The terrifying size of the upcoming apocalypse

Sometimes, it’s tough to get across just how big something is. Measurements are accurate, of course, but sometimes people use the wrong units to describe things:

And even when we use the right ones, it’s sometimes difficult for the average layperson to mentally comprehend what 50m or 5km is. That’s why we often choose to rely on common everyday things to describe the size of an object. In the UK, that common everyday thing would be a double-decker bus. Fairly standard, nationally ubiquitous: a good choice to let us know how big a fatberg in the local sewer is:

But that’s the UK. So maybe we need to look at something else for places that don’t have double decker buses. Like an animal. The elephant seems a fairly good choice, even though they do vary a bit in size:

But in Israel, they don’t have double decker buses or elephants. So those wouldn’t work as examples. They do… they do seem to have an intimate knowledge of the scale of… er… capybaras, though:

That’s a big asteroid, and those are some chunky 1.2m capybaras. Equivalent to 1,700 Nine-banded armadillos or 6,200 carrots. The same size as 112 Fatbergs. Huge.

Thankfully, as the blurb points out, the KiloCapybara lump of rock isn’t going hit us. This time. But we must always be on the lookout for multi-rodent sized bits of space debris about to crash into our planet, and describe their size accurately: whatever it takes

Asteroid death “not certain”

Great news! This learned writer (no: this one, not me) seems to suggest that humankind might actually have the technology and ability to prevent an asteroid strike which would likely end all life on earth.

As long as we have a few decades of warning time.

But: Great news! NASA is tracking loads of these potential planet-devastating lumps of rock (when they’re at work, at least), and so we’re likely to get quite a bit of lead time before all life on earth is wiped out.

The bad news is that because we’re probably going to have a few decades of advance warning, there will almost certainly be no need for desperate measures like the inevitable big nuclear bomb. Thus any thoughts of a photo op of a massive extra-atmospheric firework display are, in all probability, wholly over optimistic.

Which is sad.

Do click through for some technologically amazing – but actually rather dull – ideas on how the-powers-that-be might protect us from certain death.

Sentences like:

We could blast it with a laser, for example.

do get the hopes up, only for them to be dashed with the follow up:

But since we don’t currently have a giant space laser, this method requires a bit more planning.

Leaving us with this riveting alternative:

In space, friction ceases to exist. Bodies move about as dictated by gravity. So, if you put something heavy near an asteroid, you can pull it off track.

This method happens slowly. It would only change the asteroid’s course at a rate of millimeters or centimeters per second per year.

BOOORRING!

It is, of course, recognised by all parties involved that any attempt to divert or blow up an incoming asteroid must be accompanied by an Aerosmith soundtrack. Understandably.

A matter of survival

Before you read this post, please:

If you do not have expendable liquid funds available to you, to cover as a minimum of one point five million euros for each member of your family, please do not continue.

Just kidding – 6000 miles… is free to read and probably always will be – but that €1.5m is how much it’s going to cost you to survive a plethora of rather unpleasant events coming up in the near future, according to the Arc Survival Group.

The approaching nastiness includes World War 3:

We are moving closer and closer to the start of the third world war starting with Israel blitzing Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, and covering the Iranian flank while the U.S. and joint forces invade Iran, from Iraq.

These events being the catalyst for China to invade Taiwan, North Korea to invade South Korea and hey presto we have the third world war which will basically reduce the worlds population down to an estimated 1 billion people, at which point the new world order will step in and offer a safe, secure, peaceful future for all, tagged, bagged, and chipped.

This is the long time planned and thought out new world of the few (many names including, Knights of Malta, Knights of the Templar, Bilderburg group, Illuminati, and so on Reptilian hybrids, shape shifters, etc, etc) It is quite well known that a large segment of these entities have been living underground for thousands of years, feeding off the surface in terms of energy, food, etc etc.

I actually thought I found a shape shifter living underground in my back garden this weekend, but it turned out to be a mole. Still, it did shift shape quite rapidly when I hit it with a spade and now a large segment of it is in my compost heap.

But anyone can survive a World War. I know people that have done it twice.
My grandmother, for one.

Asteroids though, well that’s a different matter. And when they’re tied in with a complete loss of planetary magnetism and rotation, you know there’s gonna be some trouble.

NASA has known for many years that an asteroid as large as a planet with the appearance of a devil’s head is passing within close proximity to our planet around the end of 2012. They also have known that Earth’s magnetism has been decreasing year on year and is expected to reduce to nothing around the end of 2012, when the earth’s rotation is expected to stop for three days and nights before starting to rotate once again in the opposite direction. The effects are not completely known but countless models have been made. These facts have for obvious reasons been kept from the general public, and I agree with this course of action because anarchy would not be good for anyone.

People, this is serious stuff. Those of you with extensive fridge magnet collections would do well to put down a towel or something soft in front of your fridge in order to limit the damage when the magnetism finally runs out and they drop off.
The effects are not completely known, but countless models have been made and these models indicate that if the world begins to spin in the opposite direction, then day will follow night instead of night following day. Durban will finally get sunsets and Super 15 games from New Zealand will start at an entirely reasonable hour. Voting for the ANC will mean you go to Hell and flights from Cape Town to Jo’burg will mysteriously take 10 minutes longer than flights from Jo’burg to Cape Town.

Yes. 10 minutes longer. It’s that serious.

What to do?

Your life is in your hands, no one else’s, everything is your choice. We cannot offer any guarantees of survival, we cannot even guarantee the human race’s survival. But we can promise that if anyone does survive what is coming, it will be our group. ‘The last shirt has no pockets’. Who do you trust ??

Well, having considered my options quite thoroughly, I’m thinking that it might be you guys at the Arc Survival Group.

After all,

it has been predicted by some that such a large proportion of the human race will wake up, and start to once again use the right side of the brain, connect with the nearly forgotten 6, 7, 8, 9th senses and so on, connect with the universe, see beyond the MATRIX that we are all trapped in and reject the Sumerians, reptilian controller’s of the experience we are all in right now. Rejecting the order that has been put in place by the Sumerians over the last several thousand years. This would be interesting.

And I like interesting things.

Also, I just happen to have €6 million at my disposal, having won that Vodafone free SMS draw that I didn’t enter last week and I’m going to give it all to you in that

irrevocable letter of credit attached to a contact agreeable to both parties

I will also include my fax number as you request (when all other means of transmission have broken down, we will obviously be reduced to using primitive means of communication). And then, once I’ve given you the cash, I’ll sit back and wait for you to get in touch. After all, you tell me:

We know some of the safest places to be on the planet, when disaster prevails. Our Arks are designed like no others to withstand the most extreme of disasters, and although no one can be sure we believe we are building an Ark survival village in the safest place on earth. The village will be completely unknown to the outside world, and is a long distance from any habitation. It can not be detected by land or air and will always remain that way.
For obvious reasons I cannot go into any greater detail than this, other than to say that the Ark Survival village will be completely invisible to the outside world, as will its Elite occupants.

Your obvious reasons are very visible to me, even if your survival village is not. Although I like the idea that it has a library and gymnasium. It sounds like some kind of funky underground retirement village, but one accessed solely by (previously) rich people in high speed, long distance helicopters.

So let’s do this, Arc Survival Group. I’ll give you loads of money and you try to protect me amidst nuclear warfare, asteroid impact and apocalyptic falling fridge magnets. And I’ll tell all my mates too.

Upmost secrecy at all times is key.

Oh. OK. Sorry.
Mum’s the word.