Lifehaven – Doomsday forecast — but not today thank you.

Tags

ecology, global warming, Lifehaven, population

Lots of people worry about Doomsday, but these series of Lifehaven blogs are an attempt to prepare for it in a way that gives humankind some hope of surviving beyond that day, and learning from the experience. Aside from the superhuman intelligence of our huge interacting society of individually intelligent beings, which has brought us to such a dominant position in the environment, there is our natural desire to reproduce to the carrying capacity of our environment. Those three factors — reproduction, intelligence, sociability — each valuable in themselves — in combination have brought us to the precipice of doom. There are attempts to control population, but until methods are fully instituted for controlling the reproductive capacity of every last person on the planet the population will grow to its carrying capacity. Intelligence, and sociability are likewise built into the species, but it is only the application of these qualities to destructive activities that creates problems for humanity as a whole. Those qualities are controlled by proper education, and good laws enforced for the good of the entire planetary society. The immediate problem is population, but there is no way of controlling that when there are 6.7 billion freely breeding individuals. Because there are no outside predators to contain our population numbers there is nothing to hold us in check except our own behavior. This can either be through appropriate laws, appropriately enforced, or by uncontrolled cataclysmic famine, disease and war. Population is the driving thing, and because at some point an essential resource will become limited, because of the consumption by these people, a conflict will eventually arise between the contending parties as to who gets the resource. I suspect that it is too late at present to prevent a Doomsday event because there are far too many resource destroying processes in play, and at present no one is willing to create, promote, and enforce the worldwide laws necessary to bring them under control. So this series of blogs attempts to analyze the factors that will bring on the Doomsday event, and make obvious the necessity of creating Lifehavens.

Nature 412, 543-545(2 August 2001)

There has been enormous concern about the consequences of human population growth for the environment and for social and economic development. But this growth is likely to come to an end in the foreseeable future. Improving on earlier methods of probabilistic forecasting¹, here we show that there is around an 85 per cent chance that the world’s population will stop growing before the end of the century. There is a 60 per cent probability that the world’s population will not exceed 10 billion people before 2100, and around a 15 per cent probability that the world’s population at the end of the century will be lower than it is today. For different regions, the date and size of the peak population will vary considerably.

This is a population projection of Earth through the year 2100 from Nature, one of the most highly respected science magazines in the world. This is typical of this kind of rational prediction, and in this case it is certainly irrational. It isn’t saying much even if we accept their premise. It predicts 4 to 15 billion people, a rather broad guess, and it assumes total smoothness of population transitions from one moment to the next, which is highly unlikely. It assumes no wars, no famines, no epidemics, and no surprises. The brief perusal of history will not show a single hundred year period where any of those assumptions were true. And now, in a world with super weapons, the war-caused shifts can be much sharper than ever before. In a world with super transportation systems the epidemics can be much more sudden, and worldwide than ever before and with a world transportation system making everyone dependent upon the world supply of food, and not their local food sources a worldwide famine instead of local famine becomes more likely than ever before. And, of surprises that no one can predict, what can be said except that we are now one world, and not a huge batch of separate self sustaining communities so the surprise when it comes will be worldwide. Below is another projection using similar, but more complex rationalizations.

World Energy Projections from Combusem.

This chart was dated at 1992, and I redrew it for greater clarity, but the curves are the same as in the original. The problem with this chart is that it leaves out the obvious discontinuities that are almost certain to happen – social collapse, famine, epidemic, war, and surprises. Although it is total speculation let me sketch out a more probable future which puts in these abrupt, shifts and their probable consequences.

A graph of the Doomsday population crash.

This graph when viewed one hundred years into the future will probably look more like the historically accurate figures than the preceding one. The curves are generalized and the dates are made variable by having the year marks with range markers rather than specific years. If the 2000 mark is moved to the left side of the range it moves the Doomsday a little into the future, and if the 2000 marker is moved to the right side then Doomsday is upon us sooner. There is nothing specifically predictive about any of these curves, not even the world oil production curve which may be replaced by some other energy source. Note that the pollution curve rises sharply with the Doomsday event and is slow to descend which is because of radioactive pollution. Most of the short term radioactivity will dissipate in the first year but there will probably be long term secondary effects which will be slow to fade away. The life expectancy at birth will drop precipitously until the various contamination sources dissipate, and will be slow to return to even 1900 levels, because of the accumulation of stressful factors. All of the other curves drop to very low levels compared to pre-event times, but after the first few years they may stabilize at the lower levels. The total number of people will drop vastly below the current 6.7 billion, possibly as low as 10 million, or even lower but after a couple of years that should remain stable, and even start growing again. If the Lifehaven project is activated, and even a single haven is fully functioning then the return to what we consider a normal life may be possible. Without a Lifehaven even a much larger surviving population may not have the broad range of genetic material in the seed and germ banks to make good recovery — ever.

Lifehaven – What to do about usual disasters and terrorism?

Tags

flu, Homeland Security, Lifehaven, pandemic, terrorism

I don’t worry much about the 15 disasters on the official “List of Scenarios” from US Homeland Security Preparedness Activities because, as horrible as these are they are not likely to destroy all humanity. If, or when, they do happen they will be coped with by existing social mechanisms. They listed pandemic flu as the most deadly, and most likely. It is possible that the flu may be vastly worse than what Homeland Security predicts because they appear to base their analysis on the 1918-19 events which killed one in a hundred. But the current bird flu last January killed 11 out of 13 — generally it kills only 2 out of 3 — and that rate was with excellent hospital supportive care, of constant help with appropriate drugs and oxygen, which will not be available in a pandemic. New flus are inevitable, but that ghastly pandemic event, when it comes, will probably be from a weak mutated virus, and will probably not be as humanity annihilating as it appears it may be at present. Unless, perhaps, these diseases have been militarily enhanced by Ken Alibeck or his unrepentant bio-weapons developing ilk. People born before 1958 will have been vaccinated against smallpox, Alibeck’s favorite agent, and might survive, but those born later are unlikely to survive. Of course such a military style biological attack would be a mix of many deadly pathogens not just smallpox, so the multiple attack would probably get almost everyone. If the flu was really, really bad and killed 9 out of 10 people, out of a current population of 6.7 billion people that would still leave 670 million people. That is approximately the total world population back in 1730 when the industrial revolution was just getting started, and no one was complaining about lack of people at that time. Quite the contrary that is when Jonathan Swift made his Modest Proposal – For Preventing the children of poor people in Ireland from being a burden to their parents or country, and for making them beneficial to the public, by eating them. This is painful, if comic, reading even 280 years later. The mindset that could think such a way even in satire is upsetting. My point is that even so appalling a flu event, a DISS~10, would not be humanity destroying. Also, a flu event would strike in the Southern hemisphere as well as the Northern, and the Lifehavens would not be helped by their southerly status, but they would be much better off by being on very remote islands, and isolated from the infection. Because of modern radio communications they would be completely aware of the problem, and could close up their facility to the outside world, for over a year.

Lifehaven – South Georgia Island

Tags

humanity's survival, Lifehaven, remote islands, Southern Ocean, survival, WW III

South Georgia Islands -54.160 -36.712 — 3,528 km² stations ~ 20 people. This location provides great difficulties and great advantages because it is both difficult to get to but at the same time, in the summer season, it is gotten to routinely. There is a small manned station Grytviken -54.28150, -36.50800 of about 20 people at this old whaling station which at one time, about 1920, had up to 300 people living there.

Grytviken is an occasional destination of cruise ships for those seeking a romantic antarctic adventure. But, for a Lifehaven site it would be better to place the cave up in the hills away from the current town. Part of the reason for this is because the Brits and the Argentines have contested the sovereignty of this island, and Lifehavens are intended to avoid conflict at all cost. These sites are intended as refuges for survival, after all of the conflicting parties have either exhausted themselves, or totally annihilated one another.

For more views go to the original site by clicking the pictures.

The photo above shows the rather rusty state of Grytviken but also it shows how easy it would be to put in a many as 100 people in a survival situation for a not too protracted period of time if there were supplies.

Grytviken, South Georgia whaling station with cruise ship.

There are several options for this Lifehaven site which combine the advantages of some of the others. This is a possible site for beaching, and raising a retired cruise ship, and forming a large ready made survival hotel. It will be made radiation proof by burying it. It appears that there is plenty of ready made gravel for this construction purpose. Another good possibility of this site is to construct a road up the mountains several miles and build a low structure, and then cover it over with scree gravel. Of course that added weight would require some additional internal support. Quonset huts would be perfect for a cheap, almost ready-made Lifehaven. The Quonset Hut type of structure has been in use since 1941, and its many varieties, and qualities are therefore highly predictable. One advantage of going up the mountain with these huts is that with the already cold weather locally at sea level the higher elevation would give an even colder permanent freezer. The recommended permanent storage temperature is 0° to -20°C. The top of the mountains appears to have permanent snow but because there is so much rock showing the temperature has risen above freezing, and therefore this isn’t an ideal seed bank site. A storage facility with substantial insulation which opened ventilation ports when the temperature was very low in the winter and closed the ports when it was warm might prove sufficient for several year seed storage. A road appears feasible up the mountain making it inexpensive to get from the port’s docks to the higher construction site. The living structures for the people would have to be thickly insulated or course. Because, this site can be gotten to with a cruise ship it might be possible to leave the Lifehaven unpeopled except for a maintenance staff probably located back at Grytviken. This Lifehaven would be peopled only after hostilities commenced, and a few weeks would probably be available to flee to this location before radiation fallout became a serious problem.

One advantage that this remote location has over the current Svalbard Global Seed Vault is that it is not located on a top priority atom bomb target. That seed vault will literally be in several bomb craters within hours of an atomic war starting because it is the only airport on the direct route between the targets in North America and those in Europe or Asia. Don’t quibble about the Thule Air Force Base, because it won’t last ten minutes after hostilities begin. Therefore, all contending parties would be using Svalbard airport (Longyear) for an alternate landing base, and it would prove to be one of the most contested places on Earth during an atomic war with crippled planes from every nation seeking refuge there. The seed vault is located within a few hundred meters of the runway on the Google Earth map. 78.240 15.495

This is a screen grab from Google Earth. The blue dots are clickable photographs, in the original screen image. The orange dot is information about the airport. The lavender one is the seed vault. Hopefully Google Earth got the location wrong and the seed preservationists didn’t build their seed vault dead center on an atom bomb target! This site rates as right there with the Pentagon or Kremlin as a target. If they did build it there, they should take the very first possible opportunity to move it at least thirty kilometers (twenty miles) away. They claim to have coal to operate the freezer equipment in case of power failure, but that won’t be much help after the site gets repeatedly vaporized. I very much approve of their stashing a world saving supply of seeds, but this choice of a site was infinitely poor.

Any seed bank in the Northern hemisphere is going to be severely stressed or destroyed during a serious atomic war because aside from being destroyed outright, by being near  a city, there is the problem of the energy supply needed for refrigeration which will certainly be disrupted. And the seeds would start to wither or germinate and unless planted immediately … die.

Lifehaven – Gough is a remote South Atlantic island but accessible.

Tags

Eden, Lifehaven, remote islands, Southern Ocean, survival

Gough Island -40.350 -9.880 —91 km² ~ good ~ 10 people. Apparently this is a difficult island to bring a boat onto because the photos of the weather station show it to be perched on a high cliff. Much of the sea shore if faced with precipitious cliffs. The weather here when compared to such places as Bouvet Island is positively balmy.

Up the creek from the weather station is a pretty little valley where a small community could be set up -40.338 -9.919 that might be pleasant, and with a ready hillside for construction of the intended Lifehaven cave. Most locations have micro-climates where the weather is much better than a short distance away so it would be a good idea to investigate these local conditions before thinking much about an exact location. At present there doesn’t appear to be much in the way of resort potential for this island, because it is too cold for sitting on the beaches, and too rough for snorkeling, and hiking around an steep extinct volcano is basically the same everywhere. Even the bird people seem to have modest interest in Gough Island. All of these negatives for tourism are positives for Lifehavens. The photo below looks more rugged than it appears in the Google Earth 3D presentations.

This island and several others on my Lifehaven list are World Heritage Sites, and therefore are off limits to casual tourism. This is being done in order to preserve the habitat, and lives of various species. The Lifehaven project intends to cooperate with these efforts in every way possible, and intends to go much further than their currently stated objectives by maintaining a seed-banks, sperm banks, egg banks, animal banks, data banks, information banks, and every other type of bank that can be imagined and protected.

Lifehaven – The green zone of possible survival after an Atomic War.

Tags

atomic war, lifeboat, Lifeboat Earth, Lifehaven, thermonuclear war, zone of survival

This map is the the flight domain of the Northern Royal Albatross Diomedea sanfordi . This green zone is very similar to that one which has been used for creating the list of possible Lifehavens. Because the range of this Albatross is derived from empirical observations of a bird species, it might well demonstrate an understanding of basic natural conditions which were not considered in my armchair peregrinations.

The main difference in these birds travels, from the Life-haven locations, is the inclusion of all of New Zealand, all of Tasmania, and all of the coasts of Chili and Argentina. Because, these birds live in the air, and rarely come down to the surface it means that there is a steady flow of air across the water. They use the resulting wind shear to generate lift, and thus these birds are able to stay in the air almost all the time. Thus this map may be a good one for finding good new Lifehaven sites, and eliminating some other potentially bad ones. The forces that created that wind pattern are probably the same ones which are going to create the winds which will carry the radioactive fallout south after a major atomic war. These world wide wind cell patterns are known as Hadley cells. It is the semi-isolation of the flow of radioactive air from the northern hemisphere atomic bombed targets across these cells to the southern hemisphere that makes the green zone possible. The antarctic zone south of the green zone isn’t really habitable without sustained support from the more temperate regions so I haven’t located many potential Lifehavens there.

For example, half way between South Africa and Paraguay there is the island of Gough -40.323 -9.921 which might be okay, but the island of Tristan Da Cunha, -37.113 -12.288 only a little to the north, might not be. There is an Amsterdam Island -37.797 77.572 half way between Australia and Madagascar which is just outside of the green zone on this map which might mean this otherwise seemingly good site might not be such a good one after all. The photos of this island look grassy and bleak, and because of its remoteness, and its lack of military value it shouldn’t be a target, but it might get heavy fallout because of the winds. It is garrisoned by about 50 French people for weather observations or whatever, and some wild cattle. It might be a possible Lifehaven site if it were well dug in. But these particular albatross species which I have been following, in this post, seem to have excluded it for some reason other than fallout.

Lifehaven – Pitt Island is a rich tourist’s end-of-the-world destination.

Tags

Lifehaven, remote islands, Southern Ocean, survival

Pitt Island — is near Chatham Island which is a two hour flight from New Zealand -44.295 -176.235 — 62 km² ~ 45 people live there. It is relatively remote as a tourist attraction, but it has a strange attractor — this tree -44.226843 -176.220255 is among the very first ones on the planet Earth to enter into every new day, and every New Year. That is Chatham Island just visible in the distance between the trees branches.

To get to Pitt Island first go to New Zealand, and catch a weekly flight East to Chatham Island. From there where about eight hundred people live by fishing, farming, and tourism you can rent a boat or a light plane for the trip over to Pitt Island. Be careful not to miss the island or you won’t see anything but wind and water for a very long time. As a Lifehaven this one is easily accessible, but still a good choice because it is already inhabited and quite livable, a quality not shared by most of the other possible Lifehaven locations. Click here for a short history of the Chatham Islands, and Pitt Island. There has been an ongoing effort to eliminate introduced predators like cats, and rats and reintroduce the native species which had been endangered. The Pitt Island Robin Returns.

I have marked a potential location at -44.295 -176.235 (load coordinates into Google Earth) for a possible Lifehaven structure near the top of the hill. This Lifehaven might most easily be built by digging a pit and constructing a building in the pit, and then covering the whole thing over with dirt and replanting the roof with native species like the California Academy of Science in San Francisco. A year after completion it might be nearly impossible to identify it, and all of the native wildlife would soon return to its natural state. The goal with all of these Lifehavens is not to disturb the local inhabitants, including the humans. The cost of constructing this structure would be easily calculated by architects, because everything is standard procedure in a known and relatively mild environment.

Assuming that this Lifehaven’s most likely use is to be after a major atomic war there would be some time for people to come to it before the radiation reached sustained high levels. Therefore it need not be fully populated all the time. This one might be set up as a commercial venture — a very expensive atom bomb shelter, complete with large stockpiles of food, for those people willing to pay a great deal of money for the ability to survive a nuclear holocaust. Generally, I much prefer the concept of voting by large groups of people for personal representatives of their group to attend a Lifehaven for a year’s stay, but I realize that there are rich people who would prefer to pay for a retreat shelter. For them “The Pitt” sounds like an ideal location. It could be built with more amenities than other strictly life sustaining, and Earth repopulating havens.

The New Zealand people have been thinking ahead on hazards and climate change. See, — How will climate change affect the Chatham Islands? For more current details go to New Zealand, Ministry for the Environment. These projections are dealing with the hazards that everyone worries about normally, such as Global Warming, but this Lifehaven project is primarily aimed at species survival. Of course I am concerned about other issues, and I am working on them too, such as the energy problem and the population problem, but this is the survival problem. Everyone I have encountered says that I shouldn’t worry, that these things will take care of themselves. I don’t worry so much as try to think out workable solutions.

Saving humanity from Doomsday

Tags

A second chance for humanity, Saving Humanity

I have written many posts on saving humanity but the subject that is most available at the moment is the LIFE HAVEN PROJECT. Below is an opening quote from that post.

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“The Life Haven Project is simple enough; it is to create a small community sufficiently distant from a major world war that the people living there would survive. The Life Haven Project is the human survival part of The Earth Ark Project, which is aimed at a more complete restoration of our current ecology. A small community of genetically diverse humans could repopulate the Earth after a total Apocalypse if they were able to sustain themselves for, say, ten years. They would need to have reliable stored food, water and protection from a very hostile environment.

Maritime Sales MRM10 Price: U.S. $15,000,000.

The ship above is in good operating order, but a ship about to be scrapped would be much cheaper, and since it is intended to be taken out of service it wouldn’t compete with the seller’s or the scrapper’s business.

The ship used by the 1970s TV show “Love Boat” sailed its final trip to Turkey, where it was turned into scrap. It would have been an iconic boat to have been set permanently into Adams Island, south of New Zealand.

Adams Island bay at -50.865 166.028, or -50.8654 166.0556 would be good places.

Adams Island is very remote from any probable conflict, and a ship in this natural harbor would be away from ocean waves, even tsunami waves. Ideally, it would be raised above the ocean level into a dry dock, and the hull totally tarred over to reduce rusting so the ship would last for a very long time. It is so remote from anywhere that only someone really prepared would endure the difficulty of going there.

Adams Island docking site for a Life Haven ship.

Here is a list of other potential Life Haven locations.”

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Purchasing a modern cruise ship when that post was written in 2014 would have been difficult because the tourist cruise industry was just coming into an expansive period. Now, because of the Covid pandemic, that industry is almost shut down and it will probably be several years before it resumes its former profitability for investors. The fleet of idle cruise ships will become very expensive to maintain until those better times return, and the owners will want to sell them or worse, to scrap them. The owners will have few if any who want to buy these currently useless ships.

Therefore, now is the time to acquire one or more of these floating hotels, capable of sustaining thousands of people short term and hundreds long term and place them in remote places, like Adams Island, New Zealand, as Life Havens for humanity. These are not intended to be used as temporary tourist sites but to have a group of 100 selected families chosen for their genetic diversity and skills to reside there for a year or more on a rotating basis. The first families to live there would be chosen for their abilities to dry dock the ship and make it as permanently survivable as possible.

If we put a cruise ship into a Life Haven site, the Covid pandemic may give humanity a second chance for long-term survival. Now is a rare opportunity to save humanity’s future.

 

Humanity must survive its dangerous moments to continue existing.

Tags

Humanity must survive, Survive every instant!, The dead don't reproduce, The EarthArk Project, The Lifehaven Project

The downside of Darwinian survival of the fittest is that the application of the concept fittest is always based on the now instant of time. The fittest members of a species are those who have always survived every instant, especially when these individuals are in competition with the other members of their species for identical resources. Almost all the time there is a reasonable supply of resources, and a species’ members live in a protective harmony with each other by defining personal territory, but with most species there will be occasions, perhaps seasonal, where there is a short supply of resources, and then there will be a struggle among the species’ members, and a taking of the others’ personal resources. Sometimes the stressor on the species is a lack of food, sometimes a predator, or a disease, or a natural disaster, or in the case of humans a war or an economic shortfall. In all of these cases it is only those who physically survive the occasional momentary disasters who are alive to reproduce themselves. If the total species population is small, such as the human population of only a few thousand, as it was after the Mt. Toba eruption seventy thousand years ago, then the total genetic diversity will be small and homogeneous. Humanity can now survive these events with planning and preparation, even if they can’t predict the timing of their occurrence. There is always a large element of luck in these animal population reductions, but in the case of humans that is not always so true.

Humans have the capacity to store the valuable resources essential to their survival. That is usually measured in terms of ownership of property, and that is usually measured in money. However, as Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, “Men, arms, provisions and money are the sinews of war, and of these men and arms are the most valuable, for men and arms can always acquire money and provisions, but money and provisions can not always acquire men and arms.” That was written in 1516 AD, and is still true in short-term organized combat situations. However, up to a crisis situation those with stored resources are able to purchase and store those men and arms in the form of armies; thus it will be the richest people who will tend to survive. Of course there is another category of supplies that is available to forward-thinking people, and that will be found in the Life Havens and the EarthArks. In the grander scale of nations these genetic storage depots will cost almost nothing, but they will provide a source of human survival and the survival of many other species, too.

The main point here is that the human survivors of the future will be derived from those people who survived every instant of death-delivering environments between now and then. Back in the riots of the mid-1960s I created the slogan, “In a riot, the absence of body is superior to presence of mind.” However, I still reflexively follow Sir Francis Drake’s command to his flotilla of ship’s captains, “Steer for the sound of gunfire,” because that is where the pivotal changes that will affect the future are happening. Of course when you see the battle going on, try really hard not to get killed, or you won’t be one of the surviving fittest.

You and humanity must survive every deadly instant before your offspring can exist.

Arcology and the EarthArk

Tags

1000 future years, Humanities 1000 year survival, Permanent survival, Survival of species, Survival of the Earth

Arcology is a general term for self contained cities. They are science fiction staple usually placed in the distant future, but sometimes arcology refers to cities designed by professional architects, when they are not otherwise gainfully employed.

Two projects I have written about are similar to Arcology, The EarthArk Project which isn’t a city but has as its general principle the saving of humanity and all other biologically active entities, but mostly seeds. It is a permanent deep-freeze of all organic things placed at high altitude in Antarctica where the temperature is always below 40° F.

A second proposal is The Life Haven Project which is similar to the arcology principle, but it is intended to be constructed as quickly as possible. To some extent my Life Haven already exists in South Island, New Zealand where the people are most likely to survive Doomsday wars without much further preparation. The basic Life Haven is a location of few thousand persons of maximally divers ethnic background formed into communities on the islands of the southern oceans. They are presently uneconomical locations, and therefore are not presently occupied by people. These Life Havens are intended to form a core of all of the things of the modern world, to provide a basis from which the future world could reconstitute itself after a worldwide disaster. They would be maximally remote from Doomsday wars, and would be designed and stocked to survive for ten years without any outside support. Thus when a Doomsday occurred they could form the basis for repopulating the Earth, both with humans and with a large selection other living things.

The future must be now when it comes to The EarthArk.

What are the best questions to be asking?

I sometimes ask myself, what are the right questions to be asking? But, that of course depends upon what I’m trying to do; and for this blog subtitled Life Hacks, I intend to suggest helpful ideas on getting through life as abundantly as possible. There are several separate aspects to the scope of that problem depending upon how personal and temporary or how world-wide and long-term I intend the question to be applicable to.

Personal questions would be concerned with getting through the daily chores and finding interesting things to do. I have a lot of posts to that question which are filed under such rubrics as: – Health – Habits – Psychology – Medical inventions –

Personal inventions for helps around the local environment: – Medical – Household – Automotive

World questions that concern what we should be doing to improve our relationship with our Mother Earth such as: – Geo Engineering – Global warming –

Technology questions and potential fixes like: – Aviation accidents – Earth moving projects –

Social questions such as: – Disinformation – Trustworthiness – Conan Doyle –

Existential questions about life and extinction: – EarthArk – Life Havens –

What are the best questions to be asking relative to these various issues which I have been exploring?