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Supervolcanoes and asteroid collisions are good reasons to support nuclear power, not just solar, as a diverse energy source. What happens if the sun gets block
by mchusma 6y ago
Supervolcanoes and asteroid collisions are good reasons to support nuclear power, not just solar, as a diverse energy source. What happens if the sun gets blocked out?
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago> What happens if the sun gets blocked out? We all starve to death.
- mnd999 6y agoI guess if we have nuclear we will still be able to pass the time coding whilst we starve.
- rbanffy 6y agoOr nuke everyone else to get their food supplies.
- ninkendo 6y agohttps://what-if.xkcd.com/49/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/49/
- scotty79 6y agoIf can make enough electricity we could make our own light to grow plants. Significant portion of population will starve though. But energy unused by them could help grow food for remaining fraction.
- elorant 6y agoIf significant portion of the population starts starving then there will be all out wars, social instability, chaos, anarchy and whatnot. This could send us back to the stone age.
- emiliobumachar 6y agoWell, yes, but a few working power plants would make the situation a bit better for as long as we can still maintain them, wouldn't they? What's your contingency plan, everyone commits suicide the day the volcano erupts?
- elorant 6y agoI don't have one, and it's not my job to. All I know is that civil order is a very fragile thing. We saw how things evolved with covid. A virus with a 0.2% fatality rate was enough to bring the worst recession in recent history, millions of dead, and hospitals to the brink of collapse. What do you think would happen if suddenly half the world's population can't find food to survive? They'll sit back and wait while you develop your contingency plan, or they will fight for their survival with all means in their disposal? In case of nations this means an all out war.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoI mostly agree, but: > A virus with a 0.2% fatality rate was enough to bring the worst recession in recent history, millions of dead, and hospitals to the brink of collapse. The worst recession in recent history? I regard 2008 as recent, and as a recession, this is definitely not worse than that was.
- elorant 6y agoThe writing is on the wall. We just have to wait a few months for the shockwave to reach us. A lot of small businesses that closed due to lockdowns won't open again, especially in the entertainment industry.
- FooHentai 6y agoI actually can't tell if this is satire. Well done!
- RikNieu 6y agoI'm not sure nuclear power plants would be able to handle that kind of assault... Also, you kind need complex societies to function to not have them melt down. After a super volcano or asteroid collision, that one could be dicey.
- vbezhenar 6y agoWe can burn coal for thousands of years. Thankfully nobody will care about emissions anymore.
- JulianMorrison 6y agoThings that would screw up if the sun got blocked: all photosynthesizing life, the hydrological cycle (it would freeze solid), the atmosphere (it would precipitate out). Merely having a fallback power solution would be the least of our problems.
- Robotbeat 6y agoExcept we could produce food using artificial light, melt water, and evaporate the frozen atmosphere.
- TheOtherHobbes 6y agoThat list - especially the last item - would take orders of magnitude more power than has ever been available from any human-engineered source.
- Robotbeat 6y agoI meant locally for local use, not globally. We’d basically be living on a sunless Mars except with a lot more resources.
- JulianMorrison 6y agoYeah, in vast airtight geothermally heated caverns that don't yet exist, using a closed cycle ark-ship ecology that has neither been perfected nor really even seriously tried, and with an "outside" that would be as ferociously hostile to human life as the surface of Pluto. Good anime setting, not really a plausible human future.
- VilleO 6y agoThe atmosphere would turn into liquid.
- macspoofing 6y agoI'm a fan of nuclear power, but if the sun gets blocked out, nuclear isn't going to help you. Sure you'll keep your lights on, for a short time, and you get to watch total environmental and civilization collapse.
- Someone 6y agoI think temperature on earth would eventually drop to a few kelvin. The earth’s heat and heat generated by the moon’s gravity stretching the planet would increase that, initially, but I doubt it would be over 100 kelvin. That’s not cold or even cold cold, but cold³. If there still would be oceans, they would be a mix of nitrogen and oxygen. I’m not sure living on it would be much easier than living in space. You would have better radiation protection and more raw materials, but staying warm might be harder.
- Wildgoose 6y agoI think air pressure (the weight of air above us at sea-level) compresses the air sufficiently for it to reach a temperature much greater than you would expect, e.g around negative 20 degrees Celsius. (This figure needs verification, I'm going from memory).
- Someone 6y agoBut earth would still be radiating out heat, would it? If so, where would the energy come from to maintain that temperature?