06-04-2016, 12:17 AM | #21 | |
Join Date: May 2016
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
Quote:
On a more serious note, funguses actually breathe in oxygen, it's just that they can survive without it if they're capable of anaerobic respiration. That's all I know, though. |
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06-04-2016, 01:03 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
Bah. You can wipe out all land life and you'll still have an oxygen atmosphere courtesy of the oceans.
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06-04-2016, 01:26 AM | #23 |
Join Date: Mar 2013
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
About Yellowstone, if it happen right now it wouldn't be quite so bad, worldwide stocks if grain are at an all time high. The primarily agrarian US states are ruined in the very short term, but the industrialized one might come out intact, distance from Yellowstone causing variation.
Southern Africa (A drought means the entire area is short of grain) and anywhere without a good distribution network (3rd and 2nd world) are probably looking starvation, food riots and political instability. Some other points of note:
And there would be political changes due to all the refugees and the partial collapse of the free market in supply of food |
06-04-2016, 02:29 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
Piston engine prop aircraft are probably still usable. Change air filters often. So urgent flights could still happen. Turbines might still be usable if they stayed low enough to have had the dust cleared by rain.
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06-04-2016, 08:51 AM | #25 |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
You could also borrow the premise of Neal Stephenson's Seveneves, where the disintegration of the Moon causes an extinction event.
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06-04-2016, 08:56 AM | #26 |
Join Date: Aug 2010
Location: The Land of Enchantment
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
The most plausible natural events thus far are the Yellowstone super volcano and the grain blight. Unless you consider meteor strike "natural" as well, but I think that's sort of a different genre, as are pandemics.
We've been running the Red Queen's Race ever since the Green Revolution, so if you mess with global cereal stocks the results would be horrific. To the extent that I think it may have been a terrible mistake in the first place, actually. But the alternative was letting the third world starve... Another would be a generalized ecological "tipping point" catastrophe, a la some of the models for global warming where eventually you start a vicious feedback cycle until things stabilize in a really bad state.
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06-04-2016, 10:49 AM | #27 |
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Join Date: Mar 2012
Location: far from the ocean
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
This was actually the sort of thing I was hoping for more info on when I wrote the OP. What sorts of things could tip it off, and how such a catastrophe would, for instance, kill of the north american wheat fields.
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06-04-2016, 03:04 PM | #28 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
Global warming could take a massive sudden upswing if hypothetical large methane containing clathrate deposits in the ocean melted.
Modern rapid eco-destruction could mangle the Global Ocean Conveyor Belt. That would radically alter climate for many regions.
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06-04-2016, 05:31 PM | #29 | |
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Canada
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
Quote:
The "laziest" way to get this condition is just warming the oceans enough, but for that to happen in the time period asked for by the OP would mean some really NOT lazy thing already happened. But here's a nice cold-war idea: methane clathrate is lighter than water (much like normal water ice) - it's only at the bottom of the ocean because it's trapped under sediments. Posit a series of sub-oceanic nuclear tests that blasts the sedimentary layers off of a giant deposit. Clathrate floats up to the warmer layers at the surface and melts. It might take a decade before people really understood the gravity of the situation, after all they thought the Doorway To Hell was going to be a short methane burn off :)
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06-04-2016, 06:28 PM | #30 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: [ATE/IW] Ecological Collapse
I meant hypothetical in global amount, susceptibility to releasing all at once, and exactly how great of an effect such a disaster would have.
But with so many disagreeing with the most fundamental of scientific facts, I can see why someone could read my vague writing that way.
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