SurvivalUP

Doomsday Scenerios

Solar Storm / ElectroMagnetic Pulse (EMP)

Normally the plasma of our Sun is contrained by huge magnetic fields and the Sun's gravity. But often, those magnetic fields get so tightly twisted that they finally snap. When this happens vast amounts of plasma and charged particles from the Sun get ejected into space in a solar flare or coronal mass ejection. If this ejection hits earth it is called a solar storm.


Solar Storms often hit Earth, but they are not that bad. Maybe a few satelites go awry and limit communications for a day or so. But like so many other threats Solar Storms, are based on statistics - and it is just a matter of time until our electronic society gets hits with a really powerful Solar Storm.


While a Solar Storm is a natural phenomenon, an Electro-MagneticPulse (EMP) is not. These are man-made disasters that could occur from a nuclear war, or simply a terrorist act!


Whether from a Solar Storm or an EMP the results would be very similiar - lack of communications, or destruction of our power grid. And if the power grid gets knocked out, the nessecary replacement of it's transformers could take decades! So no power until it gets fixed! Bad Bad Bad.


Read more on surviving the threats from a Solar Storm or EMP

Global Pandemic

Pandemics have happened through-out our history. The Plague ravaged through Europe for hundreds of years. The Spanish Flu in 1918 was responsible for killing about 6% of the World's population. Pandemics have occured, and will occur again!


What is different today is that now people can travel from one part of the world to another far off part of the world in a day. Notice the Plaque was mostly confined to Europe when people couldn't move around as much as we can today. Then the Spanish Flu spread world-wide when people could move around more freely. Today, one person in Africa infected with Ebola can travel to New York city over-night!


Our cities today are also different from cities in the past. Today our cities have much greater population densities than they once did. One infected person in a city today has a much greater chance of infecting many more people than they could have in the Middle Ages for example.


While now our medical community has more powerful tools and knowledge then they have at any time in the past - they are not miricle workers. Even in the U.S. today, production of vacines for common illnesses is limited. Large scale production of the yearly Flu shots takes up to a year - and this only covers a percentage of our population. And the Flu shot is no where near 100% effective - on average 20% of those immunised can still get the Flu.


So should a novel pandemic occur, it would spread across the globe rapidly. It could then take years for a vacine to be found and produced in enough quanties to do any good. During that time you would be on your own.


Read more on surviving the threat of a Global Pandemic

Nuclear War

Ever since a sunny day in 1945 we have lived under the specter of nuclear war. In August of 1945 we dropped our puny fission bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagaski and the world has never the same. Much debate has occured since then on whether it "right" thing to unleash fireballs hotter than surface of the Sun on unsuspecting cities, but it WAS war. It is likely we saved hundreds of thousands of American lives by not having to invade an entrenched mainland Japan. But that doesn't mean I believe a nuclear war today would be a "good" thing, and this has nothing to do with the fact that WE bombed Japan, and not the other way around.


Today, our fusion weapons are orders of magnitude more powerful than those dropped on Japan. Regardless of whether a nuclear war would strike the U.S. or not, the consequences would be devastating and reach world-wide. Even if Russia and China were to start flinging missiles at each other the U.S. would most certainly effected. And actually, scientists claim that even if India and Pakistan started "nuking" each other we could face a 5 degree drop in global temperatures - that's about the same temperature as the last Ice Age. Crops would fail worldwide.


There would also be highly radioactive dust and soot releases high into the atmosphere, and spread across the globe should even a "limited" nuclear war occur. Cancer rates would spike.


There may, or may not be any warning before a nuclear war. There could be wars, and rumors of war occuring, but an actual nuclear strike would likely go unannouced.


Read more to increase your chances of surviving a Nuclear War