I haven't advocated partying for 20 years however to ask where the tyranny is then deny that military law with summary execution for dissenters isn't tyranny makes discussing it with you kinda tough.

"If they cant and they control resources that are essential these resources will be taken from them exactly as they would in times of war."

"Yo guys, you're free to do what you want, but whatever it is you're doing, it's going to be without your essential resources, because I'm taking them lol gg"

Gee, I wonder if there is a name for this! Oh, there is, military dictatorship! Might as well sieg heil, it would be tough for anyone to see the difference between that and what you uphold, they shouted frantically left and right about a bright and beautiful future of a perfect race and how did that end? Don't they run these WW2 documentaries 24/7 nowadays? Is the point so hard to get? Did millions not die for a morbid ideal?

"Tyranny is to irrationally enforce a death spiral for all life."

wait, what?

shlt, man, out of all the definitions one could come with for tyranny... yours strikes out laughably

Woe amazing. You think future will not come just because its future (metaphysical lol)? A future with no life is not a terrible outcome worth some effort to avoid? Is this how little you love life and people in general? Adn you have the audacity to think what i said is murderous?

Nobody is enforcing anything with violence by the way. But you guys want war even in threads over petty out of context details and fail to see what was offered before getting there and how many times i said it doesnt have to be that way and it shouldnt be that way because it has less chance to succeed with friction. Violence emerges only if those that want to give up do it in such a way that destroys everything the others are trying to do so that there is future past the catastrophe.


But seriously stop being punk cowards the way you post attacking instead of offering solutions.

My question to you is simple. Forget Mars if you want. How will you stop a society from collapsing in record time without a project or a goal to live for and which is capable to sustain basic needs for all people so that they can at least live those 20 years instead of die a lot sooner.

Do you propose we continue to trade the stock market and fight wars and spend insane amounts in defense, control how much oil we drill in order not to crash prices and accumulate power and goods so that they can all burn in 20 years in a few seconds?

Right so I'm a punk coward because I think your line in this thread is ridiculous and because you don't understand how military rule in all countries with death for dissent corresponds to tyranny.

The last person to identify the tyrant as a tyrant is the tyrant.

In times of crisis special rules apply in order to preserve the integrity of the system. Any time a disaster happens or war there are special circumstances that if people behave erratically and start being violent someone needs to stop them and organize them again. That person is not a tyrant. You can have tyranny only when there are better alternatives that are easily available and you still choose to be authoritative and strict and resisting any suggestions for improvement. Where the hell here is the position that if you propose something better we (the others that want to save life) wont listen? That is bloody essential in order to have tyranny.

What you are saying is murderous. Yes, future may or may not come, as long as our existence as species is concerned, isn't this general consensus? That we're pretty much at the mercy of the elements, be it meteorites, earthquakes, floods?

I love people enough not to accept their killing as a possibility if they decide to oppose me. You have very peculiar definitions of a lot of things, love being among them, I see. They are not petty out of context details, you set the context vividly and in great detail, albeit ridiculous and you are just contradicting yourself more and more now. You did admit enforcing your policy with violence as a possibility, several times.

Where are these solutions you provided? Drug and women ridden orgies to boost morale of workers after 12 hours shifts? "Creating" animals? What does that even mean? 10% urgency reallocation of funds? Out of what hole do you pull these numbers?

Firstly I think a solution to impending global catastrophe somewhat beyond my wherewithal, however I tend to think it's beyond yours given the ranges you've presented in this thread. What I am responding to is the means you are so willing to employ when you can't actually decide whether there is 1m or 1bn on the boats to mars. At the lower end you are looking at 0.00015% of the worlds population and I think it's kinda ridiculous to expect of the 99.99985 what you expect.

I also tend to ignore extremely speculative assertions when the assertor is not prepared to countenance they are wrong.

Most of the world will go by its usual rhytm. People will live in denial. Some will arm to their teeth while the rest call them loonies. Hard to believe the world is going to end when the birds are singing. A select few will obviously start an effort to save themselves, no talk of saving the poor and unprivileged, nowhere near the magnitude you convey and will realise that 20 years is not enough. Perhaps some futile ships will leave the orbit in the nick of time, but I don't give them much chance of making it past 6 months. Then the calamity will come, there will be despair, horror and death and then, silence.

Woe do you possibly realize what you are saying? Who the f cares if you call it murder if it is what is needed in order for a total elimination of everything to be avoided. It is not murder, it is the saving of life. If life is saved it will give you again everything you lost back in time. If you let it expire it all ends here. You do not offer any idea how to protect life and essentially sentence it to death by inaction and you think i am the murderous that will only apply violence if the effort is inhibited and destroyed?

Stop the cowardly bs and tell me how you propose to maintain order for 20 years when there is an expiration in place! What will you do if people start being violent and irrational attacking each other and destroying infrastructure in their frustration? How will you stop the madness?

And shame to you guys you for the trivialization of what i said re drugs and sex etc (which was partially also introduced by wiper too). Yes sex (and not drugs) is essential for stability of all humans. Sex can help you be creative, confident and eager to do a lot of things. It is primal and it serves a function that is very important to life and it is for this reason that appears so appealing to human brains and holds such a control over their overall chemistry and emotional stability. A society that deals with sex without taboos and with honesty will suffer a lot less than one that is puritanical, hypocritical or completely hedonistic about it ignoring the consequences and victims of its apotheosis (the other extreme).

I was asked to offer some incentive to people. I personally do not need sex in order to do what is important in that situation. Nobody that gets it should need anything other than basic means to survive and work efficiently in that situation given what we would be facing. But i will also say that it helps fix the mood in general. So a free open society that has even available sex as part of the process has now more time to devote to the truly important. It should be viewed as a basic human need , essential component of the human condition, secondary to the most important ones but still relevant. Thats all. Now you go ahead and trivialize it and equate it with whatever nazis and other armies of the past did raping women and allowing their soldiers to be animal monsters. I never said any of this bs.

I dare you to counter the claim that a person that has sex often, is fed well and has good medical care doesnt make a happier individual that can be more productive and focused. By all means tell me that sexually frustrated monks will do a better job.

The point here is people need to work on something that must be done in order for life to not expire and also in order for society to not break down. A mother will sacrifice herself to save her kid. At this instance the mother is all of us and the kid is the few that we will manage to save if we did something. The better we work the higher the numbers of people/life forms/technology/culture etc these will be (the saved ones). Everything else is bs and shame on you for making it an issue while ignoring the END of everything.

You want to try to be pseudo virginally ethical while enabling by inaction the ultimate crime. Someone is about to burn your house and shoot everyone that comes out and you will be concerned with me trying to get to the phone to call for help which requires me to break through a nice woodwork door that we dont have the keys for. It is that ridiculous. You judge me for being strict if things are not sensible when not doing anything will remove the ability to judge or to have anything to judge anymore. LOL. AMAZING. Its not at all different than having the ship go down and your problem is i am not wearing my tuxedo for the occasion while trying to find us a life boat.

Order will be maintained from sheer inertia. As I said, people will live in denial. Sombre predictions have already been made by scientists concerning our environment and I see little that is done on a global scale and no one takes it to the street to shout day in and day out. No one panics. Business as usual. The masses won't mobilize in a huge and noble effort, get real. Every state or union of states will compete for survival, as usual. You really expect islamic states to end their quarrels and join a global effort. You really expect the superpowers to forge an alliance and build towards a common good...

How naive can you get? Little to none of what you say will be accomplished.

We are not trivializing the sex and drugs matter, it is trivial simply by the way you put it.

I accept your dare and counter your claim and I will speak from my own experience. The fact that I have sex, am well fed and have good medical care has not and does not make me a happier individual. I had hoped it would, but it didn't. And it does not make me more focused, only on getting more of it.

Anyway, you seem to have stepped up your coherence in the last post, but still fail to grasp that you don't have to do anything to keep the masses calm and steady. If we speak as authorities of the world in this scenario, why let the news out from the get-go? Secretly grind a space project with third world country employees payed with 7 dollars a day. No quality ladies or meals required. It's how most of the corporate world gets shyt done anyway.

An inevitable catastrophe ahead can never be kept a secret for long due to science/information circles. Best dealt directly after some plan of action is designed of course (in fact many such plans already exist) before the broad release of news. Yes people will be insanely in denial eternally over certain death. Come on now! And that of course will be the case with all governments and scientists telling them what will happen (impossible to relate to Global warming which will not kill all life, only wipe the arrogance from our civilization when we start seeing the consequences of a ridiculous priorities world)! No denial by over 50% of the population easily. Denial will never last. All the scientists and university educated people (>20% of all societies on avg) will know the truth within months if it is that certain and clean from any ambiguity. And it will be clean and certain unlike other things/risks/climate issues etc. The others will be convinced by members of their family that they love and respect eventually. Religious leaders will agree also because the religious top is ultimately pragmatists. This current Pope for example doesnt look delusional anymore like other leaders of the past.

Islamic states that you referred to, will keep their bs infighting for a while but still a great fraction of the Muslim world is secular, not very ambiguous in their embrace of modern science and technology. I expect their governments and military and scientists and educated population to "get it" very fast too.

I do not underestimate the idiocy of humans and the enormous logistical difficulty imposed even if there were broad agreement. But i do not underestimate also their capacity in the face or real documented evidence of inevitable loss to rise up to their responsibilities for a lot more than they are doing now in a careless state of ignorant bliss lacking urgency. Very often in crisis people join forces. They did in major wars and in disasters.


I offer a process to deal with the inevitable expiration and give work a dual purpose;

1) To maintain society and even experience a rise on avg standard of living as incentive for order.
2) To try to find a way so that life survives elsewhere. That will rocket the economy in unreal directions of expansion. The currency in such effort is not money. LOL. In a crisis the only currency is manpower, man-hours, resources, and energy production.

All technology needed for both is available or reasonable to develop up to a point, that cannot be estimated how high it is until we try it, in 20 years. This is why 1 mil to 1 bil is reasonable uncertainty range with weight towards the low part.

The economy cannot survive on inertia for long. A lot of of the functions of modern society depend on the defacto acceptance of a futurewith obligations/risks/dreams for all involved. You remove that and suddenly a lot has no purpose and drops out leading to collapse of capitalism. People will start leaving their jobs thinking they have enough saved to spend with their families and they can sell assests etc as needed. See where this takes things with selling pressures. Oh and by the way dont tell me that the stock market and the economy that is vastly entangled to it can survive a situation that has no more bull markets ahead planned...lol. Yes people will take their money and buy stocks, not quality food and things, entertainment etc they need to experience what they havent already. Once the markets start diving you know what comes next. Oh yeah and lending lol!!!

And i am the one that hasnt thought this over...


Time to wake up to what it means to be human at the most primal level. In a moment of crisis of existential magnitude all that humans need is food, water, family, friends, a place to stay and a job to do that will convince them daily that yes they will die but they wont be defeated as well by the incoming catastrophe. That will be the revenge! Nature imposes its will and man says hell no! For man is also nature and maybe some of the most interesting part of the game.

I'm sure you've thought it over I'm as sure that your thinking is awful.

haven't caught up yet (see: undertitle) and only read to here. I previously professed my love for masque and I just want to point out that this response is exactly what I would have said, what I've tried to say, if I were smarter. :-/

had to google "perfervid", won't lie.

even if we're accepting the belief that many, many different, independent scientific disciplines will experience a Great Leap Forward because we throw money and physical labor towards it, especially in areas where the large, unwashed masses' abilities are essentially worthless (which, coincidentally China will be able to overcome quicker because of the large amount of the public that is "used to" being told what to do)...

it's still gonna come down to money. maybe not money, but power. that absolutely would lead to a showdown of some sort, whether forcing it's own people to acquiesce (government only providing vaccines to those who will work), or wanting to dictate the terms of "the launch" to other countries (pretty obvious that the risk of nuclear holocaust increases dramatically, and I'd argue, more likely than 1,000,000 humans getting to Mars with any real ability to survive), nationalism or religion or any of dozens of factors won't allow a smooth transition.

within 6 months, probably 3, I'd bet 51% of Americans would rather be paid with something tangible...food, gold, electricity, safety/protection, etc. than with dollars or whatever they were called.

**** is the point of Wall Street in this hypothetical? why would anyone invest in any company if they know in 20 years, no amount of dividends or ROI will matter??

only reason I can think of is the only thing that would motivate an investor in this hypothetical: salvation aboard a rocketship. genes live on, hell for enough money maybe the whole family can go on the adventure.

which is where the optimistic view of how this might play out dies, bc necessarily you will have the money and power on one side, and the large, unpowerful masses on the other.

if the only power the people have is saying "**** you" to the man, I expect a lot of people to be doing that in the form of spray-painting messages of freedom on your HQ at night.

hopefully we never have to discover the answer to this hypothetical...

Thanks for adding value to the thread by rejecting mine. Let me ask you dereds.

1) Do you even respect human culture?
2) Do you value life in general, all life?
3) Do you find any gratitude for the fact you lived?
4) Do you want people to continue to live in the future and even experience much better worlds than the ones we have?

By all means go ahead and tell me if you answer yes to these things what is the plan!

What is the reason people live by the way? What do they live for? What is the point to wake up every day and do things? Why is any of this done? Life needs to survive and propagate. Thats what it does. Intelligent life does even more to make it interesting. A lot more interesting.

Anyone that ever sacrificed something they did it for what reason? We all die. Well this time its in 20 years instead of the avg that is probably 50 for the random human you find out there. Without any crisis what do we live for? Why do we even care to make the world better place? Is it all for us right here and now? None of that is done for the future? What if you asked what is the value of the future to a human that lived 10k years ago? How about 2.5k years ago? 400? 100? The value is in fact what we have today. Enormous. It is not realized by them but because of them. Each generation lives the dreams of the ones before. Dreams that often guided their lives and struggles. Granted most of the time humans live for the moment, they cannot afford a lot more. But ultimately they want something more. They are never satisfied with the present. Any present. They live, build and die and hope their values and culture wont die with them but will prove a gift to the future generations, a gift of wisdom, a step towards what was never possible for them then when they lived. Our present and future is their immortality. What would our immortality be?

As evidence by the human epic the immortality of prior generations can be a very interesting thing that far exceeds in ultimate importance (power/wisdom etc) any prior generation and its struggles, desires and wisdom. Uncapped treasure. Existing is what makes it possible, not 100, not 200, but thousands of years and more even into whatever we create to take the baton of complexity further. And therefore continuing to exist is what will make all this possible and so much we cant dream yet. What more motivation does one need in life but to experience better things than they have before and to enable others to do that in the future. Why do we care to live and live well? The major feature of life is its "will" to survive. It strives to find a way. And we will not!

Who is it really that is not thinking it all as deep as it deserves? When something happens that comes and breaks this cycle, this unbounded quest, this intriguing adventure, whatever you want to call this human saga stolen from you and the future generations, will you simply resign to it? You will yield and go without rage, without any struggle into the night?

Ok now we are getting to the interesting part it seems. Only this is not where the optimistic view of how it all plays out dies. It is where it is born into a reality. The masses are only without power if they have no goals and a plan to get there. Money is irrelevant in a world that only tangible objects of immediate purpose are valuable. And guess what is the ultimate commodity now besides basic resources and energy? Man-hours, human work, human ingenuity, creativity, cooperation. The available total worldwide workforce devoted to managing and extracting more of these resources and producing more of that energy, the complete confident resistance to yielding and giving up through whatever effort is left in these masses in their attempt to save something to prevent the collapse and attempt the impossible. This is what will drive everything next. The masses and their work (and basic needs) will claim the system because they are the only ones that can save it now with proper rational leadership that secures their interests. What are these interests? To live with dignity and celebrate the last 20 years. To make sure that it doesnt all end there. And thats how you win. By doing these 2 things.


The structure of all this seems idealistic and impossible to put together, until finally it is recognized by most and their leaders that they have no alternative. Anything else leads to chaos and removal of any chance that anything survives elsewhere with a possibility to recover everything one day.

oh man, I just caught up.

this is a pretty fascinating conversation, IMO.

for the record, I only originally tossed out "we want hookers and blow" as a metaphor for whatever it may be that people want to work towards the goal. personally, I suppose I would want no hookers bc I more value time with my wife than women paid just to keep me working, and I've never tried cocaine once despite being the only person in an apartment or house that WASN'T doing it...'once in a while' doesn't really work for me

masque, I genuinely appreciate your writings on the value of survival. your focus on it honestly will make me examine my own opinions simply bc I disagree. I still enjoy being the dumbest person in the room (rare that it is IMO) and your vigor and sleeve-worn emotion are causing doubt in my own opinions.

I just tend to assume that my (and many like me) idea of survival means me and mine. I've never in the numerous times I've contemplated the zombie apocalypse assumed that I had to try to save OTHERS above anything else.

I'm all about living, and I suppose I need to consider what would happen if I had to decide between my own selfish agenda and *everyone*.

no idea why you keep calling people "cowards" and "cowardly" for expressing that their idea of freedom is different than yours though, it's pretty fundamental to their argument that they want to decide their own future and you casually dismissing it with a wave and a "we got the power to make you" seems disingenuous to the entire hypothetical as a whole.

you may be one of the smartest people that I can remember interacting with on a messageboard (perhaps anywhere), but this is where our opinions will stay different.

I have lived my entire life in the rust belt. working class areas, urban blight, pessimism, etc.

I disagree with you that the people in this area will come to the same conclusions on life and the survival of life that you do.

I'm saying that WANTING you to be right. hoping that we all sing Kum-Ba-ya and rise up to meet the challenge.

your life is assuredly different than mine.

we're both in the business of education, but I do mine in the one of the poorest neighborhoods in one of the poorest/bleak cities in the country, and you do yours amongst some of the most intelligent, professional colleagues in the world, wearing ties and sipping coffee.

I don't mean that as disrespect, I only point it out bc assuming that I understand theoretical physics is maybe only slightly more incorrect than you saying you know how poor people, now with a 100% certainty that they have nothing to lose, will react when informed that they can work or die, one way or another.

Randy Quaid screaming "UP YOURS" as he sacrifices his life to show the world how to take down the evil, invading aliens in the American cinematic classic, "Independence Day", seems very appropriate in this conversation.

how, I'm not sure. just wanted to point out one man's sacrifice.

Also my question to you guys is this next that comes from a profound shock towards the reactions i get from some here. I would welcome alternative proposals rather than such negative reactions.

What if indeed humans are so terrible that what i say is hard to apply and the system will go to hell. Isnt it our responsibility and those of us that think alike worldwide to then join our forces in whatever this is 1% 5%-20% even 0.1% of the population and try to change the world and show why we need to do something other than give up and fight each other over irrational things while marching to the abyss?


My problem with a pessimist is not that they are pessimistic. It is that often enough they have given up too! This has got to be an entirely separate thing. One can be pessimistic and still try. If you cannot do that then pessimism is not a position about what future outcome is more likely but a disease you have.

(I would also add that optimism for some may also be a disease if they do not care for how in real life that optimism becomes reality with some good choices of action and ideas that will win and initiate the transition.)

I don't think it's that. I think you're underestimating the complexity of resource allocation.

Food still has to be produced and distributed.

People fighting wars (avaricious or glorious) are not just going to stop and sing kumbaya.

The health care industry still has to persist. Vaccines still have to be produced. patients still have to be treated. Do you think that people in their late 40's to early 60's are just going to accept reduced treatment for themselves or their family? Emotionally, they'll consider the escape plan a pipe dream even if they accept the prediction of doom.

Cultures that have distrusted one another for ages are not suddenly going to become friends.

In all likelihood, there will be multiple projects started because the proponen ts of thos projects either don't agree with each other or don't respect the others' conclusion.

I doubt things devolve into chaos immediately, but at some point defense resources get located at the points of work on the escape project(s) and places farther away become more lawless.

OTOH, you don't really have 7B people to manage as over half the world's people won't even be aware (you do know that 50% of the people in the world have NEVER used a telephone?

It's not that human society is too evil, it's that we're chaotic by nature.

here is my proposal: allow people to make their own choices about how to approach their coming death.

if you want to help, help. if I want to play video games and put my head in the sand, let me. seems like letting humanity ultimately decide their fate by using their sense of reason, the one thing that makes us different than every other species we've ever encountered, is fitting.

maybe entire small cities in the midwest United States and Saudi princes and Japanese businessman decide the best use of their time and money is to collectively pool their money to buy a rocket, which will contain no living humans, only data drives containing the life stories/DNA/goodbye letters of those in the pool and send it out towards a distant star system in the hopes of a future civilization coming across it...then, they go about their lives, having warm family dinners, traveling or playing video games with their heads in the sand.

dictating the future is what the asteroid/gamma ray burst/extinction is doing, it shouldn't be other people.

think of just one small issue with employing the globe to evacuate: entertainment.

you've gotten past the point of arguing that a carrot other than our DNA surviving is needed. workers will need to enjoy themselves in some way...

if this happened tomorrow, no ****ing way am I allowing this NBA season to not play out. the Cavs are closer to bringing northeast ohio a championship than any team at any time in my life. if I have to work, I want some of my free time to be spent watching lebron and love and kyrie start to gel and beat the spurs in 7 games come June.

allow that to happen and I will pledge to work 60-70 hours/week doing whatever you want me to.

obviously, this is mostly said in jest. but can you guarantee lebron james, with $500,000,000 of Nike dollars in the bank will choose instead to cruise on his yacht with his 2 sons and wife for the next 20 years?

of course you cannot. nor can you assume any one person or group of people or type of people or race of people or gender of people will put the good of the many above their own.

I'll defer to your scientific knowledge, but I do believe that your faith in humans and their desire to continue the species while voluntarily giving up their own lives is misguided and incorrect.

now, if you're talking force, that's a whole different thing. we started by saying that HUMANS WILL SURVIVE and the wonders of "us". I have no doubt that the few would attempt to overpower the many, I just don't think it would work bc that assumes the tacit support of the massacre of 99% of the world by the 1% that would still need them for logistics.

there are the principled among us, you are one, I am as well and am playing more of devil's advocate role in this discussion than I'm admitting to, but there are many more that won't share our ideals or sense of duty.

and in the end, that's what we're arguing, not how wiper or masque will react, but how HUMANITY will react, and I suppose that's where our disagreement comes from.

The negative reactions are generally because the rest of us recognize that in a group you are deserving of exactly one vote. (You are permitted to attempt to persuade others if you wish. If you fail to persuade others then you are welcome to whine about your lack of capacity to persuade, but that is annoying.)

In other matters, such as "what George wants," you get exactly zero votes. I think that smrk and Chezlaw should reproduce with attractive and clever females, but it isn't my choice to make. I think that people are being ridiculously stupid by not fly fishing and have learning the art of tying flies, but I have never been disappointed to have a stream to myself.

My alternative proposal if we are faced with some calamity: you do whatever you think is right based on what is important to you, just as the rest of us will. On things where we don't trust each other too much and where there is general agreement that we are all better off if we give up personal choice for the benefits of solidarity, we will vote. That ain't too bad of a 'topia, imo.