Lifehaven – How bad are the 15 Homeland Security Disasters?

Tags

CO2, farming, Lifehaven, survival, transportation, war

Homeland Security – The Scenarios List – July 2004

— — — [DISS — Disaster, defined, measured and charted]
1: Nuclear Detonation – 10-Kiloton DISS~4
2: Biological Attack – Aerosol Anthrax DISS~4
3: Biological Disease – Pandemic Influenza DISS~5
4: Biological Attack – Plague DISS~4
5: Chemical Attack – Blister Agent DISS~2
6: Chemical Attack – Toxic Industrial Chemicals DISS~2
7: Chemical Attack – Nerve Agent DISS~4
8: Chemical Attack – Chlorine Tank Explosion DISS~4
9: Natural Disaster – Major Earthquake DISS~3
10: Natural Disaster – Major Hurricane DISS~3
11: Radiological Attack – Dispersal Devices DISS~2
12: Explosives Attack – Bombing Using IED DISS~2
13: Biological Attack – Food Contamination DISS~3
14: Biological Attack – Foreign Animal Disease DISS~0
15: Cyber Attack – Financial Infrastructure DISS~0

After the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center the United States got more serious about what came to be referred to as Homeland Security. It has been much publicized, and perhaps they do a lot of preparation, and training for the level of disasters listed above. However, the Lifehaven project isn’t concerned with any of these disasters because none of them have but the remotest possibility of annihilating humanity or agricultural life on Earth. It is possible that if it were believed that any of these things were precipitated by willful terrorist or national malice that it could precipitate a DISS~10 or worse response. But, the 15 scenarios on the list by themselves are not a profound danger to the survival of humanity. All of these estimates are very arbitrary, and intended only to give a working approximation, but a simple addition of the numbers published in the list above gives a total of “only” 294,000 fatalities. That number is every one of the terrorist attack methods being deployed one time which is unlikely. That is a lot of people being killed, but considering that since WW II there has only been one attack on US homeland, 9-11-01 Trade Towers we should divide by at least 60 to get a yearly threat rate. That calculation gives us 4,900 per rate per year which has only happened one time. By that measure the terrorists are way behind the Homeland Security rate. In fact the unrealized published terrorist rate is only one tenth of the automobile fatalities rate which is realized every year, year after year. So, I say again, these things are terrible, but they are not humanity threatening, and therefore are not of much concern for the Lifehaven Project. There are things which are an annihilating danger, but none of the items in the scenario list above are among them.

The Real Threats to Human Survival

Total Thermonuclear War North, and South Hemispheres – DISS~15 Everyone is gone.

Total Thermonuclear War mostly Northern Hemisphere – DISS~12-14 Only well prepared Southern Hemisphere, and Lifehaven inhabitants survive.

Major Thermonuclear War Northern Hemisphere – DISS~10-11 Moderately prepared Southern Hemisphere people survive.

Limited Thermonuclear War – DISS~9 All targets of 50,000 and more people are destroyed, and nuclear winter covers the Northern Hemisphere for a year.

Limited Thermonuclear War – DISS~8 A high percentage of combatant nations people killed, and food crops ruined for a year by dislocations, and haze.

A separate issue: Advanced bioweapons unleashed – DISS~1-15 It is impossible to know what can happen with carefully designed biology, but probably it would be self limiting by killing off its hosts before it was transmitted to everyone. Or, if it wasn’t quite so contagious, or virulent it probably wouldn’t kill off everyone, and would be self-contained, and adapted to by the host bodies. We have been fighting off biological invaders for a billion years, and have gotten pretty good at it, or we wouldn’t be here now.

Natural disasters of the magnitude necessary to annihilate humanity probably are even rarer than the 65 million year old event at Chicxulub. We humans have more methods of coping with that type of disaster than alligators or rodents, and they survived. So, it is unlikely that any natural event of any type experienced in the last half billion years is likely to kill all humans.

The stress factors which bring on the war.

The human population explosion is continuing right on past the carrying capacity of the planet. By my calculation the ability of Earth to easily digest CO2 was passed in about 1850, and its current ability is to sustain only 10-100 million modern high tech people’s pollution. The argument is rather like Thomas Malthus’s, which is still basically correct, we just haven’t reached the limit he proposed, but it has only been ten generations and we are now very close to his limits in terms of generation time. Probably one more doubling of population will bring on the collapse, and that is roughly a maximum of fifty years. Those figures are based on running out of food, and don’t take into account the ongoing destruction of the carrying capacity of the Earth which will bring it on even sooner.

A major crop failure of even one of the basic cereal foods. rice, wheat, or corn would bring on an immediate world wide famine. At first it might be spotty, but it would increase the price stress on everyone. This was recently shown when American farmers shifted a portion of their crop yield to the manufacture of ethanol for transportation usages. This brought about an instant mini-famine in Mexico among the poor people who eat a lot of corn based tortillas. But, if this disruption in corn supply is brought about by uncontrollable disease, or even by some unexpected economic disruptions, or some military, or terrorist conflict which prevented the easy shipping, there would be real famine somewhere and quickly.

Continuing climate change towards hotter, and more variable weather, and with that a change in what will grow in previous farming locations or which is planted, but is somehow killed off before it can be harvested by the unpredictable weather.

Water failure both from floods, and droughts will increase stress.

Land erosion decreases land availability for crops.

Destruction of the productivity of the irrigated land by the toxic mineral salts precipitated out by evaporation of the rain water percolated through mineral rich, and salty soil in the mountains, and then brought onto the farms where it evaporates. This process according to The Atlas Of World Population, has brought down several civilizations.

Oil price rise from various lacks will cause crop failures from lack of the ability of farmers to pay for the price of the creation of fertilizer or pay for the fuel to operate machinery necessary for cultivation.

What forecast indicators should we watch for?

Rising expectations of what is deserved, and a willingness to take it by force, is an indicator of world wide problems of supply.

When large groups of people start demanding, and then taking food from other groups of people by force it is a sure sign of serious trouble is about to crash in upon the entire system. The instability these actions will create will run the price of everything up rapidly, because all of the near infinite lines of supply will have to be protected. When this moves from difficult to impossible to accomplish then a collapse will ensue fairly quickly.

It is impossible to predict or possibly even post-dict the real causes of any specific war, because it will be a complex mix of many things, and ultimately it doesn’t matter much, because it could be any of them or some unusual combination of them or even just chance finally tipping something over some unseen edge into catastrophe. However, chance, and risk can be observed to some degree, and preparations can be made for their various possibilities based on their likelihood. Or, perhaps take the Black Swan approach, and develop ones robustness to cope with the unexpected. So ultimately preparing for a Chicxulub like event doesn’t make sense, but preparing for the possibility of rain on a cloudy day does make sense and preparing for transportation disruption may prove to be the most critical one which can be helped with planning.

Lifehaven – What to do about usual disasters and terrorism?

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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.

Lifehavens – What is the chance that H-bombs will be used and Lifehavens needed?

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H-bomb, Homeland Security, Lifehaven, terrorism, war, WW III

My friends think I am unduly pessimistic when I say 100%, — but that projection is for the period of 100 years into the future, and things are not nearly so grim in the short run at any given time. If in the short run we mean this year, then things are quite good, even cheerful, but not hopeful. But, here is some perspective for the longer run: For example, the Chicxulub event that killed off the dinosaurs was 65 million years ago so the likelihood is, very roughly, 1 in 65 million per year. Much more likely is a super volcano like Mt. Toba at 71,000 years ago so I would put the chance at 1 in 71,000. Or about a thousand times as likely as Chicxulub event. Meteor Crater, in Arizona was about 50,000 years ago, and it has been about 65 years since Hiroshima so one might hope that that is a typical rate for those kinds of events. Do you see where I am going with this admittedly simplistic reasoning? Here is a chart for comparison of the potential rate of various potentially powerful events. Notice that this is a rate for a type of event, and not a time between events. Sometimes the events might just happen to be close together, and at other times far apart, but this rate value is an attempt at judging an expected average.

This chart was derived from one at Tulane.edu

Who knows what straight line log log charts really mean when it comes to a subject like this? But, there is a comparative logic which implies that an event such as our current arsenal exploding should happen approximately once in a million years. That is if it were a single item controlled by random natural events. But, if you look at it the other way around there should be a Hiroshima explosion every several decades from a single weapon, and we might be overdue for an event of that magnitude. But, if you look at the arsenal as 30,000 individual bombs, each on their own time scale then the world wide bomb rate gets multiplied by 30,000. There are about 1,000 weeks in a couple of decades so we divide 30,000 by 1,000 and get 30 bombs per week. Well, the bombs aren’t individually deployed, and so it is better to count them on a nation scale, one nation controlling the war event is a better way to appraise them. There are about 10 countries with A-bombs, so we might use that number. In that case we would divide 70 years by 10 decision makers, and get about one event per decade. But the bombs are not equally distributed, most countries having only a few hundred, just enough for deterrence because they didn’t get caught up in a weapons race like the US – USSR. Recently, the only imminent threats have been between India and Pakistan; also there is a growing potential between Israel, and Iran. Viewed in this way the present risk is only 4 combatants. This is a strange calculation which I will come back to! But first let’s think a bit about the more mundane disasters and terrorism.

The real problem, of course, is the 65,000 to 20,000 or so (who’s counting?) hydrogen bombs. The people whom I have talked to, who are in some position of knowing about these weapons, believe that no sane person would use them. To which I answer, “That no sane person would need to build so many — but WE did.” Furthermore, we all have personal friends with occasionally questionable sanity, it is not uncommon, and some person with a short term problem might just be able to do something really stupid. John F. Kennedy seemed like a sane enough person, but he brought us to within an hour of Doomsday before Khrushchev, another seemingly sane person, although the shoe beating incident at the UN was a bit excessively demonstrative, chose to ease off rather than annihilate us all. So when looking at that incident in that way it wasn’t Kennedy, and MacNamara who were the sane ones, but someone totally outside of our supposedly sane political structure who saved us. Back in 1962 there were only a few nations with Atom bombs; now there are many more, and what is to assure us that some person with the power to set off one of these things won’t do it. Perhaps on a lark. On a dare. On a bet. There are all sorts of Failsafe mechanisms in place to prevent such a thing but remember the worrisome movies, Dr. Strangelove, Failsafe and On the Beach which explored the failure issues on screen. Today we are in a much shakier situation than when those movies were made because there are simply more possibilities for things to go wrong, and more people in a position to let them go wrong.

How can the likelihood of these Hydrogen Bombs being used be estimated? First it is necessary to estimate how many different nations have the possibility of deploying the weapons, and their number. This is: US~5,535, Russia~16,000, UK~200, France~350, China~160, India~120, Pakistan~80, North Korea ~10, Israel 200. Hopefully, within each military there must be several persons agreed upon the bombs’ use before they can be deployed, but there may be overrides, and it may be possible for a single person, like the head of state, to activate the process. From the movie Dr. Strangelove, which supposedly annoyed the US Air Force with its accuracy, we see that several people must agree before these things can be deployed, BUT ultimately it is just tripping a trigger like on a mouse trap, and then it all happens rather quickly. These things are so designed that they absolutely cannot go off unless specifically told to do so, and conversely absolutely do go off when they are told to do so. It becomes a tricky procedure to make both arbitrary things absolutely reliable. That times some30,000 bombs controlled, in part, by several individuals in nine or more countries.

Lifehaven – Antipodes Island is at the other end of the Earth.

Tags

Lifehaven, remote islands, survival

___ Antipodes Islands -49.686 178.774 — 60 km² ~0 population is a grassy little mid-latitude island 850 km Southeast of New Zealand which apparently interests no one except conservationists. It is cold, windy, and very isolated. From the looks of it someone might have a cattle or sheep ranch there, but without a port it would be difficult to ship them anywhere, and being so small there hasn’t been the necessary motivation to develop it. Also, the world can get by just fine without a few more big Macs. Those who tried cattle ranching there a hundred years ago failed because the cattle died.

There are the Antipodes on the horizon, rising out of the sea a happy sight for few except the Ancient Mariner or someone seeking a Lifehaven.

It’s a dismal place for everyone, except penguins.

Here is a 3D screen grab from Google Earth, which flattens out the cliffs, and shows a grassy island which is perched on top of an extinct volcano. Because, there isn’t a good harbor such as at Auckland-Adams or an outpost of civilization such as at Chatham-Pitt it might be more difficult to construct a Lifehaven here, but it has all the advantages of a remote island without terribly difficult weather. With greenhouses fresh vegetables should easily be grown. Heritage Expeditions has a site set up with a good history section for bird watchers and herbalists. It has some photos, and with links to some of the other islands which are of interest for this project.

This is a photo of Snares Island -48.03 166.61 which is 200 km south of New Zealand, and 800 km west of Antipodes, but has much the same reasons for and against its desirability as a Lifehaven. It appears to be covered with low trees, but not much grass.

Lifehaven – South Pole

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humanity's survival, Lifehaven, remote islands, South Pole, survival, WW III

The South Pole has had a permanent residential scientific community since 1957. Its official name is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, and it is owned, and operated by the United States. A fleet of LC-130s maintain a daily cargo service during the summer from October to February flying in from Christchurch New Zealand. The population varies from over 200 in the summer to under 90 in the winter when it endures six months of night, and no flights come in or go out.

Because of the great expense of getting people into this site and maintaining them there it isn’t a viable site for 1000 people on a permanent Lifehaven basis. Even fuel costs 20 times per gallon what it does back in New Zealand, where it is brought in from. They are absolutely dependent on the outside world for food supplies, and energy for heating and electricity. All of Antarctica suffers from those extreme limitations although those on the periphery or on Palmer Pennusila are cheaper, and might be viable.

The South Pole Station would be a perfect place for an unattended seed bank. It has a very low average temperature and rarely gets above zero degrees F., and because of the high altitude it has low atmospheric pressure. In this location seeds would never germinate, and would age very slowly. Recorded temperature has varied between a high of −13.6 °C (7.52 °F) and a low of −82.8 °C (−117 °F). The annual mean temperature is −49 °C, which means that the ice a few meters below the surface would be constant at very near that temperature. Therefore, all that is needed for a seed bank at this location is to place a well made barrel with selected seeds a meter or more below the surface and mark it in such a way that it can be found for a very long time into the future. The buildings at this location are constantly sinking into the ice and are constructed upon pilings so they can be jacked up occasionally and stay above the surface.

If they were constructed in the form of barges they would float up in the water. It is frozen water, of course, but there is still a hydrodynamic pressure difference between the bottom, and the surface creating buoyancy just as there is in liquid water. It is probably too much trouble to construct a pressure resistant barge beneath the buildings, but the same principle of buoyancy applies to our smaller seed barrels. They would float rather like buoys at sea but they would have seeds packed into them. The cheapest way to do this is to have a loaded heavy barrel at the bottom, denser than ice, with a solid shaft connected to an empty barrel at the top, much less dense than ice, and a flag pole sticking up from that which would remain visible above the surface so long as the barrels floated. More elaborate but better would be to construct a vertical cylindrical barrel 3 meters in diameter and 30 meters deep heaver, and stronger at the bottom to resist the hydrostatic pressure, but adjusted to be buoyant in ice. It would have a spiral staircase from top to bottom and the walls would be filled with drawers filled with seeds. Either, or both of these structures should remain stable, floating, visible and the seeds viable for thousands of years.

For people to recover the seeds a very long time into the future might be as difficult as it was for Scott who walked into the South Pole in 1909, and died of starvation trying to walk out. However, at some distant time in the future it might be worth the effort and the risk to come to this location. But those intrepid survivors would have to know exactly where they were going, and what to expect when they got there. What they find can never be more than what we put there so we should choose carefully. What they take back to their world will probably prove of incalculable value and permit the planet to be terraformed back from a scorched cinder into something a little more like the beautiful one we presently live in, and are in the process of destroying.

Lifehaven – South Georgia Island

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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.

Lifehavens – Bouvet Island for a difficult to attack haven.

Tags

Bouvet Island, Lifehaven, remote islands, Southern Ocean, survival

It is intended that there be a minimum of ten different Lifehavens each of which is totally capable of reconstituting a decent life here on Earth after a severe atomic war. Because, there are many unknowns that will arise which nevertheless must be successfully dealt with, it is best to have grossly different coping strategies with each of the Lifehavens. The one on Adams Island would be relatively easy to construct, and maintain, but it would also be relatively easy to attack, capture and take over or destroy.

Bouvet Island on the other hand has some advantages as a Lifehaven but the advantages lie in the very difficulty of getting to it, and onto it once you do get there. Those difficulties are turned into advantages when the residents are trying to defend the Lifehaven from a well provisioned group of dedicated people who wish to crash into their survival cave.

Bouvet Island is the most remote from solid land of any place on Earth. It has 100 meter high steep cliffs on all sides, as can be seen in the photograph, which makes it very difficult to get to the center. It size is about 9 km by 6 km and about 49 km² and 780 m high.The weather at this location is cold, frequently stormy and often there are ice floes surrounding the island. It is very dangerous for even a few people to go ashore from the sea, and much of the time not much better from helicopter. During construction of the Lifehaven it might be possible to moor a ship nearby, and set up for transfer of construction materials to the minimal shore, but getting them up onto the center might be very difficult. An alternative is to use a helicopter to transfer materials over from a ship. Techniques might be worked out for doing this even in difficult conditions by using dangling lines and essentially releasing loads to the surface on contact without too much control as to exact locations. The helicopter would only land and take-off occasionally to avoid those more difficult maneuvers as much as possible.

The island is the top of a shield volcano which is not entirely inactive. It is covered with thick snow, ice and glaciers. As bad as all of this sounds it might not be too bad a place to live once adequate housing had been constructed deep under the rock and ice where the weather would have no effect. It would probably be more difficult to construct a Lifehaven here than most places on Antartica, but it would probably be more difficult to attack by a small group than almost any place on Earth if it were defended.

Military interest in this island is strange. There was an officially unexplained atomic test nearby in September 1979. Its military interest lies in the fact of its remoteness, which is desirable for secret bomb tests. Here is a photo of Chuck Brady, an American astronaut who visited Bouvet island, seen here on the beach a few years after the atomic bomb explosion doing some “radio experiments” but he probably took a few soil samples back to the radiation labs. The photo shows a rock cliff behind him which appears to be a standard volcanic lava rock, and thus it is well known how to put a mine into it.

Because of the year round low temperature it would be a good location for a seed bank, and because of its remoteness no one is going to come here looking for a free meal. As Lifehavens go this one would be expensive to populate with a thousand individuals, and would function okay with a small staff of genetically disparate fertile men, and fertile women, but with a good sperm bank. This location would require a couple of very reliable, and seaworthy boats to bring these survivors back to the continents when a few years had passed.