Rhelamos Rhelamos

So those couple of years where society collapses...

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So those couple of years where society collapses...

History repeating itself?

from Sins Forums
So as a history majour i've been looking recently at a lot of ancient civilisations and taking note of the various factors that contributed to their decline and eventual collapse (though I hate to use that word as I believe not in the collapse of a society but rather massive reorganisations of political, military, and economic forces.  Change /= destruction).

We see the Roman Empire and its decline, caused in great part by internal strife coupled with external pressures and the inability to continue with its primary economic pursuit, namely the expansion of territory and capture of slaves/etc. from surrounding regions, and subsequent collapse into petty fiefdoms and clan-based/feudal regions dominated by those with enough charisma and strength to gather fighters under a banner. 

It happened, doubtless, but here I venture forth a question historians don't often seem to make: were they aware of this iminent shift?  Were the Romans in the 5th century AD aware that soon the world they knew would change so greatly that emphasis in Europe would shift from the Mediterranean to the Northwestern regions for more than 1500 years?  Were they aware of the crushing changes at their doorstep, or did they simply go on with their lives as they always had?

I ask this question because I believe I see factors at work to bring about a new "Dark Age", as it is ignorantly referred to, which is to say a massive reorganisation of the political, social, economic, and military factors present in our world.

Suburban society is the foundation of the United States. People have migrated away from the rural and urban regions of the nation to exist in these veritable bubbles of isolation, this Purgatory of the US lifestyle.  It is supplied via an unceasing reinforcement of trucks delivering goods on a constant basis; these trucks are the lifelines of this way of life and without them suburbia will wither and die.

Only a fool thinks, however, that the unceasing stream of supply will continue indefinitely.  Yes dear folk, I speak of Oil and its decline.  I do not think that we shall reach the point where one day we shall all say "OH MY!  We have run out of oil!" but doubtless we will reach the point of 8,9, dare I say 10 or even 15 dollars a gallon.  The lifeline of this suburban age WILL be severed, it is inevitable, and the only hope we have is the creation of some alternative fuel source or mode of transportation to supply these suburban islands. 

But here we yet again reach another difficult point: where will these alternative fuel sources come from?  Ethanol?  Shale oil? Hydrogen fuel cells?  Each has its own problems.  Ethanol would require shifting massive amounts of farmland towards its creation and, in best light, provide merely a temporary respite.  Shale oil at our current technological state requires more energy to extract than we are capable of extracting.  Hydrogen fuel cells are still far beyond our technological ability.

What then?  I do not deny that some day we will master SOME form of alternative fuel source, but I ask you this: will we be in time?  Will we be able to create this fuel source in time to comfortably transfer over the entire nation?  I think that is foolishly optimistic wish.

Consider this: Tokyo's subway system is among the most advanced in the world and millions of people depend on it for daily transportation.  What if that system were to suddenly stop?  Certainly there are alternative means of reaching work, school, etc.  There is walking, riding a bike, many things, but nevertheless the vast majority of the opulation would be denied access essential destinations i.e. work places.  Say we disable it for a week.  After the week we have the trains up and running again.  Does this repair the damage caused by that week of immobility?  The damage is already done, it cannot be undone.  Entering an entirely new fuel source into a national economy and society will not be so smooth as suddenly having subway access again, either.  Do you see what i'm saying here?

If the gap between the time we can say that an alternative fuel source is in majority use and the time when the majority of society becomes unable to maintain mobility and supply via personal vehicles is large enough it WILL cause a massive shift in US socio-economic status.  There is absolutely no question of this whatsoever: if the gap is too wide the shift WILL occur and may, in future years, be seen by our descendents as "Collapse".

If this dreadful gap is too wide, much too wide, then I cannot help but see the following:  People will flock from suburban centres to urban and rural areas.  Overcrowding and inability to supply will create famine and support the formation of gangs and civilian militia.  A twisted form of urban feudalism will take place in the cities and the national government, in a desperate attempt to retain what is left of its security and power, will send out military units to quell these groups.  These military units, if not supplied and maintained, will simply turn into personal armies under charismatic leaders promising survival and a "return to the old days".  Pseudo militaries and civil strife will be the watchwords of the day and much, if not all, of the country will fracture and turn in on itself.  Thus the "Modern Dark Age" sets in. 


Will we be able to keep that gap small enough to avoid such drastic changes?  Will we be able to keep that gap small enough that we're only in for a rough ride and not a total shift in the way we view and interact with our world?  I can only hope so.
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Reply #28 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
This fear is just mother culture rearing her giant head. Sure, things change. Yes, it is possible that a significant change is going to take place, but it isn't armageddon. These things happen. The end of Rome only spelled an end to Roman society, the world didn't end (yes, I understand a "dark" age came next). This all comes down to a way of life fearing for its own existence in the face of entropy. This idea of the end being nigh is just the end of the American Empire as we know it.

I'm not really making my point here. How about something more concrete.

Localization.

Bam! Solved.
Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
What one would call genius is simply this:

Ways of thinking, that facilitate learning and optimize understanding.

That's all, nothing more, nothing less.

We spend the first 18-22 years of our life learning how things are perceived by the collective (in the interests of the collective). It's only afterwards that we learn how to see for ourselves (and act in our own best interests), when the facility is no longer afforded us...

It is not the goal of society to teach us to act in our own interests, but to perpetuate itself. Society in general will prevail, at the expense of those who live within it (which is in stark contrast to what we are told, that it's supposedly built in all our interests)...

Make your own decisions here, but do something to enforce your decisions, don't just sit back and assume that the politicians are acting in your interests...

Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
Hmmmm... Interesting point, garion. But the world did end with the fall of Rome: as a matter of fact, it ended with the fall of Shinar! A single mistake in human (or any other creature's, should there be any other creatures) history dooms the entirety thereof. If absolute cause and effect exist, which they must, or else the Universe would unravel, then our present conversation is the direct result of what happened immediately post the Big Bang!

And Helioforge, I personally do not think myself to be a good judge of what is best for myself, and I seriously doubt that you are a good judge of what is best for yourself... The social indoctrination is a precaution against our doing things which would destroy ourselves though we think they are for the best...
Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
I'm just wondering; why not use nuclear power as a main source of electricity? The only problem I can see with this is storage of the waste.
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
"Hydrogen fuel cells are still far beyond our technological ability"

are you so sure? fuel cell technology is there. its ready to be mass produced. probably in the next 3 to 5 years we will see production level vechicles from every major manufacturer.

what we are lacking is infrastructure. most americans arent thinking about it. the reason is that demand will build the infrastructure as its needed. do you think gas stations were on every corner in 1910?
Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
nuke power is what 20% of the US grid right now? its carbon clean, but the waste is aweful. i suppose we can just ship it to france or something. clean\cheap energy freaks are buzzing on wind and tidal turbines right now. that would work out if enough realestate is dedicated to it.

to get the enegy topic back on track...

the question is do we wait as a society for the fossile fuels to be used up, or do we embrace a new energy tech in urban and suburban areas so the fossile fuels that are still available can be used by the likes of trains, and trucks until the tech is developed to the point that these massive systems can utilize them.

lets not forget the other uses of fossile fuels that we demand. plastics for one. i personally enjoy my computer. last time i checked there was a lot of plastic in it.
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
but the waste is aweful


No it isn't, and if you knew anything about nuclear power you wouldn't say that.

Nuclear waste is only waste because it's radioactive. Up to 85%+ of that waste is 'better safe than sorry' mildly radioactive equipment such as gloves, radiation suits, etc. Very little of it is spent rods.

As long as spent rods are radioactive they are a source of energy one way or another. Real "high-level" nuclear waste can be reprocessed a number of times.
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
I'm just wondering; why not use nuclear power as a main source of electricity? The only problem I can see with this is storage of the waste.


At least in the USA. Mass histeria. People are afraid of nuclear reactors as they were afraid of communism and Soviet Russia in the 1960's. They think it's the devil.

Real reason though. They are very complex, expensive and difficult to maintain,and have to battle many enviromental laws to get built. They generate much waste that is a pain in the ass to handle/dispose of. Also, they are quite inefficient, they have less than 15% efficiency (iirc). For example, a coal plant can have 35% or more efficiency.

No it isn't, and if you knew anything about nuclear power you wouldn't say that.

Nuclear waste is only waste because it's radioactive. Up to 85%+ of that waste is 'better safe than sorry' mildly radioactive equipment such as gloves, radiation suits, etc. Very little of it is spent rods.

As long as spent rods are radioactive they are a source of energy one way or another. Real "high-level" nuclear waste can be reprocessed a number of times.


Those rods will eventually get used up and end up as "waste". Simply, once they are spent, the only thing they good for is for making nuclear weapons. Thus they are waste. And that waste remains radioactive for over 10,000 years, but is not useable for a nuclear reactor once completely spent.
Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
I want to point out that since the stone age until about the 1900's humans have followed the same laws that govern the rest of the world, the idea of survival the the fittest. not to the extent where we are kill each other but to the point where if you can't in some way provide for yourself you die. and not only did people have to provide for their current needs they also had to be adaptable enough to meet their needs should they change.

it wasn't until the 1900's that we left this track and took on a more "humane" approach, one in that every one regardless of any reason needs to keep living. In the last 20 years this trend has only gotten more extreme. there are examples all around, such as people on welfare not doing anything and getting goverment money. or that fact that most people cringe when they hear that some one, some where, that they never met, died.

in the event that our society falls apart the people who can't support them selves will die. If things get really bad maybe 50% or more will die, leavy behind only the people who had the strengh to survive. and with drasticaly less people thats means there is less demand for things and less competition for them, thuse those that do survive will have an easier time.

I am not saying this out of some elitist theory or anything else. most likely i will be one of the first to go. I work as a manager in a supermarket, thats not going to get me anywhere. i probably wont be able to provide for myself and will quickly die out, but if i really wanted to survive, i could. i could learn new skills that would get me something that i can either use myself, or trade to some one for something i need.

And as for goverment, if the goverment also takes a survival approach then it will proably also survive. If, however, it starts throwing its money away to all the people who aren't able to support them selves, then it will die, and in months those that it supported will too.
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
Those rods will eventually get used up and end up as "waste".


No, they will end up as depleted uranium, tracers for cancer patients, and soil.

Simply, once they are spent, the only thing they good for is for making nuclear weapons


Once they are spent they are no longer fissionable. So no.

Thus they are waste. And that waste remains radioactive for over 10,000 years, but is not useable for a nuclear reactor once completely spent.


PROTIP: The longer the half-life, the less radioactive the material. If something has a half-life of tens of thousands of years, it is as radioactive as the soil.

There's an excellent video in a Berkeley series on "Physics for Presidents" or something like that called "Nukes". You might watch it if you want to learn about the basics of how radioactivity works.
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
Why can't nuclear waste be loaded onto cheap, disposable freighter rockets that are fired at the sun? The sun is already nuclear and the tiny amounts we'd be sending up there would make no difference. It'd be gone forever. Nobody has the technology to shoot it down. It doesn't matter if it takes years to get there and as for the fuel that's needed, the rockets only have to break earth's gravity field. There's no friction or gravity in space so they'd head for their target at 17,000 mph or whatever til they got to the sun's gravity well. There wouldn't be any huge explosion on the sun either.

2, The sun is constantly sending us radiation. It's time we sent some back.


In one year a single coal plant produces

3,700,000 tons of carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary human cause of global warming--as much carbon dioxide as cutting down 161 million trees.


10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2), which causes acid rain that damages forests, lakes, and buildings, and forms small airborne particles that can penetrate deep into lungs.


500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death, as well as haze obstructing visibility.


10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), as much as would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs, burning through lung tissue making people more susceptible to respiratory illness.


720 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and place additional stress on people with heart disease.


220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone.


170 pounds of mercury, where just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe to eat.


225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who drink water containing 50 parts per billion.


114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.

http://www.ucsusa.org/clean_energy/coalvswind/c02c.html

Coal mines are also bad news for the environment. There was a slurry dam that burst down south. The huge reservoir went down the mountainside, flooded the creek, killed everything there and emptied into the Mississippi. It was loaded with mercury and uranium residue.

With nuclear plants there's always the danger that something will go wrong through operator error. Then you get something like Chernobyl. Once the countryside is contaminated, it's dangerous to live there for 30,000 years and the area contaminated is huge. People shouldn't even eat the crops grown on contaminated soil. The animals that have moved in risk having their genes altered through the generations as well as various sicknesses in their own lifetimes. Then there's the threat of a nuclear plant being targeted during war or terrorism. Once again, large areas can become inhospitable for eons. I think it's that and not public hysteria that has made nuclear power undesireable. I know they're not going to cause a nuclear explosion, but Chernobyl, yea, that could happen.
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
Why can't nuclear waste be loaded onto cheap, disposable freighter rockets that are fired at the sun?


Because it costs millions of dollars to get ouncez of stuff up there. You don't have a lot to send up (high-level waste generated in a year could easily fit in your closet) but it's still a lot cheaper to dump it in a mountain or a subduction zone.

With nuclear plants there's always the danger that something will go wrong through operator error. Then you get something like Chernobyl.


Chernobyl took place in a horribly funded Soviet puppet state with untrained operators, broken or missing redundancy systems, and reactor designs that dated from decades earlier. Not only is a reactor meltdown near-impossible in modern designs, one would likely be no major threat once teams got on the scene and quarantined off the area. And as we see today, most of Chernobyl is barely radioactive - reporters, etc are sent in all the time. It was really a non-event.

Once the countryside is contaminated, it's dangerous to live there for 30,000 years


False. See above and read something on half-lives.

and the area contaminated is huge


Meltdowns don't cause fission. They cause a reactor rod to theoretically fall through the bottom of the reactor and into the soil or something. Not only is this impossible for other reasons, the contamination site would in most cases be limited to the reactor itself.

There is NO argument against nuclear power that is not bullshit OMG ATOMZ hysteria.

People shouldn't even eat the crops grown on contaminated soil.


This depends on the soil. If you're growing crops after something like Chernobyl, yeah. But who grows crops in the middle of a city? Who harvests those crops?

The animals that have moved in risk having their genes altered through the generations as well as various sicknesses in their own lifetimes.


Not really. Most of the animals and plants in Chernobyl are perfectly normal, with some minor genetic mutations that aren't much more than the base-line rate.

Then there's the threat of a nuclear plant being targeted during war or terrorism.


What are they going to do, shut down the entire reactor, wait two days and go in hazmat suits and salvage a rod, then run back to Tora Bora and build a nuclear weapon? Don't you realize nuclear plants have been sitting around in Russia with rusty chain link fences for about 20 years?

Once again, large areas can become inhospitable for eons. I think it's that and not public hysteria that has made nuclear power undesireable. I know they're not going to cause a nuclear explosion, but Chernobyl, yea, that could happen.


No. What you posted IS public hysteria, and by perpetuating this bullshit you cause more of it. Please educate yourself on the basics of physics and the properties of reactors.
Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
Those rods will eventually get used up and end up as "waste".No, they will end up as depleted uranium, tracers for cancer patients, and soil.
Simply, once they are spent, the only thing they good for is for making nuclear weaponsOnce they are spent they are no longer fissionable. So no.
Thus they are waste. And that waste remains radioactive for over 10,000 years, but is not useable for a nuclear reactor once completely spent.PROTIP: The longer the half-life, the less radioactive the material. If something has a half-life of tens of thousands of years, it is as radioactive as the soil.There's an excellent video in a Berkeley series on "Physics for Presidents" or something like that called "Nukes". You might watch it if you want to learn about the basics of how radioactivity works.


Errr.... do you know what you are talking about?

I said 10,000. Not tens of thousands. Learn to read.

Some hazardous radioactive material have thousands of years half-life.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positron_emission_tomography

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutonium

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uranium

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depleted_uranium

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fuel_cycle

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain

You can look for more in-depth and technical websites about this subject, many require subscriptions though.

Why can't nuclear waste be loaded onto cheap, disposable freighter rockets that are fired at the sun?


Lol never though of that before, might be worth exploring. :D

With nuclear plants there's always the danger that something will go wrong through operator error. Then you get something like Chernobyl. Once the countryside is contaminated, it's dangerous to live there for 30,000 years and the area contaminated is huge. People shouldn't even eat the crops grown on contaminated soil. The animals that have moved in risk having their genes altered through the generations as well as various sicknesses in their own lifetimes. Then there's the threat of a nuclear plant being targeted during war or terrorism. Once again, large areas can become inhospitable for eons. I think it's that and not public hysteria that has made nuclear power undesireable. I know they're not going to cause a nuclear explosion, but Chernobyl, yea, that could happen.


There on it self lies the hysteria. There are many erronous things and exaggerations in that paragraph. Nuclear power plants ARE safe. Chernobyl was caused by crazy Russians scientists running crazy experiments in the nuclear plant without safety safeguards. They fucked up the stability controls of the reactor during the experiment. Today a drunk operator will not cause a reactor to meltdown and explode. They are run largely by computers with automated safety mechanisms.

Modern day plants are like huge armored tombs. Even if the reactor explodes, the explosion and the fuel would be contained by the building, thus there would be no spilling like in Chernobyl, which had a lousy contruction and the explosion blew open the building's roof. Ramming a jet liner or dropping a bomb into a modern nuclear power plant would be futile.

It is relatively safe to live in Chernobyl already, in certain areas. Of course the soil is still contaminated, but the air is breatheble. No, it won't take 30,000 years to be usable again, it will take less, definitely not eons.

Gene altering? Lol yeah but I think that danger already passed. Although commonly animals and humans who had their gene altered during embryo and fetus states does not live long after birth. They get sick and die young usually. Also it called mutation rather than gene altered I think. In other cases, like deformities, they also tend to die young. My point is, something like Chernobyl will not create anything like Godzilla. More likely it will simply be like a frog with three eyes but poor shit vision and is sterile.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chernobyl_disaster
Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top
This is a response to Carbon 16 and his last post

What are your sources?
I'm no expert on nuclear power, but here's what it says at wikipedia

"The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Ukraine) was the worst nuclear accident in history and is the only event to receive an INES score of 7. The power excursion and resulting steam explosion and fire spread radioactive contamination across large portions of Europe. The UN report 'CHERNOBYL : THE TRUE SCALE OF THE ACCIDENT' published 2005 concluded that the death toll includes the 50 workers who died of acute radiation syndrome, nine children who died from thyroid cancer, and
an estimated 4000 excess cancer deaths in the future."

4000 projected deaths hardly sound like a non-event. That doesn't include all the people that died of radiation poisoning while fighting the fires at Chernobyl.

Regarding the idea that accidents won't happen in the future, the wikipedia article disagrees...

"Greenpeace has produced a report titled An American Chernobyl: Nuclear “Near Misses” at U.S. Reactors Since 1986 which "reveals that nearly two hundred “near misses” to nuclear meltdowns have occurred in the United States". At almost 450 nuclear plants in the world that risk is greatly magnified, they say. This is not to mention numerous incidents,[71] many supposedly unreported, that have occurred. Another report produced by Greenpeace called Nuclear Reactor Hazards: Ongoing Dangers of Operating Nuclear Technology in the 21st Century claims that risk of a major accident has increased in the past years."

It sounds like there are a lot of near misses. Maybe for any one year the danger is not that great, but if you consider the plants can be around for many years and there are a lot of plants, then it's possible that something can happen. Also, why would you assume we wouldn't have severe financial problems over the next hundreds of years that could lead to less professional workers and monitoring? Governments can collapse as the "Soviet Union has and then who's going to be keeping an eye on safety? If it's safe in the Chernobyl area, why hasn't everyone moved back in? Why are there huge ghost towns?

Why couldn't armed, suicidal terrorists take over a plant and lift the rods out of the cooling baths? Wouldn't they heat up and cause fires and smoke which would be contaminated? Eventually the roof could crack or a truck bomb be brought in. Bunker busters could also crack domes easily.
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
Geothermal Q&A

What risks do geothermal plants pose? None

Is there enough geothermal power to power the USA in the USA? There's enough to power 30,000 USA in the USA (something like that)

Is there any sexy technology involved? No

Complicated? Not very.

Danger to birds? Nope

It would be expensive to drill deep holes into the ground. - Oil rigs have already drilled the holes and are bringing up lots of hot water with the oil. We pay to clean the water out of the oil and then we throw away the free energy and burn the highly polluting fossil fuel.

Uh... why? - Because that's how we're set up right now. Cars burn gas or oil. Gas stations sell it. There are no electric cars.

Could we make electric cars. - Probably, but people like the sound of a big V8. Electric cars won't have that.

Well, that makes sense.

Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top
Hydrogen fuel cells are still far beyond our technological ability.
Hydrogen fuel calls are not far beyond our technological ability. Hydrogen fuel cells are a storage mechanism, not an energy source.The amount of people that don't get this is amazing.Yes but the system, as a whole, is considered as a possible fuel source. When I said it was beyond our technological ability, I mean that we do not possess the means of turning it into a viable alternative to batteries or anything else out there.I'm no engineer and I won't pretend I understand the way any of that works, but the point remains the same: H fuel cells can't be used the way we wish them to be used.


Are you aware that Honda Motors is selling hydrogen fuel cell vehicles in California RIGHT NOW? You, yes YOU could potentially buy one today! Talk about current events = http://world.honda.com/FuelCell/

If that is too fancy for you try the Honda Insight which gets over 60 miles per gallon!

There are essentially three sides of this new dark ages issue.
1. Those who believe our system can and will go on as long as we take responsibility for making it happen. Some of these people even work towards making that future a reality.

2. Those who have no awareness of this issue and go about their daily lives as usual.

3. Those who are determined that a collapse will come about. Some who passively or actively work towards bringing it about. There are many who fall into this category including politicians, actors, musical acts, many other entertainers, random everyday people.

Instead of being in groups 2 or 3 please join group 1. Let's make the world we want. Encourage those who have lost hope that there is a bright future right around the corner IF we all WORK towards it.

By the way if you want a collapse just move to one of the many places in Africa where they already live like it has collapsed. Leave the rest of us in peace.
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
4000 projected deaths hardly sound like a non-event. That doesn't include all the people that died of radiation poisoning while fighting the fires at Chernobyl.


>4000 projected deaths

>projected

It sounds like there are a lot of near misses.


Yes, I too rely on Greenpeace for all my objective scientific data.

Again, there are thousands of different studies and commentaries on this subject. I'm not debating this any further.
Reply #45 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
But here we yet again reach another difficult point: where will these alternative fuel sources come from? Ethanol? Shale oil? Hydrogen fuel cells?


Personally, I'm banking on electric and plug-in hybrids. It has the least number of problems, and can be implemented more quickly than other technologies.

Nuclear power, anyone...?


Well, you can't fit it into an automobile, but it's certainly a good power source for electricity and could supply electric cars.

Why can't nuclear waste be loaded onto cheap, disposable freighter rockets that are fired at the sun?


Because there's nothing cheap about our rockets. Even the cheapest ones are very expensive.

With nuclear plants there's always the danger that something will go wrong through operator error. Then you get something like Chernobyl.


We haven't had a situation like Chernobyl in the USA, and it's not just luck: Our nuclear plants are designed with many fail safes, and are designed such that if something goes terribly wrong, the plant will shut down. I'd say the worst that could happen in a modern design is something like Three Mile Island, not Chernobyl. We haven't even had something like that in a long time, though, because the error was easily correctable.
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
This is a response to Carbon 16 and his last postWhat are your sources?I'm no expert on nuclear power, but here's what it says at wikipedia"The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (now Ukraine) was the worst nuclear accident in history and is the only event to receive an INES score of 7. The power excursion and resulting steam explosion and fire spread radioactive contamination across large portions of Europe. The UN report 'CHERNOBYL : THE TRUE SCALE OF THE ACCIDENT' published 2005 concluded that the death toll includes the 50 workers who died of acute radiation syndrome, nine children who died from thyroid cancer, and an estimated 4000 excess cancer deaths in the future."4000 projected deaths hardly sound like a non-event. That doesn't include all the people that died of radiation poisoning while fighting the fires at Chernobyl. Regarding the idea that accidents won't happen in the future, the wikipedia article disagrees..."Greenpeace has produced a report titled An American Chernobyl: Nuclear “Near Misses” at U.S. Reactors Since 1986 which "reveals that nearly two hundred “near misses” to nuclear meltdowns have occurred in the United States". At almost 450 nuclear plants in the world that risk is greatly magnified, they say. This is not to mention numerous incidents,[71] many supposedly unreported, that have occurred. Another report produced by Greenpeace called Nuclear Reactor Hazards: Ongoing Dangers of Operating Nuclear Technology in the 21st Century claims that risk of a major accident has increased in the past years."It sounds like there are a lot of near misses. Maybe for any one year the danger is not that great, but if you consider the plants can be around for many years and there are a lot of plants, then it's possible that something can happen. Also, why would you assume we wouldn't have severe financial problems over the next hundreds of years that could lead to less professional workers and monitoring? Governments can collapse as the "Soviet Union has and then who's going to be keeping an eye on safety? If it's safe in the Chernobyl area, why hasn't everyone moved back in? Why are there huge ghost towns?Why couldn't armed, suicidal terrorists take over a plant and lift the rods out of the cooling baths? Wouldn't they heat up and cause fires and smoke which would be contaminated? Eventually the roof could crack or a truck bomb be brought in. Bunker busters could also crack domes easily.



First of all wikipedia isn't an exact source, and green peace is a horrible source. never take an enviormentalists group that have been called eeco terrorists word at face value.

Second, while Chernobyl was a pretty big dissaster, its actualy impossible for the same thing to happen in america. at the time american plants used water in their systems (we still do) while soviet plants used lead. the difference is that when a american plant starts to go critical it heats up and the water evaporates, drasticaly slowing the reaction to a stand still. the soviet plants used lead which, when the plant hits critical and heats up, melts, drasticaly increasing the reaction. lead does a much better job in a nuclear power plant when it is in liquid form. therefor the meltdown in Chernobyl was made worst do to the fact they used lead.

also durring the meltdown the russians where doing an experimental test to see how far they could push the reactor and still bring it back. when the lead melted and the reaction speed up they lost control and in an effort to cool it droped some 10,000 gallons of water on it. the water evaporated instantly due to the intense heat from the reactor and the giant mass of steam blew the roof off, thus the explosion. this is what caused the fires to start. then the russians sent in their fire fighters but didn't tell them what the building was for. they weren't protected at all for the amounts of radiation that they were standing int.

and the steam cloud explosion did take large amounts of radioactive particals and spread them all over europe. but they were mostly spread out and not nearly as lethal as some might think.

That thing with Green Peace is actualy utter nonsense. What isn't flat out lies is just exaggeration of facts. What exactly constitutes a near miss? the reactor being .0001 degrees over its recemended limit? and taken "unreported events" into consideration. they aren't reported because they didn't happen. and the thing about the the danger of something happening is increase is one very uneducated way of looking at it. yes our current reactors are getting old, they really only have a life of 50 years. they can be run for longer with modifications but thats expensive. theoreticaly if we ran a plant well past its time, lets say like 10-20 years past. the risk of something happening is increased. but we aren't doing that and will most certianly not do that.

and assuming that in the future economic problems will cause problems in a stupid reason to not do anything. economic problems will interfere with any industry, should we just stop haveing buisness because at some point it may stop working out? Further more if economic problems happen nuclear power plants will be the last thing that gets major funding cuts and by the time they do the other problems will be so bad that those will be the least of our worries.

and as for terrorist actions, there is really no threat there. for the terrorists to go in and steal something we are talking about a small army of terrorists that are highly equiped that some how have all the security and passwords beat before they got there. then this army of terrorists would also have to be a team of ex-nuclear technicians in order to know how to do anything there. so then they take some cooling rods and then what? they wont be able to move it from the room until it cools the the point that its not going to by itself do anything. and when you start messing with a reactor its failsafes kick in and it shuts down. they would need very advanced knowledge of the computer systems and would need to overide all of the failsafes, which is all classified info.

And a truck bomb would not do anything. the bunker where the reacter is hidden is so whel reinforced that unless you just kept driving truck bombs into it over the course of a few days its not going to break. a bunker buster missile could break through the roof, but that would require that the terrorists some how got their hands on a verry expesnive peice of American millitary hardware, then straped it onto a fighter bomber get and flew it over the power plant with out any one noticing. possible but so imporbably that its not worth worry about. and even if they did drop a bunker buster that would just destroy the reactor and cause contamination right there, not spread it all over the place.
Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
If you don't know the source of your knowledge, just say so.

Wikipedia can be changed by anyone. It also uses teams of people, who are themselves monitored, to check on changes in content. Are you assuming that these people that allow the information to stay up are all corrupt or misinformed and that only you few guys know the real truth about how safe nuclear plants are? Also, all those people protesting plants - they're all hysterical nuts?

The Boeing 747 is loaded with redundant safety devices. For a long time none of them crashed, but then they started having accidents. They're safe, but they're not perfectly safe, even with good maintenance and excellent crews. Same thing with nuclear plants. They're safe, but not perfectly safe. A 747 crashes and lots of people die, but the site of the accident can be cleaned up and lived in. Not so with a nuclear accident.

You've ignored the fact that countries go out of existence. Governments fall apart. Boundaries are artificial and man made. A well run government might run it's nuclear plants well, but then fall on hard times or become stupid and corrupt. Who's going to care about safety then? Do you think if some stupid regime takes over they're going to wisely close down their nuclear because they know they're not competent? Do you know the stupid regime itself isn't going to hoard nuclear waste for use against it's enemies in dirty bombs? They won't try to build a breeder reactor to make weapons grade plutonium? Do you believe that the USA is totally safe from being taken over by incompetents or some kind of extremists?

You've ignored geothermal. It poses no threats and has much less impact on the environment than other technologies. Why don't you look into that instead of promoting something that is so toxic?

I like nuclear myself and was pro nuclear when I was in grammar school, but I think geothermal should be looked into as it is so much less worrisome. It requires a large initial investment. That's why I think it's been avoided. Once geothermal is up and running, it is less expensive and worrisome than coal, oil or nuclear generating plants. It'll be expensive for the USA to switch to geothermal in the short run, but it'll be a relief in the long run and it will also set an example for the rest of the world. We won't have to listen to some shaky foreign regime insisting they need to build nuclear plants just like America does because they're just as civilized as us. If we had no nuclear plants we'd seem less hypocritical when we say that you're not ready for nuclear to tomorrows Iran or North Korea. There are plenty of new technologies coming along that will create tensions along with great breakthroughs.

Also, I posted up the statistics of one coal plant. It illustrates the danger of economically attractive short term solutions. Coal was fine when the earth was clean, but now with the atmosphere and the oceans in the condition they're in, we need to start cleaning them. We can build coal plants cheap and have plentiful power, but we'll be sorry long term. China is building 1500 new plants. I think thats triple the number of existing US plants. China and India are also getting a lot more internal combustion cars. Things are actually getting much worse environmentally. The stuff the Chinese dump into the atmosphere affects our world too. By switching to clean technologies we set an example. No longer can they say, "You do it too."

Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top
i never said i was for nuclear plants being built all over the place. i just said they aren't as bad ad most people make them out to be. and yes wikipedia has people who check the info for accuracy, but that doesn't mean its 100% accurate, since i know that wikipedia doesn't have nuclear technicians doub;e checking. but all i said was that wikipedia shouldn't be taken as absoulute fact. my main problem was with green peace. i have no doubt that green peace did say that and that it is on wikipedia. but green peace is full of crap.

and enviormental issues are like anything else, the facts can be minipulated to serve who evers ends. there has been one real accident with a nuclear power plant and i have already explained all about that, along with every one else here. every day 1000's of nuclear reacters produce large amounts of energy without any problem, and they have been for decades.

you ignored the fact that normal accident in a nuclear plant only effects the direct area. Chernobyl was beyond a worst case scenario and that will never happen again. what almost happened at three mile island was a partial meltdown. and it wasn't nearly as close to happening as people think. infact it didn't even meltdown. and if it had the material would have burnt through the floor and the area directly under the power plant would have ben contaminated. ofcourse that would have taken days for it to burn through the layers of concrete and such. if Three Mile island had melted down the effect wouldn't have been as terrible as people make it out to be. rember a meltdown is not a nuclear explosion.

I confess to not knowing tons about geothermal power, but i din't say anything about it for that reason. from what i have heard hear it seems like a valid source of energy.

and i again i restate that not doing something because at some point in the future something may or may not happend that may or may not have a bad effect is just plain stupid. by that logic we shouldn't have ever built cities in costal areas because a hurricain bay come and damage them.

if the goverment just dies in one day then the power plants failsafes will kick in and shut down. sure then people can break in and screw with them but they can also do that to millitary bases and their armories. in the event of a complete govement failure we are screwed anyway.

and as parrents around that world have been saying for ever,"just because he did it doesn't mean you can to" if china and india want to make tons of coal plants and crappy cars that spew out harmful stuff there isn't anything we cn do about it and those countries going "well the US does it so we can too" is dumb. and if you reall want to get down to it we are trying to cut back on the things we do that harm the enviorment.

However this has gotten way off from the original point about socity collapsing and into alternative power sources.
Reply #49 from GalCiv2 Forums Top
It also uses teams of people, who are themselves monitored, to check on changes in content.


Considering the scale of the project, they can only monitor a very small fraction of the entire project.

Are you assuming that these people that allow the information to stay up are all corrupt or misinformed and that only you few guys know the real truth about how safe nuclear plants are?


Corrupt? No.

Misinformed? A very likely possibility.

"only you few guys know the real truth...?" Well, how many people really research this stuff? I'd say very few people even bother to do the research.

The Wikipedia is, frankly, a collection of bandwagon agreements, not a source of factual information.

Geothermal looks good, but unfortunately you'll have to convince the right people to make it happen. Right now, most of the important people aren't thinking about it.
Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top
The social indoctrination is a precaution against our doing things which would destroy ourselves though we think they are for the best...


I believe that social indoctrination had been perverted into a kind of blindness to a true, complex understanding. My proof, one word:

FOOTBALL

We are taught to like football as a kind of adult babysitting designed to drain our resources, give us something artificial in common in order to bond with one another in a superficial way, and to give false hopes to big, stupid children who can't think for themselves. We all know that if the big, stupid children grew up to be disenfranchised then they would be a threat to society greater than any Unabomber...

It's a kind of artificial selection imposed by society to create a workforce to build things like monuments, colosseums, stadiums, etc... ...this makes it self-perpetuating, which diminishes the complexity of society further...