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The gamma ray burst didn't just fry things (or at least half the planet would have been completely untouched), rather it fried the atmosphere. That set in stage

The gamma ray burst didn't just fry things (or at least half the planet would have been completely untouched), rather it fried the atmosphere. That set in stage a domino effect. If you strip the ozone introducing ultra high UV radiation everywhere, and then life starts dying from that including plants/animal in shallow water, creatures that depend on those creatures start dying, oxygen levels start shifting, and you get this lengthy domino effect everywhere. The 15% that survived were primarily from sea life that was deep enough to not just be shielded (which doesn't need to be that deep at all), but also to have a self sustainable cycle of life untouched by the life that was affected. And this zero sum notion of work is a bit off. Nearly all work is spent doing completely pointless to harmful tasks. Unimaginably vast sums of money and manhour are spent doing things like trying to make people watch ads they don't want to see, or far worse. Yet, somehow, this sort of 'optimization of labor' only seems to come up when talking about doing petty things like make humanity a multiplanetary species. I find it to be neither compelling nor made in particularly good faith.

throwaway290 3y ago
That was 6000 ly away. If another one happens 3000 ly away, whatever water thickness you cover your entire Martian base may easily not be enough. Or 1000 ly. Or 100 ly. You can hope but you are still rolling dice wherever you are in solar system or out. If you want to protect humanity's survival from gamma rays, you can add the same protection on Earth more easily. The rational reason to colonize Mars is so that you can escape there when things go bad on Earth. Which is especially funny because the 1% who escape there are the ones responsible for most of the pollution right here.
- somenameforme 3y ago
  Again, the rays themselves did not directly cause the death and destruction. Rather they messed up the atmosphere. On Mars, where the atmosphere is already toxic, this would be irrelevant. And there's no way to shield Earth against this at all. And nobody's going to be escaping to Mars. The wealthy and powerful already have their doomsday bunkers and hideouts; even a post-apocalyptic (such as after WW3) Earth would generally be a much more hospitable place than Mars will be.
  - throwaway290 3y ago
    Okay, I see how I was wrong re GRB impact on life. Should've looked it up before!

throwaway290 3y ago

That was 6000 ly away. If another one happens 3000 ly away, whatever water thickness you cover your entire Martian base may easily not be enough. Or 1000 ly. Or 100 ly. You can hope but you are still rolling dice wherever you are in solar system or out. If you want to protect humanity's survival from gamma rays, you can add the same protection on Earth more easily. The rational reason to colonize Mars is so that you can escape there when things go bad on Earth. Which is especially funny because the 1% who escape there are the ones responsible for most of the pollution right here.

somenameforme 3y ago
Again, the rays themselves did not directly cause the death and destruction. Rather they messed up the atmosphere. On Mars, where the atmosphere is already toxic, this would be irrelevant. And there's no way to shield Earth against this at all. And nobody's going to be escaping to Mars. The wealthy and powerful already have their doomsday bunkers and hideouts; even a post-apocalyptic (such as after WW3) Earth would generally be a much more hospitable place than Mars will be.
- throwaway290 3y ago
  Okay, I see how I was wrong re GRB impact on life. Should've looked it up before!