evolution trial" is\nstarting up against the backdrop of a national policy of dicing with death\nby natural selection, which is what Congressional inaction amounts to.\nAnd to state the obvious: everyone is at risk to die in the next pandemic,\nquite irrespective of their personal beliefs about "evolution" :-/ Ah,\nit\'s a mad, mad world.\n\nOh, did I mention that some experts guess that the chances of an avian flu\npandemic starting by the end of 2005 may exceed 10%?\n\n"T. Essel" (hack hack)\n\n</UL></PRE></font></td></tr></table></BODY><HTML>');"> <IMG SRC=/images/buttons/ip.gif BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER ALT="View this Usenet post in original ASCII form"> View this Usenet post in original ASCII form </a></div><P></jabberwocky>If you are logging in from Pluto and just want to check whether the Earth
has been destroyed recently :-/ try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/geocide/board.html
Hmm... I just checked and it looks like the mad scientists are -still-
batting zero :-/
Anyway, for a concise discussion (by a math student at Oxford, I think) of
various methods which have been suggested for destroying the Earth, try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
The very first entry discusses strangelets. Not sure I completely agree
with his miniblack hole scenario, but I can't argue with his overall
conclusion: "the Earth was built to last", and is not likely to be reduced
to rubble anytime in the next hundred years.
I seem to recall that a few years ago Livermore Labs wanted to try to
ignite the atmosphere with X-ray lasers as a test of a Star Wars scheme.
Well, -part- of it, anyway. Congress turned them down, possibly more out
of budgetary concerns than safety concerns. Aye, there's the rub for mad
scientists: even if you can figure out how to destroy the Earth (or Life
on Earth) -in principle-, it's presumably much harder to figure out how to
sterilize the Earth without spending trillions of dollars. Particularly
if you haven't been able to, er, gain experience with less clever methods,
like nuclear armageddon.
Which, btw, would not in fact sterilize the Earth, or even -entirely-
eradicate humans, not that this should be much comfort. See the map in
the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some insight into just
how "hot" the continental U.S. would be post-armageddon. Any colored
regions would be uninhabitable by current standards (think Chernobyll)---
but the darned whole country gets colored -something-. Talk about "moving
to Canada", sheesh--- any survivors would probably want to move to
-Siberia-, since Canada would be pretty "hot" too. Recalling what
recently happened in Texas, just imagine trying to evacuate -North
America-.
Turning serious (sorry, this will be off-topic, except as an alternative
perspective on fears that mad scientists are likely to do serious harm in
the near future): At present, Mother Nature, via the next mutant of H5N1
or another "avian flu" strain), may be far more likely than humans to kill
off a substantial fraction of the human population sometime during the
next decade.
If you -really- want to worry about something, worry about this: some
strains of avian flu have a 50% mortality rate, and the newest strains
have been getting -more- deadly. That's right up there with Ebola.
Compare the H1N1 flu strain ("Spanish flu"), which killed 25-50 million
people around 1918, but achieved "only" something like a net 5% mortality
rate.
In fact, this discrepancy is only to be expected: over the long run, the
most transmissible illnesses (like the common cold) cannot be the most
deadly; for a virus, killing your host in a spectacular manner is
generally not a good strategy for long term survival :-/ Natural selection
is very effective at finding workable compromises between transmissibility
and mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and syphilis always
become far -less- virulent over time: possibly they still kill everyone
who contracts the illness, but eventually they no longer kill -rapidly-.
The earliest H5N1 strains tended to kill victims before they could infect
very many new victims; an alarming trend is that the latest strains seem
to have a longer incubation period and a mortality of more like 20% and
50%. Expert say that the next generation of H5N1 strains is likely to be
capable of igniting a global pandemic.
The trouble is that in the short run diseases sometimes very suddenly
become both very deadly (5-20% mortality) and highly transmissible, before
the host and disease organisms can "redjust the tradoff" between virulence
and transmissibility. This natural process can be very unpleasant for the
host species in the short run.
In the case of the avian flu, the fear for the human host species is that
a new mutation could result in a strain which is far more transmissible by
sneezing. Even if this strain had a mortality rate closer to 5% than 50%,
it would still kill far more people than even the 1918 flu pandemic.
Survivors would be better equipped to fight off subsequent avian flu
strains, but the point is that spectacular die-offs due to epidemics are
not -terribly- uncommon in Nature, particularly in the case of highly
mobile species, such as 21st century humans.
This is fine for future generations, I guess, but presumably a very
undesirable outcome for the victims of a pandemic. I've seen mortality
estimates for an avian flu pandemic ranging up to 20% of the world
population (again, compare 5% of the global human population dying in the
1918 flu pandemic), a figure for which there is a possibly relevant
historical precedent (the black death). In raw numbers, that would be
more than one -billion- deaths in one or two years, worldwide, with
perhaps 80% of the entire human population falling seriously ill at some
point. Even for survivors, it would be a very protacted "near-death
experience".
I understand that in the U.S., FEMA experts currently rate a flu pandemic
at the very top, higher than terrorism, hurricanes, tsumanamis, lehars,
etc., combined. IIRC, the director of the NIH has stated that if we ever
see more than a thousand clustered cases of avian flu -anywhere in the
world-, we will know that the next great pandemic has begun and will
inevitably run its deadly course. And we've already come close to that in
the last year.
These considerations should perhaps provoke a re-evaluation of current
spending priorities. For example, the U.S. currently has -no- stockpiles
of H5N1 vaccine. The stuff now being manufactured is only helpful against
ordinary flu strains and is thought to offer -no protection whatever-
against avian flu strains. Furthermore, the U.S. has no means of making
or acquiring the tens of millions of doses of vaccine against a new flu
N5N1 strain which would be needed in the first few weeks or months to help
control a flu pandemic. (The goal would be keeping the population alive,
not from keeping people from falling ill at all. Even in the best
scenario, the economy would take a bit hit from absenteeism.) The same
goes for certain antiviral drugs thought to have some effectiveness in
some avian flu patients: no stockpiles, and no plans to acquire any.
This leaves us utterly helpless to offer more than palliative measures
(e.g. oxygen in an ICU) in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Indeed, if
say 50% of the population were ill with flu (by no means an outrageous
assumption), it's very, very unlikely we could even offer -palliative-
medical care to the sick and dying. Indeed, the authorities might well be
forced to order -everyone- to stay at home (enforced 24 hours curfews),
and might well -close- all the hospitals because a completely inadequate
number of beds in isolation wards could quickly result in hospitals being
nothing but the most likely places to -catch- the flu, if you are not
already ill.
Thus, many or most Americans could be entirely on their own to cope with
severe food shortages, in addition to being seriously or even mortally
ill, or trying to nurse dying family members, possibly with little or no
heat. (Because long-haul trucking of food and fuel would probably be
curtailed, certainly because many truckers would fall ill and possibly
even because authorities might be forced to close highways to quarantine
the most severely affected areas.) There would probably be only limited
emergency or trash services for many months in many large American cities.
All these factors would greatly compound the challenge of surviving.
I've noticed that in recent days the U.S. government has cautiously sent
up a few trial balloons (admissions that they know they are completely
unprepared to cope with a flu pandemic). One of the least attractive
features of American emergency management is that agency heads seem to
always be terrified of "possibly causing a panic", when in fact Three Mile
Island and even Katrina suggest that the American population would
probably prove more stoic in the face of unpleasant news/events than our
leaders tend to believe.
The lack of vaccine, antiviral, food and fuel stockpiles and other urgent
shortcomings in our preparation for a global flu pandemic could be
ameliorated by expenditures which, while not cheap, seem modest in
comparision to re-establishing a large human habitation in the Gulf coast
(particularly if we seriously try to protect them from future major
storms). However, Congress is apparently too bewildered by a spate of
recent national setbacks to muster the political will to try to address
this issue.
It is of course ironic that the latest American "evolution trial" is
starting up against the backdrop of a national policy of dicing with death
by natural selection, which is what Congressional inaction amounts to.
And to state the obvious: everyone is at risk to die in the next pandemic,
quite irrespective of their personal beliefs about "evolution" :-/ Ah,
it's a mad, mad world.
Oh, did I mention that some experts guess that the chances of an avian flu
pandemic starting by the end of 2005 may exceed 10%?
"T. Essel" (hack hack)
stargene@sbcglobal.net
Oct12-06, 05:54 AM
Hi -- An interesting question ...
For what it's worth, the danger of an ultra-tiny mini-black-hole
forming
in a modern lab and engulfing the world, say after the collision of two
very high mass atomic nuclei, seems vanishingly small to me. Once
such a BH forms, it immediately proceeds to evaporate via Hawking
radiation, and the time scale needed for it to disappear this way is
also ultra-tiny compared to the time needed for it to grow larger by
gravitationally engulfing even the nearest matter to it.
The only regime which is at all able to supply such a mini-BH with
more matter than it can radiate in a given time frame is that of the
super-nuclear density environment which would exist at the center
of a maximum mass neutron star. And that, after all, would be the
trigger point for the final collapse of that neutron star into a large
stellar mass BH. This is the only kind of situation which would
allow the mini-BH to 'grow up', as it were. One can imagine that
in the neutron star's accretion period just before collapse, mini-
BHs are forming at an increasing rate near its center and always
succeeding in evaporating before absorbing enough nearby mass
to get larger. Then some point is reached at critical mass, when
the local mass-energy density is just enough to cause a single
runaway mini-BH formation event which then propagates outward
and engulfs the entire star as a BH.
regards,
Gene
stargene@sbcglobal.net
Oct12-06, 05:54 AM
Hi -- An interesting question ...
For what it's worth, the danger of an ultra-tiny mini-black-hole
forming
in a modern lab and engulfing the world, say after the collision of two
very high mass atomic nuclei, seems vanishingly small to me. Once
such a BH forms, it immediately proceeds to evaporate via Hawking
radiation, and the time scale needed for it to disappear this way is
also ultra-tiny compared to the time needed for it to grow larger by
gravitationally engulfing even the nearest matter to it.
The only regime which is at all able to supply such a mini-BH with
more matter than it can radiate in a given time frame is that of the
super-nuclear density environment which would exist at the center
of a maximum mass neutron star. And that, after all, would be the
trigger point for the final collapse of that neutron star into a large
stellar mass BH. This is the only kind of situation which would
allow the mini-BH to 'grow up', as it were. One can imagine that
in the neutron star's accretion period just before collapse, mini-
BHs are forming at an increasing rate near its center and always
succeeding in evaporating before absorbing enough nearby mass
to get larger. Then some point is reached at critical mass, when
the local mass-energy density is just enough to cause a single
runaway mini-BH formation event which then propagates outward
and engulfs the entire star as a BH.
regards,
Gene
stargene@sbcglobal.net
Oct12-06, 05:54 AM
Hi -- An interesting question ...
For what it's worth, the danger of an ultra-tiny mini-black-hole
forming
in a modern lab and engulfing the world, say after the collision of two
very high mass atomic nuclei, seems vanishingly small to me. Once
such a BH forms, it immediately proceeds to evaporate via Hawking
radiation, and the time scale needed for it to disappear this way is
also ultra-tiny compared to the time needed for it to grow larger by
gravitationally engulfing even the nearest matter to it.
The only regime which is at all able to supply such a mini-BH with
more matter than it can radiate in a given time frame is that of the
super-nuclear density environment which would exist at the center
of a maximum mass neutron star. And that, after all, would be the
trigger point for the final collapse of that neutron star into a large
stellar mass BH. This is the only kind of situation which would
allow the mini-BH to 'grow up', as it were. One can imagine that
in the neutron star's accretion period just before collapse, mini-
BHs are forming at an increasing rate near its center and always
succeeding in evaporating before absorbing enough nearby mass
to get larger. Then some point is reached at critical mass, when
the local mass-energy density is just enough to cause a single
runaway mini-BH formation event which then propagates outward
and engulfs the entire star as a BH.
regards,
Gene
Greysky
Oct12-06, 05:55 AM
<vantuyll@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127410798.778092.140040@g44g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> CERN's LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.
>
> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees
> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable
> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:
>
> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could
> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a
> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could
> expand at the speed of light.
>
> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?
>
The creation of strangelets is a cause for worry. The major reasons given
for the difficulty of strangelet production at our near future levels of
energy manipulation seem to be evaporating. See:
http://focus.aps.org/story/v16/st Though it isn't stated directly in
the article, it does indicate, between the lines, that strangelets are
500% - 1000% easier to
create than had been previously assumed. I suspect the picture will worsen
as we learn more...
There is also some good evidence in the seismic record for 1993, that the
earth was in fact hit by two of these beasties. They were moving so fast
they sailed right through us without stopping.
Greysky
Greysky
Oct12-06, 05:55 AM
<vantuyll@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127410798.778092.140040@g44g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> CERN's LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.
>
> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees
> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable
> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:
>
> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could
> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a
> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could
> expand at the speed of light.
>
> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?
>
The creation of strangelets is a cause for worry. The major reasons given
for the difficulty of strangelet production at our near future levels of
energy manipulation seem to be evaporating. See:
http://focus.aps.org/story/v16/st Though it isn't stated directly in
the article, it does indicate, between the lines, that strangelets are
500% - 1000% easier to
create than had been previously assumed. I suspect the picture will worsen
as we learn more...
There is also some good evidence in the seismic record for 1993, that the
earth was in fact hit by two of these beasties. They were moving so fast
they sailed right through us without stopping.
Greysky
Greysky
Oct12-06, 05:55 AM
<vantuyll@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127410798.778092.140040@g44g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> CERN's LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.
>
> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees
> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable
> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:
>
> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could
> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a
> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could
> expand at the speed of light.
>
> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?
>
The creation of strangelets is a cause for worry. The major reasons given
for the difficulty of strangelet production at our near future levels of
energy manipulation seem to be evaporating. See:
http://focus.aps.org/story/v16/st Though it isn't stated directly in
the article, it does indicate, between the lines, that strangelets are
500% - 1000% easier to
create than had been previously assumed. I suspect the picture will worsen
as we learn more...
There is also some good evidence in the seismic record for 1993, that the
earth was in fact hit by two of these beasties. They were moving so fast
they sailed right through us without stopping.
Greysky
Greysky
Oct12-06, 05:55 AM
<vantuyll@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:1127410798.778092.140040@g44g2000cwa.googlegr oups.com...
> CERN's LHC is scheduled to start operation in 2007.
>
> Our Final Century, a 2003 book by Sir Martin Rees
> (http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/IoA/staff/mjr/), a scientist with impeccable
> credentials, describes the following extreme risks:
>
> Crashing together an atom of gold and an atom of lead in the LHC could
> result in an unprecedented implosion. A black hole could form, a
> stranglet might be produced, or a phase transition of space could
> expand at the speed of light.
>
> Is this nonsense, or is it a risk, however remote?
>
The creation of strangelets is a cause for worry. The major reasons given
for the difficulty of strangelet production at our near future levels of
energy manipulation seem to be evaporating. See:
http://focus.aps.org/story/v16/st Though it isn't stated directly in
the article, it does indicate, between the lines, that strangelets are
500% - 1000% easier to
create than had been previously assumed. I suspect the picture will worsen
as we learn more...
There is also some good evidence in the seismic record for 1993, that the
earth was in fact hit by two of these beasties. They were moving so fast
they sailed right through us without stopping.
Greysky
tessel@um.bot
Oct12-06, 05:57 AM
If you are logging in from Pluto and just want to check whether the Earth
has been destroyed recently :-/ try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/geocide/board.html
Hmm... I just checked and it looks like the mad scientists are -still-
batting zero :-/
Anyway, for a concise discussion (by a math student at Oxford, I think) of
various methods which have been suggested for destroying the Earth, try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
The very first entry discusses strangelets. Not sure I completely agree
with his miniblack hole scenario, but I can't argue with his overall
conclusion: "the Earth was built to last", and is not likely to be reduced
to rubble anytime in the next hundred years.
I seem to recall that a few years ago Livermore Labs wanted to try to
ignite the atmosphere with X-ray lasers as a test of a Star Wars scheme.
Well, -part- of it, anyway. Congress turned them down, possibly more out
of budgetary concerns than safety concerns. Aye, there's the rub for mad
scientists: even if you can figure out how to destroy the Earth (or Life
on Earth) -in principle-, it's presumably much harder to figure out how to
sterilize the Earth without spending trillions of dollars. Particularly
if you haven't been able to, er, gain experience with less clever methods,
like nuclear armageddon.
Which, btw, would not in fact sterilize the Earth, or even -entirely-
eradicate humans, not that this should be much comfort. See the map in
the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some insight into just
how "hot" the continental U.S. would be post-armageddon. Any colored
regions would be uninhabitable by current standards (think Chernobyll)---
but the darned whole country gets colored -something-. Talk about "moving
to Canada", sheesh--- any survivors would probably want to move to
-Siberia-, since Canada would be pretty "hot" too. Recalling what
recently happened in Texas, just imagine trying to evacuate -North
America-.
Turning serious (sorry, this will be off-topic, except as an alternative
perspective on fears that mad scientists are likely to do serious harm in
the near future): At present, Mother Nature, via the next mutant of H5N1
or another "avian flu" strain), may be far more likely than humans to kill
off a substantial fraction of the human population sometime during the
next decade.
If you -really- want to worry about something, worry about this: some
strains of avian flu have a 50% mortality rate, and the newest strains
have been getting -more- deadly. That's right up there with Ebola.
Compare the H1N1 flu strain ("Spanish flu"), which killed 25-50 million
people around 1918, but achieved "only" something like a net 5% mortality
rate.
In fact, this discrepancy is only to be expected: over the long run, the
most transmissible illnesses (like the common cold) cannot be the most
deadly; for a virus, killing your host in a spectacular manner is
generally not a good strategy for long term survival :-/ Natural selection
is very effective at finding workable compromises between transmissibility
and mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and syphilis always
become far -less- virulent over time: possibly they still kill everyone
who contracts the illness, but eventually they no longer kill -rapidly-.
The earliest H5N1 strains tended to kill victims before they could infect
very many new victims; an alarming trend is that the latest strains seem
to have a longer incubation period and a mortality of more like 20% and
50%. Expert say that the next generation of H5N1 strains is likely to be
capable of igniting a global pandemic.
The trouble is that in the short run diseases sometimes very suddenly
become both very deadly (5-20% mortality) and highly transmissible, before
the host and disease organisms can "redjust the tradoff" between virulence
and transmissibility. This natural process can be very unpleasant for the
host species in the short run.
In the case of the avian flu, the fear for the human host species is that
a new mutation could result in a strain which is far more transmissible by
sneezing. Even if this strain had a mortality rate closer to 5% than 50%,
it would still kill far more people than even the 1918 flu pandemic.
Survivors would be better equipped to fight off subsequent avian flu
strains, but the point is that spectacular die-offs due to epidemics are
not -terribly- uncommon in Nature, particularly in the case of highly
mobile species, such as 21st century humans.
This is fine for future generations, I guess, but presumably a very
undesirable outcome for the victims of a pandemic. I've seen mortality
estimates for an avian flu pandemic ranging up to 20% of the world
population (again, compare 5% of the global human population dying in the
1918 flu pandemic), a figure for which there is a possibly relevant
historical precedent (the black death). In raw numbers, that would be
more than one -billion- deaths in one or two years, worldwide, with
perhaps 80% of the entire human population falling seriously ill at some
point. Even for survivors, it would be a very protacted "near-death
experience".
I understand that in the U.S., FEMA experts currently rate a flu pandemic
at the very top, higher than terrorism, hurricanes, tsumanamis, lehars,
etc., combined. IIRC, the director of the NIH has stated that if we ever
see more than a thousand clustered cases of avian flu -anywhere in the
world-, we will know that the next great pandemic has begun and will
inevitably run its deadly course. And we've already come close to that in
the last year.
These considerations should perhaps provoke a re-evaluation of current
spending priorities. For example, the U.S. currently has -no- stockpiles
of H5N1 vaccine. The stuff now being manufactured is only helpful against
ordinary flu strains and is thought to offer -no protection whatever-
against avian flu strains. Furthermore, the U.S. has no means of making
or acquiring the tens of millions of doses of vaccine against a new flu
N5N1 strain which would be needed in the first few weeks or months to help
control a flu pandemic. (The goal would be keeping the population alive,
not from keeping people from falling ill at all. Even in the best
scenario, the economy would take a bit hit from absenteeism.) The same
goes for certain antiviral drugs thought to have some effectiveness in
some avian flu patients: no stockpiles, and no plans to acquire any.
This leaves us utterly helpless to offer more than palliative measures
(e.g. oxygen in an ICU) in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Indeed, if
say 50% of the population were ill with flu (by no means an outrageous
assumption), it's very, very unlikely we could even offer -palliative-
medical care to the sick and dying. Indeed, the authorities might well be
forced to order -everyone- to stay at home (enforced 24 hours curfews),
and might well -close- all the hospitals because a completely inadequate
number of beds in isolation wards could quickly result in hospitals being
nothing but the most likely places to -catch- the flu, if you are not
already ill.
Thus, many or most Americans could be entirely on their own to cope with
severe food shortages, in addition to being seriously or even mortally
ill, or trying to nurse dying family members, possibly with little or no
heat. (Because long-haul trucking of food and fuel would probably be
curtailed, certainly because many truckers would fall ill and possibly
even because authorities might be forced to close highways to quarantine
the most severely affected areas.) There would probably be only limited
emergency or trash services for many months in many large American cities.
All these factors would greatly compound the challenge of surviving.
I've noticed that in recent days the U.S. government has cautiously sent
up a few trial balloons (admissions that they know they are completely
unprepared to cope with a flu pandemic). One of the least attractive
features of American emergency management is that agency heads seem to
always be terrified of "possibly causing a panic", when in fact Three Mile
Island and even Katrina suggest that the American population would
probably prove more stoic in the face of unpleasant news/events than our
leaders tend to believe.
The lack of vaccine, antiviral, food and fuel stockpiles and other urgent
shortcomings in our preparation for a global flu pandemic could be
ameliorated by expenditures which, while not cheap, seem modest in
comparision to re-establishing a large human habitation in the Gulf coast
(particularly if we seriously try to protect them from future major
storms). However, Congress is apparently too bewildered by a spate of
recent national setbacks to muster the political will to try to address
this issue.
It is of course ironic that the latest American "evolution trial" is
starting up against the backdrop of a national policy of dicing with death
by natural selection, which is what Congressional inaction amounts to.
And to state the obvious: everyone is at risk to die in the next pandemic,
quite irrespective of their personal beliefs about "evolution" :-/ Ah,
it's a mad, mad world.
Oh, did I mention that some experts guess that the chances of an avian flu
pandemic starting by the end of 2005 may exceed 10%?
"T. Essel" (hack hack)
tessel@um.bot
Oct12-06, 05:57 AM
If you are logging in from Pluto and just want to check whether the Earth
has been destroyed recently :-/ try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/geocide/board.html
Hmm... I just checked and it looks like the mad scientists are -still-
batting zero :-/
Anyway, for a concise discussion (by a math student at Oxford, I think) of
various methods which have been suggested for destroying the Earth, try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
The very first entry discusses strangelets. Not sure I completely agree
with his miniblack hole scenario, but I can't argue with his overall
conclusion: "the Earth was built to last", and is not likely to be reduced
to rubble anytime in the next hundred years.
I seem to recall that a few years ago Livermore Labs wanted to try to
ignite the atmosphere with X-ray lasers as a test of a Star Wars scheme.
Well, -part- of it, anyway. Congress turned them down, possibly more out
of budgetary concerns than safety concerns. Aye, there's the rub for mad
scientists: even if you can figure out how to destroy the Earth (or Life
on Earth) -in principle-, it's presumably much harder to figure out how to
sterilize the Earth without spending trillions of dollars. Particularly
if you haven't been able to, er, gain experience with less clever methods,
like nuclear armageddon.
Which, btw, would not in fact sterilize the Earth, or even -entirely-
eradicate humans, not that this should be much comfort. See the map in
the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some insight into just
how "hot" the continental U.S. would be post-armageddon. Any colored
regions would be uninhabitable by current standards (think Chernobyll)---
but the darned whole country gets colored -something-. Talk about "moving
to Canada", sheesh--- any survivors would probably want to move to
-Siberia-, since Canada would be pretty "hot" too. Recalling what
recently happened in Texas, just imagine trying to evacuate -North
America-.
Turning serious (sorry, this will be off-topic, except as an alternative
perspective on fears that mad scientists are likely to do serious harm in
the near future): At present, Mother Nature, via the next mutant of H5N1
or another "avian flu" strain), may be far more likely than humans to kill
off a substantial fraction of the human population sometime during the
next decade.
If you -really- want to worry about something, worry about this: some
strains of avian flu have a 50% mortality rate, and the newest strains
have been getting -more- deadly. That's right up there with Ebola.
Compare the H1N1 flu strain ("Spanish flu"), which killed 25-50 million
people around 1918, but achieved "only" something like a net 5% mortality
rate.
In fact, this discrepancy is only to be expected: over the long run, the
most transmissible illnesses (like the common cold) cannot be the most
deadly; for a virus, killing your host in a spectacular manner is
generally not a good strategy for long term survival :-/ Natural selection
is very effective at finding workable compromises between transmissibility
and mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and syphilis always
become far -less- virulent over time: possibly they still kill everyone
who contracts the illness, but eventually they no longer kill -rapidly-.
The earliest H5N1 strains tended to kill victims before they could infect
very many new victims; an alarming trend is that the latest strains seem
to have a longer incubation period and a mortality of more like 20% and
50%. Expert say that the next generation of H5N1 strains is likely to be
capable of igniting a global pandemic.
The trouble is that in the short run diseases sometimes very suddenly
become both very deadly (5-20% mortality) and highly transmissible, before
the host and disease organisms can "redjust the tradoff" between virulence
and transmissibility. This natural process can be very unpleasant for the
host species in the short run.
In the case of the avian flu, the fear for the human host species is that
a new mutation could result in a strain which is far more transmissible by
sneezing. Even if this strain had a mortality rate closer to 5% than 50%,
it would still kill far more people than even the 1918 flu pandemic.
Survivors would be better equipped to fight off subsequent avian flu
strains, but the point is that spectacular die-offs due to epidemics are
not -terribly- uncommon in Nature, particularly in the case of highly
mobile species, such as 21st century humans.
This is fine for future generations, I guess, but presumably a very
undesirable outcome for the victims of a pandemic. I've seen mortality
estimates for an avian flu pandemic ranging up to 20% of the world
population (again, compare 5% of the global human population dying in the
1918 flu pandemic), a figure for which there is a possibly relevant
historical precedent (the black death). In raw numbers, that would be
more than one -billion- deaths in one or two years, worldwide, with
perhaps 80% of the entire human population falling seriously ill at some
point. Even for survivors, it would be a very protacted "near-death
experience".
I understand that in the U.S., FEMA experts currently rate a flu pandemic
at the very top, higher than terrorism, hurricanes, tsumanamis, lehars,
etc., combined. IIRC, the director of the NIH has stated that if we ever
see more than a thousand clustered cases of avian flu -anywhere in the
world-, we will know that the next great pandemic has begun and will
inevitably run its deadly course. And we've already come close to that in
the last year.
These considerations should perhaps provoke a re-evaluation of current
spending priorities. For example, the U.S. currently has -no- stockpiles
of H5N1 vaccine. The stuff now being manufactured is only helpful against
ordinary flu strains and is thought to offer -no protection whatever-
against avian flu strains. Furthermore, the U.S. has no means of making
or acquiring the tens of millions of doses of vaccine against a new flu
N5N1 strain which would be needed in the first few weeks or months to help
control a flu pandemic. (The goal would be keeping the population alive,
not from keeping people from falling ill at all. Even in the best
scenario, the economy would take a bit hit from absenteeism.) The same
goes for certain antiviral drugs thought to have some effectiveness in
some avian flu patients: no stockpiles, and no plans to acquire any.
This leaves us utterly helpless to offer more than palliative measures
(e.g. oxygen in an ICU) in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Indeed, if
say 50% of the population were ill with flu (by no means an outrageous
assumption), it's very, very unlikely we could even offer -palliative-
medical care to the sick and dying. Indeed, the authorities might well be
forced to order -everyone- to stay at home (enforced 24 hours curfews),
and might well -close- all the hospitals because a completely inadequate
number of beds in isolation wards could quickly result in hospitals being
nothing but the most likely places to -catch- the flu, if you are not
already ill.
Thus, many or most Americans could be entirely on their own to cope with
severe food shortages, in addition to being seriously or even mortally
ill, or trying to nurse dying family members, possibly with little or no
heat. (Because long-haul trucking of food and fuel would probably be
curtailed, certainly because many truckers would fall ill and possibly
even because authorities might be forced to close highways to quarantine
the most severely affected areas.) There would probably be only limited
emergency or trash services for many months in many large American cities.
All these factors would greatly compound the challenge of surviving.
I've noticed that in recent days the U.S. government has cautiously sent
up a few trial balloons (admissions that they know they are completely
unprepared to cope with a flu pandemic). One of the least attractive
features of American emergency management is that agency heads seem to
always be terrified of "possibly causing a panic", when in fact Three Mile
Island and even Katrina suggest that the American population would
probably prove more stoic in the face of unpleasant news/events than our
leaders tend to believe.
The lack of vaccine, antiviral, food and fuel stockpiles and other urgent
shortcomings in our preparation for a global flu pandemic could be
ameliorated by expenditures which, while not cheap, seem modest in
comparision to re-establishing a large human habitation in the Gulf coast
(particularly if we seriously try to protect them from future major
storms). However, Congress is apparently too bewildered by a spate of
recent national setbacks to muster the political will to try to address
this issue.
It is of course ironic that the latest American "evolution trial" is
starting up against the backdrop of a national policy of dicing with death
by natural selection, which is what Congressional inaction amounts to.
And to state the obvious: everyone is at risk to die in the next pandemic,
quite irrespective of their personal beliefs about "evolution" :-/ Ah,
it's a mad, mad world.
Oh, did I mention that some experts guess that the chances of an avian flu
pandemic starting by the end of 2005 may exceed 10%?
"T. Essel" (hack hack)
tessel@um.bot
Oct12-06, 05:57 AM
If you are logging in from Pluto and just want to check whether the Earth
has been destroyed recently :-/ try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/geocide/board.html
Hmm... I just checked and it looks like the mad scientists are -still-
batting zero :-/
Anyway, for a concise discussion (by a math student at Oxford, I think) of
various methods which have been suggested for destroying the Earth, try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
The very first entry discusses strangelets. Not sure I completely agree
with his miniblack hole scenario, but I can't argue with his overall
conclusion: "the Earth was built to last", and is not likely to be reduced
to rubble anytime in the next hundred years.
I seem to recall that a few years ago Livermore Labs wanted to try to
ignite the atmosphere with X-ray lasers as a test of a Star Wars scheme.
Well, -part- of it, anyway. Congress turned them down, possibly more out
of budgetary concerns than safety concerns. Aye, there's the rub for mad
scientists: even if you can figure out how to destroy the Earth (or Life
on Earth) -in principle-, it's presumably much harder to figure out how to
sterilize the Earth without spending trillions of dollars. Particularly
if you haven't been able to, er, gain experience with less clever methods,
like nuclear armageddon.
Which, btw, would not in fact sterilize the Earth, or even -entirely-
eradicate humans, not that this should be much comfort. See the map in
the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some insight into just
how "hot" the continental U.S. would be post-armageddon. Any colored
regions would be uninhabitable by current standards (think Chernobyll)---
but the darned whole country gets colored -something-. Talk about "moving
to Canada", sheesh--- any survivors would probably want to move to
-Siberia-, since Canada would be pretty "hot" too. Recalling what
recently happened in Texas, just imagine trying to evacuate -North
America-.
Turning serious (sorry, this will be off-topic, except as an alternative
perspective on fears that mad scientists are likely to do serious harm in
the near future): At present, Mother Nature, via the next mutant of H5N1
or another "avian flu" strain), may be far more likely than humans to kill
off a substantial fraction of the human population sometime during the
next decade.
If you -really- want to worry about something, worry about this: some
strains of avian flu have a 50% mortality rate, and the newest strains
have been getting -more- deadly. That's right up there with Ebola.
Compare the H1N1 flu strain ("Spanish flu"), which killed 25-50 million
people around 1918, but achieved "only" something like a net 5% mortality
rate.
In fact, this discrepancy is only to be expected: over the long run, the
most transmissible illnesses (like the common cold) cannot be the most
deadly; for a virus, killing your host in a spectacular manner is
generally not a good strategy for long term survival :-/ Natural selection
is very effective at finding workable compromises between transmissibility
and mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and syphilis always
become far -less- virulent over time: possibly they still kill everyone
who contracts the illness, but eventually they no longer kill -rapidly-.
The earliest H5N1 strains tended to kill victims before they could infect
very many new victims; an alarming trend is that the latest strains seem
to have a longer incubation period and a mortality of more like 20% and
50%. Expert say that the next generation of H5N1 strains is likely to be
capable of igniting a global pandemic.
The trouble is that in the short run diseases sometimes very suddenly
become both very deadly (5-20% mortality) and highly transmissible, before
the host and disease organisms can "redjust the tradoff" between virulence
and transmissibility. This natural process can be very unpleasant for the
host species in the short run.
In the case of the avian flu, the fear for the human host species is that
a new mutation could result in a strain which is far more transmissible by
sneezing. Even if this strain had a mortality rate closer to 5% than 50%,
it would still kill far more people than even the 1918 flu pandemic.
Survivors would be better equipped to fight off subsequent avian flu
strains, but the point is that spectacular die-offs due to epidemics are
not -terribly- uncommon in Nature, particularly in the case of highly
mobile species, such as 21st century humans.
This is fine for future generations, I guess, but presumably a very
undesirable outcome for the victims of a pandemic. I've seen mortality
estimates for an avian flu pandemic ranging up to 20% of the world
population (again, compare 5% of the global human population dying in the
1918 flu pandemic), a figure for which there is a possibly relevant
historical precedent (the black death). In raw numbers, that would be
more than one -billion- deaths in one or two years, worldwide, with
perhaps 80% of the entire human population falling seriously ill at some
point. Even for survivors, it would be a very protacted "near-death
experience".
I understand that in the U.S., FEMA experts currently rate a flu pandemic
at the very top, higher than terrorism, hurricanes, tsumanamis, lehars,
etc., combined. IIRC, the director of the NIH has stated that if we ever
see more than a thousand clustered cases of avian flu -anywhere in the
world-, we will know that the next great pandemic has begun and will
inevitably run its deadly course. And we've already come close to that in
the last year.
These considerations should perhaps provoke a re-evaluation of current
spending priorities. For example, the U.S. currently has -no- stockpiles
of H5N1 vaccine. The stuff now being manufactured is only helpful against
ordinary flu strains and is thought to offer -no protection whatever-
against avian flu strains. Furthermore, the U.S. has no means of making
or acquiring the tens of millions of doses of vaccine against a new flu
N5N1 strain which would be needed in the first few weeks or months to help
control a flu pandemic. (The goal would be keeping the population alive,
not from keeping people from falling ill at all. Even in the best
scenario, the economy would take a bit hit from absenteeism.) The same
goes for certain antiviral drugs thought to have some effectiveness in
some avian flu patients: no stockpiles, and no plans to acquire any.
This leaves us utterly helpless to offer more than palliative measures
(e.g. oxygen in an ICU) in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Indeed, if
say 50% of the population were ill with flu (by no means an outrageous
assumption), it's very, very unlikely we could even offer -palliative-
medical care to the sick and dying. Indeed, the authorities might well be
forced to order -everyone- to stay at home (enforced 24 hours curfews),
and might well -close- all the hospitals because a completely inadequate
number of beds in isolation wards could quickly result in hospitals being
nothing but the most likely places to -catch- the flu, if you are not
already ill.
Thus, many or most Americans could be entirely on their own to cope with
severe food shortages, in addition to being seriously or even mortally
ill, or trying to nurse dying family members, possibly with little or no
heat. (Because long-haul trucking of food and fuel would probably be
curtailed, certainly because many truckers would fall ill and possibly
even because authorities might be forced to close highways to quarantine
the most severely affected areas.) There would probably be only limited
emergency or trash services for many months in many large American cities.
All these factors would greatly compound the challenge of surviving.
I've noticed that in recent days the U.S. government has cautiously sent
up a few trial balloons (admissions that they know they are completely
unprepared to cope with a flu pandemic). One of the least attractive
features of American emergency management is that agency heads seem to
always be terrified of "possibly causing a panic", when in fact Three Mile
Island and even Katrina suggest that the American population would
probably prove more stoic in the face of unpleasant news/events than our
leaders tend to believe.
The lack of vaccine, antiviral, food and fuel stockpiles and other urgent
shortcomings in our preparation for a global flu pandemic could be
ameliorated by expenditures which, while not cheap, seem modest in
comparision to re-establishing a large human habitation in the Gulf coast
(particularly if we seriously try to protect them from future major
storms). However, Congress is apparently too bewildered by a spate of
recent national setbacks to muster the political will to try to address
this issue.
It is of course ironic that the latest American "evolution trial" is
starting up against the backdrop of a national policy of dicing with death
by natural selection, which is what Congressional inaction amounts to.
And to state the obvious: everyone is at risk to die in the next pandemic,
quite irrespective of their personal beliefs about "evolution" :-/ Ah,
it's a mad, mad world.
Oh, did I mention that some experts guess that the chances of an avian flu
pandemic starting by the end of 2005 may exceed 10%?
"T. Essel" (hack hack)
tessel@um.bot
Oct12-06, 05:57 AM
If you are logging in from Pluto and just want to check whether the Earth
has been destroyed recently :-/ try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/geocide/board.html
Hmm... I just checked and it looks like the mad scientists are -still-
batting zero :-/
Anyway, for a concise discussion (by a math student at Oxford, I think) of
various methods which have been suggested for destroying the Earth, try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
The very first entry discusses strangelets. Not sure I completely agree
with his miniblack hole scenario, but I can't argue with his overall
conclusion: "the Earth was built to last", and is not likely to be reduced
to rubble anytime in the next hundred years.
I seem to recall that a few years ago Livermore Labs wanted to try to
ignite the atmosphere with X-ray lasers as a test of a Star Wars scheme.
Well, -part- of it, anyway. Congress turned them down, possibly more out
of budgetary concerns than safety concerns. Aye, there's the rub for mad
scientists: even if you can figure out how to destroy the Earth (or Life
on Earth) -in principle-, it's presumably much harder to figure out how to
sterilize the Earth without spending trillions of dollars. Particularly
if you haven't been able to, er, gain experience with less clever methods,
like nuclear armageddon.
Which, btw, would not in fact sterilize the Earth, or even -entirely-
eradicate humans, not that this should be much comfort. See the map in
the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some insight into just
how "hot" the continental U.S. would be post-armageddon. Any colored
regions would be uninhabitable by current standards (think Chernobyll)---
but the darned whole country gets colored -something-. Talk about "moving
to Canada", sheesh--- any survivors would probably want to move to
-Siberia-, since Canada would be pretty "hot" too. Recalling what
recently happened in Texas, just imagine trying to evacuate -North
America-.
Turning serious (sorry, this will be off-topic, except as an alternative
perspective on fears that mad scientists are likely to do serious harm in
the near future): At present, Mother Nature, via the next mutant of H5N1
or another "avian flu" strain), may be far more likely than humans to kill
off a substantial fraction of the human population sometime during the
next decade.
If you -really- want to worry about something, worry about this: some
strains of avian flu have a 50% mortality rate, and the newest strains
have been getting -more- deadly. That's right up there with Ebola.
Compare the H1N1 flu strain ("Spanish flu"), which killed 25-50 million
people around 1918, but achieved "only" something like a net 5% mortality
rate.
In fact, this discrepancy is only to be expected: over the long run, the
most transmissible illnesses (like the common cold) cannot be the most
deadly; for a virus, killing your host in a spectacular manner is
generally not a good strategy for long term survival :-/ Natural selection
is very effective at finding workable compromises between transmissibility
and mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and syphilis always
become far -less- virulent over time: possibly they still kill everyone
who contracts the illness, but eventually they no longer kill -rapidly-.
The earliest H5N1 strains tended to kill victims before they could infect
very many new victims; an alarming trend is that the latest strains seem
to have a longer incubation period and a mortality of more like 20% and
50%. Expert say that the next generation of H5N1 strains is likely to be
capable of igniting a global pandemic.
The trouble is that in the short run diseases sometimes very suddenly
become both very deadly (5-20% mortality) and highly transmissible, before
the host and disease organisms can "redjust the tradoff" between virulence
and transmissibility. This natural process can be very unpleasant for the
host species in the short run.
In the case of the avian flu, the fear for the human host species is that
a new mutation could result in a strain which is far more transmissible by
sneezing. Even if this strain had a mortality rate closer to 5% than 50%,
it would still kill far more people than even the 1918 flu pandemic.
Survivors would be better equipped to fight off subsequent avian flu
strains, but the point is that spectacular die-offs due to epidemics are
not -terribly- uncommon in Nature, particularly in the case of highly
mobile species, such as 21st century humans.
This is fine for future generations, I guess, but presumably a very
undesirable outcome for the victims of a pandemic. I've seen mortality
estimates for an avian flu pandemic ranging up to 20% of the world
population (again, compare 5% of the global human population dying in the
1918 flu pandemic), a figure for which there is a possibly relevant
historical precedent (the black death). In raw numbers, that would be
more than one -billion- deaths in one or two years, worldwide, with
perhaps 80% of the entire human population falling seriously ill at some
point. Even for survivors, it would be a very protacted "near-death
experience".
I understand that in the U.S., FEMA experts currently rate a flu pandemic
at the very top, higher than terrorism, hurricanes, tsumanamis, lehars,
etc., combined. IIRC, the director of the NIH has stated that if we ever
see more than a thousand clustered cases of avian flu -anywhere in the
world-, we will know that the next great pandemic has begun and will
inevitably run its deadly course. And we've already come close to that in
the last year.
These considerations should perhaps provoke a re-evaluation of current
spending priorities. For example, the U.S. currently has -no- stockpiles
of H5N1 vaccine. The stuff now being manufactured is only helpful against
ordinary flu strains and is thought to offer -no protection whatever-
against avian flu strains. Furthermore, the U.S. has no means of making
or acquiring the tens of millions of doses of vaccine against a new flu
N5N1 strain which would be needed in the first few weeks or months to help
control a flu pandemic. (The goal would be keeping the population alive,
not from keeping people from falling ill at all. Even in the best
scenario, the economy would take a bit hit from absenteeism.) The same
goes for certain antiviral drugs thought to have some effectiveness in
some avian flu patients: no stockpiles, and no plans to acquire any.
This leaves us utterly helpless to offer more than palliative measures
(e.g. oxygen in an ICU) in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Indeed, if
say 50% of the population were ill with flu (by no means an outrageous
assumption), it's very, very unlikely we could even offer -palliative-
medical care to the sick and dying. Indeed, the authorities might well be
forced to order -everyone- to stay at home (enforced 24 hours curfews),
and might well -close- all the hospitals because a completely inadequate
number of beds in isolation wards could quickly result in hospitals being
nothing but the most likely places to -catch- the flu, if you are not
already ill.
Thus, many or most Americans could be entirely on their own to cope with
severe food shortages, in addition to being seriously or even mortally
ill, or trying to nurse dying family members, possibly with little or no
heat. (Because long-haul trucking of food and fuel would probably be
curtailed, certainly because many truckers would fall ill and possibly
even because authorities might be forced to close highways to quarantine
the most severely affected areas.) There would probably be only limited
emergency or trash services for many months in many large American cities.
All these factors would greatly compound the challenge of surviving.
I've noticed that in recent days the U.S. government has cautiously sent
up a few trial balloons (admissions that they know they are completely
unprepared to cope with a flu pandemic). One of the least attractive
features of American emergency management is that agency heads seem to
always be terrified of "possibly causing a panic", when in fact Three Mile
Island and even Katrina suggest that the American population would
probably prove more stoic in the face of unpleasant news/events than our
leaders tend to believe.
The lack of vaccine, antiviral, food and fuel stockpiles and other urgent
shortcomings in our preparation for a global flu pandemic could be
ameliorated by expenditures which, while not cheap, seem modest in
comparision to re-establishing a large human habitation in the Gulf coast
(particularly if we seriously try to protect them from future major
storms). However, Congress is apparently too bewildered by a spate of
recent national setbacks to muster the political will to try to address
this issue.
It is of course ironic that the latest American "evolution trial" is
starting up against the backdrop of a national policy of dicing with death
by natural selection, which is what Congressional inaction amounts to.
And to state the obvious: everyone is at risk to die in the next pandemic,
quite irrespective of their personal beliefs about "evolution" :-/ Ah,
it's a mad, mad world.
Oh, did I mention that some experts guess that the chances of an avian flu
pandemic starting by the end of 2005 may exceed 10%?
"T. Essel" (hack hack)
tessel@um.bot
Oct12-06, 05:57 AM
If you are logging in from Pluto and just want to check whether the Earth
has been destroyed recently :-/ try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/geocide/board.html
Hmm... I just checked and it looks like the mad scientists are -still-
batting zero :-/
Anyway, for a concise discussion (by a math student at Oxford, I think) of
various methods which have been suggested for destroying the Earth, try
http://ned.ucam.org/~sdh31/misc/destroy.html
The very first entry discusses strangelets. Not sure I completely agree
with his miniblack hole scenario, but I can't argue with his overall
conclusion: "the Earth was built to last", and is not likely to be reduced
to rubble anytime in the next hundred years.
I seem to recall that a few years ago Livermore Labs wanted to try to
ignite the atmosphere with X-ray lasers as a test of a Star Wars scheme.
Well, -part- of it, anyway. Congress turned them down, possibly more out
of budgetary concerns than safety concerns. Aye, there's the rub for mad
scientists: even if you can figure out how to destroy the Earth (or Life
on Earth) -in principle-, it's presumably much harder to figure out how to
sterilize the Earth without spending trillions of dollars. Particularly
if you haven't been able to, er, gain experience with less clever methods,
like nuclear armageddon.
Which, btw, would not in fact sterilize the Earth, or even -entirely-
eradicate humans, not that this should be much comfort. See the map in
the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists for some insight into just
how "hot" the continental U.S. would be post-armageddon. Any colored
regions would be uninhabitable by current standards (think Chernobyll)---
but the darned whole country gets colored -something-. Talk about "moving
to Canada", sheesh--- any survivors would probably want to move to
-Siberia-, since Canada would be pretty "hot" too. Recalling what
recently happened in Texas, just imagine trying to evacuate -North
America-.
Turning serious (sorry, this will be off-topic, except as an alternative
perspective on fears that mad scientists are likely to do serious harm in
the near future): At present, Mother Nature, via the next mutant of H5N1
or another "avian flu" strain), may be far more likely than humans to kill
off a substantial fraction of the human population sometime during the
next decade.
If you -really- want to worry about something, worry about this: some
strains of avian flu have a 50% mortality rate, and the newest strains
have been getting -more- deadly. That's right up there with Ebola.
Compare the H1N1 flu strain ("Spanish flu"), which killed 25-50 million
people around 1918, but achieved "only" something like a net 5% mortality
rate.
In fact, this discrepancy is only to be expected: over the long run, the
most transmissible illnesses (like the common cold) cannot be the most
deadly; for a virus, killing your host in a spectacular manner is
generally not a good strategy for long term survival :-/ Natural selection
is very effective at finding workable compromises between transmissibility
and mortality, and diseases like tuberculosis, AIDS, and syphilis always
become far -less- virulent over time: possibly they still kill everyone
who contracts the illness, but eventually they no longer kill -rapidly-.
The earliest H5N1 strains tended to kill victims before they could infect
very many new victims; an alarming trend is that the latest strains seem
to have a longer incubation period and a mortality of more like 20% and
50%. Expert say that the next generation of H5N1 strains is likely to be
capable of igniting a global pandemic.
The trouble is that in the short run diseases sometimes very suddenly
become both very deadly (5-20% mortality) and highly transmissible, before
the host and disease organisms can "redjust the tradoff" between virulence
and transmissibility. This natural process can be very unpleasant for the
host species in the short run.
In the case of the avian flu, the fear for the human host species is that
a new mutation could result in a strain which is far more transmissible by
sneezing. Even if this strain had a mortality rate closer to 5% than 50%,
it would still kill far more people than even the 1918 flu pandemic.
Survivors would be better equipped to fight off subsequent avian flu
strains, but the point is that spectacular die-offs due to epidemics are
not -terribly- uncommon in Nature, particularly in the case of highly
mobile species, such as 21st century humans.
This is fine for future generations, I guess, but presumably a very
undesirable outcome for the victims of a pandemic. I've seen mortality
estimates for an avian flu pandemic ranging up to 20% of the world
population (again, compare 5% of the global human population dying in the
1918 flu pandemic), a figure for which there is a possibly relevant
historical precedent (the black death). In raw numbers, that would be
more than one -billion- deaths in one or two years, worldwide, with
perhaps 80% of the entire human population falling seriously ill at some
point. Even for survivors, it would be a very protacted "near-death
experience".
I understand that in the U.S., FEMA experts currently rate a flu pandemic
at the very top, higher than terrorism, hurricanes, tsumanamis, lehars,
etc., combined. IIRC, the director of the NIH has stated that if we ever
see more than a thousand clustered cases of avian flu -anywhere in the
world-, we will know that the next great pandemic has begun and will
inevitably run its deadly course. And we've already come close to that in
the last year.
These considerations should perhaps provoke a re-evaluation of current
spending priorities. For example, the U.S. currently has -no- stockpiles
of H5N1 vaccine. The stuff now being manufactured is only helpful against
ordinary flu strains and is thought to offer -no protection whatever-
against avian flu strains. Furthermore, the U.S. has no means of making
or acquiring the tens of millions of doses of vaccine against a new flu
N5N1 strain which would be needed in the first few weeks or months to help
control a flu pandemic. (The goal would be keeping the population alive,
not from keeping people from falling ill at all. Even in the best
scenario, the economy would take a bit hit from absenteeism.) The same
goes for certain antiviral drugs thought to have some effectiveness in
some avian flu patients: no stockpiles, and no plans to acquire any.
This leaves us utterly helpless to offer more than palliative measures
(e.g. oxygen in an ICU) in the event of an avian flu pandemic. Indeed, if
say 50% of the population were ill with flu (by no means an outrageous
assumption), it's very, very unlikely we could even offer -palliative-
medical care to the sick and dying. Indeed, the authorities might well be
forced to order -everyone- to stay at home (enforced 24 hours curfews),
and might well -close- all the hospitals because a completely inadequate
number of beds in isolation wards could quickly result in hospitals being
nothing but the most likely places to -catch- the flu, if you are not
already ill.
Thus, many or most Americans could be entirely on their own to cope with
severe food shortages, in addition to being seriously or even mortally
ill, or trying to nurse dying family members, possibly with little or no
heat. (Because long-haul trucking of food and fuel would probably be
curtailed, certainly because many truckers would fall ill and possibly
even because authorities might be forced to close highways to quarantine
the most severely affected areas.) There would probably be only limited
emergency or trash services for many months in many large American cities.
All these factors would greatly compound the challenge of surviving.
I've noticed that in recent days the U.S. government has cautiously sent
up a few trial balloons (admissions that they know they are completely
unprepared to cope with a flu pandemic). One of the least attractive
features of American emergency management is that agency heads seem to
always be terrified of "possibly causing a panic", when in fact Three Mile
Island and even Katrina suggest that the American population would
probably prove more stoic in the face of unpleasant news/events than our
leaders tend to believe.
The lack of vaccine, antiviral, food and fuel stockpiles and other urgent
shortcomings in our preparation for a global flu pandemic could be
ameliorated by expenditures which, while not cheap, seem modest in
comparision to re-establishing a large human habitation in the Gulf coast
(particularly if we seriously try to protect them from future major
storms). However, Congress is apparently too bewildered by a spate of
recent national setbacks to muster the political will to try to address
this issue.
It is of course ironic that the latest American "evolution trial" is
starting up against the backdrop of a national policy of dicing with death
by natural selection, which is what Congressional inaction amounts to.
And to state the obvious: everyone is at risk to die in the next pandemic,
quite irrespective of their personal beliefs about "evolution" :-/ Ah,
it's a mad, mad world.
Oh, did I mention that some experts guess that the chances of an avian flu
pandemic starting by the end of 2005 may exceed 10%?
"T. Essel" (hack hack)
vBulletin® v3.7.6, Copyright ©2000-2009, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.