Horsemen of the Apocalypse - or fears?

Experience shows that too loud alarmism reduces the sensitivity of humanity to further alarms. Perhaps this would be quite normal if it were not for the fear that we may not respond to a real disaster alert (1).

Within six decades of the success of the book "Silent Spring", authorship Rachel Carson, 1962 and five since its release Club of Rome report, born in 1972 ("Limits to Growth"), prophecies of doom on a colossal scale have become routine media topics.

The last half century has brought us, among other things, Warnings against: population explosions, global famines, disease epidemics, water wars, oil depletion, mineral shortages, declining birth rates, ozone dilution, acid rain, nuclear winters, millennium bugs, mad cow disease, bees -killers, brain cancer epidemics caused by mobile phones. and, finally, climate catastrophes.

Until now, essentially all these fears have been exaggerated. True, we have faced obstacles, threats to public health and even mass tragedies. But noisy Armageddons, thresholds that humanity cannot cross, critical points that cannot be survived, do not materialize.

In the classical biblical Apocalypse there are four horsemen (2). Let's say their modernized version is a four: chemical substances (DDT, CFC - chlorofluorocarbons, acid rain, smog), disease (avian flu, swine flu, SARS, Ebola, mad cow disease, recently Wuhan coronavirus), extra people (overpopulation, famine) i lack of resources (oil, metals).

2. "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" - a painting by Viktor Vasnetsov.

Our riders may also include phenomena over which we have no control and which we cannot prevent or from which we cannot protect ourselves. If, for example, huge sums are released methane from methane clathrates at the bottom of the oceans, there is nothing we can do about it, and the consequences of such a disaster are difficult to predict.

To hit the ground sun storm with a scale similar to the so-called Carrington events of 1859, one can somehow prepare, but the global destruction of the telecommunications and energy infrastructure that is the bloodstream of our civilization would be a global catastrophe.

It would be even more destructive for the whole world supervolcano eruption like Yellowstone. However, all these are phenomena, the likelihood of which is currently unknown, and the prospects for prevention and protection from the consequences are at least unclear. So - maybe it will, maybe not, or maybe we will save, or maybe not. This is an equation with almost all unknowns.

Is the forest dying? Really?

3. Cover of the 1981 magazine Der Spiegel about acid rain.

The chemicals that humanity produces and releases into the environment are fairly well known, from the plant protection product DDT, which was identified as a carcinogen several decades ago, through air pollution, acid rain, to ozone-destroying chlorocarbons. Each of these pollutants had an "apocalyptic" media career.

Life magazine wrote in January 1970:

“Scientists have strong experimental and theoretical evidence to support predictions that in ten years, city dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive. air pollution"Which in turn until 1985"reduce the amount of sunlight halfway to earth.

Meanwhile, in the years that followed, changes brought about partly by various regulations and partly by various innovations drastically reduced vehicle exhaust and chimney pollution, leading to significant improvements in air quality in many cities in developed countries over the next few decades.

Emissions of carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, lead, ozone and volatile organic compounds have dropped significantly and continue to drop. We can say that it was not the predictions that were wrong, but the correct reaction of mankind to them. However, not all dark scenarios are affected.

In the 80s, they became the source of another wave of apocalyptic predictions. acid rain. In this case, mainly forests and lakes should have suffered from human activity.

In November 1981, the cover of The Forest is Dying (3) appeared in the German magazine Der Spiegel, showing that a third of the forests in Germany are already dead or dying, and Bernhard Ulrich, a soil researcher at the University of Göttingen, said the forests "can no longer be saved." He spread the forecast of forest death from acid tremors throughout Europe. Fred Pierce in New Scientist, 1982. The same can be seen in US publications.

However, in the United States, a 500-year government-sponsored study was conducted, involving about 1990 scientists and costing approximately $XNUMX million. In XNUMX, they showed that "there is no evidence of a general or unusual reduction in forest cover in the United States and Canada due to acid rain."

In Germany Heinrich Spieker, director of the Institute for Forest Growth, after conducting similar studies, concluded that forests are growing faster and healthier than ever, and in the 80s their condition improved.

Speaker said.

It has also been observed that one of the main components of acid rain, nitric oxide, breaks down in nature into nitrate, a fertilizer for trees. It was also found that the acidification of the lakes was likely caused by reforestation rather than acid rain. One study found that the correlation between rainwater acidity and pH in lakes is very low.

And then the rider of the Apocalypse fell off his horse.

4. Changes in the shape of the ozone hole in recent years

The Blind Rabbits of Al Gore

After scientists made records in the 90s for a while expansion of the ozone hole The trumpets of doom sounded over Antarctica as well, this time due to the increasing dose of ultraviolet radiation that ozone protects from.

People began to notice the alleged increase in the incidence of melanoma in humans and the disappearance of frogs. Albert Gore wrote in 1992 about blind salmon and rabbits, and the New York Times reported on sick sheep in Patagonia. Blame was placed on chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used in refrigerators and deodorants.

Most of the reports, as it turned out later, were incorrect. Frogs were dying from human-transmitted fungal diseases. Sheep had viruses. Mortality from melanoma has not really changed, and as for blind salmon and rabbits, no one has heard of them anymore.

There was an international agreement to phase out the use of CFCs by 1996. However, it was difficult to see the expected effects because the hole stopped growing before the ban went into effect, and then changed regardless of what was introduced.

The ozone hole continues to grow over Antarctica every spring, at about the same rate every year. Nobody knows why. Some scientists believe that the breakdown of harmful chemicals simply takes longer than expected, while others believe that the cause of all the confusion was misdiagnosed in the first place.

Ulcers are not what they used to be

Too infection He does not seem to be such a formidable horseman today as he was in the past when, for example, the Black Death (5) cut the population of Europe by about half in the 100th century and could have killed over XNUMX million people. person all over the world. While our imaginations are filled with the brutal mass pandemics of centuries ago, modern epidemics are, colloquially speaking, "without beginning" for the old plague or cholera.

5. An English engraving from 1340 depicting the burning of clothes after the victims of the Black Death.

AIDS, once called the "plague of the XNUMXth century", and then the XNUMXst century, despite significant media coverage, is not as dangerous for humanity as it once seemed. 

In the 80s, British cattle began to die from mad cow diseasecaused by an infectious agent in feed from the remains of other cows. As people began to contract the disease, the predictions for the extent of the epidemic quickly became dire.

According to one study, up to 136 people were expected to die. people. Pathologists warned that the British "must prepare for perhaps thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of cases of vCJD (new Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, or the human manifestation of mad cow disease). However, the total number of deaths in the UK at the moment is ... one hundred and seventy-six, of which five occurred in 2011, and already in 2012 none were registered.

In 2003 it's time SARS, a virus from domestic cats that led to quarantines in Beijing and Toronto amid the prophecy of a global Armageddon. SARS retired within a year, killing 774 people (it officially caused the same number of deaths in the first decade of February 2020 - about two months after the first cases appeared).

In 2005 it broke out bird flu. The official forecast of the World Health Organization at that time estimated from 2 to 7,4 million deaths. By the end of 2007, when the disease began to subside, the total number of deaths was about 200 people.

In 2009 the so-called mexican swine flu. World Health Organization Director-General Margaret Chan said: "The whole of humanity is at risk of a pandemic." The epidemic turned out to be a common case of the flu.

Wuhan coronavirus looks more dangerous (we are writing this in February 2020), but it is still not a plague. None of these diseases can compare with the flu, which a hundred years ago, with the help of one of the strains, claimed the lives of perhaps up to 100 million people worldwide in two years. And it still kills. According to the American organization Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) - approximately 300 to 600 thousand. person in the world every year.

Thus, known contagious diseases, which we almost "routinely" treat, kill many more people than "apocalyptic" epidemics.

Neither too many people nor too few resources

Decades ago, overpopulation and the resulting famine and depletion of resources were on the agenda of dark visions of the future. However, things have happened over the past few decades that contradict black predictions. Mortality rates have declined and areas of the world's hungry have shrunk.

Population growth rates have halved, perhaps also because when children stop dying, people stop having so many of them. Over the past half century, world food production per capita has increased even though the world's population has doubled.

Farmers have been so successful in increasing production that food prices have fallen to record lows at the start of the new millennium, and forests across much of Western Europe and North America have been restored. It must be admitted, however, that the policy of converting some of the world's grain into motor fuel has partly reversed this decline and pushed prices up again.

The world population is unlikely to double again, while it quadrupled in 2050. As the situation with seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, transport and irrigation improves, the world is expected to be able to feed 9 billion inhabitants by the year 7, and this with less land than is used to feed XNUMX billion people.

Threatening depletion of fuel resources (See also 🙂 were as hot a topic as overpopulation a few decades ago. According to them, crude oil was going to run out for a long time, and gas would run out and rise in price at an alarming rate. Meanwhile, in 2011, the International Energy Agency calculated that the world's gas reserves will last for 250 years.Known oil reserves are rising, not falling.It is not only about the discovery of new fields, but also the development of techniques for extracting gas, as well as oil from shale.

Not only energy, but also metal resources they should have ended soon. In 1970, Harrison Brown, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, predicted in Scientific American that lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone by 1990. The authors of the aforementioned 1992-year-old Club of Rome bestseller The Limits to Growth predicted as early as XNUMX the depletion of key raw materials, and the next century would even bring the collapse of civilization.

Is radical containment of climate change harmful?

Climate change it is difficult to join our riders as they are rather the result of many different human activities and practices. So, if they are, and there are some doubts about this, then this will be the apocalypse itself, and not its cause.

But should we even be concerned about global warming?

The question remains too bipolar for many specialists. One of the main implications of the failed predictions of the environmental apocalypses of the past is that while it is hard to say that nothing happened, indirect possibilities and particular phenomena were too often excluded from consideration.

In the climate debate, we often hear those who believe that a catastrophe is inevitable with total consequences, and those who believe that all this panic is a hoax. Moderates are far less likely to come forward, not by warning that the Greenland ice sheet is "about to disappear" but by reminding them that it can melt no faster than the current rate of less than 1% per century.

They also argue that increasing net precipitation (and carbon dioxide concentrations) can increase agricultural productivity, that ecosystems have previously withstood sudden temperature changes, and that adapting to gradual climate change may be cheaper and less environmentally damaging than a quick and violent decision to move away from fossil fuels.

We have already seen some evidence that humans can prevent global warming catastrophes. Good example malariaonce widely predicted will be exacerbated by climate change. However, in the 25th century, the disease has disappeared from most of the world, including North America and Russia, despite global warming. Moreover, in the first decade of this century, the death rate from it has decreased by an astonishing XNUMX%. Although warmer temperatures are favorable for vector mosquitoes, at the same time, new antimalarial drugs, improved land reclamation, and economic development have limited the incidence of the disease.

Overreacting to climate change can even worsen the situation. After all, the promotion of biofuels as an alternative to oil and coal has led to the destruction of tropical forests (6) to grow viable crops for fuel production and, as a result, carbon emissions, a simultaneous increase in food prices and thus the threat of world hunger.

6. Visualization of fires in the Amazon jungle.

Space is dangerous, but it is not known how, when and where

The real rider of the Apocalypse and Armageddon may be a meteoritewhich, depending on its size, could even destroy our entire world (7).

It is not known exactly how likely this threat is, but we were reminded of it in February 2013 by an asteroid that fell into Chelyabinsk, Russia. More than a thousand people were injured. Fortunately, no one died. And the culprit turned out to be just a 20-meter piece of rock that imperceptibly penetrated into the Earth's atmosphere - because of its small size and the fact that it was flying from the side of the Sun.

7. Catastrophic meteorite

Scientists believe that objects up to 30 m in size should normally burn in the atmosphere. Those from 30 m to 1 km have the risk of destruction on a local scale. The appearance of larger objects near the Earth can have consequences that are felt throughout the planet. The largest potentially dangerous celestial body of this type discovered by NASA in space, Tutatis, reaches 6 km.

It is estimated that every year at least several dozen major newcomers from the group of so-called. next to the Earth (). We are talking about asteroids, asteroids and comets, the orbits of which are close to the orbit of the Earth. It is assumed that these are objects whose part of the orbit is less than 1,3 AU from the Sun.

According to the NEO Coordination Center, owned by the European Space Agency, at the moment it is known about 15 thousand NEO objects. Most of them are asteroids, but this group also includes over a hundred comets. More than half a thousand are classified as objects with a probability of collision with the Earth greater than zero. The United States, the European Union and other countries continue to search for NEO objects in the sky as part of an international program.

Of course, this is not the only project to monitor the security of our planet.

Within the framework of the Program Asteroid Hazard Assessment (CRANE – Asteroid Threat Assessment Project) NASA Achieves Target supercomputers, using them to simulate collisions of dangerous objects with the Earth. Accurate modeling allows you to predict the extent of possible damage.

Great merit in the detection of objects has Wide Field Infrared Viewer (WISE) – NASA's Infrared Space Telescope launched on December 14, 2009. Over 2,7 million photographs have been taken. In October 2010, after completing the main task of the mission, the telescope ran out of coolant.

However, two of the four detectors could continue to function and were used to continue the mission called neowise. In 2016 alone, NASA, with the help of the NEOWISE observatory, discovered more than a hundred new rock objects in the immediate vicinity. Ten of them were classified as potentially hazardous. The published statement pointed to a hitherto unexplained increase in cometary activity.

As surveillance techniques and devices evolve, the amount of information about threats is rapidly increasing. Recently, for example, representatives of the Institute of Astronomy of the Czech Academy of Sciences stated that asteroids with destructive potential that threaten entire countries may be hiding in the swarm of Taurids, which regularly cross the Earth's orbit. According to the Czechs, we can expect them in 2022, 2025, 2032 or 2039.

In keeping with the philosophy that the best defense is an attack on asteroids, which are probably the biggest media and cinematic threat, we have an offensive method, albeit still theoretical. As yet conceptual, but seriously discussed, NASA's mission to "reverse" an asteroid is called dart().

A satellite the size of a refrigerator should collide with a really harmless object. Scientists want to see if this is enough to change the intruder's trajectory slightly. This kinetic experiment is sometimes considered the first step in building the Earth's protective shield.

8. Visualization of the DART mission

The body that the American agency wants to hit with this shot is called Didymos B and crosses space in tandem with Didymosem A. According to scientists, it is easier to measure the consequences of a planned strike in a binary system.

It is expected that the device will collide with the asteroid at a speed of more than 5 km / s, which is nine times the speed of a rifle bullet. The effect will be observed and measured by precision instruments on Earth. The measurements will show scientists how much kinetic energy a car must have to successfully change the course of this type of space object.

Last November, the US government held an inter-agency exercise to respond to a predicted Earth impact with a large-scale asteroid. The test was conducted with the participation of NASA. The processed scenario included actions taken in connection with a likely collision with an object ranging in size from 100 to 250 m, determined (of course, only for the project) on September 20, 2020.

During the exercise, it was determined that the asteroid will complete its space journey, falling into the region of southern California or near its coast in the Pacific Ocean. The possibility of a mass evacuation of people from Los Angeles and the surrounding area was checked - and we are talking about 13 million people. During the exercise, not only the models for predicting the consequences of a disaster described in the study were tested, but also a strategy for neutralizing various sources of rumors and false information that could become a serious factor influencing public opinion.

Earlier, in early 2016, thanks to NASA's collaboration with other US agencies and institutions dealing with security issues, a report was prepared in which, among other things, we read:

“While it is highly unlikely that a NEO impact that threatens human civilization will occur in the next two centuries, the risk of minor catastrophic impacts remains very real.”

For many threats, early detection is the key to preventing, protecting, or even minimizing damaging effects. The development of defensive techniques goes hand in hand with the improvement of detection methods.

Currently, a number of specialized ground observatorieshowever, exploration in space also seems to be necessary. They allow infrared observationswhich are not normally possible from the atmosphere.

Asteroids, like planets, absorb heat from the sun and then radiate it in the infrared. This radiation would create a contrast against the background of empty space. Therefore, European astronomers from ESA plan, among other things, to launch as part of the mission Hourly a telescope that, in 6,5 years of operation, will be able to detect 99% of objects that can cause great damage when they come into contact with the Earth. The device should rotate around the Sun, closer to our star, near the orbit of Venus. Located "back" to the Sun, it will also register those asteroids that we cannot see from Earth due to strong sunlight - as was the case with the Chelyabinsk meteorite.

NASA recently announced that it wants to detect and characterize all asteroids that pose a potential threat to our planet. According to the former deputy head of NASA, Lori Garver, the US agency has been working for some time to detect bodies of this type near the Earth.

- she said. -

Early warning is also critical if we are to prevent the destruction of technical infrastructure as a result of an impact. solar coronal mass ejection (CME). Recently, this is one of the main possible space threats.

The Sun is constantly observed by several space probes, such as NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) and the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) of the European agency ESA, as well as the probes of the STEREO system. Every day they collect more than 3 terabytes of data. Experts analyze them, reporting on possible threats to spacecraft, satellites and aircraft. These "sunny weather forecasts" are provided in real time.

A system of actions is also provided for in case of the possibility of a large CME, which poses a civilizational threat to the entire Earth. An early signal should allow all devices to be turned off and wait for the magnetic storm to end until the worst pressure has passed. Of course, there will be no losses, because some electronic systems, including computer processors, will not survive without power. However, the timely shutdown of equipment would save at least the vital infrastructure.

Cosmic threats - asteroids, comets and jets of destructive radiation - undoubtedly have apocalyptic potential. It is also hard to deny that these phenomena are not unreal, since they have happened in the past, and not at all infrequently. It is interesting, however, that they are by no means one of the favorite topics of the alarmists. Except, perhaps, doomsday preachers in various religions.