So I was watching this documentary yesterday, and you guessed it. It was about the earth becoming uninhabitable and humans having to be sent away to other planets in order to save the human race. It was called Evacuation Earth, and it was on National Geographic. I've thought about all kinds of ways we could do this, things that could go wrong, why it wouldn't work, why it would work, and what could be some possible outcomes if we had to evacuate the planet. So based on things I've thought of myself and things that I got from the film, I'm going to take you through, step by step, what we would have to do, some potential problems that could occur, some things that might be possible, and some things that would inevitably be impossible. And I'm mostly just going through what was said in the documentary, but I'm adding my input to it - my questions, my thoughts, my concerns that were not raised in the film. Maybe you guys have some input too. And just so you guys know, the documentary has a lot more specific information, is really intense and entertaining, has great graphics and images if you're confused about what things I'm trying to explain actually look like, and has really cool music. So you should check it out here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=95n9BclgBUM.
I have explored tons of the ways the world could end in my note, "End of Ze World." There are all kinds of scenarios that could occur, but the one that the film writers used in the documentary was the impact of a neutron star, which is like a meteor. It's a star in another galaxy that died. When a star dies, it collapses in on itself, and debris from it is sent hurtling through space. This would be our first clue. We would get all kinds of crazy, unprecedented meteor showers that killed crazy numbers of people, so we'd look into it and be able to predict approximately where the neutron star has sent itself hurtling off to, and approximately how long it would take it hit earth if earth was in its path. And of course, in this example, earth is definitely in its path. So these scientists were able to predict that it would take 75 years for the neutron star to reach earth. So how would people react to this news? Plenty of people would not believe it, but I would say most people would end up realizing it was the truth after a period of times goes by. Supposedly, based on a theory I learned in one of my classes in college, when humans are faced with certain doom, they are more likely to band together for a common good than to fall apart, destroy each other, and lose hope. However, there's no way to know what would really happen, and with an earth is big and full of so many different kinds of people who come from different cultures and don't even speak the same languages, there are so many things that could and inevitably would go wrong here.
Now my substitute teacher in the 6th grade told me that we'd relocate to the moon if we had to leave earth. That is obviously not possible in this scenario, since the neutron star would wipe out the moon along with the earth. If the world ended some other way, like because of a pandemic, for instance, could we live on the moon? Maybe. I'm not really sure. I mean there's no oxygen up there, so we'd have to build a dome of oxygen. Would that be possible? Anyway, the moon would not be an option in the particular scenario of a neutron star impact. So where would we go? What would we do? I guess an earth evacuation plan would be our only hope. So since we've decided to go somewhere other than earth, how do we get there? We would have to build some rockets to send people up into space. How would we get the money? We'd have to forget the idea of money and just all work together to put this thing together for the common good. Would people be willing to do that? There are tons of greedy people out there who will want to keep their money, even if it means nothing anymore. So if we get some people to fund the mission, I guess NASA would be the ones who build the rockets and figure out how to ship them up into space. They would need scientists, architects, engineers, etc. to help create this. They'd have to create an anti-matter engine, so that we'd be able to travel close enough to the speed of light in order to get anywhere in an actual period of time. Is there even a way to do this? Now NASA would probably decide to create an enormous ship that would send an incredible number of people to where ever we decide to go. But this ship can't be a rocket. You can't shoot it out into space, because you can only shoot small objects into space, and they way ships are built, it just wouldn't be possible to shoot them off into space. So what would we need to do? We'd have to send some astronauts into space and shoot parts up to them, so that they could construct the ship while already in space. It's insane to think of that as a possibility, but it's been done before. These parts would need to be created and sent up into space from all kinds of different ports all over the world. It would take total world cooperation and communication.
In the mean time, what will happen on earth as people realize the impending doom? Some religious cults might try to stop the efforts to save the human race. (They may take the signs to mean that God is destroying the world, as promised, and that it would be against God to try to save the human race.) There would be total chaos. Rates of suicide would increase. Rates of homicide, muggings, burglaries, rapes, wars, etc. would increase, because people would stop caring and do whatever they wanted. What would you do if you knew you were going to die soon either way you slice it?
There are plenty of planets out there in the middle of space (in other galaxies, of course) that could potentially work for us, based on what we can know about them. They have oxygen, and some of them may even have water and plant life. So which one do we pick? Well, we'd have to do as much research on it as possible. What if we got there, and there were noxious gases in the atmosphere that we didn't know about? What if there was life on that planet, and that life didn't want us there? Anything could happen! And we really would not know until we got there. So we'd have to do as much research as humanly possible based on what can find out about these planets without actually being there and seeing for ourselves. In the film, scientists picked a planet that was about 80 years away, using an anti-matter engine that we were somehow able to create. How could it be possible to put people on a spaceship and send them somewhere that would take them 80 years to get there? We would literally have to create a little world inside that spaceship. Could we do that? Could we create growing grass, weather, homes, etc.? We would have to do it in order for people to be able to grow and live in this spaceship for 80 years. We could continue to reproduce up there, and then the adults who originally boarded the spaceship would never get to see the new planet we picked to make our new home, but their children and grandchildren would.
But what about gravity? There's no gravity in space. Without gravity, our bones deteriorate, and our health declines in many ways. If you have ever seen videos of astronauts who have been in space for a few months and then came back down to earth, they literally have to be carried off the ship, because they're so weak. They have to completely re-adjust themselves to being in an environment with gravity. Imagine spending a lifetime in zero gravity! And then there's reproduction. Can we reproduce in space? Our reproduction system relies on gravity in order to work. So we'd have to creating artificial gravity, which scientists believe they may be able to do by create a spinning cylinder to contain our spaceship. So NASA would have to figure out how to build that and get it right - the first time, since that's all we'd have.
So how many people can we support in this spaceship? Certainly not 7 billion. So we might be able to take maybe 250,000 people. Who do we choose? Who lives, and who dies? We'd have to have a genetically diverse group of people, or else everyone on the ship would be susceptible to disease. If a few people on a ship with people all contained in a small space together get sick, everyone does, and then everyone dies. That brings me to the next point. We would have to only allow people with perfect health and long life expectancies to board the ship, because we're talking about the survival of our race. So we couldn't allow people with many diseases in their family background to board the ship. I have lots of cancer in my family, so I probably wouldn't get to go. Old people couldn't go. Sick people (like schizophrenics, autistic people, diabetics, etc.) would not be able to go. We'd need people who are used to harsh conditions and have survival skills. We'd also need people with certain sets of skills to go - like doctors, pilots, astronauts, scientists, engineers, etc. And we'd need the best of the best. So who gets to choose? And how do we choose? The film suggested we send "Evacuation Eligibility Kits" to people's houses for them to test themselves and send back to NASA.
So during this choice of who lives and who dies, we'd have to allow people who worked on the spaceship project to go, along with their families. If certain countries backed out of the project and didn't want anything to do with it, should we allow people from their countries to go? How would we tell people who goes and who doesn't? You have to realize that more than 99% of people would not get to go. What would happen when people find out they can't go? Lots of people would try to stop the efforts. Lots of people would revolt. I mean, I don't think anyone would realize just how much chaos would break out. That movie Deep Impact, no matter how good it was, doesn't even make it look like much chaos would break loose during such an event, but that is a huge factor to take into consideration when thinking about whether these efforts would work or not.
As impact time gets closer, we'd have to have shelter. We would preferably need to hide somewhere underground, because the radiation that would come from this star would increase and be brutal and fatal. All kinds of not so natural disasters would occur as the star would begin a major global climate shift. There would be hurricanes, tornadoes, earthquakes, major storms, extreme heat waves, extreme cold weather, volcanic eruptions, etc. of intensities that have never been seen by man before. And these would occur in places they've never occurred before - all over the world. So many people would die during this course of time.
What supplies would we need to send to the spaceship? We would need soil, hopefully some animals, bacteria, and all kinds of other supplies (to ensure that we will have oxygen, gravity, homes, weather, etc.) These people wouldn't be able to eat meat, because it takes way too many vegetables to sustain a cow, so we can kill it and eat it, so it'd be a better bet to just eat those vegetables. The food we'd have to grow would be veggies that could grow in such an environment as outer space. We'd be eating "Chlorella Crackers" and algae, according to the film. And remember, we'd have to take bacteria up there with us in order to keep our digestive systems working, etc.
So what about sending rockets of people up into space to be put onto the spaceship? What if those rockets blew up? I mean they have anti-matter engines, so they can't come into contact with any matter. That's extremely hard to do here on earth. What if our rockets hit some debris in space and exploded? There are so many things that could go wrong when you try to send a rocket up into space. Even if we can't, we've already sent some astronauts up there, so even if we couldn't get any civilians up there, at least we would have some astronauts who would survive and board the spaceship. The only thing is, with such a small group of people who have to procreate and repopulate our race, it's unlikely that our race would survive. So let's say we got some people up there, even if some of our rockets failed. These people would have some major mental health problems, I'm sure. They'd be super depressed, as they'd have to say goodbye to some of their family members, friends, places they grew up, etc. FOREVER.
And you better hope that the artificial gravity, oxygen tanks, and artificial weather work on that ship for 80 years. You better hope you don't run out of food or water. You better hope no mechanical errors arise while you're on that ship. You better hope you can properly dispose of waste, so as to not make everyone sick and disgusting while on board. And you better hope you don't have a pandemic on board, which would be easy with such a small group of people stuck so close together. You also better hope the engine doesn't blow. How do you make an engine that can run for 80 years anyway?
I can't even begin to imagine what life would be like on board the ship. But I know they'd be able to see the huge explosion as the star struck the earth. And they'd know that their loved ones were going through hell at that very moment. And think about it. What happens here on earth? Rape. Murder. War. Disease. What if someone tried to overtake the ship and stop the efforts? You would have to have a kind of small government and police force within the spaceship. You'd have to have rules and laws. You couldn't have a dictatorship, of course, but would we want democracy? Would that work with a group of people that is so small and contained? What would work, and what would we agree on? Once they reached the new planet, there would be all kinds of emotions. Most of the original people who boarded the ship would be dead. Their kids and grandkids would be the ones to touch down on this new planet, so this ship would be all they ever knew so far.
Like I said before, even if we are able to get there, and even if our landing is safe and we're able to touch down, there could be all kinds of things wrong with this new planet that could kill us. So would the human race survive?
Sending supplies and such to space.
Space food. Yum!
Neutron star collapsing in on itself.
The earth during the neutron star collision.
This gives you an idea of what the cylinder-shaped spaceship (in order to allow for artificial gravity) might look like, and in this picture, you can see the astronauts working on building it in space. I couldn't find a picture of the inside of the spaceship, so you should go check out the documentary! You really need to see it, because you can't exactly imagine what it looks like. It's literally like an earth within a spaceship.
This gives you an idea of what the cylinder-shaped spaceship (in order to allow for artificial gravity) might look like, and in this picture, you can see the astronauts working on building it in space. I couldn't find a picture of the inside of the spaceship, so you should go check out the documentary! You really need to see it, because you can't exactly imagine what it looks like. It's literally like an earth within a spaceship.
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