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 – South Pole

Tags

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

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.

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.

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.

Lifehavens – A list of potential refuges for humanity’s survival.

Tags

Apocalypse, Lifehaven, remote islands, Southern Ocean, survival

Places for human survival—Lifehavens—would probably be most successful if they were located far away from any place that is easily accessed by people. After a true humanity wide disaster which threatened the lives of everyone there would be many people who would try to flee to easily accessible Lifehavens, and attempt to enter them—by force if necessary. If these caves were located where terrified people could easily access them by merely walking, or driving, or flying, or boating to them they would certainly do so, and overwhelm the few people who were already living there. Therefore it seems most reasonable to put these Lifehavens in the most remote places possible. These places would require efforts and expenses to get there, and that would be impossible during a sudden crisis. This isn’t being cruel to these people because they can prepare a personal Lifehaven if they choose to do so now. If the Lifehavens are located in very difficult to access remote places then fleeing survivors would find it more desirable to retreat to more easily accessible places such as mines and caves nearer to their homes. Since the preexisting Lifehavens will be occupied by people, selected by vote, from everywhere in the world the locations will be well known to everyone, and so might become, during a disaster, the destination of many people hoping to survive. Therefore it is important to make them as difficult to reach as possible while at the same time be reasonably easy to construct, and maintain. As discussed before, the best places are in the Southern Hemisphere, because that is where, after a major war, the radioactive fallout would be the lightest. It is probably best to be on a very desolate Southern Ocean island or even Antarctica. Here is a list of some possible sites to place Lifehavens:

(Click the check mark √ to see the Lifehaven post, click the name to visit a Wikipedia article and to visit these locations in 3D copy and paste the coordinates into Google Earth, at the bottom “Filed under:” click the word Lifehaven and EarthArk for more links. Also, search the internet for current articles.)

1. √ – The Green Zone map of survival from ~ 40°S ~ 64°S
2. √ – The List of Lifehavens from ~ 40°S ~ 64°S
3. √ – Bouvet Island -54.42 3.372 — 49 km² ~0 people
4. ___ Marion Island -46.908 37.595 Prince Edward — 290 km² ~10
5. ___ Crozet Islands -46.105 50.236 — 352 km² ~0
6. ___ Alfred Faure -46.432 51.858 — 150 km² ~20-100
7. ___ Crozet-Ile de l-Est -46.400 52.220 — 352 km² ~0
8. ___ Kerguelen Island -49.553 69.821 — 7,215 km² ~70
9. ___ Heard Island -53.017 73.497 — 368km² ~0
10. ___ Maatsuyker Island -43.651 146.277 — 3km² ~0
11. ___ Macquarie Island -54.638 158.860 — 128 km² ~40
12. √ – Adams-Auckland Islands -50.750 166.104 — 510 km² ~0
13. √ – Campbell Island -52.540, 169.145 — 115 km² ~0
14. √ – Antipodes Islands -49.686 178.774 — 60 km² ~0
15. √ – Pitt – Chatham Islands -44.295 -176.235 — 62 km² ~45
16. ___ Balleny Islands -66.81 163.23 — 781 km² ~0
17. ___ Peter I Island -68.846 -90.594 243 — km² ~0
18. ___ Palmer Peninsula-Islands Antarctica, -64.774 -64.052 ~300
19. ___ Marambio Air Base -64.241 -56.625 — ~90
20. ___ South Orkney Islands -60.656 -45.660 — 620 km² ~0
21. √ – South Georgia Islands -54.160 -36.712 — 3,528 km² ~20
22. ___ South Sandwich Islands -57.090 -26.734 — 310 km² ~0
23. √ – Gough Island -40.350 -9.880 —91 km² ~10
24. √ – South Pole Station -99.999 180 —3 km² ~90-300
25. ___ List of Antarctic Islands south of 60°S

This is a list of probable places for Lifehavens. Most of these look quite formidable as places to get to, or live, but because of their remoteness they are more secure and, because of their inhospitableness they are not heavily populated. For these reasons and being in the radiation-lighter Southern hemisphere these places become possible candidates for a Lifehaven community. The Lifehavens would require quite a lot of outside financial support to build and maintain, but eventually they might find economic reasons for existence, such as storage of essential information. Some of these locations have potential wind resources which could be used for generating electricity.

A quick and, easy Lifehaven to set up would be to sail a retired cruise ship into the Campbell Island bay (pictured above). This remote location could be stockpiled with necessities for a thousand people buried in a mine on the island, and totally locked up. After Doomsday began a cruise ship could be sailed to this southerly location at the last moment before the fallout reached it. This is a cheap, and not very effective way to populate a LifeHaven but, it is better than nothing. Even, cheaper is for all ships on the high seas to sail south as fast as possible when the conflict begins.

There is a possibility of making one of these Lifehavens into a commercial site which functions as a spa destination in and of itself. This would make it into a potentially economically viable venture. Or perhaps it could be made into a commercial enterprise as an after collapse survival, bomb shelter like site, where you payed up front for the privilege for going there upon demand. Or, perhaps a somewhat morbid possibility, it is owned by people who sell their privilege to others via the Ebay auction on a minute by minute basis. This would be an exciting bidding venue during some crisis like the Cuba Missile crisis of 1962. This scenario is for the commercial Lifehaven not the basic one which is set up, and run on a more equitable humanity wide basis which is intended to save humanity, not rich people. But if rich people are willing to support such a venture then it makes sense for them to do it.