If the Government knew for a fact that the world will end in 2012
Just a question, and no i do not believe that the world will end in 2012
Lets say the government had harcore evidence or very good cause of a doomsday event that will end the world in 2012
1. Would they tell the public?
2. Would they pick 400,000 people and save them in a bunker or whatever and let everyone else die?
3.Lets say you found out the government is keeping all this secret what would you do?
It is highly unlikely that "the government" would be able to control such knowledge in the first place, as it would be scientists and other researchers who discover it and the media that reports it.
I'm also unsure of what type of world ending disaster the government would legitimately be able to prepare for in a year. I know there are theories that the government would just keep everything quiet to prevent panic, however, I think such panic is overestimated by people who make those arguments.
Originally posted by inimalist
I'm also unsure of what type of world ending disaster the government would legitimately be able to prepare for in a year. I know there are theories that the government would just keep everything quiet to prevent panic, however, I think such panic is overestimated by people who make those arguments.
Reallly? I hold that opposite: I think that people don't realize how bad the panics would be (the extreme majority don't realize it).
For instance, whenever there is a report of an ice-storm coming to a location, people freak out. They all get in their cars or on their bikes and buy out everything in all the food stores, assuming they will be iced in for 4-7 days. People get in car crashes sometimes killing each other, the stores are flooded with panicked people, and everyone is angry and on the verge of getting into fist fights (some do) over the last box of Captain Crunch.
This is just a 4-7 day icing. So what would happen if everyone knew that 90% of all humans will die in a massive asteroid impact? You bet your sweet*ss that the panic would be so severe that thousands to millions would die in the panic before the strike. It would be complete chaos. The crazy aluminum foil hat people that have underground nuclear bunkers that are stocked to last for a year, however, would be the apex humans that would repopulate the earth. Thank goodness for the paranoid people.
Originally posted by inimalist
For every anecdote like that there is an exact opposite, such as the blackout that hit the Eastern American seaboard/Eastern-Central Canada, where there were no such riots.
Historically, blackouts have not caused massive panics.
This is something we had to study in our contingency planning class. We studied blackouts (historical and scenerio), weather, military, natural disaster, and "other" category incidents. We also did contengency planning and had to justify our contengency planning against things such as military presense (such as marshall law), panic, looting and some other stuff that I am forgetting. In another class we had to design a Control System (PLCs, pumps, etc), from the ground up, and draw up contigency planning for various problems. It had to meet government regulations as well as make its way through various attack or outage scenarios (not to brag but I designed the logical controllers for our pumping stations which had pressure sensitivities (with corresponding actions and notifications at the PLC interface to notify a human) built in to prevent both outages and over-pressure.) As a supervisor at my current job, I also have to have contigency planning in place for natural disasters, terror events, or system outages. Meaning, I have both real-world and academic experience with this particular area: contingency planning is one of the most important things in IT management and "Panic" is part of that management pie (you know why panic is more involved with my IT job than others but I don't care to disclose this in the open.)
That massive indonesian blackout (biggest one in history) went quite smoothly with little criminal/panicky elements.
There was looting in the NE blackout (the recent one...2003?). It wasn't massive. Sure, no rioting.
There was fear of looting in the blackout in Brazil back in 1999 or 2000. So they setup MPs in Rio to curb that. Looting was minimal and the panic was waaaaaay overestimated.
The one back in the 60s was fairly smooth. It only lasted 12 hours, however.
My point is, using short blackouts as a comparison against what would happen during a mass extinction event is a bad comparison. We do see increased looting during blackouts (Tons of perishable food is thrown out during long power outages (such as Ice Storms) so I do not see looting food as a wholly "bad" element to blackouts) but it is hardly the "90% of life will die in the next 2 years" levels of panic. Blackouts are something we handle better as humans. Ice Storms are not...even though they occur multiple times a year (I think) in both Winnipeg and Oklahoma, yet people still panic. Why? There is research on why and you are more familiar with it than I am.
And my experience is not an anecdote, at all: it is not my personal experience of an isolated event (nor is it amusing). It is what happens all over Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, and northern Texas when the annual ice-storms hit. Food-stores are cleaned out all over the region and traffic related deaths make a sharp jump due to the panicked drivers, and domestic violence increases : that's hardly an anecdote. When millions of people are involved in such a panic on an annual basis, it ceases to be an anecdote
Originally posted by Lord Lucien
I've never understood the whole "government keeping it quiet" to quell panic. The government is made up of regular people who themselves would panic.
Most of them are not regular people, actually. And I don't mean lizard people or some other smart joke. They are not the norm, they are the exception. They are usually very intelligent (compared to the population average), very outgoing, narcissistic, controlling, and serial killers.
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2009/06/politicians-and-serial-killers.html
http://www.globalpolitician.com/21001-narcissism
They would obviously try to come up with ways to be both ethical and maximize the safety of their people. Maybe they would work secretly to destroy and asteroid that was about to hit the earth, never tell us they diverted it, and allow us to continue our blissful lives. (Maybe it has happened and we don't know it)
End completely, as in, stop sustaining all kinds of life?
I honestly think I'd rather not know. Ignorance is bliss, yeah?
And what could anybody do about it if everyone's going to die.
There are people who would want to know ahead of time, obviously, so they can die on their own terms, do the time with the loved ones, friends.
Now we just need a place to check on our licenses. "In the event of the end of the world, would you or would you not like to know when it's coming?" 18 and under don't get to choose, just like voting and legally buying smokes.
Originally posted by Colossus-Big C
Just a question, and no i do not believe that the world will end in 2012Lets say the government had harcore evidence or very good cause of a doomsday event that will end the world in 2012
1. Would they tell the public?
2. Would they pick 400,000 people and save them in a bunker or whatever and let everyone else die?
3.Lets say you found out the government is keeping all this secret what would you do?
1. No
2. Yes. They would at least try, but most people chosen would likely be the rich elite, or very intelligent science or Nobel prize winning scholars.
3. I'd get out my Wily Coyote umbrella that I bought from the Acme company and wait for the end to claim me. What the hell can we do if the end comes? Notadamnthing.
Originally posted by Stoic
What the hell can we do if the end comes? Notadamnthing.
Well, some things we can prevent, no problem.
For example, the whole "giant asteroid" impact thing is very easy to fix. We just simply put some larger rockets on it and knock it off course. Moving it one one hundredth of a degree can make it move by thousands of km after it travels a several million kilometers. (for instance, if would knock it off course by about 6108 km if our rockets moved it at 35,000,000 km out).
Think about it: get a very powerful laser pointer and point it just one degree off from straight ahead (in your vision). Have a buddy stand 2 miles down from your position and find where it is pointing. You can figure this out with trig, no problem. Using the law of sines, you should expect your laser to be off by about 184 feet!
Apply this to an incoming asteroid. Pretend it is as far as the moon away from Earth when we finally get our equipment and rockets setup to budge the asteroid just 1 degree. By the time it reached earth's orbit around the sun, it would be off the mark by 6632 km. The Earth's radius is 6370. So if we assume it would land perfectly in the "middle" of the earth when it is orbiting the sun, we could expect, at the very worst case scenario, for the asteroid to miss the earth by 262 km. That's the absolute worst case scenario (where we assume a perfect bullseye.) Even if you add in the effects of gravity (from the earth, the moon, the sun, the other plents), it should not change that much once it reaches the distance of the moon.
That's just one example. I don't think much of the other "suggested" doomsday scenarios are legit.
Originally posted by rotiart
If you knew that you had one year left to live what would you do.There are those who would live life to the fullest.
There are others who knowing that any repercussions would be short in coming would do whatever the hell they want.It only takes a couple crazies to ruin it or the rest of us
Because we don't know we should all live each day to the fullest or try too. 😉
Originally posted by dadudemon
For example, the whole "giant asteroid" impact thing is very easy to fix.
Yep, send Bruce Willis up to deal with it. (You left yourself wide open there)
😄
To answer the OP:
1. I don't think they'd tell us officially but it's likely there will be leaks of some kind (a huge mass of important/rich people moving to a remote location would be the giveaway). Even if they did come clean most would probably shout 'conspiracy!' and not believe it at all which would be heavily ironic.
2. Maybe, but what would be a guaranteed survival plan or safe location? Not to mention the whole silly concept that the people in power before would continue to have any power over their fellow survivors afterwards.
3.There's nothing you can do really, telling people is not going to do anything, no one would believe you and you'd be easily dismissed as a crazy end-of-the-world loon.
All we have to do is ensure that Roland Emmerich has no access to nuclear weapons this year or any year and the odds will be good.
Originally posted by rotiart
If you knew that you had one year left to live what would you do.There are those who would live life to the fullest.
There are others who knowing that any repercussions would be short in coming would do whatever the hell they want.It only takes a couple crazies to ruin it or the rest of us
If you tried to live life to the fullest you'd probably get arrested. 😂 I honestly think that most people would continue doing what they are doing, because after all, no one really knows when the end will come until it does, and even then people like to cling to optimistic thoughts even in their darkest hour. When I'm in a pickle I often find myself thinking "Hey this time next year, this whole thing will be a fading memory".
Real talk though, if you died of natural causes, it really doesn't matter whether or not the Earth goes to hell in a hand basket right? 366 days and counting ha ha ha.
Originally posted by dadudemon
Well, some things we can prevent, no problem.For example, the whole "giant asteroid" impact thing is very easy to fix. We just simply put some larger rockets on it and knock it off course. Moving it one one hundredth of a degree can make it move by thousands of km after it travels a several million kilometers. (for instance, if would knock it off course by about 6108 km if our rockets moved it at 35,000,000 km out).
Think about it: get a very powerful laser pointer and point it just one degree off from straight ahead (in your vision). Have a buddy stand 2 miles down from your position and find where it is pointing. You can figure this out with trig, no problem. Using the law of sines, you should expect your laser to be off by about 184 feet!
Apply this to an incoming asteroid. Pretend it is as far as the moon away from Earth when we finally get our equipment and rockets setup to budge the asteroid just 1 degree. By the time it reached earth's orbit around the sun, it would be off the mark by 6632 km. The Earth's radius is 6370. So if we assume it would land perfectly in the "middle" of the earth when it is orbiting the sun, we could expect, at the very worst case scenario, for the asteroid to miss the earth by 262 km. That's the absolute worst case scenario (where we assume a perfect bullseye.) Even if you add in the effects of gravity (from the earth, the moon, the sun, the other plents), it should not change that much once it reaches the distance of the moon.
That's just one example. I don't think much of the other "suggested" doomsday scenarios are legit.