Bush Administration offers warning to world: Armagedon Asteroids will be kept secret!

[uh Clem]

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
Ehm. Since this policy of keeping any possible collisions secret would be rather public, it would mean people live in a constant fear, because they aren't sure if there's a rock inbound or not. That would mean living in continuous anxiety, which would be a lot worse than telling everybody if such an impact is going to happen.

Well, that depends on your perspective. For the public, yeah, it's a bad thing.

But for governments, having the public live in continuous anxiety makes their job easier.


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Stop Mad Cowboy Disease

[GePap]

I agree thast humanity has a chance to survive such an impact, and it would be the job of governments to try to see how many of thier people they could save with soem sort of imporvised actions: most specifically, setting aside enough supplies to try to keep some groups stocked thorugh the coming decades (or centuries). Such preparations would have to be very large scale, and I doubt during that time someone won't say:" , why is the government stocking up NORAD with tons of food? Do they know somehting we don't?)

I think keeping such a thing secret would be impossible, and if people found out the gov. had kept it a secret, the mess would be even greater.

[Sava]

I just hope the asteroid hits Cheyenne mountain so Bush doesn't survive.

[Stefu]

We could survive in mineshafts. Of course, we could only save our top military and government leadership and a number of females chosen for youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross-section of necessary skills.

[KrazyHorse]

What ratio of females to males?

[Sava]

If we want the best of parts of humanity to live on, we shouldn't save the top military and government leadership people.

[tandeetaylor]

Originally posted by Sava
we shouldn't save the top military and government leadership people.

I know! Why would we want them? And isn't the youth, health, sexual fertility and intelligence of males important too?

[monkspider]

I suggest a 10-1 female to male ratio, purely for procreation purposes. Down in some of our deeper mindshafts we could carry on indefinitely.

-edit oops Stefu already made the mineshaft pun.

[KrazyHorse]

Purely for recreation purposes?

I believe they would breed prodigiously...

[tandeetaylor]

Actually I think the reason that the whole one female for one male thing has always worked out is because you really do someone doing some producing while someone else is doing the child rearin'.

If you think that underground it would somehow be easier for us the produce food and stuff, that's the only way your fantasy ratio would work out.

[mrmitchell]

This policy is pure (1) idiocy or (2) hatred for fellow man.

Although the news is bad and it could cause anarchy, I myself (and apparently a lot of others) would rather know that the Earth is about to be blown to bits. At least I'd know that the extinction (much like dino extinction led to humans) would lead to some other life form to run around the globe for a while, as good as us or not. ("Good as us" is incredibly rude to the next life form, but I gotta stand up for my species somehow.)

BTW, in the scary event that the media allied up with the gov't (already evident in cases of Fox News etc.), news of asteriods about to hit Earth could easily be controlled. A lone amateur astronomer telling you he found something? He's either a nutcase or he mistook it for something else. Even if he showed you plates with a big round rock coming straight at you or something, or hell, even if some large scientists' organization showed you that, humans have a high hope rating i.e. they disregard bad news as false or not relevant to them.

[The diplomat]

The point is that a collision would not be 100% certain. Do you want to have global anarchy, collapse of government, looting and pillaging on a global scale, and then find out that the asteroid will miss?

[DanS]

What do you think the chances are of the government being able to keep this a secret?

I'll give you a hint. Much less than this happening in the first place.

[Ecthy]

You guys forgot something important: animals would have to be bred... and slaughtered.

[Shi Huangdi]

it is possible humanity could be totally wiped out, for instance if a big enough object hit us our atmosphere could turn into rock vapor.