succeed. So Solaren already has a buyer; they just need to build the product, which they expect to have completed by 2016. All told, the entire system would annually generate up to 4.8 gigawatts of power in geosynchronous orbit, convert it to radio waves, and then fire it to a collecting station on the ground. Because the radio waves would be spread into a rather wide beam, the hope is that they wouldn’t be too dangerous to everything below them.
• Church services
• Funerals
• Elections
• Describing the certainty you have that vast areas of U.S. soil will be immune to the lasers you are going to fire at them.
Oh, but that whole “harmless to everything below” thing is a far cry from Solaren’s initial goal: Absolute control over the weather for destructive purposes.
What? That came out of left field, didn’t it? Surely it can’t be true: Why would California be buying sci-fi power stations from a space weapons developer? It’s almost too crazy to believe, and if it weren’t California—home of the bad decision—you probably shouldn’t. But in this case it’s true. The inventors, Jim Rogers and Gary Spirnak, wrote in their patent application:
The present invention relates to space-based power systems and, more particularly, to altering weather elements, such as hurricanes or forming hurricanes, using energy generated by a space-based power system.
The theory is that by either heating up or diverting heat from a burgeoning hurricane, Solaren’s panels could either destroy or encourage the infant storm. If you heat certain parts of a tropical storm, thus lowering or raising the pressure differential between the upper and lower layers of a hurricane, it is possible to weaken, strengthen, or completely dispel it, depending on your purposes. Let’s repeat those points for emphasis: Kilometer-wide solar satellites firing lasers that destroy or create hurricanes.
That shit is being built right now, destined for the skies above California, and it will be operational by 2016.
And you promised to pay them, California. You know what happens to people who don’t pay their debts to shady loaners? They get their legs broken. Your loan shark has a hurricane laser, and everybody is well aware that you’re broke as hell.
This begs an interesting question: Can an entire state go into the Witness Protection Program?
NATURAL DISASTERS
Nobody kills like Mother Nature. She is the undisputed master of terror—inventor of the spider and the giant squid, producer of the parasite and the flesh-eating bacteria. If Gaia is the source of all life, she’s also the cause of all death. And while death is a natural, necessary part of the circle of life, some of her methods seem like downright overkill; if we’re all going to die of old age, having the Earth explode and then drown itself in fire just seems a bit mean spirited, doesn’t it?
But hey, love her or leave her, you owe your life to Mother Nature, and you live all of that life on her very body. And judging by the following examples, she really fucking hates you for it.
6. SUPERVOLCANO
THINGS WITH THE prefix “super-” are almost always fantastic: Superman? So much better than a regular man. Where would we be without him? Crushed beneath the heel of Lex Luthor’s Angro-bots, that’s where. Stunt comedian Super Dave? Just like a regular Dave, but five times more hilarious. Supersize it? Fuck yes! What do I look like, a guy who eats regular-size meals? You add “super” before a word and it’s like marketing crack. Super anything is great!
Just all around fantastic.
Really.
No exceptions.
Well, maybe one exception: the supervolcano. That’s not so great. If you were hoping it was “super” like Superman—a regular volcano given superpowers to protect humanity—it’s not. But it
…and turns them into
A supervolcano occurs when magma builds up below the crust of the Earth, but can’t quite break through. All the heat, the gas, and the pressure—it all keeps building up until the Earth just can’t take the pressure anymore and bursts. So to sum up: A typical volcanic reaction is like a normal person throwing a fit—a little eruption just to vent the pressure, but generally keeping the devastation to reasonable levels. But sometimes the planet just holds all that fury inside until it snaps. Except by “fury,” I mean burning rock, and by “snaps,” I mean
There have been only a handful of these supervolcanoes in all of history, but just those few have been responsible for mass extinctions, global weather changes, and sometimes even small ice ages. Supervolcanoes must, at the minimum, consist of at least 1,000 cubic kilometers of magma. That’s basically a small country’s worth of material, and it’s all
Maybe it can be of some small comfort to you if you consider that the last supervolcano was a long, long time ago. Why, over twenty-six thousand years ago as a matter of fact! I can barely remember starting to write this sentence, so twenty-six thousand years is a lot longer than I can even comprehend. And if you’re anything like me, that’s enough time to make you feel safe—shielded by the buffer of history. It matters little that the second-to- most-recent supervolcano, over seventy-five thousand years ago at Lake Toba in Indonesia, caused a volcanic winter, triggering an ice age that lasted for more than a thousand years, killed off between 70 and 90 percent of the human race (depending on which estimate you use), and formed sulfuric acid in the fucking atmosphere (you know, that thing you breathe in, and live inside of? That was acid). Hey, just as long as it’s not happening right now, you shouldn’t have to worry about history. Because let’s face it, if you paid attention to history you’d never leave the house; that shit is terrifying.
• Duck and cover
• Sit and spin
• Bump and grind
• Whatever else distracts you for a brief moment from the burning inferno that you now call home
