Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A long dormant volcano is about to go off and a daring scientist has a crazy idea to stop it. He’s being opposed by rigid thinkers and as a result the world is in imminent danger. This feels like a syfy channel show I saw. Or maybe seven. The end of the world is a common plot device. In climate fiction this is generally the result of mother earth fighting back against us humans being really stupid or just the normal cycle of nature reminding us that, in the end, we ain’t all that. Of course the victory condition is that we hardy humans survive the rampage of nature and stand to face a new future. This plot device, while common, is not entirely fictional. In fact, we are dealing with a version of that right now. There is a SuperVolcano under Yellowstone that erupts every 600,000 years and it is primed to pop relatively soon.
So, if the story was being written then the opening sequence would show Old Faithful not being faithful. In fact, erupting in irregular patterns. This started becoming noticeable back in ’96 (https://www.nytimes.com/1996/02/05/us/time-trouble-for-geyser-it-s-no-longer-old-faithful.html) and was revisited by the media just recently (https://www.npr.org/2018/05/03/608210968/yellowstones-largest-geyser-erupts-3-times-puzzling-scientists). In the fictional version (or at least the screenplay) people get hurt. Human lives have to be put at stake in order for the problem to seem to matter.
Next we find ourselves interacting with our wayward scientist who must already be at the end of a downward spiral. S/he has to be in trouble already and need this. S/he could already be working on the solution but is being overlooked because this feels like a problem that is not a problem.
There’s more to the story, but because I only have 10 I’ll get to it tomorrow.
Some Thoughts:
- Given the speed of light and the rampant use of radio waves to convey messages into the ether of deep space, we will eventually contact another civilization. The question is how will they react?
- Pardon the shoddy linking. This interface (or computer) is not functioning as designed.