Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nukes of Hazard (2013)

newyorker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–176 of 176 posts

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#171

Post by dredmorbius »

zorbo wrote: post #68
mariusz79 wrote: post #61

All we need is a solar frame, pandemic, or string of larger earthquakes in some parts of the globe. That would cause some nuclear plants to meltdown. Life on Earth would become impossible. No need to worry about some accidental nuclear war. Damn, we're dumb.

Can you back that up with some numbers, or a source perhaps? Because that just sounds like fearmongering. We've already had two nuclear plant meltdowns, and life on earth is doing just fine.

The effects of widespread disruption on nuclear power plants is one of the elements addressed in Alan Weisman's The World Without Us.

There are roughly 400 nuclear power plants in the world today. If disrupted for several weeks, they would eventually lose cooling capabilities, as grid, backup fuel, and ultimately cooking water, were exhausted. You'd see a few hundred core melt events scattered over the globe, and moreover, no real capability to address those -- Chernobyl was encased in a large concrete sarcophagus (and is in the process of being re-entombed). Fukushima has still not been contained and requires ongoing interventions to slow, not halt, leaking of radioactive material from four cores.

S.G. Collins, the guy who put together the "No, we couldn't have faked the moon landings" video, has a very good one on nuclear power which addresses a number of the systemic and very long-range issues involved in nuclear risks:

http://fixyt.com/watch?v=KOBEloymLQA

The requirement for civilization to continue operating in a sane and predictable manner for a very, very, very long time is particularly concerning.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#172

Post by axman6 »

_s wrote: post #23
axman6 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the terrists are real. Did you already forget 9/11, the greatest tragedy ever inflicted by man upon itself?

9/11 the greatest tragedy? I can think of much worse - though it could be argued if it weren't for 9/11 the world wouldn't be in the state it is in now.

As others have stated, there was a heavy dose of sarcasm to my comment; I felt that HN would be the sort of place where "/s" weren't necessary but I guess not.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#173

Post by Houshalter »

InclinedPlane wrote: post #168
Houshalter wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Civilizations have collapsed before from far less serious disasters. From Mayans to Mediterranean civilizations (several of them actually) to the 5 centuries of decline and stagnation of China, and probably countless more I haven't read about. And the industrial world is far less resilient. We depend on huge amounts of infrastructure and massively complex systems of trade and production. Very likely we would return t…

Even when the entire Mediterranean Bronze age civilization collapsed catastrophically with people starving to death, cities burning, widespread brutal and chaotic warfare, and obliteration of conventional social structures the civilizations still bounced back in a few centuries, sometimes in less than a single century. And that's without widespread literacy and widespread availability of printed knowledge (as we have…

Yes civilizations bounced back in the past, but not industrialized ones. I have no doubt eventually people will build new cities and civilization. But they won't be industrialized. They won't have access to natural resources like we did when we industrialized. Some information might survive, but it will be mostly useless without the resources or established infrastructure to use it.

Over the generations, more and more of the knowledge we've accumulated will be lost. The culture will change further and further from the one that led to our civilization.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#174

Post by JoeAltmaier »

dredmorbius wrote: post #170
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nah. We've got information, which is more valuable than energy and not likely to be lost in a collapse. Civilization doesn't require pissing away prodigious amounts of energy on every little thing - that's just the way we do it when we have lots of energy. Also, there's plenty more available energy on this planet, many times the amount we've used so far in building this civilization. Methane Hydrate, Thorium to name…

Neither of your premises have much to support them. Dennis Meadows, of Limits to Growth fame, has noted that adding technology to his models does very little to shift the ultimate outcome. And information absent energy isn't worth much at all. The world as a whole has effectively equal access to information. What's it's got unequal access to are raw material resources, most particularly energy.

What its got is different cultures, which makes all the difference. The Protestant work ethic has an entirely different outcome for a people than many other ethics for instance. Japan has little or no natural resource - look at what they accomplish.

And what do you mean, absent energy? There's plenty of energy around. Methane Hydrate reserves are estimated at 6X all the oil we ever found for instance.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#175

Post by refurb »

ceejayoz wrote: post #138
refurb wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One way to measure the impact of a death from illness vs. a deliberate attack is the impact on society. Since the goal of terrorism is to destabilize a society and instill fear, the ramifications reach far beyond the individual who died. Take a look at what happened to the stock market after 9/11. The resulting fear was widespread and very disruptive. The ramifications of doing nothing when someone dies of a heart at…

So terrorism is worse because we overreact, therefore we should overreact by considering terrorism to be worse?

How would you have reacted to 9-11? Just shrugged your shoulders and said "it's only 3000 people?" Maybe the same for Pearl Harbor? If so, you'd likely be speaking German or Japanese now.

Re: Nukes of Hazard (2013)

#176

Post by dmm »

jackpirate wrote: post #153
dmm wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criticism of the US for segregation was a common tactic used in Soviet propaganda.

Roughly to the same extent that criticism of the soviets was a common tactic used in western propaganda.

It was used as a form of misdirection, a way to change the subject when someone brought up stalin's genocide.
Post reply on HN