I didn’t want to hijack the Could humanity survive another dinosaur killer? thread, but a key question to that post is, just what contingency plans does the US have for recovering from a gigaton-range global disaster (manmade or natural)?
For example, suppose that after the Event there was so much soot and dust in the upper atmosphere that it would not be possible to grow crops for years or decades. Whether humanity survived or not would be strongly dependent on whether the US (or any government) had an “ark” contingency plan to keep a group of people alive in a shelter for years, not just months, after the Event.
You would not only have to keep the people sheltered, and store enough food to feed them possibly for decades, but also to provide for how they and their descendents would recolonize the surface. Things like seeds of otherwise extinct plants. Farm animals. Maybe even a small zoo to try to preserve some megafauna other than cattle.
If there is or was any such Extinction Level Event planning, I’ve never heard of it. All I’ve ever heard of was short-term (<5 years) shelter for government officials, with the civilian population on it’s own, or even during the Reagan years suggestions that a nuclear war with the Soviet Union would be a “counterforce” exchange, that would be no worse, relatively speaking, then what Europe suffered during WWII.
I think a lot would depend on if we knew it was coming. Let’s face it, even if we’ve got five years of advance notice, it probably wouldn’t be enough to do anything about it with our current technology except prepare the ark of which you speak. We also must consider that it would be impossible to save but a tiny fraction of the population using such an ark. If humanity was faced with an extinction-level event, could be pull together enough to decide who gets to live and re-establish humanity, and who doesn’t? In the Biblical Flood, God picked Noah, his family, and two of every animal. In the role of God, who would be pick? Could we agree? I have to wonder if the battle over that decision would not be as deadly as the catastrophe to follow.
Whatever “plans” may exist, you will find them filed under “BS”.
Nobody could know what resources would be left after such an event; thus, no meaningful plan could be made.
You couldn’t even be confident that one single member of the Reconstruction Team would still be alive to dig the battered file cabinet of plans out of the ruins, then to stand on the streetcorner, screaming, “OK People! All you stunned & grieving surviors! Line up here! Because I’ve got this nifty piece of paper with an Official Government Plan written on it!” :smack:
You might as well assign Elvis to rebuild the nation. :rolleyes:
One disaster is pretty much like another in the macro sense. Plans for The Big California Earthquake would serve as the basis for The Crazed Mexican Locusts, or whatever.
FEMA has long had a secret identity as the agency that plans for civil defense and continuity of government after a major disaster. While these plans are phrased in terms of a nuclear exchange, the provisions made for that emergency would help us if we are gobsmacked by the luggie from Deep Space.
On the other hand, I know of no plan (or even discussion of a plan) for a meteor strike.
It is well-known that there are shelters for the president, cabinet and top staff in the mountains of Virginia near DC. It is less well-known that these shelters are equipped with an assortment of motorcycles, nitrous-enhanced muscle cars, and studded leather gear – and, for the prez, a scary goalie mask. All Hail the Humongous!
There does seem to be a potential conflict-of-interest situation:
-The President gets to start a nuclear war.
-The President and his closest advisors are the first to know the war is coming, being the ones who get to start it.
-The President and his closest advisors get to hightail it by air to a nuke-proof bunker in Appalachia, with plenty of advance warning, to ride out the holocaust and subsequent nuclear winter.
-The rest of us die.
Well, Cecil did mention that Nixon’s twilight days in the White House included some concern that he’d try to torch the planet out of spite, and the military chain of command was told to double-check any “suspicious” orders from the President.
(No link, sorry; that column isn’t in the online archives yet. It’s in the first SD book, though.)
The first priority after an asteroid strike would be retaliation of course. There’s incontrevertible evidence showing that it passed over Syria shortly before hitting the US…