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7/29/11
Alpha Nerd! Podcast coming straight at you!
Hey people of Earth! Bill here, just wanted to give you the news that we recorded the first podcast last night and it's fucking barnburner!
Gabe, Kevin and myself worked our asses off to bring you the finest in Podcast entertainment!
I'll post updates here and give you the podcast as soon as the editing is done!
Gabe, Kevin and myself worked our asses off to bring you the finest in Podcast entertainment!
I'll post updates here and give you the podcast as soon as the editing is done!
7/8/11
Billions and billions (The nature of existence.)
Around 13.7 billion years ago something pretty rad happened.
If you subscribe to Einstein's crazy "Theory of Relativity" you can look at what happened like this; the Universe was really tiny, so small in fact that it was compressed to the point of being infinite. So to lay that out for you, it was so small that it could be no smaller or more dense. At this point the Universe was really a crazy place, it was just a tiny infinite little spot sitting in, well we don't know what, just waiting for something to happen. There were different rules back then so our current physics don't really apply. There was a great deal of effects from Quantum Gravity (something that we are aware of, but since the Universe is much more spread out now we don't see it's effects the way you would have back at the Planck Epoch. There was infinite heat too! Shit was just CRAZY!
Things just kept being really dense and really hot for an undetermined amount of time, then it happened.
A fucking BIG BANG happened! In an instant there was rapid expansion, something that is still present today. Our infinite little Universe finally wanted to admit that Einstein was right (even though this was a few billion years before his birth) and started conforming to the rules we see around us in the present state of things. This rapid expansion is cataloged today fairly regularly using science that you can experience by going out and standing by the street. Straight up, you guessed it, the Doppler effect.
In the milliseconds (yes, I said milliseconds) following the big bang there was a shitload of activity. The time-frames for most of this stuff is measured in the smallest units of measurement we have for time, Planck time. All of the elementary particles in the Universe conceivably formed within the first few hundred seconds after the bang. The temperature around the Universe fell noticeably, paving the way for the next 50,000 years known as the "Nuclear Age".
During the Nuclear Age almost all of the hydrogen and helium in the Universe was formed. Matter started to become an actual "thing" as pairs and pairs of atoms began to form all over the place. This formative stage lasts until about 200,000,000 years after the big bang when the real shit starts jumping off!
From about 200,000,000 until 300,000,000 years after the bang the larger structures in the Universe started to form paving the way for the Stellar Epoch (creation of stars) which is still happening all around us today.
One of the larger structures that formed is something you might be familiar with:
The Sun, Sol, our best friend. Whatever you call it, the Sun is a big reason that we are here or anything in the general vicinity is. Made up of lots of Hydrogen and Helium (two of the most abundant things in the Universe), the Sun sits at the center of our solar system burning away with a surface temperature of around 5500c. The Sun also accounts for about 98% of the mass in our solar system, which is to say, it's pretty fucking big!
The Sun creates a well of gravity around it, causing things in the nearby Universe to orbit it in a consistent manner. During the formation of our Solar system the Sun's gravity caused all of the matter in it's general vicinity to start spinning and forming in to what we see now, big spheres. All of the planets are formed out of this once loose material, tightly wound from years of orbiting the Sun and compressed in to the bodies we see in the night sky (as well as the one we're standing on).
Here's a breakdown from Berkeley that lays out the early solar system in a better fashion than I'm capable of (I get too excited and start rambling!):
"As astronomers reconstruct it, a cloud of interstellar dust and gas floated in our inconspicuous part of the Milky Way galaxy for several billion years. Then, a nearby supernova explosion blasted new material and a lot of energy into the cloud; as a result, or by coincidence, the cloud began to collapse on itself. Most of the material condensed in the center of the cloud to form a new star, our Sun, but about 1% of the cloud remained in orbit around the new star as dust and gas."
It's that remainder that formed the planets about 4.5 Billion years ago (give or take about 50 million years), making our planets relative newcomers in the Universe.
There is one planet that is rather important to our species, it shelters us from the hostile things that the galaxy has to offer as well as helping out with keeping us in a comfortable spot to live. A planet so special and such a huge part of our lives that we often take it for granted.
Jupiter is one of the biggest factors in our ability to exist as a species. Jupiter is a HUGE ball of mostly hydrogen, which has lead to speculation that it was all set to become a star and never quite got massive enough to make it happen. I like that idea, Arthur C. Clark explored it thoroughly in his 20XX series. In Dr. Clarke's vision Jupiter was a failed star that represented life for the inhabitants of the outer solar system once it was re-born as Lucifer, the second star in our neck of the woods. There is a beauty represented there that I think can really resonate with you if you've ever gazed through a telescope at the 3rd largest body in our night sky.
Jupiter shields us from the onslaught of debris that constantly works its way towards us via the Kuiper Belt. Jupiter's immense gravity works as a moat of sorts for all the millions and millions of objects pulled toward the center of the solar system. Asteroids get close enough to Jupiter to be locked in to the King of Planet's orbit, hence the 60 plus moons that currently orbit the big bastard.
In 2009 we were lucky enough to capture the collision of an object the size of several football fields with Jupiter. The Hubble telescope had just been upgraded and cleaned so they decided to show off in the best way possible. Check it out:
That was a relatively small object in comparison to the often Kilometer wide bodies that are spotted out there. Even then, Jupiter takes it right on the fucking chin. Yeah, there was some of the craziest weather the solar system has ever seen afterwords, but that is nothing new for Jupiter.
Jupiter's weather is the most intense in the solar system. There are segmented layers of different kinds of weather visible on the surface. When those layers contact each other it creates storms of such intense magnitude that they can be seen by amateur astronomers all the time. You might be familiar with the most famous weather system in the near galaxy; the Great Red Spot:
People have observed the GRS since the 17th century. How fucking crazy is that? There is a storm, a fucking STORM that has been going on for hundreds (if not thousands) of years. Beat that hurricanes!
Jupiter's gravity also helped to put us in the "sweet spot" for life to form on Earth. Just far enough but still just close enough to Sun. Thanks Jupiter!
Jupiter is constantly hooking us up by being the cosmic bouncer we need and also hooking us up with natural beauty. It's so fucking insanely big that it actual gets referred to as the "Jovian System" (that includes it's moons) and with good reason. It is a good smaller scale model of what we see going on in the Universe all over the place; little things orbiting a bigger thing.
So now you might have a little more appreciation for Jupiter but that doesn't mean you should neglect your home! Hell, it's everybody's home!
Earth. What a fucking glorious place huh? So far we've seen nowhere like it in the Universe (some inherently similar planets, but nothing quite like it so far). There are gas giants like a motherfucker, pretty much everywhere there's going to be a gas giant. But Earth! Livable, lovable mother to us all. What a fucking rare occurrence right?
So as the planets were forming something pretty awesome happened. A little ball of stuff started spinning up from that great cloud of Sol's left-overs. Earth was formed. Made up of Iron, Silicon and lots of Oxygen Earth fucking kicks ass on making life! With literally MILLIONS of species on it's surface and in it's ocean's it is the ONE place in the known Universe with the proven existence of life. The ONE, not the third of the eighteenth, but the only fucking one. One more time: THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE WHERE WE HAVE PROOF OF LIFE.
That's not to say that there is not life elsewhere (in the Universe it seems that when something is common, it's really fucking common. When you're dealing with the volume of the Universe and the great distances it covers it's really stupid to think there isn't SOMETHING else out there but more on that in another article) it's just not anywhere that we can see it, or it's impact on something.
So a little more than 4.5 billion years ago this great ball of mostly Iron starts taking shape. The first few hundreds of thousands of years are filled with vulcanism and a roiling molten surface. That cooled down fairly quickly and liquid water started to appear in the atmosphere to further cool the molten rock. Somewhere around this time the Moon formed as well.
The Moon has an intense effect upon our existence, keeping the tides moving and the internal temperature of Earth regulated by slowly tugging it as it orbits. The Moon is something very special too, as to date it is still the largest recorded moon in relation to the planet it orbits. The Moon, like Jupiter, hooks us the fuck up with the proper conditions for life. Speaking of which:
Within about 1 billion years in to Earth's history life started popping up in the form of self replicating molecules. Then came photosynthesis that when combined with the large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere and water on the surface gave way to even more complex organisms called Eukaryotes. These collections of cells were formed in to colonies and grew more complex over time, specializing in certain things to aid the colonies that had formed (like processing waste etc.). The Ozone layer (made of molecular oxygen O3) shielded the surface from harmful radiation opening up the planet to more and more complex life-forms.
Geologically things were changing around too. The water in the atmosphere started cooling as the surface/core temperature of the Earth did. When that happened the oceans became more habitable to larger colonies of cyanobacteria and other multi-cellular organisms. There were also glaciers. Big fucking glaciers. And glaciers were doing the same thing they do today, chugging around the planet leveling whatever is underneath them. Though at one point (about 650 million years ago) nearly the entire surface was frozen. At least that's been the most subscribed to logic since the 70's, it's a theory called Snowball Earth appropriately enough. When you think about it in non-scientific terms and more in the terms of standard logic it seems crazy that life was able to continue on through this Black Metal fan's DREAM Earth.
Not only did life survive, something rather incredible happened after this Snowball Earth scenario. The Cambrian explosion. This is when the groundwork for what WE see as living creatures began, almost all of the phyla are represented. Things with skeletons started showing up (whether exo, on the outside. or endo, on the inside), sense organs started showing up too. This is where the real deal life shit began, things that could DO not just BE.
The Cambrian period led way to the Earth getting bigger and more complex forms of life at a crazy fast rate. Soon the little arthropods and other creepy crawlies were out of the picture and BIG shit like Dinosaurs started taking over the planet. Things were crawling around all over the place and flying through the skies.
That was about 300 million years ago. Big ass animals running the planet, giant flora everywhere. It sounds pretty rad actually, like a really fucking vicious Hawaii. Dinosaurs ruled the planet until about 65 million years ago when the impact of a rather large asteroid killed all but a few of the dinosaurs off completely (only a few flying varieties made it). The impact was so fucking HUGE that you can still clearly see the crater today, you don't even have to look that hard.
With the dinosaurs handily dispatched and conveniently out of the way, mammals were able to climb their tiny asses out of the ashes and start the fucking! Once mammals started getting busy with each other all over the now dinosaur free surface of the planet something totally beautiful happened.
Mammals started taking over the planet! Well us and insects, but I fucking hate bugs, so you can find some entomologist's blog to look at if you're that interested.
Little furry things started becoming bigger furry things! We went from gerbils to monkeys and apes. There was one of these early ape-guys that was really special to OUR story, he was Orrorin. He was the first bi-pedal Hominin, a very early ancestor to us he lived about 6 million years ago. There isn't much known about these guys at the moment, the best fossils on record were only found in 2000 and are still being researched. So far though it looks like they might be the earliest recorded upright walkers, so that is fucking something! Right?
After Orrorins were stumbling around awkwardly other hominins started communicating with each other and using tools. These two things started to stimulate our brains to do something other than constantly tell us "Eat, eat, eat." and "Don't die. Don't die. Don't die.". We started THINKING which, in turn, brought us together so we could tell each other "Eat, eat, eat." and "Don't die. Don't die. Don't die.". Little pockets of ape-men started banding together and using each others help to accomplish complex tasks, like killing big things and picking berries.
That mental surge pushed us towards using tools to make food grow in the land so we could spend less time chasing it and getting more hungry. Bam, agriculture was born and with agriculture came even more time to think. When our pre-historic ancestors started to become farmers of a sort they also become curious of the world around them. They had weapons to protect them, food to feed them and nice places to rest. So they started wondering, "What's the big fucking yellow thing up above me? Why is it so hot?" (you already know the answer to that, just look about 2/3 up the page). They also started filling in the blanks when they could, so logic and introspection became hallmarks of our intelligence.
We continued evolving along those lines until sometime around 250-200 thousand years ago a bigger (for the time) collection of Humans left the shores of south Africa and started a world tour that puts all the 80's metal bands to shame.
There are different theories as to the proliferation of Humans, but the rest of them seem too far-fetched to me so this is the one you're getting. This little band of humanity worked it's way up from south Africa and started spreading out to the corners of the Earth via India, Tibet, China and the Middle East. Different geographic conditions causing different evolutionary traits in the descendents of these initial travelers. We're talking about 200-600 people being the direct ancestors of EVERYONE on the planet. Think on that, really fucking absorb that (notice I ask you to do this all the time, think on it that is, so you should!). Doesn't that idea make racism and xenophobia seem so fucking STUPID? I mean, I wish we had a time-machine just so we could take all the White-Supremacists, Palestinians, Israelis and Mel Gibson back to that colony, just to show them how fucking IDIOTIC it is to think the way they do in the face of the fact that we are truly a global family. Whew, ok, got that out.
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Humanity.
So these few hundred people moved around the globe creating new pockets of civilization everywhere they went. These groups grew larger and larger until complex societies started to form. In Sumeria they started writing and they started law in the same breath. Spirituality and religion started to pop up in a more organized fashion, leading to more and more time dedicated to exploring the reaches of the mind. War on a scale larger than the planet had ever seen began, divisions in the land as well.
Great monuments were erected (tee hee) and people began to look towards tribal kings and warlords for direction. This is a chain that pretty much remains unbroken to this day in one shape or another.
Civilization became a reality and with the advent of the written word it also was given a history. From that point forward it became possible for Humans to not only live through something or imagine something but to also preserve it on paper for future Humans to learn from or enjoy.
Once writing caught on, there was a way to write instructions for things as well. That lead to engineering and culture! What a fucking gas! So we started building things, bigger and more extravagant things. We started writing down recipes and religious tomes. It was an all out information blitz!
All of the engineering turned in to so much work that we needed a way to make it faster and easier to do on a large scale. We needed machines that could do the work of many men and not get pissed off about it. So we set off to build industrial stuff!
Assembly lines made it easy to make really complex things using really stupid people. So you could break a machine down in to tiny parts and have a bunch of people responsible for their tiny little cog. That way there was a very limited amount of shit for the peon to fuck up! Brilliant!
Industrialization became the norm on the planet and since then we have wanted more, more, more! The industrial revolution made it possible for people to have way more shit than our ancient ancestors coming out of south Africa could have ever imagined. Buildings got bigger and crazier, we started making huge bridges across big waterways and boats to cross the ones we couldn't bridge. The automobile came about and so did airplanes. The Earth, as big as it was for the cyanobacteria was getting much smaller for us.
Industry gave us even more time to ponder things and invent. Technology soon became a staple of every home, from radios to television and on to computers. Computing helped to usher in an Information Age that saw the growth of Human understanding expand as we let computers do the hard thinking for us, freeing us up to theorize and be abstract (which one of our early south African ancestors must have specialized in).
We started using computers to help us think better and ended up putting men on the moon and making communications across the globe easier than ever. We used computers to help us decode the human genome and verify many long held scientific theories. Machines began to become a part of our society, as important in some respects as writing itself and culture.
But computers also made us lazier and we all started getting really careless about everything. In the last 40 or so years we have done quite a number on the Earth, choking up her atmosphere with shitty chemicals and pissing the leftover chemicals right in to the very oceans that gave us life in the first place. We dug up all the dinosaur bones and burned them up in our cars. We basically just started fucking up and not caring about the consequences.
Now we live in an age that is dominated by convenience and timidness. We stopped exploring, no more walking around the Earth. We push our minds to greater heights and then ignore the findings. We spend billions and billions on weapons and complain when we spend a few million to explore our celestial neighbors or our distant past. Our existence is based a lot on being in the right place at the right time, so precious and so rare, yet we throw it the fuck away in order to be in the most convenient position we can be. Lethargy rules Humanity and until we're ready to take a cue from our ancient ancestors we might end up more akin to the dinosaurs than we'd like to think.
So what does it all add up to? Billions upon billions of years, hundreds of millions of evolutionary gambles, societies built from the tribes of our ancestors. What you ask? This:
And this:
And this:
FUUUUUCCCCKKKK!!!!! Is it too late to become a Creationist? That's a lot easier to explain and I think it would make writing these articles a little less soul-crushing. Come on asteroid!!
 |
| BANG! |
Things just kept being really dense and really hot for an undetermined amount of time, then it happened.
 |
| "What happened? I'm dying to know!" |
A fucking BIG BANG happened! In an instant there was rapid expansion, something that is still present today. Our infinite little Universe finally wanted to admit that Einstein was right (even though this was a few billion years before his birth) and started conforming to the rules we see around us in the present state of things. This rapid expansion is cataloged today fairly regularly using science that you can experience by going out and standing by the street. Straight up, you guessed it, the Doppler effect.
In the milliseconds (yes, I said milliseconds) following the big bang there was a shitload of activity. The time-frames for most of this stuff is measured in the smallest units of measurement we have for time, Planck time. All of the elementary particles in the Universe conceivably formed within the first few hundred seconds after the bang. The temperature around the Universe fell noticeably, paving the way for the next 50,000 years known as the "Nuclear Age".
During the Nuclear Age almost all of the hydrogen and helium in the Universe was formed. Matter started to become an actual "thing" as pairs and pairs of atoms began to form all over the place. This formative stage lasts until about 200,000,000 years after the big bang when the real shit starts jumping off!
From about 200,000,000 until 300,000,000 years after the bang the larger structures in the Universe started to form paving the way for the Stellar Epoch (creation of stars) which is still happening all around us today.
One of the larger structures that formed is something you might be familiar with:
 | |||
| BEHOLD! |
 |
| "98% of the mass? Not for long!" |
Here's a breakdown from Berkeley that lays out the early solar system in a better fashion than I'm capable of (I get too excited and start rambling!):
"As astronomers reconstruct it, a cloud of interstellar dust and gas floated in our inconspicuous part of the Milky Way galaxy for several billion years. Then, a nearby supernova explosion blasted new material and a lot of energy into the cloud; as a result, or by coincidence, the cloud began to collapse on itself. Most of the material condensed in the center of the cloud to form a new star, our Sun, but about 1% of the cloud remained in orbit around the new star as dust and gas."
It's that remainder that formed the planets about 4.5 Billion years ago (give or take about 50 million years), making our planets relative newcomers in the Universe.
There is one planet that is rather important to our species, it shelters us from the hostile things that the galaxy has to offer as well as helping out with keeping us in a comfortable spot to live. A planet so special and such a huge part of our lives that we often take it for granted.
 |
| "Well, Hello there." |
Jupiter shields us from the onslaught of debris that constantly works its way towards us via the Kuiper Belt. Jupiter's immense gravity works as a moat of sorts for all the millions and millions of objects pulled toward the center of the solar system. Asteroids get close enough to Jupiter to be locked in to the King of Planet's orbit, hence the 60 plus moons that currently orbit the big bastard.
In 2009 we were lucky enough to capture the collision of an object the size of several football fields with Jupiter. The Hubble telescope had just been upgraded and cleaned so they decided to show off in the best way possible. Check it out:
Jupiter's weather is the most intense in the solar system. There are segmented layers of different kinds of weather visible on the surface. When those layers contact each other it creates storms of such intense magnitude that they can be seen by amateur astronomers all the time. You might be familiar with the most famous weather system in the near galaxy; the Great Red Spot:
 | |
| Are you staring in to it? Or it you? Trippy man. |
Jupiter's gravity also helped to put us in the "sweet spot" for life to form on Earth. Just far enough but still just close enough to Sun. Thanks Jupiter!
Jupiter is constantly hooking us up by being the cosmic bouncer we need and also hooking us up with natural beauty. It's so fucking insanely big that it actual gets referred to as the "Jovian System" (that includes it's moons) and with good reason. It is a good smaller scale model of what we see going on in the Universe all over the place; little things orbiting a bigger thing.
 |
| "Hey Hey Hey, it's Gravity!" |
 |
| BEHOLD! (Picture taken by the crew of Apollo 17!!!) |
So as the planets were forming something pretty awesome happened. A little ball of stuff started spinning up from that great cloud of Sol's left-overs. Earth was formed. Made up of Iron, Silicon and lots of Oxygen Earth fucking kicks ass on making life! With literally MILLIONS of species on it's surface and in it's ocean's it is the ONE place in the known Universe with the proven existence of life. The ONE, not the third of the eighteenth, but the only fucking one. One more time: THIS IS THE ONLY PLACE IN THE KNOWN UNIVERSE WHERE WE HAVE PROOF OF LIFE.
That's not to say that there is not life elsewhere (in the Universe it seems that when something is common, it's really fucking common. When you're dealing with the volume of the Universe and the great distances it covers it's really stupid to think there isn't SOMETHING else out there but more on that in another article) it's just not anywhere that we can see it, or it's impact on something.
So a little more than 4.5 billion years ago this great ball of mostly Iron starts taking shape. The first few hundreds of thousands of years are filled with vulcanism and a roiling molten surface. That cooled down fairly quickly and liquid water started to appear in the atmosphere to further cool the molten rock. Somewhere around this time the Moon formed as well.
The Moon has an intense effect upon our existence, keeping the tides moving and the internal temperature of Earth regulated by slowly tugging it as it orbits. The Moon is something very special too, as to date it is still the largest recorded moon in relation to the planet it orbits. The Moon, like Jupiter, hooks us the fuck up with the proper conditions for life. Speaking of which:
Within about 1 billion years in to Earth's history life started popping up in the form of self replicating molecules. Then came photosynthesis that when combined with the large amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere and water on the surface gave way to even more complex organisms called Eukaryotes. These collections of cells were formed in to colonies and grew more complex over time, specializing in certain things to aid the colonies that had formed (like processing waste etc.). The Ozone layer (made of molecular oxygen O3) shielded the surface from harmful radiation opening up the planet to more and more complex life-forms.
Geologically things were changing around too. The water in the atmosphere started cooling as the surface/core temperature of the Earth did. When that happened the oceans became more habitable to larger colonies of cyanobacteria and other multi-cellular organisms. There were also glaciers. Big fucking glaciers. And glaciers were doing the same thing they do today, chugging around the planet leveling whatever is underneath them. Though at one point (about 650 million years ago) nearly the entire surface was frozen. At least that's been the most subscribed to logic since the 70's, it's a theory called Snowball Earth appropriately enough. When you think about it in non-scientific terms and more in the terms of standard logic it seems crazy that life was able to continue on through this Black Metal fan's DREAM Earth.
 |
| "Yes! Pre-Cambrian era fucking rules!" |
The Cambrian period led way to the Earth getting bigger and more complex forms of life at a crazy fast rate. Soon the little arthropods and other creepy crawlies were out of the picture and BIG shit like Dinosaurs started taking over the planet. Things were crawling around all over the place and flying through the skies.
 |
| And making shitty tv shows. |
 |
| Gulf of Mexico dummy! |
 |
| "Trust me Bill. There is nothing beautiful about this, I'm as dirty as a mammal can be" |
Little furry things started becoming bigger furry things! We went from gerbils to monkeys and apes. There was one of these early ape-guys that was really special to OUR story, he was Orrorin. He was the first bi-pedal Hominin, a very early ancestor to us he lived about 6 million years ago. There isn't much known about these guys at the moment, the best fossils on record were only found in 2000 and are still being researched. So far though it looks like they might be the earliest recorded upright walkers, so that is fucking something! Right?
After Orrorins were stumbling around awkwardly other hominins started communicating with each other and using tools. These two things started to stimulate our brains to do something other than constantly tell us "Eat, eat, eat." and "Don't die. Don't die. Don't die.". We started THINKING which, in turn, brought us together so we could tell each other "Eat, eat, eat." and "Don't die. Don't die. Don't die.". Little pockets of ape-men started banding together and using each others help to accomplish complex tasks, like killing big things and picking berries.
That mental surge pushed us towards using tools to make food grow in the land so we could spend less time chasing it and getting more hungry. Bam, agriculture was born and with agriculture came even more time to think. When our pre-historic ancestors started to become farmers of a sort they also become curious of the world around them. They had weapons to protect them, food to feed them and nice places to rest. So they started wondering, "What's the big fucking yellow thing up above me? Why is it so hot?" (you already know the answer to that, just look about 2/3 up the page). They also started filling in the blanks when they could, so logic and introspection became hallmarks of our intelligence.
We continued evolving along those lines until sometime around 250-200 thousand years ago a bigger (for the time) collection of Humans left the shores of south Africa and started a world tour that puts all the 80's metal bands to shame.
 |
| Aww fuck! Not this guy again. |
Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah, Humanity.
So these few hundred people moved around the globe creating new pockets of civilization everywhere they went. These groups grew larger and larger until complex societies started to form. In Sumeria they started writing and they started law in the same breath. Spirituality and religion started to pop up in a more organized fashion, leading to more and more time dedicated to exploring the reaches of the mind. War on a scale larger than the planet had ever seen began, divisions in the land as well.
Great monuments were erected (tee hee) and people began to look towards tribal kings and warlords for direction. This is a chain that pretty much remains unbroken to this day in one shape or another.
 |
| "You bet your ass it does!" |
 |
| Or to write stupid blogs. FUCK I hate that word! |
Once writing caught on, there was a way to write instructions for things as well. That lead to engineering and culture! What a fucking gas! So we started building things, bigger and more extravagant things. We started writing down recipes and religious tomes. It was an all out information blitz!
All of the engineering turned in to so much work that we needed a way to make it faster and easier to do on a large scale. We needed machines that could do the work of many men and not get pissed off about it. So we set off to build industrial stuff!
Assembly lines made it easy to make really complex things using really stupid people. So you could break a machine down in to tiny parts and have a bunch of people responsible for their tiny little cog. That way there was a very limited amount of shit for the peon to fuck up! Brilliant!
Industrialization became the norm on the planet and since then we have wanted more, more, more! The industrial revolution made it possible for people to have way more shit than our ancient ancestors coming out of south Africa could have ever imagined. Buildings got bigger and crazier, we started making huge bridges across big waterways and boats to cross the ones we couldn't bridge. The automobile came about and so did airplanes. The Earth, as big as it was for the cyanobacteria was getting much smaller for us.
 | |
| "Hey! I'm right over here!" |
We started using computers to help us think better and ended up putting men on the moon and making communications across the globe easier than ever. We used computers to help us decode the human genome and verify many long held scientific theories. Machines began to become a part of our society, as important in some respects as writing itself and culture.
But computers also made us lazier and we all started getting really careless about everything. In the last 40 or so years we have done quite a number on the Earth, choking up her atmosphere with shitty chemicals and pissing the leftover chemicals right in to the very oceans that gave us life in the first place. We dug up all the dinosaur bones and burned them up in our cars. We basically just started fucking up and not caring about the consequences.
Now we live in an age that is dominated by convenience and timidness. We stopped exploring, no more walking around the Earth. We push our minds to greater heights and then ignore the findings. We spend billions and billions on weapons and complain when we spend a few million to explore our celestial neighbors or our distant past. Our existence is based a lot on being in the right place at the right time, so precious and so rare, yet we throw it the fuck away in order to be in the most convenient position we can be. Lethargy rules Humanity and until we're ready to take a cue from our ancient ancestors we might end up more akin to the dinosaurs than we'd like to think.
So what does it all add up to? Billions upon billions of years, hundreds of millions of evolutionary gambles, societies built from the tribes of our ancestors. What you ask? This:
And this:
And this:
FUUUUUCCCCKKKK!!!!! Is it too late to become a Creationist? That's a lot easier to explain and I think it would make writing these articles a little less soul-crushing. Come on asteroid!!
6/28/11
Post Apocalyptic MELTDOWN! (Or, "If the shit hits the fan, you're dead!")
I really dig the shit out of Post Apocalyptic fiction. It doesn't matter what medium either, comics, movies, books. Doesn't matter, I love it all.
I am always stoked on the newest "after the world ends" video game. I watch the Mad Max movies at least once a year and I still watch them with the zeal that I had for them as a kid.
There is something so fucking frightening about the idea of civilization collapsing on itself, something frightening and somewhat liberating. I don't know what the combination of those two feelings does to me, but it's really awesome.
So, the other day I took a break from thinking about space and started thinking about what I would do in the case of an extinction level event happening and I being one of the "lucky" ones to survive. Question being; what would I do in this new liberated future?
The answer is, die. Just like the rest of you.
If you don't think that's the case, you are a fucking idiot. Unless you are an Army Ranger or avid survivalist, odds are you'd last about ten seconds in an "End of the World" type of scenario. I have decided today to do the world yet ANOTHER service and give my dear readers an idea of what to expect when shit finally jumps off.
In the following I will do my best to address your inadequacies, your lack of survival skills and eventually your demise. VARNUNG! This one might get a bit, uhm, how shall I say? "Visceral".
First, let us establish the parameters of our little disaster scenario. I am talking of a strict ELE type of thing here, like less than 10% of the world's population is still around. No electricity, no fuel (aside from scavenged) and certainly no communications equipment. I am talking fucking dire.
With that laid out for us, let's begin:
1.) You don't know how to make a fire.
Oh fuck off! I can hear what you're thinking already; "Whatever Bill, I can totally start a fire. I accidentally do it in the work ashtray all the time.","How hard could it be?".
It's incredibly hard you moron! Starting a fire requires a lot of ingenuity when you don't have a lighter. Now, some of you may be thinking about flint at this point and good for you for getting that far. Flint would be a nice option, but how many of you have flint in your house? One, maybe two? You'd have a better chance scavenging for Bics with a little fuel left.
Let's say, by some miracle, you have a flint or a fire-stone in your possession. Well fucking great! Now you'll be exhausted and cold!
Even with a fire starting kit, it still takes a ton of work and lots of effort to get one going. Check out this douchebag Montana resident (only guessing there!) spend ten fucking minutes starting a fire using full on fire-starting equipment.
And that dude is a survivalist! He spends his free time trying to figure this shit out and it still takes a fucking meal's worth of energy for him to get that little pussy-fart of a fire going. Now, most of my readership is in the Northwest and Northeast of the country. Think about this. Really think about it. How often does it rain where you live? Now add that to the fact that building a fire takes a lot of work and really think about your odds of doing it consistently and without breaking any of the tools. Like I said before, you're fucked!
Ok, the dude above might not be the best example. So here are two girls from Survivor (yes, my favorite show) who are sent in to a duel where they compete to start a fire. First one to start their fire and have it burn for a few SECONDS gets the win. Now before you watch this, keep in mind that these girls have been on an island "surviving" for 38 days at this point. They are on a "set" on the island, there is no wind and they are sheltered by the fake rocks behind them. (action starts about 1 minute in)
Do you see what I'm saying? Fire starting is hard. Really hard.
But don't worry! You'll probably be to busy getting raped and eventually cannibalized by savages to know that you're cold. Which brings me to my next topic:
2.) You can't protect yourself.
Sorry to say, but you can't do shit to defend yourself! I don't care if you know Karate, if you have a fucking handgun, it doesn't matter! There is nothing that YOU can do to protect yourself after the world tries to shrug Humanity off like so much dandruff.
Have you ever thought about what you'd do if someone broke in to your home? If you're like me, you probably answered "yes". Now my answer is always, "Well, I'd shoot the shit out of them.", which sounds great in theory. In practical application though, well, that's another matter entirely.
I have been around guns my entire life, I am comfortable with guns and have discharged them on many occasions. Hell, I like guns. They're fun and they make a really loud noise (which is kind of my only prerequisite for any good time activity). I have shot at targets and animals, both of which lack one key feature of the overall equation.
They can't shoot back.
Truth is, shooting at a target is easy. You just look down the barrel, line up the sight and gently squeeze (not pull) the trigger. See, super easy. Well, not quite. For example:
Straight up, that's YOU with a gun if you've never shot one before or very rarely. Shooting guns isn't like it is on TV or Movies. You don't just point it in a direction and everything happens for you. It takes control to shoot a gun, let alone hit a target accurately.
Now I was trying to sound like a tough-guy, but that's far from the truth. When it comes down to it in our little post-apocalyptic scenario, I'd fall prey to same thing all of us would. I've never killed someone. I have never shot at another Human, nor have I shot anything that was aggressively running towards me.
So let's say that you're out scavenging for food one lonesome day (since you can't build a fire you have to find any canned goods you're able to) and you come across a lock-box with a gun in it. Great! Now you're armed. We'll assume that you found the necessary ammunition for it and it works as well. So you've loaded up your pistol (or rifle, really whatever imaginary gun you want, go for it!) and you take off on your merry way.
Then, up ahead on the trail, you see a figure nestled in between some trees. He's bent over shuffling through a box, most likely doing the exact same thing you are. He hasn't seen you yet, so here's your chance! You can level your gun at him right now and take his head off before he even knew what happened. Go ahead! C'mon!
You pussy! You totally could have shot him dead without so much as a "Hello!". You were too morally opposed to it though, just like any other sane person would be. Instead you decide to move a little closer and try to see what he's up to. Who knows? He might have some food that he'd be willing to share. Or perhaps some knowledge of any upcoming dangers on the trail. So you start off towards him slowly, your loaded gun still in hand.
You start getting fairly close to him, about 10 meters. He's still digging around in what looks like box of cans, but it's too hard to tell from where you are. He hasn't seemed to notice you yet, but you can see from the look of him that he's been around the block. His clothes are tattered and it appears that he's wearing some kind of logo t-shirt, but you're just a little too far away to make it out.
Suddenly, he jerks back. He turns on his heels in an awkward fashion and looks directly at you. That's when you notice that he's holding a pistol. You think of something to say to him, but you keep staring at the pistol, thinking about the loaded gun in your hand. You decide to "break the ice" by throwing up your hands and telling him you're not going to hurt him.
BAM!!!
He fucking shot you! Shot you dead, from ten meters away. Didn't say a goddamned word to you.
You know why that is? Because that guy had been there before and knew that if he didn't shoot you dead right there you'd either do it to him, or become another mouth to feed. Another mouth to feed is something no one in our scenario could afford to deal with.
My point being, you have to be a hard motherfucker to just shoot someone in cold blood. In the milliseconds it takes you to formulate a thought it all could be over. All it requires is one asshole who is really motivated to survive. Or an asshole that's just a better shot than you. Either way, you're fucked.
3.) You're not a doctor.
Come the fuck on! You know this one already! Even if you were a boyscout or worked search and rescue, you're not a fucking doctor. Why is this important you ask? Because of this:
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? No seriously, what are you looking at there? I mean, I couldn't tell you. The only reason that I know is because I was the one who found the picture. I will seriously give $1 to any person that emails a correct response.
You know why I'll make that wager? Because you're not a fucking doctor and you have no idea what that is. From that picture you could misdiagnose a million conditions because there are too many things that have a similar symptoms for you to nail it down from one out of context image. That's what doctors do though! They look at random information and upon that make a diagnosis hoping that it's the correct one.
Let's continue to get hypothetical for a moment and say that you are out on the trail in our Post Apocalyptic playground. You found a can of beans and some meth, so you're super happy and just chugging along. You set yourself a nice pace and start covering ground rapidly. You're admiring the trees and the silence of it all when you trip over a half-buried rock. OH SHIT! You fall in to a ditch and feel the worst pain you have ever felt directly in the lower half of your right arm.What is it? A bad sprain? A break? You don't know, because you're not a fucking doctor!
Let us assume that you can tell, from the pain, that it's a break. What's the first thing you do? Splint? Make-shift cast? I mean, do any of us know how to make a cast that would actually immobilize a bone? Maybe, but it's doubtful. Even if you could create a make-shift cast, how do we keep the limb from getting gangrenous? How would we know if the cast was too tight?
See what I'm saying? There are too many variables in any medical situation for us to make due with a half-assed solution. That's not say that these scenarios are completely unsurvivable, but the odds of you fucking it up are a lot higher than the odds of you getting it right on the first whack.
So hypothetical bone fractures aside, what about disease?
There are tons of diseases that we don't often encounter that could easily kill you without proper medical treatment. On top of that, there are common infections that could kill you just from lack of shelter and food. The Flu used to kill thousands and thousands of people a year and guess what? It still does.
In 2010 alone 2,117 people died from the flu in the United States. Keep in mind that is WITH medical treatment. So imagine you get the flu in our little Wasteland and are sleeping in a damp wooded area. Remember the last time you got the flu? How your comfy house felt like a personally crafted hell? Now try and transpose those feelings to a fucking cave or other unpleasant place you could find yourself in our wasteland. You're starving, you're cold and you can't move because of the aches. The flu has become really "real" for you as you lay in the cold and wish, truly wish, that you were able to get some Thera-flu.
Don't worry though, it'll all be over soon. Since, let's face it, you're not a fucking doctor.
4.) There is no Facebook.
You read that right! In our hypothetical future it's safe to assume that all communications technology has ceased to function. With that said, how would a social creature like a Human deal with the intense isolation of our new planet?
Short answer, we wouldn't.
Let's really put this in perspective. Here are some stats directly from Facebook:
Now what happens with all those people's delicate psyches when they don't constantly have other people to comment on their lives? What if you went from a community of millions at your fingertips to almost complete isolation? Even a small scale regional Nuclear attack would result in the loss of MILLIONS of lives, leaving just small pockets of civilization at best.
"A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 asserted that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario in which two opposing nations in the subtropics each used 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons (ca. 15 kiloton each) on major populated centers, the researchers estimated fatalities from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country. Also, as much as five million tons of soot would be released, which would produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions. The cooling would last for years and could be "catastrophic" according to the researchers."
Now when you read that above paragraph and REALLY digest the numbers, it's a bit overwhelming.Millions of people gone in a few short days is a tough idea to deal with. Also, keep in mind that the above mentioned information only relates to ONE possible scenario. Super-volcanoes, asteroid/meteoroid collisions and severe climate change could have potentially tens of millions of more causalities than an all out nuclear war.
Every service in the world would shut down, no police, no cell phones, no internet. There might be a military still functioning but we would most likely not know as they would be too busy trying to figure out who was in charge and why.
This is a pretty startling prospect, the loss of all communications technology that is. Our world has grown considerably smaller over the last few decades, begging the question, "Can we live without the entire world being at the touch of a button?". I'd like to think so, but I highly doubt it.
For example; when I wake up I usually grab my phone and check my email. At some point in the two or so hours that follow I'll check in on my Facebook and Twitter. In that time I have made contact with at least 500 people. 30 years ago that simply wasn't possible.
With all of the people who are now present in my life, would I be able to cope mentally with the fact that there would be no one to give a shit? Now you know me, there's no doubt I would go fucking insane within like 2 days.
Here's a quote from James House that you may find interesting:
"The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors. However, our understanding of how and why social isolation is risky for health—or conversely—how and why social ties and relationships are protective of health, still remains quite limited."
So, even some of the smartest people on the planet know isolation is bad, but don't know why. Since we already established that you aren't a doctor, odds are you'd be at a loss too. Some of you more introspective types might be thinking "Fuck that. I'd be fine. I HATE being around people.". Well good for you, but you're wrong.
"First is the idea that isolation from others is anxiety-arousing or stressful in and of itself, producing physiological arousal and changes, which if prolonged, can produce serious morbidity or mortality; and, conversely that affiliation or contact with others reduces or modulates physiological arousal, both in general and in the presence of stress and other threats to health. A growing body of evidence from experimental studies of animals and humans is consistent with this hypothesis."
I don't care how much of a hard-ass you are, given a few weeks without interacting with another person and you are going to go a bit nuts.
So if we add it up at this juncture; you are a freezing, diseased, helpless and possibly insane mess. Point being, Mad Max makes it look cool, but the truth is just COLD. Very, very cold.
I am always stoked on the newest "after the world ends" video game. I watch the Mad Max movies at least once a year and I still watch them with the zeal that I had for them as a kid.
There is something so fucking frightening about the idea of civilization collapsing on itself, something frightening and somewhat liberating. I don't know what the combination of those two feelings does to me, but it's really awesome.
So, the other day I took a break from thinking about space and started thinking about what I would do in the case of an extinction level event happening and I being one of the "lucky" ones to survive. Question being; what would I do in this new liberated future?
The answer is, die. Just like the rest of you.
If you don't think that's the case, you are a fucking idiot. Unless you are an Army Ranger or avid survivalist, odds are you'd last about ten seconds in an "End of the World" type of scenario. I have decided today to do the world yet ANOTHER service and give my dear readers an idea of what to expect when shit finally jumps off.
In the following I will do my best to address your inadequacies, your lack of survival skills and eventually your demise. VARNUNG! This one might get a bit, uhm, how shall I say? "Visceral".
First, let us establish the parameters of our little disaster scenario. I am talking of a strict ELE type of thing here, like less than 10% of the world's population is still around. No electricity, no fuel (aside from scavenged) and certainly no communications equipment. I am talking fucking dire.
With that laid out for us, let's begin:
1.) You don't know how to make a fire.
Oh fuck off! I can hear what you're thinking already; "Whatever Bill, I can totally start a fire. I accidentally do it in the work ashtray all the time.","How hard could it be?".
It's incredibly hard you moron! Starting a fire requires a lot of ingenuity when you don't have a lighter. Now, some of you may be thinking about flint at this point and good for you for getting that far. Flint would be a nice option, but how many of you have flint in your house? One, maybe two? You'd have a better chance scavenging for Bics with a little fuel left.
Let's say, by some miracle, you have a flint or a fire-stone in your possession. Well fucking great! Now you'll be exhausted and cold!
Even with a fire starting kit, it still takes a ton of work and lots of effort to get one going. Check out this douchebag Montana resident (only guessing there!) spend ten fucking minutes starting a fire using full on fire-starting equipment.
And that dude is a survivalist! He spends his free time trying to figure this shit out and it still takes a fucking meal's worth of energy for him to get that little pussy-fart of a fire going. Now, most of my readership is in the Northwest and Northeast of the country. Think about this. Really think about it. How often does it rain where you live? Now add that to the fact that building a fire takes a lot of work and really think about your odds of doing it consistently and without breaking any of the tools. Like I said before, you're fucked!
Ok, the dude above might not be the best example. So here are two girls from Survivor (yes, my favorite show) who are sent in to a duel where they compete to start a fire. First one to start their fire and have it burn for a few SECONDS gets the win. Now before you watch this, keep in mind that these girls have been on an island "surviving" for 38 days at this point. They are on a "set" on the island, there is no wind and they are sheltered by the fake rocks behind them. (action starts about 1 minute in)
Do you see what I'm saying? Fire starting is hard. Really hard.
But don't worry! You'll probably be to busy getting raped and eventually cannibalized by savages to know that you're cold. Which brings me to my next topic:
2.) You can't protect yourself.
Sorry to say, but you can't do shit to defend yourself! I don't care if you know Karate, if you have a fucking handgun, it doesn't matter! There is nothing that YOU can do to protect yourself after the world tries to shrug Humanity off like so much dandruff.
Have you ever thought about what you'd do if someone broke in to your home? If you're like me, you probably answered "yes". Now my answer is always, "Well, I'd shoot the shit out of them.", which sounds great in theory. In practical application though, well, that's another matter entirely.
I have been around guns my entire life, I am comfortable with guns and have discharged them on many occasions. Hell, I like guns. They're fun and they make a really loud noise (which is kind of my only prerequisite for any good time activity). I have shot at targets and animals, both of which lack one key feature of the overall equation.
They can't shoot back.
Truth is, shooting at a target is easy. You just look down the barrel, line up the sight and gently squeeze (not pull) the trigger. See, super easy. Well, not quite. For example:
Straight up, that's YOU with a gun if you've never shot one before or very rarely. Shooting guns isn't like it is on TV or Movies. You don't just point it in a direction and everything happens for you. It takes control to shoot a gun, let alone hit a target accurately.
Now I was trying to sound like a tough-guy, but that's far from the truth. When it comes down to it in our little post-apocalyptic scenario, I'd fall prey to same thing all of us would. I've never killed someone. I have never shot at another Human, nor have I shot anything that was aggressively running towards me.
So let's say that you're out scavenging for food one lonesome day (since you can't build a fire you have to find any canned goods you're able to) and you come across a lock-box with a gun in it. Great! Now you're armed. We'll assume that you found the necessary ammunition for it and it works as well. So you've loaded up your pistol (or rifle, really whatever imaginary gun you want, go for it!) and you take off on your merry way.
Then, up ahead on the trail, you see a figure nestled in between some trees. He's bent over shuffling through a box, most likely doing the exact same thing you are. He hasn't seen you yet, so here's your chance! You can level your gun at him right now and take his head off before he even knew what happened. Go ahead! C'mon!
You pussy! You totally could have shot him dead without so much as a "Hello!". You were too morally opposed to it though, just like any other sane person would be. Instead you decide to move a little closer and try to see what he's up to. Who knows? He might have some food that he'd be willing to share. Or perhaps some knowledge of any upcoming dangers on the trail. So you start off towards him slowly, your loaded gun still in hand.
You start getting fairly close to him, about 10 meters. He's still digging around in what looks like box of cans, but it's too hard to tell from where you are. He hasn't seemed to notice you yet, but you can see from the look of him that he's been around the block. His clothes are tattered and it appears that he's wearing some kind of logo t-shirt, but you're just a little too far away to make it out.
Suddenly, he jerks back. He turns on his heels in an awkward fashion and looks directly at you. That's when you notice that he's holding a pistol. You think of something to say to him, but you keep staring at the pistol, thinking about the loaded gun in your hand. You decide to "break the ice" by throwing up your hands and telling him you're not going to hurt him.
BAM!!!
He fucking shot you! Shot you dead, from ten meters away. Didn't say a goddamned word to you.
You know why that is? Because that guy had been there before and knew that if he didn't shoot you dead right there you'd either do it to him, or become another mouth to feed. Another mouth to feed is something no one in our scenario could afford to deal with.
My point being, you have to be a hard motherfucker to just shoot someone in cold blood. In the milliseconds it takes you to formulate a thought it all could be over. All it requires is one asshole who is really motivated to survive. Or an asshole that's just a better shot than you. Either way, you're fucked.
3.) You're not a doctor.
Come the fuck on! You know this one already! Even if you were a boyscout or worked search and rescue, you're not a fucking doctor. Why is this important you ask? Because of this:
WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT? No seriously, what are you looking at there? I mean, I couldn't tell you. The only reason that I know is because I was the one who found the picture. I will seriously give $1 to any person that emails a correct response.
You know why I'll make that wager? Because you're not a fucking doctor and you have no idea what that is. From that picture you could misdiagnose a million conditions because there are too many things that have a similar symptoms for you to nail it down from one out of context image. That's what doctors do though! They look at random information and upon that make a diagnosis hoping that it's the correct one.
Let's continue to get hypothetical for a moment and say that you are out on the trail in our Post Apocalyptic playground. You found a can of beans and some meth, so you're super happy and just chugging along. You set yourself a nice pace and start covering ground rapidly. You're admiring the trees and the silence of it all when you trip over a half-buried rock. OH SHIT! You fall in to a ditch and feel the worst pain you have ever felt directly in the lower half of your right arm.What is it? A bad sprain? A break? You don't know, because you're not a fucking doctor!
Let us assume that you can tell, from the pain, that it's a break. What's the first thing you do? Splint? Make-shift cast? I mean, do any of us know how to make a cast that would actually immobilize a bone? Maybe, but it's doubtful. Even if you could create a make-shift cast, how do we keep the limb from getting gangrenous? How would we know if the cast was too tight?
See what I'm saying? There are too many variables in any medical situation for us to make due with a half-assed solution. That's not say that these scenarios are completely unsurvivable, but the odds of you fucking it up are a lot higher than the odds of you getting it right on the first whack.
So hypothetical bone fractures aside, what about disease?
There are tons of diseases that we don't often encounter that could easily kill you without proper medical treatment. On top of that, there are common infections that could kill you just from lack of shelter and food. The Flu used to kill thousands and thousands of people a year and guess what? It still does.
In 2010 alone 2,117 people died from the flu in the United States. Keep in mind that is WITH medical treatment. So imagine you get the flu in our little Wasteland and are sleeping in a damp wooded area. Remember the last time you got the flu? How your comfy house felt like a personally crafted hell? Now try and transpose those feelings to a fucking cave or other unpleasant place you could find yourself in our wasteland. You're starving, you're cold and you can't move because of the aches. The flu has become really "real" for you as you lay in the cold and wish, truly wish, that you were able to get some Thera-flu.
Don't worry though, it'll all be over soon. Since, let's face it, you're not a fucking doctor.
4.) There is no Facebook.
You read that right! In our hypothetical future it's safe to assume that all communications technology has ceased to function. With that said, how would a social creature like a Human deal with the intense isolation of our new planet?
Short answer, we wouldn't.
Let's really put this in perspective. Here are some stats directly from Facebook:
- More than 500 million active users
- 50% of active users log on to Facebook in any given day
- Average user has 130 friends
- People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook
Now what happens with all those people's delicate psyches when they don't constantly have other people to comment on their lives? What if you went from a community of millions at your fingertips to almost complete isolation? Even a small scale regional Nuclear attack would result in the loss of MILLIONS of lives, leaving just small pockets of civilization at best.
"A study presented at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in December 2006 asserted that even a small-scale, regional nuclear war could produce as many direct fatalities as all of World War II and disrupt the global climate for a decade or more. In a regional nuclear conflict scenario in which two opposing nations in the subtropics each used 50 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons (ca. 15 kiloton each) on major populated centers, the researchers estimated fatalities from 2.6 million to 16.7 million per country. Also, as much as five million tons of soot would be released, which would produce a cooling of several degrees over large areas of North America and Eurasia, including most of the grain-growing regions. The cooling would last for years and could be "catastrophic" according to the researchers."
Now when you read that above paragraph and REALLY digest the numbers, it's a bit overwhelming.Millions of people gone in a few short days is a tough idea to deal with. Also, keep in mind that the above mentioned information only relates to ONE possible scenario. Super-volcanoes, asteroid/meteoroid collisions and severe climate change could have potentially tens of millions of more causalities than an all out nuclear war.
Every service in the world would shut down, no police, no cell phones, no internet. There might be a military still functioning but we would most likely not know as they would be too busy trying to figure out who was in charge and why.
This is a pretty startling prospect, the loss of all communications technology that is. Our world has grown considerably smaller over the last few decades, begging the question, "Can we live without the entire world being at the touch of a button?". I'd like to think so, but I highly doubt it.
For example; when I wake up I usually grab my phone and check my email. At some point in the two or so hours that follow I'll check in on my Facebook and Twitter. In that time I have made contact with at least 500 people. 30 years ago that simply wasn't possible.
With all of the people who are now present in my life, would I be able to cope mentally with the fact that there would be no one to give a shit? Now you know me, there's no doubt I would go fucking insane within like 2 days.
Here's a quote from James House that you may find interesting:
"The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors. However, our understanding of how and why social isolation is risky for health—or conversely—how and why social ties and relationships are protective of health, still remains quite limited."
So, even some of the smartest people on the planet know isolation is bad, but don't know why. Since we already established that you aren't a doctor, odds are you'd be at a loss too. Some of you more introspective types might be thinking "Fuck that. I'd be fine. I HATE being around people.". Well good for you, but you're wrong.
"First is the idea that isolation from others is anxiety-arousing or stressful in and of itself, producing physiological arousal and changes, which if prolonged, can produce serious morbidity or mortality; and, conversely that affiliation or contact with others reduces or modulates physiological arousal, both in general and in the presence of stress and other threats to health. A growing body of evidence from experimental studies of animals and humans is consistent with this hypothesis."
I don't care how much of a hard-ass you are, given a few weeks without interacting with another person and you are going to go a bit nuts.
So if we add it up at this juncture; you are a freezing, diseased, helpless and possibly insane mess. Point being, Mad Max makes it look cool, but the truth is just COLD. Very, very cold.
6/25/11
Why Astronaut John W. Young is the most badass human in recorded history.
I love space. I love space with a fervor typically reserved for twelve year old girls (and 25 year old gay men) at a Justin Bieber concert.
I am constantly thinking about space travel, literally. If you ever see me staring off in to the distance, brow furrowed, mouth twisted into a tiny smirk; odds are I'm thinking about manned spaceflight (most likely the Apollo program). Ever since I was a little boy I have been fascinated with the human adventure in space, there is something so promising about the whole thing. I can say with great certainty that space travel has inspired me more so than the most impressive piece of artwork, than the greatest written word. Hands down, nothing can top space in my mind. Nothing.
Sitting atop the great mental Ziggurat of space in my imagination, there is one man. One man so mythical in his proportions that as a kid it was hard for me to believe he really existed. He was like Pete Venkman to me, a character devised by a person's imagination for the simple purpose of telling a story. Well the difference being, this man was real. Really real.
His name is John W. Young.
John W. Young, born in San Francisco in September of 1930. Spaceman, in the truest sense of the word. No one could have known at the time, but baby John was on a path of greatness that would be unrivaled by any human being even 80 plus years later.
In the course of his Astronaut career John Young flew almost every spacecraft that had been built, went to the Moon a few times and helped to save Apollo 13 in order to make sure that Ron Howard would have something to do before Arrested Development started.
An engineer, a pilot, a scholar. A surly bastard, a hero, a genius. Yes, all of the above.
Today I'd like to share with you a few hallmarks of this great American's career, in order to familiarize you with someone you probably have no idea expanded the boundaries of human understanding forever (no joke!).
There is too much to cover for just one article, so I'll try to go through the highlights and give you the coolest nuggets I can think of.
1.) John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich in to space.
You read that right.
On March 23rd 1965 Gemini III lifted off from the Cape on it's way to space in order to perform the first Orbital Maneuvers in manned spaceflight. Added note: In order to pronounce "Gemini" like the astronauts say it like this, gemi-KNEE.
The launch went off without a hitch for America's 7th spaceflight (the seventeenth overall at that point, if you count early upper atmosphere test flights of the X-15), Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John Young rode atop a Titan rocket on their way to make history.
Gus Grissom was a bit infamous in the NASA ranks at the time, for accidentally blowing the hatch on Liberty Bell 7 (his Mercury capsule) and sinking it. So in honor of this event he named Gemini III's capsule the "Molly Brown", in hopes that it would be unsinkable. This was the first and only time a Gemini capsule got named, so really drink that in. No, really drink it in. Ok, good. Now we can move on.
Everything was going according to plan (minus a few mechanical failures here and there) when about two hours in to the flight the following conversation was overheard by the CapCom (capsule communicator, not Street Fighter):
Grissom: "What is it?"
Young: "Corn beef sandwich."
Grissom: "Where did that come from?"
Young: "I brought it with me. Let's see how it tastes. Smells, doesn't it?"
Grissom: "Yes, it's breaking up. I'm going to stick it in my pocket."
Young: "Is it?"
Young: "It was a thought, anyway."
Grissom: "Yep."
Young: "Not a very good one."
Grissom: "Pretty good, though, if it would just hold together."
Young: "Want some chicken leg?"
Grissom: "No, you can handle that."
Grissom: "What was the time of that booster again? What elevation?"
Now reading that, it may not seem like much, but this was a big fucking deal to NASA. So much so, that NASA thought about grounding John Young permanently (They wouldn't do that to Gus, as he was technically a hero per his Mercury 7 status.).
The press had a bit of a field day with the story (and rightfully so, considering how awesome it is) and started spreading it around. At that point spaceflight wasn't as "common" as it's become today, people used to go APE-SHIT over astronaut stories. Much like today's media, the most sensational things get the most coverage and soon John Young's sandwich was in bed with the communists. Here's a quote from then NASA administrator Jim Webb:
"The training program should have been so impressive to these men that they would not have done a thing like that. I do not agree that you can tolerate this kind of deviation from what is clearly the purpose and requirement for success on these flights."
Unconfirmed reports state that there was buzz around Star City (Baikanur) in Kazakhstan that the Americans had no regimented astronaut training or regulations, which made those Commie bastards think they had an edge on us! Well, the Russians totally did have an edge on us, the beat us to nearly every first in space (mainly because instead of engineering a problem to death they just skipped the engineering and went straight to the death. Which I plan to cover in another update, but check this out in the meantime.).
John caught a lot of heat over this incident, but luckily it didn't end with him getting grounded.
Now you may be asking "How the fuck did this all go down?","Did NASA not do a pre-flight contraband check?". Remember, this was the Wild Wild West of Aerospace, when there were no rules and only a handful of dedicated dudes trying to kick ass on the future of flight.
Here's the "unofficial" version of how it went down:
Wally Schirra (another famous Gemini astronaut and notorious practical joker) wasn't scheduled for flight training the day of the launch and knew how much John Young hated the prospect of eating the "space" food.
Who could blame JY? I mean the Gemini food looks like bags full of stuff that came OUT of people, not something that should be put IN them. So ol' Wally went to a local deli and bought the infamous corned beef.
Now there are conflicting reports about Deke Slayton's (head of the astronaut office) take on the sandwich, but some say he let John take it, most say he was unaware. Either way, the space-wich was stealthily added to John's kit and the rest is, well fuck, mentioned above.
2.) John Young was "all up in" the Apollo program.
Ok, so you had Gemin-KNEE, which was essentially a bunch of test flights to show that we could go places other than really high up in our own atmosphere. That was great stuff, with lots of groundbreaking science and exploration, but it was merely the tater-tot appetizer to the big meatloaf main course that was the Apollo program.
Apollo was a mission so grand in it's scale that trying to sum it up on one sentence would be foolish. You need a kick ass phrase to describe it instead; "Incredibly fucking epic."
May 25th 1961 then President John F. Kennedy made a big announcement, probably the biggest proclamation in the history of civilization. He let the world know, we were going to the Moon.
I recommend that you listen to the whole thing HERE.
No one knows what Kennedy's motivation TRULY was. There is a lot of speculation that it was a calculated political move, others claim he was just an avid Space-nut. I really feel like the true answer is neither. I think the real reason that Kennedy issued the challenge to go to the Moon because of one man:
Lyndon B. Johnson.
When he wasn't pulling out his dick in foreign countries, he was going to bat for America's future in space. Johnson had a wicked hard-on (oh I love writing about LBJ) for getting America in the front of the space pack. He worked hard to give the burgeoning industry a voice and to get lawmakers to see the benefits of having a robust space program. I mean fuck, Johnson Space Center ring a bell?
LBJ really pushed for the Apollo program and it made a big difference on the President's view of the thing. So during his speech Kennedy didn't mince words, he told us we were putting a man on the Moon by the end of the decade. That didn't give us much time.
It turned out that about 500,000 Americans didn't have much going on, so we were able to get the ball rolling on visiting our closest neighbor. Thank God that when we got up to 499,999 people involved there was still room for one more. John W. Young.
John was put on the backup crew for Apollo 7, maybe as a little slap on the wrist for the space-wich. Apollo 7 was the first manned Apollo mission (it took NASA a while to recover from the Apollo 1 fire that killed Gus Grissom, Roger Chaffee and America's first space-walker Ed White) so it was a pretty big deal! Luckily for history the Apollo 7 flight went off without a hitch and moved John Young a bit closer to the Moon.
John's next step in Apollo was Apollo 10, the second manned flight to the Moon. John flew the command module around the Moon solo, while Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford farted around in the LM testing it out. Apollo 10 also set the record for highest speed attained by a manned vehicle, 24,791mph.
So just to put Apollo 10 in perspective; John Young flew a spaceship around the Moon by himself and then went faster than any other person, ever (well him Cernan and Stafford). All this before the real shit even started!
He was also the backup commander for Apollo 13, the flight Tom Hanks was on. When shit hit the fan with 13, John Young went to work. I'll cover that in a minute, don't worry.
After 13, John Young did something that only 12 people in history have done. Joined a fraternity so exclusive that membership required you be pretty fucking amazing.
On Apollo 16 John Young walked on the Moon.
Which leads us to our next topic:
3.) John Young did really awesome shit on the Moon!
Now John Young wouldn't travel 250,000 miles trapped in a little can eating "food" out of a bag only to get to the Moon and walk around a bit. No, he had other plans.
Yeah, that's right. You see JY in that picture, jumping like 5 feet in the air and giving a salute. How fucking awesome does that look? I mean really, in the history of pictures with people doing awesome shit in them, you really can't top that.
You have to think about the logic on this one too, to really get an idea of how rad this is. There is John Young on the Descartes Highlands, on a different fucking planet! Charlie Duke says "stand by the flag and give me a big navy salute". John Young not only delivers the salute, he jumps as high as he can in the fucking air! On the Moon! I mean, holy shit! He does this for no practical scientific purpose, but just to get the raddest picture a human being will ever take. And BAM, he nails it. So fucking rad.
Ok, ok. I'm getting off topic here. Sorry about that, I just love that fucking picture!
So not only did they take a bunch of glamorshots on the Moon, they did tons of science and exploration as well. Apollo 16 had the luxury of fast transport, they had the lunar rover.
The Lunar Rover was essentially an electric car, with four independent electric motors that powered each wheel. It could go pretty fast, but no one knew quite how fast it could get going on the Moon. Not until John Young showed up that is.
John put the rover through it's paces. Really. He was cruising so fast in the thing that Charlie Duke later joked that all four wheels rarely contacted the ground at the same time. NASA really couldn't do much to stop John from getting rad with the rover, so he and Charlie had a bit of fun.
John got that bad-boy up to speeds exceeding 30mph, which may not sound like much for Earth driving, but 30mph in one-sixth gravity is pretty fucking amazing.
Not only did JY get to race around on the Moon, he got to break things while he was there as well! There is nothing quite as "punk rock" as smashing shit, so John Young got punk-as-fuck on the Moon.
For the Apollo landings, they had a package of experiments that the Astronauts launched once they were doing an EVA on the surface. It was called the ALSEP and some of the instruments in those packages still send us useful data today. Well all except the one from Apollo 16 that is.
When John went to deploy 16's ALSEP, he tripped on a chord and broke the shit of the experiment. Which, in turn, made a bunch of scientists back on Earth shed a single tear. To John's credit, it was really hard to get around in the Spacesuit! Check it out:
So not only was there a bunch of falling down on the Moon, John Young did the two most awesome things the Moon has ever been a party to.
John Young cursed and farted on the Moon. A lot.
When you read the transcripts of the communications between Earth and Apollo 16 there is a lot of truncated material and for a good reason. John Young really had gas.
Go ahead and try and tell me that he's not your favorite Astronaut now too.
4.) John Young saved Apollo 13's ass.
So I'm not going to spend forever on this one, since you know the fucking story from the movie. One thing that didn't get covered in the film enough for my tastes, was JY's involvement.
As a backup crew you run the same training as the "prime" crew just on a different shift. So while Jim Lovell was getting ready for what he though was going to be a walk on the Moon, John and crew were getting ready in case one of the prime guys broke a leg. That meant that John Young was contemplating every contingency, getting familiar with every system. As much as badass as he was, he was also an incredibly talented and versatile engineer, with a mind like a focused laser. You had to be not only an accomplished pilot, but a great student of engineering to work on the Apollo program, there wasn't room for slouches.
When Apollo 13's cryo-tank blew and oxygen was getting low in the freezing death-tube a group of engineers got together at a room in Houston and went to work on how to get a square peg in a round hole, literally.
The "scrubbers" that removed carbon-monoxide from the recycled cabin air in the lunar module were only set to work for a few days for two people. When John Young proposed the idea of using the LM as a make-shift lifeboat, the one problem was clean oxygen as instead of the two people the LM was made to support, it was going to be three people for about four times the duration of the LM's initial mission. It was suggested that the Command Module's scrubbers be moved from the CM to the LM in order to facilitate the LONG trip home. It was a great idea except for the fact that the LM's scrubbers were round and the CM's were square. It was an engineering mistake that NASA would never repeat.
John Young corralled every piece of material the Astronauts had with them (including every part of the ship that could be safely removed and all toiletries etc.) and the engineers got to work. A few hours later the produced what you see above, a duct taped masterpiece. They assembled a filter system using only spare parts that not only got Apollo 13's crew safely home, but also worked 90% as efficiently as the original equipment. So there, John Young helped save three humans 200,000 miles from Earth. Beat that Clooney.
5.) John Young is pissed!!!
John Young walked on the Moon, he almost did it twice (as backup for Apollo 17 he almost replaced Gene Cernan who was close to being sidelined with a knee surgery, which would have made John Young the last man on the Moon). Once John had been there, he wanted to go back. That seems to be a common thing with the Moon-Walkers, wanting to go back. John just takes it to a whole new level, by trying his best to get people to understand that hindrances of being a one-planet species. Here he is on SuperVolcanoes:
His whole thing is based on the idea that at any time there could be an extinction level event that we would have no escape from. John Young has dedicated many years to getting this point across to the world, but people just don't seem to be listening. READ THIS.
His whole philosophy is summed up pretty well in this quote from a lecture he gave, ""If you want to see an endangered species, get up and look in the mirror.". Going to the Moon wasn't as much a spiritual experience to John as it was to the others, for him it seemed to be a wake-up call about just how fragile our planet is in the grand scheme of things. Ever since he got back, he's been formulating ways to get us off the planet and save ourselves from what he feels is an inevitability.
Here is a good interview with the Houston Chronicle that has John talking about the Moon and how ridiculous it is that we haven't gone back. Check it out, as it's best to hear the argument straight from the man's mouth.
John Young is right and we're foolish for not listening closer to what he has to say. His prospective is unique to a group him and eleven other men. All of which has expressed the same concerns for the safety of our planet. These men are the ONLY people to have seen the entire Earth in one glance, they have traveled farther from home than anyone else. And yet we treat them like museum pieces and don't offer them the courtesy of learning from their incredible experience.
John just wants us to go back. I want us to go back. Cosmologically the Moon is incredibly close and it's ours. And by "ours" I don't mean America's or Russia's, I mean all of us. When we look up at night, we are all witnessing the same thing. We see a place that could offer the jumping off point for living up to our destiny as a species. We see a land so intrinsic to our very way of thought that we often take it for granted. But, we've been there. We've touched it, Astronauts will tell you about the smell of the Lunar soil (like struck matches). We have a group of men that can RECALL the place, not just imagine it. To me there is no greater benchmark for Human achievement and no better testament to a versatility and capacity for understanding. Human civilization has always thrived on exploration, it's hard-coded in our DNA. So why stop with Earth?
We have the chance to gain experience from the most traveled men in history. We have a unique opportunity to learn every time one of them opens their mouth, we just have to shut-up and listen.
John Young is telling us something now and after all you just learned about him, how could you not give a shit?
I am constantly thinking about space travel, literally. If you ever see me staring off in to the distance, brow furrowed, mouth twisted into a tiny smirk; odds are I'm thinking about manned spaceflight (most likely the Apollo program). Ever since I was a little boy I have been fascinated with the human adventure in space, there is something so promising about the whole thing. I can say with great certainty that space travel has inspired me more so than the most impressive piece of artwork, than the greatest written word. Hands down, nothing can top space in my mind. Nothing.
Sitting atop the great mental Ziggurat of space in my imagination, there is one man. One man so mythical in his proportions that as a kid it was hard for me to believe he really existed. He was like Pete Venkman to me, a character devised by a person's imagination for the simple purpose of telling a story. Well the difference being, this man was real. Really real.
His name is John W. Young.
 |
| "Hey there." |
In the course of his Astronaut career John Young flew almost every spacecraft that had been built, went to the Moon a few times and helped to save Apollo 13 in order to make sure that Ron Howard would have something to do before Arrested Development started.
An engineer, a pilot, a scholar. A surly bastard, a hero, a genius. Yes, all of the above.
Today I'd like to share with you a few hallmarks of this great American's career, in order to familiarize you with someone you probably have no idea expanded the boundaries of human understanding forever (no joke!).
There is too much to cover for just one article, so I'll try to go through the highlights and give you the coolest nuggets I can think of.
1.) John Young smuggled a corned beef sandwich in to space.
You read that right.
On March 23rd 1965 Gemini III lifted off from the Cape on it's way to space in order to perform the first Orbital Maneuvers in manned spaceflight. Added note: In order to pronounce "Gemini" like the astronauts say it like this, gemi-KNEE.
The launch went off without a hitch for America's 7th spaceflight (the seventeenth overall at that point, if you count early upper atmosphere test flights of the X-15), Virgil "Gus" Grissom and John Young rode atop a Titan rocket on their way to make history.
Gus Grissom was a bit infamous in the NASA ranks at the time, for accidentally blowing the hatch on Liberty Bell 7 (his Mercury capsule) and sinking it. So in honor of this event he named Gemini III's capsule the "Molly Brown", in hopes that it would be unsinkable. This was the first and only time a Gemini capsule got named, so really drink that in. No, really drink it in. Ok, good. Now we can move on.
Everything was going according to plan (minus a few mechanical failures here and there) when about two hours in to the flight the following conversation was overheard by the CapCom (capsule communicator, not Street Fighter):
Grissom: "What is it?"
Young: "Corn beef sandwich."
Grissom: "Where did that come from?"
Young: "I brought it with me. Let's see how it tastes. Smells, doesn't it?"
Grissom: "Yes, it's breaking up. I'm going to stick it in my pocket."
Young: "Is it?"
Young: "It was a thought, anyway."
Grissom: "Yep."
Young: "Not a very good one."
Grissom: "Pretty good, though, if it would just hold together."
Young: "Want some chicken leg?"
Grissom: "No, you can handle that."
Grissom: "What was the time of that booster again? What elevation?"
Now reading that, it may not seem like much, but this was a big fucking deal to NASA. So much so, that NASA thought about grounding John Young permanently (They wouldn't do that to Gus, as he was technically a hero per his Mercury 7 status.).
The press had a bit of a field day with the story (and rightfully so, considering how awesome it is) and started spreading it around. At that point spaceflight wasn't as "common" as it's become today, people used to go APE-SHIT over astronaut stories. Much like today's media, the most sensational things get the most coverage and soon John Young's sandwich was in bed with the communists. Here's a quote from then NASA administrator Jim Webb:
"The training program should have been so impressive to these men that they would not have done a thing like that. I do not agree that you can tolerate this kind of deviation from what is clearly the purpose and requirement for success on these flights."
Unconfirmed reports state that there was buzz around Star City (Baikanur) in Kazakhstan that the Americans had no regimented astronaut training or regulations, which made those Commie bastards think they had an edge on us! Well, the Russians totally did have an edge on us, the beat us to nearly every first in space (mainly because instead of engineering a problem to death they just skipped the engineering and went straight to the death. Which I plan to cover in another update, but check this out in the meantime.).
John caught a lot of heat over this incident, but luckily it didn't end with him getting grounded.
Now you may be asking "How the fuck did this all go down?","Did NASA not do a pre-flight contraband check?". Remember, this was the Wild Wild West of Aerospace, when there were no rules and only a handful of dedicated dudes trying to kick ass on the future of flight.
Here's the "unofficial" version of how it went down:
Wally Schirra (another famous Gemini astronaut and notorious practical joker) wasn't scheduled for flight training the day of the launch and knew how much John Young hated the prospect of eating the "space" food.
 |
| Morsels! |
Now there are conflicting reports about Deke Slayton's (head of the astronaut office) take on the sandwich, but some say he let John take it, most say he was unaware. Either way, the space-wich was stealthily added to John's kit and the rest is, well fuck, mentioned above.
2.) John Young was "all up in" the Apollo program.
Ok, so you had Gemin-KNEE, which was essentially a bunch of test flights to show that we could go places other than really high up in our own atmosphere. That was great stuff, with lots of groundbreaking science and exploration, but it was merely the tater-tot appetizer to the big meatloaf main course that was the Apollo program.
 |
| I prefer to call it "making love". |
May 25th 1961 then President John F. Kennedy made a big announcement, probably the biggest proclamation in the history of civilization. He let the world know, we were going to the Moon.
I recommend that you listen to the whole thing HERE.
No one knows what Kennedy's motivation TRULY was. There is a lot of speculation that it was a calculated political move, others claim he was just an avid Space-nut. I really feel like the true answer is neither. I think the real reason that Kennedy issued the challenge to go to the Moon because of one man:
 |
| "I'm not wearing pants." |
When he wasn't pulling out his dick in foreign countries, he was going to bat for America's future in space. Johnson had a wicked hard-on (oh I love writing about LBJ) for getting America in the front of the space pack. He worked hard to give the burgeoning industry a voice and to get lawmakers to see the benefits of having a robust space program. I mean fuck, Johnson Space Center ring a bell?
 |
| Of fucking course they put that thing behind the sign. LBJ approves. |
It turned out that about 500,000 Americans didn't have much going on, so we were able to get the ball rolling on visiting our closest neighbor. Thank God that when we got up to 499,999 people involved there was still room for one more. John W. Young.
 |
| AKA Badass |
John's next step in Apollo was Apollo 10, the second manned flight to the Moon. John flew the command module around the Moon solo, while Gene Cernan and Tom Stafford farted around in the LM testing it out. Apollo 10 also set the record for highest speed attained by a manned vehicle, 24,791mph.
So just to put Apollo 10 in perspective; John Young flew a spaceship around the Moon by himself and then went faster than any other person, ever (well him Cernan and Stafford). All this before the real shit even started!
He was also the backup commander for Apollo 13, the flight Tom Hanks was on. When shit hit the fan with 13, John Young went to work. I'll cover that in a minute, don't worry.
After 13, John Young did something that only 12 people in history have done. Joined a fraternity so exclusive that membership required you be pretty fucking amazing.
On Apollo 16 John Young walked on the Moon.
 |
| That is the motherfucking MOOOOON he's standing on! |
Which leads us to our next topic:
3.) John Young did really awesome shit on the Moon!
Now John Young wouldn't travel 250,000 miles trapped in a little can eating "food" out of a bag only to get to the Moon and walk around a bit. No, he had other plans.
 |
| A big Navy salute. |
You have to think about the logic on this one too, to really get an idea of how rad this is. There is John Young on the Descartes Highlands, on a different fucking planet! Charlie Duke says "stand by the flag and give me a big navy salute". John Young not only delivers the salute, he jumps as high as he can in the fucking air! On the Moon! I mean, holy shit! He does this for no practical scientific purpose, but just to get the raddest picture a human being will ever take. And BAM, he nails it. So fucking rad.
Ok, ok. I'm getting off topic here. Sorry about that, I just love that fucking picture!
So not only did they take a bunch of glamorshots on the Moon, they did tons of science and exploration as well. Apollo 16 had the luxury of fast transport, they had the lunar rover.
 |
| Watch it go! |
John put the rover through it's paces. Really. He was cruising so fast in the thing that Charlie Duke later joked that all four wheels rarely contacted the ground at the same time. NASA really couldn't do much to stop John from getting rad with the rover, so he and Charlie had a bit of fun.
John got that bad-boy up to speeds exceeding 30mph, which may not sound like much for Earth driving, but 30mph in one-sixth gravity is pretty fucking amazing.
Not only did JY get to race around on the Moon, he got to break things while he was there as well! There is nothing quite as "punk rock" as smashing shit, so John Young got punk-as-fuck on the Moon.
For the Apollo landings, they had a package of experiments that the Astronauts launched once they were doing an EVA on the surface. It was called the ALSEP and some of the instruments in those packages still send us useful data today. Well all except the one from Apollo 16 that is.
When John went to deploy 16's ALSEP, he tripped on a chord and broke the shit of the experiment. Which, in turn, made a bunch of scientists back on Earth shed a single tear. To John's credit, it was really hard to get around in the Spacesuit! Check it out:
So not only was there a bunch of falling down on the Moon, John Young did the two most awesome things the Moon has ever been a party to.
John Young cursed and farted on the Moon. A lot.
When you read the transcripts of the communications between Earth and Apollo 16 there is a lot of truncated material and for a good reason. John Young really had gas.
Go ahead and try and tell me that he's not your favorite Astronaut now too.
4.) John Young saved Apollo 13's ass.
So I'm not going to spend forever on this one, since you know the fucking story from the movie. One thing that didn't get covered in the film enough for my tastes, was JY's involvement.
As a backup crew you run the same training as the "prime" crew just on a different shift. So while Jim Lovell was getting ready for what he though was going to be a walk on the Moon, John and crew were getting ready in case one of the prime guys broke a leg. That meant that John Young was contemplating every contingency, getting familiar with every system. As much as badass as he was, he was also an incredibly talented and versatile engineer, with a mind like a focused laser. You had to be not only an accomplished pilot, but a great student of engineering to work on the Apollo program, there wasn't room for slouches.
When Apollo 13's cryo-tank blew and oxygen was getting low in the freezing death-tube a group of engineers got together at a room in Houston and went to work on how to get a square peg in a round hole, literally.
 |
| This Square Peg does not have a nerdy Sara Jessica Parker. |
John Young corralled every piece of material the Astronauts had with them (including every part of the ship that could be safely removed and all toiletries etc.) and the engineers got to work. A few hours later the produced what you see above, a duct taped masterpiece. They assembled a filter system using only spare parts that not only got Apollo 13's crew safely home, but also worked 90% as efficiently as the original equipment. So there, John Young helped save three humans 200,000 miles from Earth. Beat that Clooney.
 |
| "Already did. Twice. And I made this." |
John Young walked on the Moon, he almost did it twice (as backup for Apollo 17 he almost replaced Gene Cernan who was close to being sidelined with a knee surgery, which would have made John Young the last man on the Moon). Once John had been there, he wanted to go back. That seems to be a common thing with the Moon-Walkers, wanting to go back. John just takes it to a whole new level, by trying his best to get people to understand that hindrances of being a one-planet species. Here he is on SuperVolcanoes:
His whole thing is based on the idea that at any time there could be an extinction level event that we would have no escape from. John Young has dedicated many years to getting this point across to the world, but people just don't seem to be listening. READ THIS.
His whole philosophy is summed up pretty well in this quote from a lecture he gave, ""If you want to see an endangered species, get up and look in the mirror.". Going to the Moon wasn't as much a spiritual experience to John as it was to the others, for him it seemed to be a wake-up call about just how fragile our planet is in the grand scheme of things. Ever since he got back, he's been formulating ways to get us off the planet and save ourselves from what he feels is an inevitability.
Here is a good interview with the Houston Chronicle that has John talking about the Moon and how ridiculous it is that we haven't gone back. Check it out, as it's best to hear the argument straight from the man's mouth.
John Young is right and we're foolish for not listening closer to what he has to say. His prospective is unique to a group him and eleven other men. All of which has expressed the same concerns for the safety of our planet. These men are the ONLY people to have seen the entire Earth in one glance, they have traveled farther from home than anyone else. And yet we treat them like museum pieces and don't offer them the courtesy of learning from their incredible experience.
John just wants us to go back. I want us to go back. Cosmologically the Moon is incredibly close and it's ours. And by "ours" I don't mean America's or Russia's, I mean all of us. When we look up at night, we are all witnessing the same thing. We see a place that could offer the jumping off point for living up to our destiny as a species. We see a land so intrinsic to our very way of thought that we often take it for granted. But, we've been there. We've touched it, Astronauts will tell you about the smell of the Lunar soil (like struck matches). We have a group of men that can RECALL the place, not just imagine it. To me there is no greater benchmark for Human achievement and no better testament to a versatility and capacity for understanding. Human civilization has always thrived on exploration, it's hard-coded in our DNA. So why stop with Earth?
We have the chance to gain experience from the most traveled men in history. We have a unique opportunity to learn every time one of them opens their mouth, we just have to shut-up and listen.
John Young is telling us something now and after all you just learned about him, how could you not give a shit?
 |
| Take that Clooney. |
6/16/11
Why I HATE your band. Yes, YOUR band.
You might be asking yourself, "Why does Bill hate my band so much?", as I typically hate around 99% of bands.
Now this is a legitimate question, I mean, your band might have hundreds, even thousands of fans. Yet every time someone mentions your band name, you can see my disappointed look in the back of your mind. Me, shaking my head in disgust, long luxurious locks flowing in the breeze as I vigorously try to shake the fart smell of your crappy music out of my brain.
The truth is, I have developed a fool-proof system for quantifying the quality of each band. I have spent years honing this mental tool in order to save my delicate psyche from the garbage that pollutes the airwaves and fiber optic cables of today's popular culture.
In an effort to do a great service to the rest of humanity, I am going to offer you a little insight in to this highly polished mental process.
Let us cover a few basics first:
If you band features members of any of the following you are automatically disqualified:
MxPx, DC Talk, Blink 182, (hate to say it) Motley Crue, any "Nu-Metal" band ever.
There are others, that's just a small taste. If you are ever approached by former or current members of any of those acts make sure to decline requests to "jam". If you accept I will instantly hate you.
Now, let's cover the basics:
1.) Your band has a stupid name.
No, really. A fucking stupid name will KILL your band, at least in my eyes. You could play the most badass music in the history of sound but it doesn't matter if your name is retarded.
Example, "INfliKted", a stupid transposition of one letter takes a mundane, boring band name and makes it ridiculously idiotic. Replacing a "C" with a "K" is like wearing an Ed Hardy shirt, it instantly identifies you as a douchebag.
"Dudes, you have to come and check out my band on Saturday."- Douche
"Oh cool, what are you called?"- Me being polite
"The band's name is "MissStykk"." - Douche
"I hope you have life insurance that covers murder." -Me
The trend of trying to be "clever" and have a band name that is comprised of pidjin English wore off the minute Fred Durst did, which is to say 15 minutes after we heard about him. And that really is the main problem, if you swap a "C" for a "K" you are directly following in the footsteps of Fred Durst and we all know where that road leads....
During the late Eighties this motherfucker was on top. If it wasn't for Axl Rose and Sebastian Bach this douche would have fucked every bleach blonde girl on the planet.
5.) Just because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD.
Now this is a legitimate question, I mean, your band might have hundreds, even thousands of fans. Yet every time someone mentions your band name, you can see my disappointed look in the back of your mind. Me, shaking my head in disgust, long luxurious locks flowing in the breeze as I vigorously try to shake the fart smell of your crappy music out of my brain.
The truth is, I have developed a fool-proof system for quantifying the quality of each band. I have spent years honing this mental tool in order to save my delicate psyche from the garbage that pollutes the airwaves and fiber optic cables of today's popular culture.
In an effort to do a great service to the rest of humanity, I am going to offer you a little insight in to this highly polished mental process.
Let us cover a few basics first:
If you band features members of any of the following you are automatically disqualified:
MxPx, DC Talk, Blink 182, (hate to say it) Motley Crue, any "Nu-Metal" band ever.
There are others, that's just a small taste. If you are ever approached by former or current members of any of those acts make sure to decline requests to "jam". If you accept I will instantly hate you.
Now, let's cover the basics:
1.) Your band has a stupid name.
No, really. A fucking stupid name will KILL your band, at least in my eyes. You could play the most badass music in the history of sound but it doesn't matter if your name is retarded.
Example, "INfliKted", a stupid transposition of one letter takes a mundane, boring band name and makes it ridiculously idiotic. Replacing a "C" with a "K" is like wearing an Ed Hardy shirt, it instantly identifies you as a douchebag.
"Dudes, you have to come and check out my band on Saturday."- Douche
"Oh cool, what are you called?"- Me being polite
"The band's name is "MissStykk"." - Douche
"I hope you have life insurance that covers murder." -Me
The trend of trying to be "clever" and have a band name that is comprised of pidjin English wore off the minute Fred Durst did, which is to say 15 minutes after we heard about him. And that really is the main problem, if you swap a "C" for a "K" you are directly following in the footsteps of Fred Durst and we all know where that road leads....
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| The best visual metaphor ever created. |
2.) You play shitty music.
Ok, so let's say you've sorted out the band name. Changed it from "KandlleKrusH" to something respectable like "Seeger's Beard" or something rad like that.
Great! You're one step closer to not being a complete waste of time. Now we need to take the ol' magnifying glass to your music, which might also require taking the flamethrower to it as well.
The vast majority of the bands I hear don't have a fucking clue what music is. Before you start getting worried that I'm going to say it's not music unless it's Metal, that's not the case. A lot of Metal bands I hear nowadays suck just as much as their folk counterparts, because the problem isn't with the genre choices, it's with the actual music writing itself.
When you listen to a song like "Opium Trail" by Thin Lizzy, you can hear exactly what they were going for. You can feel the desperation in Phil Lynott's voice as he tries to convey a complex message over incredibly well arranged and thought out music. There is something monumental about good song writing, something that transcends the physical and grabs you in the darkest reaches of you mind.
Then there's this:
FUCK YOU CRAZY TOWN! FUCK YOU IN YOUR GLITTER-COVERED, BLEACH TIPPED, STRIPPER FUCKING ASSHOLES!!!!!
Whew. I needed to get that out.
That is a prime example of writing for the lowest common denominator. The idea of music like that being that you only should write something that lies very close to the surface, something that any idiot with 20 dollars in his wallet would gladly suspend his forthcoming birth control purchase to drop money on (hence creating a whole new generation of idiots for guys like this to rip off when they inevitably become record executives). It's a proven formula for success (or "SukkSekks" as they would probably spell it) that has been going on since recorded music began. There will always be vapid fucking clueless idiots that will listen to whatever TV tell them to and this is not me being jaded, that's the truth (Color Me Badd ring a bell? How the fuck did they have a career?).
So odds are you write music like that, so I hate your band. If you could take the energy you use tuning your fretless bass to C and make an attempt to write something from the soul I might get on board, but probably not.
Songwriting is a craft, much like crochet or woodworking, it takes practice and skill with a liberal dose of natural talent to make it work. The difference between songwriting and other crafts is that not every idiot thinks they can crochet a cozy or build a bookshelf.
Take the time to think about what you're writing, to pull influence from something other than the local Hot Topic and write a fucking song with some depth! Also, don't release every shitty thing you've recorded!
In this day and age with information being SO prevalent, things you put out there last forever. Inevitably your first songs are going to suck, so don't put them on YouTube! Wait until you've garnered the skills required of the task and keep your early efforts a secret. Speaking of experience...
3.) You missed the fucking boat.
You heard me! You missed the fucking boat.
I'm older now, especially in the musical arena, and have gathered a lifetimes worth of failure to look back on and build off of. I've never been THAT successful, but have done much more than the average musician gets to and for that I'm grateful. I have no ideas that I will ever "make it" as once I hit 23 years old I knew that "making it" is bullshit. What that term really means is that you have a HUGE debt to the IRS and possibly debilitating herpes.
We all had dreams of being a famous rock star, because it looks rad and seems easy! The truth is, very few people reach that status because that kind of success is so reliant on luck. There is no marketable formula for who gets to be the rockstar and who ends up the session musician, if there was we'd all be rockstars.
What there is out there is loyalty, which is thousands of times better than stardom. Take for example Brett Michaels. In his prime, he strutted around stages in front of thousands and thousands of fans. Getting blowjobs, drinking Coors and farting in the face of the established scene. Yeah right. Well anyway...
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| Fuck off. |
Then it all came crashing down, fast. The bottom fell out of that comfortable lifestyle and guys like BM (haha!) were left to wipe the cum off of their own bellies. No more Perrier in the limo, no more lines of crazy groupies. Everybody put on a flannel and fucked these dumbasses right off.
So BM (haha pt.2) went "underground" which is to say no one called him for a few years and then, he became ironic. That's when shit got really sad.
VH1 called and up and I assume the conversation went something like this:
"Uh, Hey, Brett Michaels?"- VH1 producer
"Speaking. Is this CC?"- BM (haha pt.3)
"Um, no sir. This is the producer of Flavor of Love. We were interested in trying to get a few bucks out of the fact that you are so not cool that you are kind of becoming cool again." -Prodoucher.
"Will I get to fuck strippers?"- BM (not this time)
"Of course, that's the whole premise of the show."- VH1 guy
"Sign me up!"- BM (ok, this time. HAHAH)
To a guy like Brett, this was awesome news! To the rest of the world its just sad as fuck.
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| His latest "Poison" is botox. |
The point being, that even if you do make it to the TOP, the top turns out to be the bottom of something else. Only Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Huey Lewis ever made money off of music. You're too fucking late.
Also, if you are in your late thirties or early forties and trying to start the "next big thing", fucking give up. Just write music that you'd like to hear. Don't cultivate an image, don't recruit guys that are in their twenties to back you up. Just find dudes your own age that play the way you like, jam and have fun.
If you are 25 or above and still trying to "make it", make a noose and fucking hang yourself. At least you'll succeed at that.
4.) Nobody cares.
That's right! Nobody gives a flying fuck about your band!
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| "But we're trying so hard!" |
In a world where nearly every album that has ever been recorded can be found within the touch of a button, no one will ever give two fucks about "Wykked Warlokk"s debut album.
Since all the good shit is available anywhere, any time, most people won't be intrigued by variations on a theme. You need to be doing some original shit to get anyone to notice and you have to do it well.
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| "We missed that last part." |
You can't just keep putting out the same shit that the guy down the street is doing and expect everyone to just jump right on board. You need to craft your songs with expertise (no matter what kind of music you play) and forge your stage show in the fires of creation!
I hear so many bands that I confuse the crappy late-era Metallica albums it's starting to get ridiculous. Why don't those bands try to do something original you ask? Because they don't know how, because that involves skill. As I mentioned before, making GOOD music is hard, really fucking hard. Writing something that your friends like is one thing, writing something thousands of people like is nearly impossible.
The best thing to do, like I also said earlier, is to write something YOU like to listen to. It won't be perfect, but if you like it, it will be perfect for you. And let's be honest, since no one else gives a shit, that's all that matters.
The greatest bands just "are". You can't recreate that, no matter how much you bite their sound or gimmick. Just stick with what you know and I won't throw bottles of warm piss at you. Much.
Now that everyone has a computer and audio software is cheap as fuck, most people think they are some kind of engineer. The truth is, they pay people to do that for a reason. So unless you are a total audiophile or big nerd for engineering, don't bother. You will always fuck it up and most likely take any chance you had of getting fans and fucking it right off.
It was nice when it costs thousands of dollars to record, it kept bands like "Cyklikal Cirkis" from putting out ten albums. They'd do one and then fail and rightfully hang it the fuck up.
Now those same cunts will put out three hundred singles and ten albums. It's getting stupid, real stupid.
I love the availability of independent music and great albums, but the vast majority of bands riding this digital wave are absolute shit. You have to wade through metric tons of diarrhea to get to the one gem in the bunch. You used to only have to wade through a cowpie at best, it's getting out of hand.
My suggestion; Don't fucking start. Do the garage band thing (not the recording program either).
I guess my whole point is this; you do NOT need to make every band you play in THE band. It's ok to just jam with friends and to rock out in private. If you get to play some shows, rad. If not, that's ok. If you want to record a CD and give it out to your friends, rad. If you want to record a CD and present it to labels, don't bother.
The listeners will tell you if you've got something. If you don't have listeners, you obviously don't have shit. So do your thing, have fun and don't sweat it.
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