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Apocalypse Early Warning System

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Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#11

Post by acidburnNSA »

I made something like this in like 2007 called Apocalypse Feed. It took in a few factors and aggregated them into a 0-to-100 number that updated and published over RSS. First it pinged debian mirrors around the world and made a map based on mirror city's lat/long: green for online, red for offline. If there was a cluster of red, that part of the world was considered gone. Then it checked space weather data and nearest asteroid, increasing the value if it was looking bad. It scraped news headlines looking for key words like zombie, pandemic, virus, war, bomb, etc. These fed into a pie graph showing what "type" of apocalypse was most likely at any given time.

It was all fun and games until my VPS host banned me for pinging too many people every few mins.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110516084503/http://www.apocal...

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#12

Post by jandrewrogers »

This has the same issue as many other types of event warning systems based on noisy, incomplete data.

The latency of constructing a semi-reliable warning signal from the data sources described significantly exceeds the latency of event onset. You can modify the algorithms to reduce latency but then the false positive rate skyrockets. Not what you want for an "apocalypse" early warning system.

To mitigate this you need more data from more diverse sources and lower latency feeds.

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#13

Post by aorloff »

andrewla wrote: post #7
beej71 wrote: post #6

There was a Sci-Fi book I read where this was a service provided to rich people. Basically you signed up for it, and you'd get a text when everything was about to go down. Time to drop everything and fly to your bunker.

This seems like an area rife for a scam, like hurricane insurance or earthquake insurance. You pocket the money, and when disaster strikes, who is going to sue you when you do nothing? If there was a real bunker-worthy event then all your insurees have been devoured by zombies or dissolved by radioactive strings or whatever.

On Polymarket, $60m has been wagered on "Will Jesus return before 2027"

https://polymarket.com/event/will-jesus-christ-return-before...

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#14

Post by 2ndorderthought »

aorloff wrote: post #13
andrewla wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like an area rife for a scam, like hurricane insurance or earthquake insurance. You pocket the money, and when disaster strikes, who is going to sue you when you do nothing? If there was a real bunker-worthy event then all your insurees have been devoured by zombies or dissolved by radioactive strings or whatever.

On Polymarket, $60m has been wagered on "Will Jesus return before 2027" https://polymarket.com/event/will-jesus-christ-return-before...

I'll definitely put money on that one around December for a quick return. Thanks for the tip

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#16

Post by wat10000 »

Rygian wrote: post #2

I'll ask the obvious: wouldn't the aircraft just take to the skies directly, without bothering with the formality of setting their transponder, if they were knowingly escaping an apocalypse scenario?

Colliding with other planes is going to impede your escape plan, so it would still be a good idea to turn the thing on. No further action needs to be taken for the ADS-B output to be correct, it works once it's powered on.

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#17

Post by prerok »

singpolyma3 wrote: post #9

in case of Apocalypse you think they're all filing flight plans?

If it's early enough, they would have to. And in case it's a false positive, they would be liable.

All this to say, I actually find the thing hillarious, though. If there's an actual apocalypse a plane will not save you.

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#19

Post by omiliyomami »

acidburnNSA wrote: post #11

I made something like this in like 2007 called Apocalypse Feed. It took in a few factors and aggregated them into a 0-to-100 number that updated and published over RSS. First it pinged debian mirrors around the world and made a map based on mirror city's lat/long: green for online, red for offline. If there was a cluster of red, that part of the world was considered gone. Then it checked space weather data and neares…

Oh this is really cool

Re: Apocalypse Early Warning System

#20

Post by gambiting »

>>we suspect that many people who have access to private jets will immediately take to the skies and escape city centers

Why would that be true? There would never be enough warning to get to the airport and take off anywhere, even if everything else was still working perfectly.

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