What if: The end is nigh!

[Bullgrit]

There have been more "end of the world" stories than I can count. Hollywood, alone, churns out at least 1 a year.

I got to thinking on an idea the other day, and I figured it would be fun to bring it here and let everyone participate in the thought exercise.

What if an asteroid was heading on a collision course to the earth, an asteroid big enough to completely destroy the planet -- no chance of any survivors at all. A BIG asteroid -- too big to stop or deflect. The total annihilation of the world will occur in 2038. 27 years from now.

27 years of existence left. Movies, TV, and books seem to always have the end of the world coming in a matter of days. (if not hours). But what if the end was not that soon. Too soon to really advance technology to a point of taking people to other planets, but too far off to panic immediately. (Or, rather, immediate panic would probably wear off before the event came.)

How would people react? Would there be immediate mass suicides? Most work/jobs would now seem rather useless, but 27 years is a long time to live with no income. Would chaos erupt and reign?

With the world ending in 27 years, how would life change for most people? How would life remain the same for most people?

Bullgrit

 

[Umbran]

Too soon to really advance technology to a point of taking people to other planets....

I think you're dead wrong there.

At current levels of funding and research, you're not going to reach other stars in under 30 years, no.

But if the planet, is going to be destroyed, and all its resources with it, there is no good reason not to throw all of them (and I do mean *all* of them) at the problem. Grow food, dig energy, build spacecraft, and protect the systems and infrastructure required for those activities. Do that with the entire willing population (and maybe some of the unwilling, too), and you'd be surprised what you can do in 20+ years.

Remember, you're talking about a scenario where we can throw out a whole lot of concerns: Ecological protection? Who cares? The ecology's going to be obliterated! Human lives? Dude, you're going to lose billions of them - ALL of them - in a generation, losing a few due to poor work conditions isn't really a blocker any more.

Under those conditions, getting large numbers of people to Mars is probably possible. Under these conditions, we can get by with a lot of brute force, rather than technological advancement. It wouldn't be fun. The cost would be terrible. But the cost of not doing it is... literally everything.

This is part of why media usually gives a very short timescale for world destruction. If you give us any time at all, you have to deal with what *billions* of people can do if they set their mind to it.

 

[Bullgrit]

Would billions actually put their last full effort into getting hundreds(?) to [possible] safety? Is that within human nature?

Bullgrit

 

[Henry]

Would billions actually put their last full effort into getting hundreds(?) to [possible] safety? Is that within human nature?

Bullgrit

Everyone? No, you'd have your fair share of glam-hedonist types who'd blow through everything they had to live for the moment, and your share of end-of-the-world types who would shave their heads, flagellate, and/or go all introspective, but in even most localized disasters, there's a pretty large percentage willing to dive in and help, even at the cost of their lives.

Now, couple that with some sort of Super-Lottery that says,

"Well, we've already got the top scientists, athletes, engineers, DNA samples of all the animals, etc. loaded on the Space Ark, and we've allocated room for 0.00000001% of humanity to be in a lottery -- you win the lottery, you're coming too" and you'd be surprised how many people would pitch in on the sliver of hope that they're in the lottery.

You don't have to get everyone on board with the plan -- just 60% or so.

Plus, who says there has to be one plan? One team works on Ark Technology, while the other works on veering the asteroid off course. Matter of fact, with 30 years worth of warning, many physicists agree that we could save ourselves now with current technology in the form of an ion drive or ten that would touch down on the asteroid, and apply enough constant minute force to drive the thing off course and miss us. A small course correction now, and even an asteroid the size of JUPITER would still miss us in 30 years. (Probably an exaggeration, but you get my point.)

(Although there's a thought -- Rogue gas giant? That might be impossible to stop. Nothing to attach to to impel it out of the way.)

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Would billions actually put their last full effort into getting hundreds(?) to [possible] safety? Is that within human nature?

Well the billions might not want to, but the few that actually call the shots by virtue of running the militaries & factories & food fields, etc, might have other ideas. Seems quite reasonable that a big chunk of the population would end up enslaved to save a much smaller chunk of the population. That, after all, is also human nature.

 

[Super Pony]

I would imagine that a LOT of really awful human behavoir would occur in that first 2 or 3 years. Then, provided nuclear warheads haven't been used, you would have some stabilization of some kind into a "status quo". What that would be is just too varied to pin down given our species' penchant for mass insanity and valiance. I bet it would take about 5-15 years for that to run its course. So we're about 17 or 18 years in.

I'll go ahead and overly simplify what I think the options would be. One, we are scrabbling around in a post-nuclear event of some significance. Two, various groups have each taken it upon themselves to get off-world faster than the other "bad" group complete with minor wars and/or finger pointing. Three, everyone decided to set aside our differences just long enough to escape earth and continue our religious wars on Mars.

Of the three I think one or two are most likey, but we could surprise ourselves as a race and kick off number three. In any case the "success" of getting offworld would probably only be realized for the barest fraction of people...we simply lack the resources to get everyone off Earth without some miraculous breakthrough in the physical sciences, magic or extraterestrial involvement.

So we have 9-10 years to figure out how to get off Earth, and I have a feeling that another bout of mass histeria would erupt in those final couple of years with people deciding who gets to leave and who gets to watch the world end (again assuming the Vulcans haven't shown up to save us). In that scenario it is possible that: One, the best and brightest are chosen and everyone has a big party as they sail away into the stars and posts final face-book photos of the asteroid coming down behind them. Two, the richest, most cunning or influential are chosen, which could result in a fragmentation of global unity resulting in someone destroying or sabatoging the escape...dooming the refugees to be unsuccessful at least. Three, the technology is never realized and the debate over how to leave earth is raging on as the asteroid burns away the atmosphere.

But hey, once the asteroid hits it won't really matter a wink how we got from point A to point B. The survivors, if any, are going to have a heck of a time kick-starting the continuation of our species on alien worlds. Mars would also be a terrible choice, as they would escape Earth only to hope terraforming tech actually worked...otherwise they'd die a slow death on the red planet.

...sheesh...that was depressing. I'm going to go play Super Mario to cheer up.

 

[Stumblewyk]

Wow. I guess I'm far more pessimistic than most. In the event of an assured, near-eventual cataclysmic disaster, I just see world economies and social structures collapsing. I see crime going through the roof, and I see nothing but pre-apocalypse apocalyptic living.

The dollar would positively plummet in the wake of guaranteed news that none of us will be here in 30 years to possess it and maintain it's value. With the majority of the world's economies 100% pinned to the US dollar, their economies, along with the United States' would wither and die. Food prices would skyrocket, and suddenly you'd have people killing each other over loaves of bread and potable water in the streets. Why not? What are they going to do - lock you away? They're welcome to try - you'll shoot the cops, if they bothered to stay on the job. What's the worst that happens? You go down in a blazing firefight. You're going to die anyway. It was just a matter of the difference between now, and 27 years from now.

Religion would simultaneously experience a Renaissance and and Exodus. Many faithful would give up their beliefs - after all, what "god" would allow his followers to ALL die like this? While many non-believers would flock to the churches for comfort and peace. While still other hard-line religious fanatics would decide that the Rapture (or Ragnarök, or what-have-you) would have to occur between now and the impact, and likely do what they can to hasten their end-time's arrival.

It would be bleak, not Utopian. People don't band together, not like that. In the wake of 9/11, Americans experienced a unity and camaraderie they didn't know if they could ever experience again. But that was because the American ideals as we saw them were worth preserving and carrying forwards. If America (and the world itself) were to be gone in just over a generation or so? No sir. Not gonna happen. People would fold like a house of cards. Existence becomes useless and meaningless.

 

[Umbran]

Would billions actually put their last full effort into getting hundreds(?) to [possible] safety? Is that within human nature?

There are now about 7 billion people on the planet. With only 30% of the people on board, you get billions of people working on it.

How many firefighters and cops put their lives on the line on a daily basis to get other people to safety? Sure, it is in human nature. Humans are driven to see their genes survive - and if the only way to get any of your genes survive is to push some folks off this planet, lots of people would do that.

And, as others have noted, if you link their chance of getting on the Arks with their active participation, you'll get your billions.

Getting hundreds to safety is insufficient. You need thousands to have a stable gene pool for the future. I'm thinking tens of thousands. I think turning the majority of the possible output of the planet into the effort for *two and a half decades* could achieve that.

That may seem ambitious, but only by current standards. Currently, NASA does everything it does on a budget of $19 billion a year. The US Budget is something like $3 trillion. So, NASA's currently working with just a touch over half a percent of the US budget.

The full Gross Domestic Product of the planet is more like $58 Trillion - nearly a factor of 20 greater than the US budget.

Imaging funding NASA and the ESA and the Chinese with not just a fraction of a percent, but with the whole value of an industrial nation. Or of several whole nations.

That, sir, would produce results.

Don't get me wrong, when I say the cost would be terrible, I mean it - many things would get left by the wayside if you did that. But you wouldn't be looking for long-term sustainability here. We'd be willing to trash the world economy, because the world economy is going away no matter what we did.

 

[Umbran]

What if an asteroid was heading on a collision course to the earth, an asteroid big enough to completely destroy the planet -- no chance of any survivors at all. A BIG asteroid -- too big to stop or deflect. The total annihilation of the world will occur in 2038. 27 years from now.

I'd like to add - there's destroying the planet, and then there's destroying the planet.

The latter, actually making it so there is no planet left here, is not something you can do with an asteroid. Current best theory for the formation of the Moon is that early on, something the size of Mars slammed into the Earth, and the Earth is still here. So, no mere asteroid is going to really remove the planet's existence. The surface can be made unlivable for some period of time, yes.

And what that period of time will be affects how we'd react, and what we might do about it.

 

[Mark CMG]

What if: The end is nigh!

Then we'll go out as gamer.