Fixing Doomsday with a new species and a new life form.

Tags

Craig Venter, Doomsday, Heaven, New life forms, New species, Ray Kurzweil

The problems of Doomsdays, and the Lifehavens designed to survive them which have been discussed in these blogs are ultimately like a nasty, knotty, twisted ball of string beyond the powers of any rational person to unravel. It appears that the current unstoppable inertia of humanity projected even a few years into the future collides solidly with the absolute physical limitations of our planet. When they finally do make their ultimate collision it will be the second greatest event in the human story, second only perhaps to that first party when some young woman uttered a cry of approval of some particular guy, which was understood by her companions. This began a series of thousands of generations of artificial selection in which women chose mates based on these women’s increasingly genetically refined verbal abilities. These two events are the beginning, and the end of humanity as we know it. After the Doomsday Event people will either continue on the route set upon by that pair of women, and on to the certain extinction of our species or we will awaken, and realize that there needs to be a new way to choose our mates and methods of reproduction and thus to create the new species.

The old way of mate selection, and reproduction worked well enough until humans developed super weapons, but now with that physical possibility  clearly within our technical ability it now becomes possible for us to exterminate our own species. But as discussed earlier the policy of survive and outbreed your competition can not work permanently with a species possessing such abilities, and such weapons. The problem becomes unsolvable when there is any group of people with the unlimited ability to breed without external restrictions. All species other than ourselves have outside limitations imposed upon them. Actually, we do too, but they are only famine, homicide and birth control. Famine and homicide are the only usual external options at play, but unfortunately they lead to boom, and bust cycles, and with super weapons now available these will be absolutely disastrous.

The other option is the one induced by human reason, and control, and it means that the vast majority of women would be limited to two children. This restriction would be imposed on every woman in the world. This new way of relating to the reproduction of the species is so different from all other plants, animals, and in fact all other living things that these new human derived creatures might even be called a new life form. They are operating on a new set of operating principles from all other creatures which have gone before. To some degree domesticated plants and animals are already there, although they are not self controlled, but rather they are controlled by outside forces. In this case it isn’t natural forces but the controlling forces of humans. The humans would be controlling themselves, and this is what makes them into a new species — in fact a new life form.

It is a self-imposed external restriction, and that is what makes the creatures that come into being not just a new slightly modified human species, but into a whole new life form. It can choose to reproduce not only what it likes in its present genome, but can willfully decide upon a new direction to go. The law that is successful in creating, and imposing these limitations upon humanity will over the next one hundred thousand years have profound, and unknowable results. Because the direction of those changes will be thoughtfully considered the results should be even more desirable than those of that first conversation a hundred thousand years ago.

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Lifehaven – Pitt Island

Tags

Chatham Island, Lifehaven, Pitt Island

This is a view of Pitt Island showing the location of the proposed construction site for the Pitt Lifehaven. It is about as remote from any militarily valuable target as it is possible to find while at the same time easily inhabited. Mangere Island, seen to the left, would also be a good site but it is presently a bird sanctuary and part of the goal of this Lifehaven project is to preserve all life forms into the distant future.  Because Pitt Island has been inhabited for hundreds of years there are probably few remaining endangered species there.

Pitt island as viewed from the south in Google Earth

A closer view of Pitt Island and the proposed building site for the Pitt Island Lifehaven.

Pitt Island from the south showing the proposed site.

This particular site is located away from the current structures, at the north end of the island, and away from their fenced in properties which is desirable for maintaining these people’s autonomy. The site also has a good harbor close by which could shuttle materials to the beach from larger ships. It is seen just above the site marked with latitude and longitude ( -44.295 -176.235 ). The landing beach is at ( -44.271 -176.240 ) only a few hundred meters away. On all oceanic sites there is a potential of a tsunami and it appears that there may have been some in the past which are still evident from the color of the vegetation running up from the undercut beach even at ( -44.257 -176.243 ). This would be a rare event but it must be considered with a permanent survival site. Part of the problem for a Lifehaven is that it presumes a war waged with H-bombs, and some of these might be intentionally exploded in such a way as to maximize a tsunami wave. The proposed site itself is located at an elevation of 162 meters which should be well above any such problem.

To build this site it would be necessary to contact those people who have built large hotels in remote regions.

Much of the power for the haven could probably be derived from the wind because this is in what is known to sailors as the roaring 40s. It is described as windy, damp and cool with an average temperature of 52°F

Chatham Island history.

Lots more history of the early Pacific voyages with a mention of  Chatham Island.

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Lifehaven — Doomsday sense and nonsense.

Tags

Doomsday, Lifehaven, survival

Discussions of Doomsday will generate nonsense responses quicker than any other topic except perhaps the question of how to please a woman. Both of these subjects are of critical importance to the human species, and thus there is a great deal of generalized conversation about them. Ultimately, there can never be clear cut resolution to either subject before the action, and after the action there is nothing left to say. Thus, the arguments will persist until the end of time. At least until the end of time for man.

Shakespeare’s Sonnet #129
Th’ expense of sprit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and, till action, lust
Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust,
Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight,
Past reason hunted, and, no sooner had,
Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad;
Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;
Had, having and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

The post “Hilarity – is a symptom that someone might be thinking” gives some underlying reasons for the qualities of human thinking and why we think the way we do. The post “Lifehaven – Request to dock the ship Queen Mary in Tasmania.” with its projection of a precipitous drop in human population, discusses the reason people don’t want to think about survival, and just blank out the whole subject and call it foolish. And, the post “Intelligent Design — of humans by humans and for humans.” brings us back to the problem of why humans are the way they are and behave in the way they do. The problems are just too intractable to be solved with current wisdom, and the outcomes too horrible to contemplate, so any real solutions haven’t been pursued. They are politically unpalatable, and can’t be implemented, and so the impending disaster is blurred over with a distorting rhetoric of transparent fabrications. The problems are simply too big to face.

Overall the situation for most people of the world is better than it has ever been at any time in the history of humanity. People have food, which is proven by the fact that the population continues to expand. There isn’t a major war, proven by the fact that the population continues to expand. There isn’t a major epidemic, proven by the fact that the population continues to expand. The pollution of the environment isn’t a problem, proven by the fact that the population continues to expand. The resources of the world are plentiful, proven by the fact that the population continues to expand. Modern weapons are not being used, proven by the fact that the population continues to expand. The farm land, although nearly fully utilized, isn’t a problem, proven by the fact that the population continues to expand. A long and prosperous future is ahead, proven by the fact that the population continues to expand! Not!

If any of those factors concerning the overall health of the population of the planet falters there will be repercussions felt throughout the rest of them. When that happens it is possible for a progressive collapse to ensue with a positive feedback cycle bringing on a general collapse. That will probably trigger a major war, and that will trigger a really catastrophic collapse. Hence it is necessary to prepare for a fall back position, to prevent the absolute dissolution of all we hold worthwhile. Thus, we need a Lifehaven Strategy to be put into place as quickly as possible. At present we are quite wealthy, and it would be very easy to do. A single philanthropist could finance it. — That is an interesting word. Philanthropist, a “Lover of humanity”. — For a government, any government, it would be a minor appropriation to finance a Lifehaven. Even for a group of not particularly wealthy people it would be easy to create a Lifehaven. Preparations for Lifehavens in the Southern Hemisphere by those people living there would entail little more than creating a livable location, laying up supplies, and supplying a gene bank. However, a group of dedicated people must step forward soon.

Because, the time is ripe for Doomsday.

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 – 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.

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

Tags

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 – 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 – 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.

Lifehaven – Adams Island – A second chance for humankind.

Tags

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

In this quest for a life refuge for the human species, there is one island that stands out, in part because there is already a major effort there to save it as a primordial Eden. It is curious that it is named Adams Island because the intent here with the Lifehaven project is to reconstitute humanity along with all of the other species. To give humanity a second chance after they fail with their first attempt at high-tech civilization. The intent of this Lifehaven project is not just to preserve humans, but to preserve as much of the genetic code of the planet as is possible. All of the plants, and all of the animals along with all of the viruses, and all of the bugs, all of the information encoded by humans, and all of the wisdom. It is all to be stored for the rebuilding of the earth in this safe and remote location. This site has been intentionally chosen for its nonmilitary value so that it will not be targeted in a major war and peopled with people chosen by vote from all populations, and some people were chosen from all humanity by absolute chance lottery. Everyone has a chance to participate. Everything of military interest is to be avoided by this Lifehaven except for short-range weapons for local protection against intruders, who were not selected by that universal human process that chose the people of this habitat to represent all humanity.

Adams Island is that portion of the Auckland Islands on the right of this photograph. It is joined to the larger portion of the islands by the isthmus seen here which has a gap to our left separating them into islands.

The plan would be to create a Lifehaven out of a retired cruise ship or a retired aircraft carrier, chosen because of their large size, and existing housing for over a thousand people, and plant this ship permanently into the side of the hill. The material would be mined from out of the interior of the hill and used to literally bury the ship. The sides would be filled into the angle of repose and planted over and the deck would be covered to an appropriate depth with soil, a meter or so, and the whole thing planted over. After completion, the view would look almost identical to the one in this picture except that the inlet in the middle distance ( -50.865 166.028 ) would be extended out into the inlet about the width of a ship. After the grass grew back in, the entire project would be invisible. Even the wildlife wouldn’t know the Lifehaven was there. Because the harbor, which is open at the other end, is so protected from the stormy weather the construction would be easier as would be mooring of the occasional supply ship.

Because the intent of this project is to protect all life, the Lifehaven would be designed from its inception to have a minimal impact on the local environment. And, in fact, because the people involved are especially sensitive to those issues, it is more likely that this habitat would be made to be a working example of what can be done with proper environmental protections.

At Adams Island, the outside weather is blustery and cold all year round, but this project is intended to be designed as an underground environment. It is intended that it can be self-sustaining for in excess of one year without any access to the outside world whatsoever. This is its function as an underground Lifehaven. Because it is underground the external environment isn’t so very important.