Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with apocalypse

Where can I find a copy of a classroom discussion activity where you are forced to save 6-8 people in an apocalypse to start a new society?

jeisme — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 22:37:37 -0800

I remember doing a discussion activity/thought experiment in high school where we had to choose 6-8 people from a list (e.g. pregnant teen, scientist, priest, stay-at-home mom, doctor) to save in a nuclear apocalypse and justify our decision. There was a paper handout associated with the activity, and I'm pretty sure my teacher didn't write it himself, because I've talked to friends who've done the same thing in a different context (church groups, retreats, etc. ). I'm looking for a link to a copy of this activity, or a place where I'd be able to find it.

Mel Gibzetti

kittensofthenight — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 11:41:36 -0800

In the recent documentary not quite hollywood , the talking heads mention the Australian influence on Italian genre films, where an entire genre of Mad Max–style rip-offs emerged. What are these movies, and can I get them on netflix? If there is a whole Italian sub-genre of Mad-Max rip-offs, I have high hopes. Spaghetti apocalypse?

What is the title of this book?

Uncle — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:58:42 -0800

Identify a book for my girlfriend please. Read in the mid 90's maybe had 'children' in the title. Sci-fi novel about children held captive with woman in a castle after being placed with her through a government forced foster system (children are lent out to childless people for one month). They survive nuclear meltdown and years after by being put into suspended animation. When they wake up thousands of years have passed and they are kept subdued with drugged wine. David(?), the main character, escapes and finds a village of survivors who have become mutated from the radiation and inbreeding. They live off beetles and giant rabbits that have grown to the size of cattle. David has a close relationship with a girl in the castle and returns to save her?

How long will satellite repeaters last?

jsonic — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 11:16:54 -0800

Ham Operators: In the event of the apocalypse, how long will satellite-based repeaters last? Are some of the satellite repeaters in completely stable orbits, thus requiring no fuel to maintain orbit? Are the electronics expected to die after a certain period of time? It seems as if the oldest fully-functioning amateur satellite repeater was launched in 1974.

On a side-note, in the event of societal collapse, is the complication of using satellites to bounce signals around the planet worth the effort? Is there a much easier method of communicating (ie. short-wave, higher-power, etc.)?

I want to be entirely clear, THIS IS NOT MY HOUSE.

Medieval Maven — Sun, 17 May 2009 16:57:36 -0800

A place that my husband and I spend a lot of time in has termites. A plethora of questions about termites and my possibly insane level of fear about them follows. So, I help to run a theater group, and we work out of this building that belongs to the city. It's made out of, and I am not making this up, timbers from a bridge that burned sometime after the civil war. The building's whole story is quite long, but right now we have noted that recently termites swarmed in there. They are dead - well, a lot of them are - there are still some live ones around. We have a bunch of fabric stored in a dry room that is on the 2nd floor - the place where most of the infestation seems to be is also on the 2nd floor, but not in our room. (We looked. A lot.) I think they are IN the beams that are built into the walls in the main rooms (our room is NOT a main room). I am freaking out on a couple of levels:

1) Can we bring these things HOME with us? (We have a termite contract on our house.)

2) Our stored fabric. Do they care about it? Termites? They are not in there right now, but we don't really have anywhere to PUT it otherwise. I think they will eat cotton. :/ if we are not seeing them in there . . . are we okay? I have no idea what to do.

This is a very old building so I accept that there are bugs and maybe some mice (that are routinely treated for) but this termite thing is FREAKING ME THE EFF OUT because they look SO APOCALYPTIC. FWIW the site coordinator knows that there is a problem - at least us and the cleaning lady have told him already that there is a serious issue and he's there daily so he should know. Thank you in advance.

Financial Advice for Dummies.

ElmerFishpaw — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 11:15:17 -0800

This has my parents spooked. Tell me how to ease their financial fears. I guess what was supposed to be safe ("FDIC Insured") is no longer so safe in their eyes. Are they right? They have pretty much their entire savings in an ING savings account and are way spooked. Can you link me to something saying ING is safe and FDIC insured means "Youre all good Mom, dont worry."?

Unless, of course their fears are actually valid. Then what should they do? What should any of us do?!

It's not the end of the world...

jasondbarr — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:29:34 -0800

Reading this article (and a USA Today story linked in it) this morning, and I'm curious about an astronomical event mentioned in it. So, all of the silliness surrounding the end of the world in 2012 seems to be predicated on the fact that the end of this particular "long cycle" in the Mayan calendar occurs on a winter solstice, and the fact that our sun will align with the center of the Milky Way galaxy on the same day. Apparently, this type of alignment occurs only once every 26,000 years.

What does that mean? I'm not a mathematician or an astronomer, but my understanding is that in Euclidian geometry, two points can be connected to form a line at all times. So, technically, the sun and the center of the galaxy are always "aligned" from this standpoint. And, if we're dealing with this as the sun and the center of the galaxy aligning from the perspective of Earth, it seems like it should happen more often. Since the Earth revolves around the Sun, and the Sun revolves around the center of the galaxy, there have to be plenty of times (once a year, at least) where these three points (Earth, Sun, and Center of Galaxy) line up.

What am I missing? I'm not worried about a cosmic catastrophe, but this seems to me like it should be a fairly common occurrence, and not justification for losing your mind about the apocalypse.

No One Would Have Believed...

turgid dahlia — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 15:16:57 -0800

First contact and apocalyptic sci-fi recommendations please. I am a big fan of first contact science fiction, first contact being the moment wherein the human species – generally the protagonists – make contact with extraterrestrial intelligences or artefacts. I’m thinking along the lines of Sagan’s Contact, most of Stanislaw Lem’s work (The Invincible, Solaris, His Master’s Voice and the wondrous Fiasco), but particularly Clarke’s Rendezvous With Rama, Pohl’s Gateway, Budrys’ Rogue Moon and Bear’s Eon.

I find the latter sorts of stories particularly thrilling. An abandoned BDO (Big Dumb Object) filled with mysteries and terrors, which must be explored and scientifically understood. They are equal parts creepy and fascinating.

Of course, it doesn’t have to be an intelligence or an artefact. Baxter’s Moonseed was remarkable, and that was basically about a kind of dirt.

And for me, apocalyptic sci-fi (I’m thinking Footfall, The Forge of God, Blood Music, etc.) is great because it’s fun to watch the human race get wiped out, or nearly so. I know this is technically two questions but I figure science fiction aficionados would be happy to share their favourites in both genres.

So I guess I’m just after suggestions along those lines: hard (preferably) sci-fi about humankind’s first experience with a mysterious alien force, be it hostile, neutral, friendly, or simply extinct; and hard (preferably) sci-fi about humankind being taken to the very brink of continued existence.

How much of the telephone and Internet systems would survive a nuke?

wastelands — Sun, 28 Dec 2008 07:40:53 -0800

Would the landline telephone system be completely down after a nuclear strike on ~20 U.S. cities? I'm an avid post-apocalypse buff, and I've been watching Jericho on Netflix's Watch Instantly lately. I love the show. But a few points of realism bug me, specifically, the lack of communication by radio / phone / Internet in the show.

Would the landline telephone network actually be down as portrayed in the show? I could be wrong, but wouldn't regional parts of it still survive? Or is the assumption that the bombs would have screwed up trunks/backbones and major switching centers? Or maybe general lack of electricity would kill it?

In the same vein, how much of Internet access would survive in the "Nukes hitting 20 major cities" scenario? It's supposed to be distributed, but again, maybe the idea is that big trunks were severed?

The sense of isolation and lack of communication and news in the show makes it more ominous and mysterious, but I somehow doubt it's realistic. I mean, if nothing else, there'd be Ham radio operators relaying news, right?

Post-apocalypse in comic book form?

cowbellemoo — Sat, 11 Oct 2008 23:13:07 -0800

Comic Book Recommendation: What well-done series are like the Age of Apocalypse? (Whole-Earth holocaust featuring emotionally vulnerable resistance fighters/mutants/superheroes) Preferably serious in tone. Any imprint and series duration welcome. I'm after a great ruinous setting and emotional realism more than the appeal of a crossover/what-if/movie franchise/gimmick title, but those are welcome too if the quality is great.

Help finding a horse poem

Chairboy — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 16:42:33 -0800

I'm trying to find a quietly apocalyptic poem that featured horses - can anyone help? I also seem to remember that it mentioned a ship passing by, and then perhaps a plane on different days, and after so many days had passed some horses arrived and I think that may have been how it ended. It was in an anthology (perhaps one of the Touchstones series?) which I studied at school in the UK in the early 80's but my google-fu has deserted me on this one. Can any literary mefites help?

what's the worse that could happen in finances today?

ictow — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 17:54:51 -0800

I was listening to public radio this morning and they were talking about the current financial crisis on Wall Street. The expert said, "We will pull through this. America is resilient." That surprised me, as the idea of us not pulling through never occurred to me. But now I'm wondering: what would happen if we didn't "pull through"? As in, explain to me the rock bottom scenario for the United States' current situation and how we get to it. Obviously make it realistic it enough that I can have some really substantial nightmares.

What useful trade can I learn to survive a collapsed economy?

sportbucket — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 13:05:03 -0800

What's a trade I can learn now, as a hobby, that will be useful if/when the economy collapses? Carpentry? Beer/wine making? Animal husbandry? This isn't totally reactionary fear-mongering, I was thinking about this before everyone started talking about the economic apocalypse, but now it seems a little more timely. Is there a useful trade I can learn in a year or so and practice as a hobby, maybe make some side money, that would be useful to be in a collapsed economy?

Nevermind for a minute that economic collapse isn't exactly an imminent threat -- I just want to learn some practical and marketable skills, if only to gain peace of mind knowing that if I lost my job I'd have something to offer the world.

I'm not a physicist but I play one in front of my friends

Navelgazer — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:46:39 -0800

Help me explain why the Large Hadron Collider doesn't spell our doom. I know that all the doom-saying is bullshit, and that the (American) Media keeps talking about the paranoia because it's sexier than talking about the science, but my understanding of physics, while better than average, is still not authoritative. This is essentially what I've been saying to people (and all of the people I've been talking to are highly intelligent, at least enough to care about the LHC, but not really scientifically educated) who bring up the "destroy the earth" theory:

The LHC was just fired up, in a month CERN will start firing beams in the other direction. The expected result is to produce in miniature conditions similar to those at the very beginning of the universe. It is possible that such collisions will produce a microscopic black hole, which sounds bad, but even if that happens, it's not anything to worry about, because the destructive power of a black hole comes from its mass, and the mass of a few protons won't have enough gravitational power to do anything destructive to something with so, so much more mass (i.e. the earth.)

I feel like this explanation must be somewhat correct, but I've also been talking out of my ass. Can someone with better understanding help me with my argument, please?

Thank you.

I need Math People to help me find out how long it takes 2 Last (Wo)Men on Earth to meet.

mr_book — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 09:36:34 -0800

How long should it reasonably take before 2 "Last Men on Earth" meet? I'm writing a story about a post-apocalyptic mathematician, something to do with zombies. Any such character would naturally be inclined to work the following problem in such a situation. My difficulty lies in myself having very few mathematical skills (2 +2 is four, heh heh heh, me smart). So, Hive Mind, assist me!

Question: Assuming that there has been a global catastrophe of Hollywood proportions and most of the human race has died off (or become zombies, etc), and assuming that any lone survivors will, eventually, come to think of themselves as the "Last (Wo)Man on Earth" in the Richard Matheson vein, and assuming a slow rate of travel among these LMOE, how long will it take before 2 LMOE meet, and how many LMOE are there on Earth in total?

Assumption 1: Most of the human race has died off. Let's assume that 99.99% of the global human population is gone, just so we have something to work with.

Assumption 2: Lone survivors come to believe themselves as the Last Man on Earth. Let's assume that it takes 3 months of being alone to come to this assumption. This assumption is contingent on not seeing another -living- human being during this time, so we can expect city dwellers to have a margin of error here leading them to come to this conclusion later than their rural or islander counterparts, being as there should (at first) be more survivors in cities. However, they can't be considered LMOE unless they end of alone, so it may take some time for their fellow survivors to die off and thus the margin of error. If their fellow survivors never die off, they can't be considered LMOE. Let's say any group of survivors has a half-life of 1 week, and no group can begin with more than 8 survivors.

Assumption 3: A slow rate of travel among the LMOE. Let's say, for the sake of the problem, that half the LMOE are home-based and half are travel-based. Home-based LMOE stay within their little "fortified zone" of about 5 square miles (gathering supplies, killing zombies, and waiting out the storm going slowly insane). Travel-Based LMOE move slowly (at about 5 miles per day) due to travel hazards such as zombie hordes, traffic blocks, fires, etc. They're determined to find other survivors and thus keep themselves from madness.

Hidden Assumption 4: The game begins on Day 0. Day 0 is the day when the travel-based LMOE begin moving, the home-based LMOE start gathering supplies, and city-based groups of survivors begin dying off down to single LMOE.

How many days will it take before any 2 LMOE meet?

I realize I am not a mathematician (I am in fact, and English major and the opposite of a mathematician), and so any data that needs to be filled in, altered, or deleted should be in order for the problem to be solved.

Cheers.

Turn your key, sir.

Happy Dave — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 16:20:38 -0800

Are there any documented instances of disaster/apocalypse training exercises where the participants could not be sure if it was real or not? I was watching this episode of Spooks (MI5 in the US), which follows the team through a simulated nerve gas attack on ten British cities. As the episode progresses, the increasingly agitated group begins to suspect that the incident may be real, their fears fuelled by news broadcasts, crackly video linkups with other control centres and so on.

Another good example of this is the "Turn Your Key Sir!" scene from Wargames.

I find the whole idea of these kinds of exercises, the pressure they place on civil and military forces and the post-event effects of believing something truly terrible has happened absolutely fascinating.

Are there any books, documentaries, articles or websites which discuss this kind of immersive simulation, and its effects on preparedness and the people involved?

Because everyone should be useful somehow.

Skorgu — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 06:04:20 -0800

What are some humorous descriptions/job titles/uses for otherwise "useless" people during the zombie apocalypse, end of the world, WWIII, etc.?

CarbonationFilter! How long would it take for an unopened can of soda pop to go flat? Would it ever?

kittens for breakfast — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 17:45:42 -0800

CarbonationFilter! How long would it take for an unopened can of soda pop to go flat? Would it ever? So I'm reading Cormac McCarthy's The Road, which all takes place in some vaguely defined post-apocalyptic setting that seems to be the aftermath of a nuclear war, and there's a scene where the main character finds a can of Coke and gives it to his son. The father first pops the top and sniffs it, and carbonation tickles his nose. The book doesn't specify exactly how long ago the war was, but -- given that the kid was born days after it happened, and now seems to be six or seven -- well, that Coke's about six or seven years old. That it still hasn't gone flat doesn't strike me as impossible, but it does make me wonder how long a sealed can of soda pop would retain its carbonated properties. Anybody?

They're dead, but they're comin' right for us!

rinosaur — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 09:20:44 -0800

Help me find the perfect gift for a zombie enthusiast. My friend and I are big fans of zombie/apocalypse movies. We spend a lot of time imagining how we and our rag-tag group of friends will survive the coming zombie apocalypse. After coming off of I Am Legend this weekend, I had the idea to get him a tool or other instrument to aid in our ultimate survival as a jokey Christmas gift. The trouble is, I can’t think of anything clever that fits the bill. He is an avid hunter, so he’s already got camping/outdoorsy survival stuff. Ideally I would be able to go to a store to buy it (rather than the internet), and I'd like to spend less than $25, but if the gift kicks ass, I would be willing to spend more and/or order online. Extra points if it’s generally useful or entertaining and won’t just collect dust.

If all else fails, other general zombie gift ideas are welcomed.

Thanks!

Horsemen of the apocalypse paintings?

BlackLeotardFront — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:10:31 -0800

I'm looking for a few pieces of art I saw on the net a couple years ago. They were individual pieces of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, and by a relatively modern artist with a name like Durand, Dorand, or something like that. Ring a bell? All my googling of things like "apocalypse painting," "pale horse," etc with/without my suspected artist's name in there has been for naught. Maybe someone will have better luck? No, it's not Dore... but I love that etching of his.

Help me survive the coming apocalypse!

incomple — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 21:42:47 -0800

I'm looking for a program (in NYC, ideally) that will help me survive the coming apocalypse. I'd like to learn a wide set of survival skills (how to make water potable, first aid, self defense, scrounging/farming food, making clothes and shelter, etc.) that will help me and my loved ones escape Manhattan in a crisis situation, and then survive in the Thunderdome world that lies beyond.

Any program that incorporates swimming skills, weapons training, and so forth would be a huge plus as well (or any recommendations for practical weapons training, or swimming lessons for adults, would also be appreciated).

I'm also up for programs outside of NYC (but still ideally in the general vicinity), provided that it's just an intensive few days. Thanks for any recommendations.

Would the internet survive Armageddon?

szechuan — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 19:24:50 -0800

Would the internet survive Armageddon? For the purposes of a work of fiction, I am trying to ascertain what likely forms of communication would be available after an apocalyptic event (full scale nuclear war, some sort of pathogen that results in massive depopulation etc). All internet history notes that it was designed to survive, but is this only in the context of dedicated machines in government bunkers?

Obvious impediments would be EMP damage to computers, lack of electricity, general unavailability of ISPs. But if you can power your laptop on your bicycle, and you have the right equipment, will the internet still be available after the end of the world?

Point me to a map of the effects of global warming

greggish — Mon, 21 May 2007 10:57:41 -0800

I'm looking for a dynamic map (of the USA, or of the world) that will graphically display various trends relating to climate change and the effects of global warming in the next century. So, if I want to see the projections of sea level rise over the next century, I can call that data up on the map; same for agricultural production patterns, extreme weather forecast, etc. Perhaps this map could be manipulated to show separate displays for the best, most likely, and worst case scenarios.

Does such a map exist on the interweb, or is it just an awesome idea that someone should totally get to work on asap?

The Most Exciting Library

tmcw — Mon, 05 Feb 2007 21:34:33 -0800

ChildhoodMemoryFilter... I keep remembering a Laserdisc movie from way back that included a library, the dewey decimal system, and a force field... I can't remember much more, but I think it was the last library on earth or something of that sort, and it had a spherical force field around it, as well as something underground. I was absolutely taken by whatever this educational film was, but I can't find it even with the most fervent Googling. Any ideas? This is an educational film, almost definitely on LaserDisc, played in New Jersey around 1991? to teach kids about libraries.

Shit, still in Saigon.

mwhybark — Sat, 23 Dec 2006 10:50:09 -0800

Who holds copyright to Hearts of Darkness^, and why did they block inclusion of the documentary in the recently-released Apocalypse Now: The Complete Dossier DVD set?