[Dean's World] Dave Price: All Our Eggs In One Basket

[notify at powerblogs.com]

Posted by Dave Price:
All Our Eggs In One Basket
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1150291994.shtml


   In the wake of Stephen Hawkings' well-publicized comments on space
   colonization, Ron Coleman asked how likely it was civlization would
   fall and perhaps even become extinct, if we remain tied to the surface
   of a single planet, and listed some good resources.
   I stumbled on this [1]Armageddon Online site a few years ago. It has
   short articles on the known possible catastrophic events, including (I
   removed the non-civiliation-threatening items):
   Casualty by Natural
   Super Volcano
   Mega Tsunami
   Disease & Plagues
   Earthquakes
   Casualty by Man
   Nuclear Weapons
   Biological Warfare
   Chemical Warfare
   The Virus
   World War III
   World War IV
   Doomsday Device
   Cosmic Abberations
   Black Holes
   Supernova
   Hypernova
   Asteroid Impact
   Impact Event
   Interesting reading. I was surprised to learn supervolcanoes are 10
   times more common than asteroid impacts. It's also a bit alarming just
   how many such possibilities are out there, though even in toto they
   remain very unlikely to occur in the next 1000 years, which is
   probably longer than we need to establish some sort of off-Earth
   colonization scheme.
   And [2]this list of the Top Ten Ways to Destroy Earth is also
   interesting, but mostly amusing.

References

   1. http://www.armageddononline.org/
   2. http://www.livescience.com/technology/10ways_destroyearth-10.html