http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192805711/sr=8-1/qid=1141842021/ref=sr_1_1/103-8439550-8778268?%5Fencoding=UTF8

The reality of both situations, and many more like it, is that the GREAT MAJORITY of people (white, black, Martian) did NOT go into straight anarchy. Most did just what they “were supposed to do” (whatever that was, contextual to their situation).

I think in some of the surviable scenarios you line out, once the social water found its own level again, society as a whole would right itself relatively quickly. Man is, after all, a social animal. Society may change to some degree, or even a large degree, but there will be order and “law” of some type, as there always is. Maybe that means desire for Socialist protectionism (like post WWII Europe) or we go into post-Apocalyptic Mad Max world “armed might makes right”. But something will happen, you can bet on it.

Mercury is naturally occuring too, but we shouldn’t spew it into the air and soil!

We are all hard-wired this way:
1. Preservation of Self.
2. Preservation of Species.
3. Dominance of Environment.
It takes a special person to alter any of these – in a special situation.
The loss of a societal core will (I believe) cause a people to cling to their society even more tightly.

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I think we just need to find a way to break DHMO down into it’s basic components. Then nature will be able to address the excess that we create. We should pass legislation that requires all ‘artificial’ DHMO to be made in such a way that it is biodegrable. These manufacturers need to be held responsible for the effects their actions have on the environment.

The only way to protect yourself from this dangerous industrial-age byproduct is to daily innoculate yourself with several glasses of DHMO. Since the contamination of natural DHMO by manmade DHMO is widespread you’ll get a small amount in each glass. Over time you can build up an immunity to man made DHMO in much the same way as you can build up an immunity to iocane, “known to be one of the deadliest poisons in the world.”

You need to take your piss-poor gutter science back into the water closet. We require facts to back up argument here. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Unless you can pull some genuine science out of your ass, I’m gonna ignore you and your trollish ways from here on out.

However, one of the most famous is Mary Jo Kopeckne with DHMO playing an even bigger role than Ted Kennedy.

You sir, you are a kook and an alarmist, and I’m beginning to suspect your scientific claims. I’d like to see a cite on a single case of a death from exclusively man-made DHMO. Just one case.

We need to use more organically stabalized liquid hydrogeb (Liquid Sunshine), the 7C18H variety, where plants use the carbon to keep the hydrogen in check and prevent the environment from being flooded with DHMO.

Although I do recognize the problem of naturally produced DHMO (a HUGE amount was in the toxic sludge during the Katrina disaster!), The man-made stuff is not the problem. You could pour the entire yearly man-made supply in the toilet and flush it down our sanitary sewer and it still wouldn’t be a fraction of the damage the natural stuff does every year.

Nope, regulating the man-made stuff is not the solution.

The Socioeconomic possibilities are where I struggle with a general lack of faith in people. These are items that the human race could likely anticipate and work to prevent or deal with after it happens (work on fuel alternatives, kick up food production, etc.). But would people, on a large scale, do that? I tend to doubt it. Look at the looting and general mayhem where people just went and got theirs in the aftermath of Katrina or the LA riots. Also, the socioeconomic possibilities seem the most likely to me in the short term.

Hell, Socialist Insecurity. People saw that train wreck coming before I was even fracking born.

Nuclear war could do it, but don’t worry about nuclear winter. That was anti-war BS that Carl Sagan pulled out of his ass. He pulled the same crap in Gulf War I (”if Saddam lights the well on fire we’re all going to freeze!”) and it didn’t happen. There has been cooling before from volcanic eruptions (which can put more particulates in the air than even a full nuclear exchange) and it was just a few degrees, not iceball. We survived.

Not exactly a few degrees. Google “year without a summer”. But yea, we survived.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_A_Summer

Yea, we could have our own “two thousand and froze to death” at any time. It also begs the question of if there’s a more cost effective way to manage the one degree rise that’s attributed to human activity than forcing all the rich countries of the world to stop using R-12 (freon), only to turn around in twenty years or so and force a retrofit, yet again, because R-134a is a potent greenhouse gas. (I’m predicting this from the eco-wacks sometime shortly)

There’s a couple of natural disasters to look out for. The coming super-erruption at Yellowstone seems to be the biggest. Yellowstone is going to errupt pretty soon, geologically. Of course, pretty soon means “sometime in the next 10,000 years”. Maybe today, maybe 8998. That one, though, will burn North America down and put ash and sulpher gas all over the globe. Gonna be a definate bad hair day when that one comes. When Toba went in Colorado 75000 years ago, it put six inches of ash all over India.

Was it scary? Hell, yes–the TV coverage was relentless! Yet civilization didn’t break down, life went on and things settled back to relatively normal.

You say: “Look at the looting and general mayhem where people just went and got theirs in the aftermath of Katrina or the LA riots.”

No–look at the looting and general mayhem where people of low or criminal character just went and got theirs. The Korean shopowners protected their businesses; I would imagine that many people of reputable character did not commit mayhem, arson or engage in looting.

Oh, and I also take it upon myself to encourage as many of the ‘good’ people as possible to do the same. While I wouldn’t mind trying to repopulate the world myself (get you mind out of the gutter!), a little help would be…well…helpful.