porcus - sappo

38
production
Pondering Points
More strange world
stories – how is it
going to end and
like when?
Well, after we lost the world
cricket quarter-fi nal against Sri
Lanka and then the sevens rugby
fi nal against New Zealand and
the sun continued to rise and set
in the usual way, we do have to
admit that life can carry on and
the world may need more of a jolt
to come to an end than that – ask
any Indian or Kiwi.
This Armageddon/cataclysm/grand fi nale
for what we often think of as the world,
namely our little planet, has occupied
the minds of scientists, philosophers and
religious leaders ever since our ancestors
decided that their lives were infl uenced,
if not ruled, by external forces bigger
than they were, and started worshipping
and placating the sun, moon, rains and
anything else their leaders could think of
to frighten them with.
Inevitably, lists have appeared with the
most likely ten or twenty catastrophes
(that is catastrophes for humankind) that
might extinguish our earth or most of
what we recognise as useful on it, and
PP has selected a few to keep us all
awake while we ponder our exit lines.
How about—
• Global warfare: Ja, selle ou storie,
but just remember there are 20 000
nuclear weapons hanging around waiting
to be used, as well as tanks full of very
nasty biological cultures with no easy
treatments simmering away in hidden
labs.
And: Ever heard of prions? They are
smaller than viruses, devoid of DNA, almost
indestructible by usual disinfectants
and heat treatments, non-immunogenic
(i.e. do not produce an immune response
in the host) and not too fussy about
which host animal they fi nd themselves
in. They cause invariably fatal diseases
with a very long incubation periods and
an unpleasant preference for nervous
tissues, especially the brain.
That’s right, it’s mad cow disease/
Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease and a new
one or two in man/scrapie in sheep/
chronic wasting disease in caribou and
moose. So far nothing in pigs or cockroaches.
It will only take two maniacs far
enough apart geographically and politically
with access to the red button to
take us all out, quickly or slowly.
And what about the Large Hadron
Collider, that atomic race track in
Switzerland that can gee-up sub-atomic
particles like protons to speeds within a
whisper of the speed of light and then
send them on a head-on collision
course? Whose idea of fun is that?
Don’t they know Roger Federer lives
there?
• Natural disasters: Take your pick.
o a collision with an asteroid bigger
even than Bruce Willis and Harrison Ford
between them can handle;
o a really good volcanic eruption blotting
out the sun and changing the temperature
of all the surfaces on earth; inhibiting
the metabolism of the marine plankton
that generate most of our planet’s
oxygen (how many of us thought we only
had trees doing that?) and wiping out
99% or more of the existing species;
o solar fl ares similar to those that have
been seen in other of the billion or two
visible solar systems; a big one will fry us
like bacon or, if for some not altogether
unlikely reason our sun’s radiant heat
output drops by one percent we will go
into an everlasting ice age and wish we
had the present global warming back.
We may well be exercised to keep our
study Group
creep and weaner temperatures within
small limits and we should continue to do
so until the sun gives up on us;
o black holes and colliding dead stars:
the fi rst you can’t see coming (being black
and all) until they suck us and everything
else within a few million light years into the
bottomless pit until the whole universe is
back in its original box, the size of a small
suitcase. Dead stars collide with more of a
crash than all the nuclear weapons plus all
the solar fl ares times a trillion or two – let’s
not stand too close if the astronomers tell
us it’s going to happen!!
• Divine Intervention: Many religions
seem to have this concept as a
sort of default answer to the puzzles of
apparent and inexplicable indifference
on the part of the all-powerful creator towards
what we see as injustice or heroic
and wonderful achievement deserving
of immediate omnipotent attention. Did
the creator plan it all for eternity, making
all the laws of physics, chemistry and
biology just before lighting the blue paper,
waiting for the big bang, seeing that it
worked ok and then just walking away
from this universe?
Not at all we are told the day will
come when all is revealed, all is explained,
justice is done and we will all get
our just deserts.
So why don’t we all start being
kind to each other (not forgetting
our pigs)? It certainly can’t do any
harm in this life, and it just may be
our best investment for a long – very
long — happy experience in the next
one, whether it comes in October
2012 or after a million years.
It’s all rather nerve-wracking; PP will
take his time pondering the chances of
the Bokke in the rugby world cup in the
hope that they can do it again and that
there will not be a head-on stellar catastrophe
in the neighbourhood at half-time
in the fi nal with us 20 points ahead of
New Zealand — or worse still an all-black
hole!
Porcus April/Mei 2011