Nuclear weapons agency (and many others) attacked by massive computer breach

December 17, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Terrorism often comes in the form of bombs and poisons, but it can also come in the form of cyber attacks. There has been a massive attack in the United States stretching up to some of the most secure sites in the country:

Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught

The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.

The breach is so bad and so far reaching, it is thought that entire computer networks will need to be “burned to the ground” in order to lock them down again:

Hacked networks will need to be burned ‘down to the ground’

“We have a serious problem. We don’t know what networks they are in, how deep they are, what access they have, what tools they left,” said Bruce Schneier, a prominent security expert and Harvard fellow… The only way to be sure a network is clean is “to burn it down to the ground and rebuild it,” Schneier said.

An unbelievable situation for a country as advanced and powerful as the United States.

“The Doomsday Book” by Marshall Brain lays out this scenario in amazing detail and offers solutions to prevent this doomsday scenario from unfolding. You can order the book today on Amazon and other retailers.

Mass Extinction

An unfathomable story of human destruction at a massive scale

December 17, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Here is a documentary that describes massive infrastructure projects in Florida – dams and canals – that have destroyed entire ecosystems:

Sweetwater- A Film by Spencer Miller

The video describes a path to repair, but what is the chance that we take it?

The problems include:

A massive sugar industry
Housing development
Politics

Whole areas destroyed by misguided human infrastructure and economic development. The destruction documented in the video is heartbreaking. By the 29 minute point you just want to cry.

More details: Help save Florida Bay and Florida’s water

Terrorism

Domestic Terrorism Threats surging in wake of United States Elections

December 14, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

The Proud Boys are using YouTube to organize violence at Joe Biden’s inauguration

In the last few years, the Proud Boys have been involved in one violent clash after another. The extremist far-right group with ties to white nationalism doesn’t just relish violence, it encourages it. And lately, Proud Boys leadership has been using a show on InfoWars alum Joe Biggs’ YouTube channel for recruiting, fundraising, promoting events, and urging violence up to and including revolution.

Watch what happened when CNN reporter went to Proud Boys rally

What Goes on at A Proud Boys Rally | NowThis

Global Warming, Sea Level Rise, Warnings

Is the loss of arctic ice the true harbinger of the climate apocolypse?

December 10, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Is the loss of arctic ice the true harbinger of the climate apocolypse? Probably:

Blue Ocean Event : Game Over?

From the description:

A Blue Ocean Event, or Ice-Free Arctic, is the source of almost fever pitch speculation in the climate science world. The consequences of the disappearance of sea ice from the arctic ocean, however briefly, at the end of a summer melt season some time in the not too distant future, are potentially very ominous for the way we organise our human socio-economic structures today. This week, we consider what those consequences may look like.

It truly is a frightening prospect. Without artic ice to cool things off, temperatures in the northern hemisphere can go haywire and permafrost will melt, releasing gigatons of methane and CO2 into the atmosphere in a positive feedback loop. It is both terrifying and deeply depressing, because it appears that humanity (though politics, lack of leadership, lobbying, inertia, ignorance, indifference, corporate power in the fossil fuel industries, etc.) will be unable to take any coordinated action to turn things around.

The Arctic as we once knew it, an inhospitable, barely accessible and icebound place, is gone. Climate change has transformed it into a region that can heat up to 100 degrees, is beset by ferocious wildfires, and is covered in permafrost that is no longer permanent. The sea ice cover that has long defined the Far North is fast disappearing. This is the picture from a new international scientific assessment released Tuesday. The 2020 Arctic Report Card, a report led by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) involving 133 scientists from 15 countries, points to trends that, with each passing year, have grown more extreme and have far-reaching implications for people living far outside the region, including in the Lower 48 states.

Pandemics

Anti-mask protesters in Idaho overwhelm cops, force cancellation of public health meeting – also shut down homes of commissioners around the city

December 10, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Anti-mask protesters in Idaho overwhelm cops, force cancellation of public health meeting

The commissioners tried to meet Tuesday to address the COVID-19 pandemic, but were met with fierce resistance from anti-mask protesters, the Idaho Statesman reported. The anti-maskers gathered outside the public health building in downtown Boise and at commissioners’ houses around the city, according to a press release from Boise police.

Meanwhile there is very good reason to enforce mask-wearing and increase restrictions:

Idaho doctors have warned state leaders that they’re so overwhelmed by COVID cases that they could soon be forced to let some people die because they simply don’t have the resources to care for all patients. More than 285,000 people in the U.S. have died from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins data. More than 1,000 of those people have been in Idaho.

It is amazing that there is this much politicized energy around mask-wearing. These people are not protesting anything that matters – not climate change, not mass unemployment or government inaction on it, not wealth inequality and its corrosive effects on society… No, they are protesting a simple piece of cloth over the face that can save thousands and thousands of lives.

Pandemics, Warnings

COVID-19 is just the first – we face the prospect of pandemic after pandemic

December 8, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

How Climate Change Is Ushering in a New Pandemic Era – A warming world is expanding the range of deadly diseases and risking an explosion of new zoonotic pathogens from the likes of bats, mosquitoes, and ticks

This paragraph paints a picture of what humanity has lost due to COVID-19:

Covid-19 likely emerged from the wilds near southern China, then found residence in horseshoe bats before making the jump to humans. The virus, as of this writing, has infected 63 million people and caused 1.5 million deaths around the world. The global economic impact of the pandemic was estimated at $8 trillion to $16 trillion in July 2020 — it may be $16 trillion in the U.S. alone by the fourth quarter of 2021 (assuming vaccines are effective at controlling it by then). The amount of human suffering this tiny microbe has caused is incalculable: lost loved ones, vanished jobs, broken families, and lingering sickness from a virus that will eventually retreat but will never disappear.

But the future could be much worse:

But the biggest impact may be on the emergence of new pathogens from animals. Through intensive agriculture, habitat destruction, and rising temperatures, we are forcing creatures to live by the cardinal rule of the climate crisis: adapt or die. For many animals, that means migrating to more hospitable environments. In one recent study that tracked the movement of 4,000 species over the past few decades, as many as 70 percent had moved, almost all of them seeking cooler lands and waters. Some animals have made big leaps. Atlantic cod have moved more than 120 miles per decade. In the Andes Mountains in South America, frogs and fungi species have climbed a quarter mile higher over the past 70 years. In Alaska, hunters are discovering parasites from more than 950 miles southeast in Canada, alive under the skin of wild birds (tiny parasites adapt better to rapidly changing temperatures than large animals). Great white sharks are turning up as far north as Maine. “A wild exodus has begun,” writes Sonia Shah in The Next Great Migration. “It is happening on every continent and in every ocean.”

Somehow humanity has to stop doing what it is doing and become responsible stewards of the planet. But can humanity do this?

Drones, Terrorism

Imagine a world where remote-control robots are shooting and killing people. That world is now…

December 7, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Iranian nuclear scientist was killed using ‘satellite-controlled machine gun’ – The gun was so accurate that the scientist’s wife, who was sitting in the same car, was not injured, reports say.

From the article:

Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency quoted Commodore Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as saying: “The machine gun was equipped with artificial intelligence to target Martyr Fakhrizadeh.” He said that the gun fired 13 shots at Mr Fakhrizadeh but was so accurate that the scientist’s wife, who was sitting in the same car, was not injured. “The gun was focused only on Martyr Fakhrizadeh, and his wife was not shot, despite being a few centimetres away,” he said.
“The head of the protection team was also shot four times because he threw himself on Fakhrizadeh, and no enemy was on the scene to shoot the guards.”

Between this technology and high-flying drones killing people, it seems like soon no high-ranking official will be safe. See for example Drone Attacks.

Add robot soldiers and robot armies into the mix and things get frightening fast:

10 BEST MILITARY ROBOTS IN THE WORLD

Pandemics

New Mexico tried to stop the pandemic with a near-total shutdown and it did not work. Why?

December 5, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

New Mexico shut down nearly everything to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed by covid. It wasn’t enough.

From the article:

The governor had been sounding the alarm for more than a month. But by mid-November, it was clear to Michelle Lujan Grisham that she would need to take extreme measures to head off the “most serious emergency that New Mexico has ever faced.” With covid-19 cases rising exponentially and hospital beds dwindling, she dragged her state back to the darkest days of spring, when restaurant dining was banned, nonessential businesses were closed and residents were ordered to stay inside unless absolutely necessary.

By doing all of that, it seems like the virus would stop propagating. But it did not work nearly as well as hoped. So what went wrong? The article has the answer:

People want to get together with friends and relatives, and they resent being told by political leaders or health experts that they can’t. “There’s a need for instant gratification,” she said. “We’re not used to delaying gratification.” But that lack of constraint is having deadly consequences: More than 1,700 New Mexicans have already succumbed to covid-19. An average of nearly 30 people are added to the tally each day.
In other words, enough people do not cooperate and the virus keeps spreading. The article puts it this way:

She pleaded for citizens to take the threat seriously – to mask up, socially distance and limit their gatherings. At a time when President Trump was sending a very different message – hosting mass, and largely maskless, rallies nationwide – not everyone listened. “We have constituents here – and I would argue in every state – that still believe that this is not a deadly, contagious virus, and you don’t have to practice any public health measures,” she said in a Thursday phone interview. “That makes it really complicated.”

In other words, the intransigence and ignorance of certain groups of people make things horrible for everyone. Once again, people who are assholes make things miserable for everyone else.

Warnings

The Map of Doom – A fascinating way to categorize and rank Doomsday Scenarios

December 4, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

The Map of Doom is a fascinating way to categorize and rank doomsday scenarios:

The Map of Doom | Apocalypses Ranked

From the Video’s description:

This year was the first experience we’ve had of a global disaster affecting every single person on Earth. And also how unprepared society was to deal with it, despite plenty of people giving warnings that this was going to happen at some stage. But in the midst of all the doom I started to wonder, what other things could threaten humanity, that we are not thinking about? So I made the Map of Doom to list all the threats to humanity in one place. But just finding them all is not enough. I wanted to find a way of comparing the risks of all of these disaster scenarios. So this video follows my attempt at doing that, and I think I’ve hit on a great way to visually compare all these dangers, which I haven’t seen anyone do before, so hopefully by the end of the video you’ll have a better idea about what the biggest threats are, and how they compare to this pandemic.

There is even a poster available:

Map of Doom Poster

Global Warming, Hurricanes & Cyclones, Mass Extinction, Ocean Acidification, Rainforest Collapse, Sea Level Rise, Warnings

Humans continue burning fossil fuels despite the obvious stupidity of doing so

December 3, 2020 Marshall Brain Leave a comment

Such a depressing headline:

World is ‘doubling down’ on fossil fuels despite climate crisis – Production must fall by 6% a year to avoid ‘severe climate disruption’ but Covid-19 funding is supporting increases

The world’s governments are “doubling down” on fossil fuels despite the urgent need for cuts in carbon emissions to tackle the climate crisis, a report by the UN and partners has found. The researchers say production of coal, oil and gas must fall by 6% a year until 2030 to keep global heating under the 1.5C target agreed in the Paris accord and avoid “severe climate disruption”. But nations are planning production increases of 2% a year and G20 countries are giving 50% more coronavirus recovery funding to fossil fuels than to clean energy.

The headline, however, is not nearly strong enough. The reality is that fossil fuel burning should be reduced to zero immediately, and humanity must start sucking excess CO2 back out of the atmosphere. Otherwise the planet faces an unstoppable cascade of catastrophic effects including:

As discussed in the book, humanity somehow needs to transform its thinking to a wartime posture against climate in order to prevent all of these cataclysms from occurring. If we do not take immediate action, the prospects are dire.

Doomsday Now

Monthly Archives: December 2020