I’m in that sort of mood again. I’m often in that sort of mood. Probably because I listen to too much NPR and Lou Dobbs and PBS and - I guess - news. Anyway this time it’s another terrifying report on the avian flu, which made me realize it’s jumped ahead on my list of imminent catastrophes to worry about.
The thing is, for so long the undisputed leader was nuclear warfare it never occurred to me that there’d be any serious competition - a dark horseman, if you will, like the avian flu. In fact the number of potential disasters out there right now is very disorienting to those of us who remember the cold war well. Back then we all knew the world was going to end. Well, reasonable people could differ on whether it was *definitely * going to end or only *probably * going to end. But in any event, we certainly knew HOW it was going to end. I don’t think the possibility of a major catastrophe OTHER than nuclear war was much considered.
But since the end of the Cold War we haven’t been exactly basking in sweet relief. There must have been some kind of psychological void to fill, because ever since there’s been a parade of new horrors to contend with. Emerging virii and asteroids and global warming and supervillains sitting in caves plotting creative ways to end Western Civilization. There was Y2K for a while and there’s always the super-earthquake that will plunge California into the Pacific. The other day on PBS I think there was talk of a volcano somwhere out in the Atlantic that could easily cause a tidal wave that would bury the Eastern Seaboard. Who knew?
So I’m wondering - what are all of your horsemen? I’m a cold war baby and I need some consensus again. What do you think are the four disaster threats?
For the record, mine are (I’ll grant you not the most original - I told you I listen to too much news):
Avian Flu Pandemic (a 50% mortality rate and high probablity of occurring earns it first place)
Nuclear War - hey the Russians still have the nukes, and who really can feel comfy with North Korea, China, India and Pakistan having them too?
Global Warming - probably the most inevitable and the most catastrophic, but I
figure I’ll have plenty of warning to move inland and northwards before I drown or die of heat stroke.
A political catastrophe in the U.S. - This could play out any number of ways, but I list it mostly because I figure I’ll be one of the first up against the wall when the Revolution comes.
Now I realize there are many ways to rank potential catastrophes. There’s scale of the catastrophe, the likelihood of the it happening at all, how soon it’s supposed to it, and the likelihood of it affecting you if does hit (remember these are your *Personal * Four Horsemen.) I recommend multiplying the probabilities. Oh and scariness counts. Personally, losing coastal land to beach erosion from global warming may affect me - but it’s not as scary as say - a highly contagious airborne strain of rabies. So feel free to consider the horror variable. Also, being an atheist, I can’t take actually heralding the end of creation too seriously - but if that’s an issue for you, feel free to throw it in.
(mods: This may be an IMHO. I think it’s a GD but move as you see fit.)
Read Bill Bryson’s A short History of Everything and you realise just what has happened to Earth in the past which we would almost certainly have any prior knowledge of were it to reoccur:
Large meteor. There are, worldwide, fewer people seriously looking for them than work in an average McDonalds. So, unless one of them is incredibly lucky, then given the speeds they travel at we would be aware of it roughly one second before its impact.
Enormous earthquake/volcano. Again, catastrophic events of this kind occur every few thousand or million years, and it has been very quiet for a long, long time.
Global warming releases methane from the ocean floor: cue possible Venusisation.
Even the worst of these would not have global catastrophic effects. Many would die locally, but on a global scale, it doesn’t rank with the others you mentioned.
What is the periodicity of events like the Deccan Traps, which occurred 65 million years ago? Was it a unique event, or are there events of a similar scale since then that could give us the odds of a recurrence?
I must be honest and say I really have no idea, FI - I put vulcanism in my four because it has contributed to mass extinctions in the past. I do know that “supervolcanoes” occur regularly, geologically speaking, the last one being about 80,000 years ago.
My understaning is that the 50% mortality figure is for known cases, an important qualifier.
A “known” case is going to be someone made seriously ill by the disease who as a consequence seeks medical treatment (or dies). But for every such “known” case, there may be ten or twenty or thirty milder cases which never became “known” because the symptoms were so mild that the victime never reported the illness.
That is of course speculation, and it could be wrong. I’m only saying that we need to take the scary 50% mortality figure with a grain of salt.
True - but just to clarify I don’t think that a horseman necessarily has to be global to qualify. It should be a very large scale disaster (otherwise we’d all be putting down coronary artery disease). But if it’s like that eastern-seaboard destroying volcano, and you happen to live on Cape Cod - I think that qualifies as an imminent threat.
Super Volcano causing initial mega-damage (especially if it happens in the US in the tri-states area…saw this on Discovery :)), and leading to world wide climatic change, crop failures, etc.
Large ‘dinosaur killer’ meteor strike that comes in undetected.
Global climatic change causing either a rapid temperature shift up or down triggering either a new ice age or a global warming trend that has sea levels rising and flooding of all the major coastal areas.
Some absolute idiot detonates a nuclear weapon in a city during Bush’s watch.
-XT
