Nuke

how do you klnow the alien isnt a hyper-evolved kitty? i think id be too busy trying to give it scritches to push any buttons. perhaps that was its intention all along.

still not sold on another intelligent species not having time to evolve. you have about a billion years until the sun warms up and the earth becomes uninhabitable (the great boil off). evolution works on the order of hundreds of thousands of years. once an intelligent species evolves it can get to our level from its natural state in as little as 10k years. removal of humans causes a partial die off but opens new niches. evolution seems to supercharge after a die off as life finds way to find newly opened niches. i dont think the humans only scenario will play out for very long. we stand to lose a lot of our population in the first year, after that we will utterly depend on hyper industrialization which will further destroy a barren world. thats assuming we dont devolve into a bunch of cannibalistic tribes that hunt eachother to death. the chicken algae may also become a threat. either button does a lot of damage, but i still think green is the less destructive of the two.

we are not destroying the planet, we are destroying the thin film of goo on its surface layers. its important to be specific in science. for the purposes of removing humans and have all their stuff blow up in unusual ways, i dont think its enough to destroy all life. you might clear out some niches or poison some water tables. but nature will over time correct them without human intervention. its true that we have possibly the largest impact on the environment since cyanobacteria, but for the purpose of the thought experiment that's not relevant. either button will have severe consequences to the biosphere of the planet, and in that reguard letting the humans live has the biggest effect. if removing humans, then by the time one of the surviving species makes their ascension to sapience, all traces of humanity would likely have been erased. most of our structures would have collapsed, any chemical polution would have likely cleaned itself up, and any nuclear products would be well past their half lives. they might find evidence of our existence in the solar system, like seeing the front bumper of a tesla roadster sticking out of a rubble pile. i also have a lot of doubts about the long term survivability of humans without any other life forms, baring the chicken algae. humans currently depend on a wide array of bioproducts to produce building materials and clothing, not that we dont have synthetic alternatives (perhaps the algae is really versatile). transitioning to those materials will take time, its likely large chunks of the population wouldn't be able to survive the first winter. im not sure our digestive systems will function without appropriate gut fauna. of course im interpreting erased as total removal, and not simply killing them and leaving the remains. tree is gone, not killed. what of other biological remains. will we be able to salvage dna from the things dead prior to the button pressing and bring those life forms back into existence? can i get a sample from the bacon in my fridge and re-animate the pig. perhaps dig up the remains of one beau f. cuddles and bring cats back (granted ones that puke on everything). what of fossil fuel, the long dead remains of plant life. do the aliens remove those as well?

its survivable, was the point i was getting at. you might destroy some habitats and kill a few species. but there is still enough biodiversity to compensate.

the damage would be localized and it would take but a geological eyeblink for it to go away. its unlikely to be an extinction level event.

other than saving cats (and bacon), there is the matter of my own misanthropic tendencies to contend with. cats would be worse, which makes them a contender for a galactic empire. i can see humans arguing for alien rights at the expense of their own, cats would just be eating them. i usually just buy whichever is on sale.

most house cats die, but there are a large number of wild cat species, as well as feral cats that will do just fine. so the prospects of a future stellar empire dominated by cats with a profound hatred of sicoms still sounds like a good idea. no chicken flavored algae whisky could compare.

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should i just lock it now then?

linked in original mod posts. let me know if there is anything else you want in there before i have squad "nuke" the thread. i also did a big cleanup on the initial post so hopefully there will be no confusion going forward.

well cannibalism is still an option so there is that. i wont have to give up my carnivorous existance. the problem is, im a cat person, and dont want to live in a world without cats. or bacon, or things to eat other than algae that tastes like chicken and humans. also think of the bacon! i mean in the world without humans, the possibility exists that a pig will fall into the dead sea, drown, get appropriately salt cured, then washes ashore and gets struck by lightening to become bacon, which then later gets consumed by a cat. cats then later grow thumbs and evolve into the dominant life form on earth, build grand starships, and take over the known universe with their refined predatorial instincts. this is more grand than anything a bunch of algae (and human) fed humans could do. therefore i am obliged to hit the green button.

good to see this mod still kicking around. some trivia, i did some research on image used on the flag. figured out that this detonation is the greenhouse-item test. first tritium boosted device, its yield was only 45.5kt. footage of this detonation can bee seen at the end of dr. stangelove, iirc.

a helicopter rotor is a very dynamic thing. each blade can have a different pitch based on how its phased and the angle of the swash plate. like if you pitch forward the blade in the back will increase pitch while the opposite blade will decrease. assuming zero roll, the blade will actually flutter up and down as it rotates. tying the ends together would need to be done through a bearing system since the blades need to be free to pitch as needed for cyclic control. that would be straight forward for a straight wing (though adding a ring to that configuration would be completely unnecessary) but a wing with any kind of slope or curve the tip would follow an arc so big that any plausible bearing system would add a lot of drag. i couldn't find any examples of swept chopper blades, though i saw several with a curve at the tips or some other wingtip geometry. i couldnt find a rotor head design that could for example offset either the root or tip of the wing to create a swept blade. there are probibly structural or aerodynamic reasons why those dont exist.

i think you would get higher specific impulse if you only sacrificed virgins. now if only you could find one.

swept wings on a helicopter rotor seem like they would be rather unwieldy. blade would curve would act as a big off axis flap which might put too much stress on the swashplate linkages. you can bulk those up of course but that is extra weight. there is also the matter of the blades holding their shape with the centrifugal forces. i think most helicopter designs use that to their advantage to keep the blades in tension and less likely to flex in unpredictable ways. curved rotors pretty much invite that.

any landing you can walk away from... etc. small planes have always been death traps. almost no redundancy compared to an airliner. you got one engine and if it fails you dont really have enough altitude to get to an airport or other viable landing area. chute systems are a real life saver in these situations.

so the other day i had a little drinking party on my deck. half a bottle of bourbon, motorhead tunes. the guests were my cats and about a thousand gnats. me and the gnats got drunk, the cats mostly just slept. two days later im covered in gnat bites, everywhere. dont have an outdoor drinking party with gnats. it really itches.

thats all i have to say about that.

well the alaska minimum wage is $10.34/hr. but alaska is also a bit expensive. if you live up here all year round then you can apply for the pfd.

its sad that we have a day for it.

the only difference ive seen is that one is like an order of magnitude larger than the other. technically they are both in the deer family. an even weirder situation comes when comparing caribou to reindeer, which as far as i know are two names for the same species. but they live further north and i dont like that much cold. bear is also an option but im told the meat is terrible, especially later in the year when they start eating dead fish and garbage. moose love frozen hash browns, dont ask how i know.

i just picked up stray today, an early birthday present. its as fun as i thought it would be, and a little creepy, but in a good way. its amazing the kind of crap a cat can get away with.

round these parts we got these things called woods, and they are full of these meatbags called deer and moose. i suppose that is as close to whole foods as i go.

i tried to join the marine corps out of college, but i was 4-f on the grounds that im a lunatic.

come up to alaska and work for a fish processing plant. if you can stand the smell (and its so much worse than you could imagine). they got bunk houses all over the place. but i think you have to crash with others, and its seasonal work. fortunately its spring-summer so while you arent yanking guts out of salmon you have some of the nicest scenery around and a lot of outdoor activities. and if you want to bring your vehicle you can catch tha alaska marine highway ferry in bellingham, wa. that or drive the alcan highway. i think the former is your best bet as you can get into one of the many fishing towns in southeast alaska. i think here in petersburg alone we got 3 different processing plants.