Striving toward a new meaning for human existence.

Tags

Future of Humanity, Future religion, human evolution, religion, Winwood Reade

Unbeknownst to me I have been exploring the outer reaches of human advancement first proposed by Winwood Reade in his mid-Victorian era book The  Martyrdom of Man, (1872)(Books Google full view of text). He was what was known in the late Victorian era as a free-thinker. He published that book only thirteen years after Charles Darwin’s, The Origin of Species and Reade based some of his ideas on Darwin’s theory. He would now be identified with the pejorative term Social-Darwinist. Various people and movements working under those general principles went far astray in their intellectual supporting of the practice of ethnic cleansing. That unfortunate human quality has existed since, even before, the beginning of humanity and has probably destroyed even more cultures than outright wars. Daniel Jonah Goldhagen exposes this quality as humanity’s dirtly little mega-secret in his book, Worse Than War Genocide, Eliminationism and the Ongoing Assault on Humanity.

There is really no denying that within a species those members who survive are the progenitors of the next generation and that includes the human species. By the same logic those nations or ideologies which survive are those which give rise to the future ones. This same sentiment was expressed just last week by the famous economist Richard Thaler here in Berkeley as, “Science advances one funeral at a time.” The inherent problem with this philosophy is that it is emotionally very cold, in that it supports the healthy and vigorous within a community and lets its permanently sickly and unproductive members perish. In a natural world, outside of human interference, the sick and lame would be picked off preferentially by their predators. But, within modern humanity, which at the moment is astonishingly successful, and has no predators, we have enough excess productivity to support even brain dead humans. It is now even possible for people who have been dead for years to have children — by the use of frozen sperm and eggs. If used wisely this could actually be beneficial but there are easily found ways this technology can be abused.

Reade’s philosophy may have been intellectually honest, at least that was his stated attempt, but it was hostile to individual well being even individual survival. His idea was to improve the quality of humanity and to help it grow in achievement toward some undefinable and at the moment unknowable perfection. He says, p. 522 “truth is only a means toward an end—the welfare of the human race.” The technical advancement he sought in 1872 was, p. 513 a motive force which will take the place of steam: the invention of aerial locomotion; and the manufacture of food. These things were suggested long before they came into existence and with our present technology food is practically manufactured by farming equipment with little human intervention. Only three percent of Americans are farmers. He clearly was a clear headed futurist.

The painful part of this book is what Reade probably valued most and that was his method for destroying religion. He presents many arguments for how it is the corrupt and selfish motives of people which bargains with an unknown deity for a big pay off in the afterlife They accomplish this with a sniveling dishonest behavior in this one. The personal dishonesty of that type of behavior destroys individuals honest relationship with the world about them and the people with whom they interact. Reade admits that in the past religion has helped people grow from savagery but he asserts that now it is time to abandon untested pre-scientific ideas of standard Christianity and adopt a more honest set of reality based behaviors. He says, “Supernatural Christianity is false. God-worship is idolatry. Prayer is useless. The soul is not immortal. There are no rewards and there are no punishments in a future state.” p. 522. If that statement bothers you, even a little, you won’t like this book.

What I have been proposing, in this blog in various ways for almost three years, is a way to have a better relationship with the world around us without directly condemning the old religions or anything else. It really doesn’t matter so much where we came from but it does matter where we  are going. The ideas which were in the blog called, A religion for attaining more mature people, is designed as a training program for emotional growth. If people can have a clear relationship with their own inner self they will be able to understand the world around them better and be more helpful to their community. This process will give people a way to grow out of a dependency on religions founded on poorly understood natural reality.

70% of known plant species are at risk of extinction.

Tags

Antarctica, EarthArk, human survival, Lifehaven Project, Species survival

Human-caused extinction risk has become much worse than expected for almost all of Earth’s species, according to The American Scientist, Volume 98, p. 24. That present risk includes 21% of known mammals, 30% amphibians, 12% birds and 70% plants. In response to those risks I have designed two separate projects to cope with these ongoing disasters. The EarthArk Project is designed to collect small samples of seeds, plant materials and soils from everywhere on Earth and place them in permanent deep cold storage high in the mountains of Antarctica. Some places are permanently at -40°F or C (these numbers are identical at -40) and possibly even colder appropriate places can be found after a search. The South Pole sub-surface temperature is approximately -50° but this location is inappropriate for a long term storage plan because it is on an ice floe and and storage container will sink, flow away with the ice or if lighter than ice will be blown away by the wind. The EarthArk Project would be better served by being located high on a rock exposed mountain. This storage depot would be more stable and findable and give extremely long storage times for plants and seeds but it wouldn’t be cold enough for the storage of animal sperm or eggs.

The LifeHaven Project is different—it is a plan for helping the animal species survive long term problems and extinction. It places a maximum sustainable number of living animals and plants on various remote islands in the Southern Hemisphere with the goal of maintaining as much genetic variability as possible. Several islands such as the Chatham Islands would be ideal for this project because they are relatively temperate and could sustain a large variety of living things. These LifeHavens would be reserves similar to large zoos but without bars. Perhaps, animal-proof fences could be used to maintain diversity but as much wildness for every given organism as possible.

In the short run, say 10 years, I am quite optimistic about humans finding their way through the many problems facing humanity but in the long run, say 100 or 1,000 years it seems obvious that something very unpleasant will happen. Global warming and other human encroachments are already creating the mayhem quoted in the extinction statistics above but there is also the near certainty that in the long run there will be a full scale war. When that happens species extinctions will quickly approach and perhaps exceed those seen in the geologic record. Humans are the most likely of all animals larger than a mole to survive these calamities. If the various things which somehow survived the previous extinctions didn’t have the intelligence and foresight of humans then it would seem modern humans could have survived those ancient events and similar modern ones. The only thing likely to have the power to destroy our species is a large and varied batch of different biological weapons specifically designed to kill humans. Unfortunately, it seems various governments have funded these kinds of genocidal projects and although smallpox has been eliminated there are reported to be huge stockpiles of this exterminating disease.

The primary aim of the American Scientist article was to report experiments on the minimum population of  mammals, reptiles, birds, plants and other species needed to maintain long term genetic viability. The estimated number was 5,000 adults. Since the modern human population now approaches 7,000,000,000 it means that only one person in a million need survive for our species to be perfectly viable by that standard. I have written elsewhere that about 100 million humans might be about the ideal number for a really long term civilization lasting millions of years. If we continue living as we do there will be repeated boom and bust cycles, each one leaving the survivors living in a more species poor world than the former civilization. This is why I think The EarthArk project and The LifeHaven Project are the best chance for long term survival of civilization. Humans began to live in civilized societies 10,000 years ago, but there is no way we can keep on doubling our population every twenty years for that long a time, so to survive sustainably we must change our life goals and our habits.

Humans as a species will survive for a long time but civilization and the things we presently value and enjoy may be very short lived pleasures.

The civilization we enjoy today could easily be gone tomorrow.

Top 3 events for humanity! – Ever.

Tags

Earth survival, First human, human evolution, Last human, Most important events ever, New life forms

I believe the three most important events ever for humanity are:

1. The creation of our human ancestors by what I call Evish selection,
2. The direct genetic creation of new species by Craig Venter which will revolutionize what we call life and
3. The salvation of the genetic codes of the currently existing species of the world with The EarthArk.

Eve chooses Adam with a little verbal uh-huh from her friends.

I made this composite picture, derived from Michelangelo’s “God creating Adam” and Goya’s “Naked Maja” to illustrate my theory of human-style selection, Evish selection, in action. The picture shows Adam having ascended some difficulty, showing his prowess over another man and Eve choosing him as her mate but with the verbal counsel of a group of friends whispering in her ear.

Craig Venter - creates the first new computer generated species - Mycoplasma Venterium

What Craig Venter and his team did was much more important than creating primitive life out of pure chemicals; they laid the ground work for creating entirely new species of life out of computer generated DNA sequences. They have created the possibility of altering the DNA of these new species into new forms and creating completely new types of life with completely new but controlled behaviors.

The EarthArk Project - logo symbolizes seeds shipped to Antarctica from everywhere.

The EarthArk Project is designed to save as much of the world’s accumulated life forms as possible. That includes wild species of all living things and not just the commercially viable seeds. The ultimate goal is to have samples of seeds and soil from every square kilometer of Earth put into 10,000+ year -40°C cold storage containers in Antarctica.

Each of these three things chosen are about human mediated life here on planet Earth. The first is how our species shifted from a non-verbal one into one controlled genetically by verbal selection which eventually created all of our non-preexisting human qualities. The second is the newly acquired ability to create new unknown and at present unknowable life forms and to derive products from them which those living things can produce. The third is to preserve in a deep cold storage facility all of the life forms which have come into existence both in the past and in the future. It’s a backup plan for life.

The past, the present and the future of life is in our hands. Act wisely!

2012 – The movie – A caustic review.

Tags

2010 movie, Public conception of 2010

In my efforts to create a real EarthArk it is necessary to get an idea of what the public is being subjected to relative to world disasters and Arks for helping some portion of the world’s species survive. The movie 2012 postulates an absurd cause for worldwide calamity based on a solar flare which heats up the innards of the Earth with strange neutrinos. That begins slowly enough but as the heating continues the Earth ultimately convulses with tsunamis so fantastic they run the heroes’ ark aground near the top of Mount Everest. However, it leaves the whole African continent in pristine condition. The plausibility of the situations is so far beyond belief as to be ludicrous but it is entertaining in the maudlin social interactions.

My problem with entertainment of this type is that it so befuddles the public’s mind with the Hollywood induced distortions that they can not see simple logic. When real proposals are made for creating an EarthArk of seeds in the high Antarctic they imagine monster operations conducted by zombie drones. What the movies fill peoples minds with would be impossible for even unified world governments to construct.

What the basic EarthArk consists of is no more than a standard shipping container filled with local wild seeds collected by high school students on local field trips and sent to a cold storage place. In a safe and permanent cold storage these seeds would remain viable for thousands of years and so in the future after global warming had finally been gotten under control their local habitat could be restored to its present condition. The total large expense would only be the cost of a shipping container and the transportation costs to get to its permanent cold storage site. The smaller expenses of collecting the seeds would be spread over large numbers of people taking outings in their local environments and could be considered pleasurable afternoon jaunts.

The movie 2012 makes people into helpless pawns controlled by forces totally outside of their understanding and control. What The EarthArk Project does is to give meaningful control of the distant future back to present people by these present people doing some easy to understand collecting and storage of local living things. Thus they can accomplish something which fifty years from now they can look back to with pride even if there is irreparable destruction to the atmosphere and the world’s environment.

A quick recovery plan from a Doomsday disaster

Tags

Lifehaven Project, The EarthArk Project

The EarthArk Project is a deep-freeze storehouse of essential seeds and information located high in Antarctica’s mountains. It is designed to be isolated and intended to give as much restoration of the plant ecology and information technology as possible. Once in place these deep-freeze containers should give viable plant seeds for thousands of years.

The Life Haven Project is more expensive and more difficult because its goal is to be a storehouse of animal life, including human life, which requires an ongoing living community of each creature being preserved. These are designed as intentional communities supported from the outside world in safe isolated locations with a maximum of living genetic potential stored. It is from these Lifehavens that a more complete Earth ecosystem could be re-established.

The Next Year’s Crop Project is the deep-freeze storage of enough immediately plantable seed to start a whole new farming crop cycle. The assumption is that a Doomsday has struck and the available food has been eaten by the survivors before the Doomsday clouds have been cleared away by natural processes and more food can be created. In this scenario even the seeds intended for planting the next years crop of food cereals will have been eaten because in a famine situation everything that can be eaten will be eaten. Then the famine gets even worse. In that terrible situation with seven billion people exerting every last bit of creativity to find food resources we should expect that all eatable things will get eaten. Then what?

If the sun isn’t shining brightly enough to raise food crops people will be forced to eat whatever exists in the form of previously stored food. But, even these days of plenty, there isn’t much food in storage between the farm and the human mouth. Probably if everything is eaten which can be eaten as would be done in a famine that would include some pretty disgusting materials as defined by todays palate. But using that definition of food there may be six months available. It’s hard to tell because most food tallies are based on current food edibility standards and if we use that standard it is about a month.

The total amount of food stored in The Next Year’s Crop Project storage facilities isn’t great if it is measured by direct consumption but there is a huge amount if it is measured in terms of quick recovery for next years crop. Thus these seeds should be removed from ready consumption by hungry people because it wouldn’t be enough to make much difference, even a temporary difference for these people but it would make a great difference in a few months if the seeds could be planted and harvested in a maximally productive high-tech manner. So these particular seeds should be stored where they are permanently viable because we can not know when they will be needed and in some remote place where the effort of getting them for short-term food takes more effort than their food value. The object is to preserve them for planting because that is where they will do the most good.

Of course we all hope that a world-wide famine never happens but with a population that is sixty-seven times greater than that of 1AD when people created their food with human labor in the fields there is considerable opportunity for our technical civilization to falter. We should have a backup plan in place with the materials which will enable that plan to work and that can best be done with some storage depots deep in Antarctica.

Toba or not Toba that was a question of human survival.

Tags

human survival, Long term human survival, Megatsunami, Natural disasters, Tsunami

Mt. Toba in Sumatra

 

Mt. Toba in the island of Sumatra exploded a short while back, in geological terms just 71,000 years ago and all but exterminated humanity leaving only some 6,000 human beings alive on planet Earth. The energy source for this rambunctious region is still active. It killed some 250,000 people from an earthquake and associated tsunami on December 26, 2004. Humans are now spread all over the planet and most are much further away from that single source of destruction so it is unlikely that it, or any other earthquake will destroy the whole species at this time. But, there is a possibility that a super landslide into the ocean from the Canary Island of La Palma forming a megatsunami could kill millions in the eastern side of North and South America. The tsunami from a land slide at Lake Tahoe would throw some water on my summer vacation but it wouldn’t be an existential risk for humanity. My September residence near the top circle of four circles at the bottom is still deep under water even after the water has run back from the mountain sides. See some moving simulations.

Lake Tahoe tsunami from a big landslide

These megadisasters are natural but they will not destroy humanity.

Global Catastrophic Risks by Bostrom & Cirkovic – review #4

Tags

Book review, Catastrophic risks, Human population control

  Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom and Milan J. Cirkovic chapter 5 is loaded with absolutely essential information for anyone who wants to understand human understanding and resultant behavior. In this chapter Cognitive biases potentially affecting judgement of global risks (p. 91-119) the contributor Eliezer Yudkowsky summarizes the research findings of recent cognitive science research called  heuristics and biases. He discusses the results of the processes of natural-selection and in the case of humans artificial-selection and how those processes have not adapted modern humans into perfectly rational creatures but instead into strategy optimizing ones which can react quickly and accurately, most of the time, to real world settings. These built-in human qualities were honed by our evolutionary past to react appropriately to the most common events to which we have been subjected. That is, the human being responds well, and adapts well to experience, but it does not forsee the cause and effect of events very well which are outside of that past experience and when it comes to existential risks for all humanity it is worse than poor at rational thinking and behavior and quickly devolves into a type of thinking which most people when thinking rationally would characterize of as panic like thinking.

Our unconscious and almost totally automatic mode of thinking gives good working behavior to our local problems based on genetic experience and personal experience — heuristics — most of the time it works well but these same methods sometimes have strange and illogical results. A type of thinking was discovered and termed — biases. One of the first of these biases was reported by Tversky and Khneman in 1973 which has to do with the availability of a thought. It appears that a thought that is easily accessed by our mind, even when false, is more readily believed than a more difficult to access idea even when this difficult one is objectively and testably true.  

Newspapers and the entertainment media thrive on these human shortcomings and inundate humanity with tales of tragedy and mayhem which few will encounter in their daily lives but which they trained to believe they will encounter and are at great risk of injury. Back in 1979 Slovic tallied reporting deaths in two newspapers and found that errors in probability judgements correlated strongly, (.85 and .89) with selective reporting in newspapers. People when interviewed have been shown to have outrageously erroneous estimates of easily measured risks. Because of the non-availability of the thought of catastrophic risks to humanity and possible human extinction people totally discount it and make no preparations for averting that potential tragedy. No one will ever know but if there is a single survivor he will say, “I saw it coming !”

Taber and Lodge (2000) tested for heuristics and  biases: (see p. 100 GSR)

Prior attitude effect. Subjects who feel strongly about an issue – even when encouraged to be objective – will evaluate supportive arguments more favourably than contrary arguments.

Disconfirmation bias. Subjects will spend more time and cognitive resources denigrating contrary arguments than supportive arguments.

Confirmation bias. Subjects free to choose their information sources will seek out supportive rather than contrary sources.

Attitude polarization. Exposing subjects to an apparently balanced set of pro and con arguments will exaggerate their initial polarization.

Attitude strength effect. Subjects voicing stronger attitudes will be more prone to the above biases.

Sophistication effect. politically knowledgeable subjects, because they possess greater ammunition with which to counter-argue incongruent facts and arguments, will be more prone to the above biases.

 These are some of the ways that humans are deceived by their natural constitution even when attempting to cope with personal situations with which they have some experience. Unfortunately, when thinking about living humanity of 6.8 billion people or the ~ 30 billion who have lived and hopefully many more to come along we are even more easily trapped by our own built-in and probably inescapable limitations.

I can not know what will help to make future people happy but I can say that unless they exist they can not be happy. Therefore, what I can say with confidence is that I want to maximize the total number of human hours and leave the quest for their individual happiness to the individuals themselves. I would encourage them to participate to their fullest in the world into which they find themselves immersed.

Global Catastrophic Risks by Bostrom & Cirkovic – review #3

Tags

Book review, Catastrophic risks

This book,  Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom and Milan J. Cirkovic purports in its title and introduction to deal with the existential risks facing humanity. The title implies in the word risks that there may be behaviours which humans if human cautiously took would prevent the various catastrophes because risks are not certainties and present humanity is creating most of the risks and could stop. Unfortunately, the solutions to the various existential risks, presented by this respectable tome, that are annihilating to humanity, are so generalized and weak as to be both unworkable and even if implemented would certainly fail. At the conclusion of the introduction there are six suggestions which are the ultimate of academic bureaucratic non-sense. It is soft peddaled gibberish — that is things which appear to suggest a solution but after reading it everyone will move on instantly without a clue as to what should be done or even attempted. The final one is typical.

Foster a critical discourse aimed at addressing questions of prioritization in a more reflective and analytical manner than is currently done; and consider global catastrophic risks and their mitigation within a broader context of challenges and opportunities for safeguarding and improving the human condition.

Okay, so there is the final suggestion of how humanity should cope with extreme disasters and … here comes an asteroid, or a plague of war-modified disease, or an atomic war or a world-wide population explosion, or a collapse of an essential mineral, or a total lack of trust in the distribution of food, or a collapse of one or two of the essential food grains. These authors will then begin by applying the above solution to the problem and the other suggestions are just as weak. The next sentence, the concluding sentence of the introduction can bring one to tears.

Our hopes for this book will have been realized if it adds a brick to the foundation of a way of thinking that enables humanity to approach to global problems of the present  era with greater maturity, responsibility, and effectiveness.

Here we are approaching Doomsday, certainly within 100 years, and the only scholarly book on the subject will be happy to add a brick, (a single brick ?), to the foundation of a way of thinking. My God, they could have at least aspired to a little more in words if not in suggestions.

Even to read a bit of Oscar Wilde, We are all in the gutter but some of us are looking at the stars,  will give more hope and plan for the future of humanity than this entire book is suggesting.

Oscar Wilde - in Charring Cross - (+51.5088, -0.1260)

Picture from wikimedia.org.

At least Oscar Wilde had a hope and an exestential vision for humanity.

Global Catastrophic Risks by Bostrom & Cirkovic – review #2

Tags

Catastrophic risks, Human population control

This well written and scholarly book  Global Catastrophic Risks by Nick Bostrom and Milan J. Cirkovic is a must read for everyone who is interested in human survival or human extinction. That should mean that this book has a wide audience, everyone,  and it should be a world-class best seller. Instead it’s hard to find in any bookstore but it is available online at Amazon. Here in Berkeley, where the atomic bomb was first conceived, it isn’t even available in bookstores. How curious is that?! These intelligent Berkeley physicists make a method for destroying humanity but the bookstores don’t even stock a single copy of a classic book on how humanity might just possibly avoid being incinerated by their weapons. Everyone’s just doing their job and since a physics job demands so much intelligence and hard work there isn’t anything left over for coping with the problems which they created. Oh, well. C’est la vie. Unfortunately, it seems no one else has what it takes either – including these 25 highly educated and clear thinking authors.

These acknowledged authorities in their fields seem to be sleep-walking through their problems because they don’t acknowledge the root source of their assigned special problem. Each author appears to put on blinders and only look at the part of the problem that fits their specific overly narrowed specialty. The problem doesn’t exist in this book only, in fact the recent Copenhagen World Climate Conference specifically forbade discussing the root problem – exploding total population numbers. To put it simply what does it matter if the Earth’s CO2 per person is reduced 20% if there are 100% more people expecting to be living a higher standard of living. The doubling time rate for world population is about 40 years but the problem is that the high rate of increase is upon a huge population base. World population probably won’t double in 40 years because there will be a collapse. It is impossible to predict when because it could happen at any moment and could have happened at any time in the last fifty years. But the stressors that will trigger the collapse are worsened day by day be the excess population making excess demands on the sustainability of the environment. With the population expanding the rate of destructive exploitation will increase until some critical shortfall occurs. Then things will get worse very quickly. This wont be a conflict of opinion, or of ideologies or of religion it will be a shortfall of some critical necessity like, rice, corn, rice, soy beans or perhaps a mineral like oil, water or copper.

This book concludes with the idea that bringing all of the world into one political system would be to create a hell on earth. It is to be avoided at all cost. And yet when one considers the population problem in the longer term all of the world must abide by some population which can be sustained. If that cannot be done then Mother Nature will come to the rescue and destroy far more completely than any sane human would ever consider doing.

No one likes the Chinese solution to their population problem — one child per woman — but it has been an economic blessing for the new generation of Chinese. That type of draconian demand would be impossible to enforce everywhere in today’s world because it would have to be enforced upon every woman in the world. But in the future, especially after a Doomsday or two has been endured, the reasonableness of a stable population small enough for the Earth to supply an abundance to everyone will seem the best way for everyone to live.

The EarthArk Project vaccine bank.

Tags

Preparing for the future, The EarthArk Project, The future of humanity, Vaccine storage

The world needs a backup plan for restoring the human population after the Doomsday catastrophes have run their course. The EarthArk Project is a plan for a deep-freeze storage depot in the coldest regions of Antarctica intended to preserve seeds and everything else that a revivification of the despoiled Earth could use. A second project called Lifehavens are communities of a thousand people from every different ethnic background living in carefully chosen remote places. These would be micro-humanities which would be capable of fully restoring humanity’s genetic diversity if called upon to do so. Because the sites are not currently economically viable for human settlement these communities would of necessity be supported by the outside world. The population would be slowly moved through the site  with a total turnover about once in ten years. This keeps each site fully in contact with the normally developed world but provides stability and diversity to the community. They would be located on what are currently remote places of no military value and therefore unlikely to be attacked and as far as possible from any possible hostilities. Click the hot links to see how these plans have been developed.

Those are the big public projects but there are some personal ones which individuals can participate in right now, which future people would consider very favorably. My favorite is the The EarthArk Project which is an effort to save the genetic variability of all Earth’s species. This is done at first by individuals, such as yourself, collecting small seed samples of local living things, especially wild things and including small soil samples, and sending them to the local collection facility which ships them to very cold (-40°C) very high locations in the mountains of Antarctica for long-term storage. In the extreme cold there they will maintain viability for thousands of years without any further supervision. The containers shipped the to the EarthArk storage depot will be tagged to the location from which they came and thus those future people, from that locality, will be able to go there and bring back what they need to restore much of the vitality which that given area now possesses but which may have been lost by then. The most viable region for particular plants may have shifted but there may still be good areas for a particular storage container to be taken as a whole.

The EarthArk Project should include a vaccine bank containing inoculations for protecting humans and animals and plants from all known pathogens. Of course it impossible to know what diseases are going to come into existence and become a serious threat but unused vaccines from current epidemics could be safely stored at the EarthArk sites deep in Antarctica for very long periods of time without any human supervision. When a vaccine has been made for some particular disease outbreak it is usually made in much larger quantity than is required for the particular outbreak and the remaining over-run could be stored. At present vaccines are simply disposed of at the end of the risk period for their target disease but  these could and should be stored for some use in the distant future. They might be considered out of date for maximum strength by modern users and thus discarded from current use but they might at almost no cost be shipped to the Antarctic storage site when combined with other shipments. They would then be safe and are out of the usual chain of supply so they wouldn’t pose a problem for vaccine manufactures when a new outbreak of some disease needs newly manufactured materials. However, if at some distant date the ability to manufacture a particular vaccine was disrupted there would be a ready supply available.

When a safe and remote location is available for storage it becomes feasible to have manufacturers of these types of products manufacture large quantities of them on a routine basis. Presently they are made on a crash basis as quickly as some particular pathogen becomes a problem. If this type of operation was make into an ongoing one making an abundance of similar materials constantly for distant future use then when an new outbreak occurred requiring immediate attention the facilities would be readily available. They simply shift production from a non-currently-critical vaccine to a currently critical one and once the crisis was over they could continue making the routine materials. Within a few years of this type of operation if there was a strange new pathogen the equipment, materials and people would be already available and the disease could be quickly contained.

Preparing for the distant future might pay for itself with the first crisis.