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Interesting Take On The Fragility Of Modern Society.

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sevenOP | 17:50 Mon 18th Jan 2016 | Society & Culture
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It does make many assumptions, as do many contemporary humans.
A must see for senior schoolkids and politicians.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L8_wACL7sw0
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Can you give us a precis? I'm not wading through an hour and a half of what I suspect will, largly, be waffle.
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World pandemic- most citizens believe it will not come to their door - due to air travel/global commerce it does - health services overwhelmed - vital Labour die/do not go to work through fear of contagion - infrastructure ceases to function - with no power for electricity/gas/water nor food deliveries, gang rule ensues with looting for basic food/water - many try to leave cities by car for country areas but crooks are already setting blockades for looting - some leave by foot with meagre supplies - some make it to find refuge in guarded villages but frontier law of the Wild West and religion is back big time.
The pandemic only lasts 90 days, but by 30 days dead bodies are lying all over in cities all food stores are looted and empty and anarchy/Law of the Jungle is king.
oh....Day of the Triffids....
Ah, 100% waffle.
L o B
We read "Day of the Triffids" as a school book in about 1966. I enjoyed it so much that I eagerly read all the others that John Wyndham wrote. My favourite was "The Chrysalids"

And all of them are miles better than this American tosh !

Give up 1½ hrs of my life for that, "You cannot be serious!"
Sounds like the UK in 70s before TGL cleaned it up!
The solution is for everyone to stay indoors and watch endless YouTube videos ;-)
apocalyptic scenarios are always interesting. This one sounds plausible enough (just from your summary, I haven't watched it), but there are many other possibilities. It wasn't what happened after the Black Death, though. The short-term outcome was a shell-shocked population - half of them had died. Longer term, it broke the back of feudalism/slavery because there weren't enough people to work, so wages had to rise. Very long-term this led to the growth of democracy, but by then many other changes were also contributing.

No guns then, though, so that might change the outcomes.
"Longer term, it broke the back of feudalism/slavery because there weren't enough people to work, so wages had to rise. Very long-term this led to the growth of democracy, "

Not everywhere.
More interesting to me were Stephen Hawking's comments that we'd better think about colonising other worlds die to the cumulative odds of some disaster or other threatening the human race in the near-ish future.
Interesting to me, anyway, because he seemed to imply, in one of his Reith lectures, that we are only 100 years away from colonising, say, Mars.
Even if the case, I doubt if there'd be room for everyone ...
I have every respect for Hawking but unless the basic laws of physics are radically altered, I can't see how we can colonise other planets and star systems. Its all in the realm of SciFi.

Even if we were to start with Mars, it would take many millions of us to make the journey for it to make any difference to the population of earth.
If we can master high-speed travel in the next thousand or so years (which to be fair was the time frame he was talking of more realistically) then it ought to be possible to reach worlds in other solar systems. You'd have the added advantage that the distance would shrink as you sped up. It does seem pretty fantastic though and a major project.
ichkeria....unless the laws of physics are changed, travel to other star systems will remain in the domaine of the Sci-Fi writer.

Alpha Centauri is our nearest neighbour and Proxima is at a distance of 1.29 parsecs or 4.24 light years from the Sun. It will never be possible to visit that planet, unless the aforementioned laws of physics are overcome. Even Hawking hasn't a clue how that can be achieved.
Mikey, 4.24 light years can be travelled in a handful of years at speeds approaching the speed of light (naturally).
Off the top of my head, I don't know what the thinking is about the prospect of habitable worlds in that star system or others, or what the distances are, but the faster the speed you can travel not only the quicker can you get there, but the shorter the actual distance travelled is.
I'm glad I won't be around when we have to try it ...
I think its the idea of travelling at speeds approaching the speed of light that is the problem !

Changing the subject slightly....I was extolling the virtues of Asimov's "Foundation" series recently on here.....very enjoyable and I can thoroughly recommend them !
ichkeria...just found this on youtube and thought you might like it !
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz-1c2o1Dxw&list=PL2907664D333F4F02
Hence "If we can master high-speed travel in the next thousand or so years ..."

I saw old footage of Fred Hoyle on the TV the other night extolling the virtues of the Steady State theory. I'd never seen him before.

Anyway, I've hijacked the subject rather ...
"ichkeria...just found this on youtube and thought you might like it ! "

Ha ha yes I am sure it will be just like that :-)

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