A threat we are not prepared to face
Read time: 4-5mins
In 2021 as I was finishing my Bachelor's degree, I wrote this article after the overnight shutdown of the Facebook servers - After the global outage caused by Crowdstrike and Microsoft, I decided to share it again.
Article below:
Have you ever asked yourself what would happen if the internet shuts down ?
On the 4th of October 2021, Facebook servers shut down causing the Whatsapp and Instagram Apps also to not work. So let’s ask ourselves a question : Were we prepared for that ? Well yes, people were still using platforms like Telegram, Signal and mail for texting, others were using Twitter and TikTok for scrolling etc… But if the internet suddenly stops working, what would happen to the financial markets such as real estate, stocks, cryptocurrencies ? Let us look for a way to be prepared for it.
The carrington event:
In 1859 mankind witnessed the Carrington event, named after the scientist Richard Carrington, this phenomenon is also known as a geomagnetic storm. On a calm afternoon of September, Carrington witnessed a sudden flash of increased brightness on the surface of the Sun that lasted for a few minutes while watching the observable Universe with his telescope. At that time we didn’t know what this light was but today we know that it is a solar flare. The same night a few hours later, we noticed green and blue lights travelling across the skies which are today known as the Aurora Borealis. At that time of course, people were very shocked and the solar flare caused the whole telegraph system to shut down but there was no internet or satelites so life moved on as if nothing happened. So what would happen if a Carrington event of that caliber strikes us today, specifically to financial markets ?
We are for almost two years now, the victims of the COVID-19 pandemic and we were absolutely not prepared for it even if scientists kept warning us. For weeks we did not know what we were facing and globally, most of the businesses stopped working and are still recovering from it today. Now if a virus of 100 nanometers of diameter can cause us to stay at home for 1 year, what would be the impact of a solar storm ?
Risks we face in front of a Solar Flare:
Relax, we people do not risk anything violent or apocalyptic because the earth amosphere will shield us from x-rays, gamma rays and cosmic radiations but our society and our routine will be affected. How is that ?
In former times, messages, money transfers or even news took days, sometimes months to get to destination, people would even do the delivery as a job. Today you can be in Tokyo and still facetime a friend who is in Europe or Brasil, you can send mails and get immediate answers, buy stocks from the NYSE even if you are in Africa etc… but all of this is not really wireless. In fact the 380 underwater cables that are spanning a lenght of over 1.2 million kms connect all the continents and are the reason we can do all we do today, alongside the 6542 satelites orbiting the planet at the moment. These cables are not really affected by geomagnetic currents but due to their lenght we had to install repeaters along certain gaps and those repeaters are susceptible to fail and if they do, an entire cable that connects two continents, instantly disconnects them.
What if the power grid is down ?
Let’s imagine the worst case scenario where our power grid gets knocked, that could cause a wolrdwide blackout, but not only because our satelites will also be disabled, which means we will not be able to buy stocks or crypto anymore but that is not our biggest concern since we won’t be able to place phone calls, we will not be able to know what is happening since google or the TV are not functionning anymore, we will also not be able to charge our electronic devices which means no more zoom meetings ; navigation systems would break which means no more airplanes and last but not least places that accept credit cards will not be able to take payments. Unfortunately it gets worse, our health would also be affected since all of the material in hospitals are electronic so hospitals won’t be able to work normally. This is without mentionning the unability to maintain the stock of food because how can you do that without refrigirating systems, also that means no more ice cream. To sum up, this would cause a global mess followed by a movement of panic.
In that scenario, lots of markets would collapse but curiously markets like the real estate or the stock market would not because we would simply do it the old way, a piece of paper and a pen and you are good to go, it would be a lot slower, but it would survive. Most of us would also have to go back to the unfashionned way : barter. And since neither banks or financial instruments would be available, the people who have been saving a heavy load of cash or simply people that bought gold would be saved. What an irony, the most powerful tool we created is the internet, because there is no off switch that could turn off the whole thing, but here is the off switch right in front of our eyes sitting at a few million kilometers : a hot ball of glowing gasses at the heart of our solar system.
Real estate in the 19th century :
The probability of happening of a Carrington event According to the PNAS, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the US, the probability of a Carrington event happening is once every 150 years, and we are not sheltered from it. In 2012 there was an unusual and strong solar superstorm that luckily got dodged by 9 days. In fact when the storm passed, our planet was 9 days behind in the rotation cycle from the path of the storm.
The famous boxer Mike Tyson once said « everyone has a strategy, until they get kicked in the mouth ». So let us not give up what we need most for what we want now and unlike the COVID-19 pandemic, be prepared. The potential that would cost us a Carrington event financially is not shy of 2 Trillion USD, which represents 2.5% of world’s GDP. Of course it will only be a matter of time before the competent authorities fix the problem, which could be a week or a month, and life in the 21st century will go back to its fullest.
Aouani Khalil
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A threat we are not prepared to face
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THE END OF AN EPOCH
I've never heard anybody ask the question, "how risk adjusted is civilization?" I suspect that many of us know the answer. Even if we refuse to admit it, civilization is not secure. We are in the most consequential period of modern human history. Not only are times changing faster than they ever have before, the avenues to our demise are most plentiful.
I have a few theories about the universe, the first being that all things bring about their opposite over a sufficiently long time. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Thus, all things are paradoxes.
The second being that all things are connected through mutual mechanics. All things are conscious (panpsychism), which is a controversial take, and my argument is that our conscious thinking clearly has an effect on the world, so consciousness must be a physical force.
The third being that good and evil are fundamental forces. Good seeks to create life and evil destroys the vessel it occupies. Goodness is God and evil is Satan. All things are paradoxes, thus evil creates good and vice versa. Examples of evil include suicide and hedonism (like homosexuality and pedophilia, though there's a big difference between a homosexual who has children and a homosexual who chooses sexual satisfaction over preservation of life).
My final theory is that the mechanics that govern consciousness and physics enforce the paradoxical nature of the universe. An epoch is a period of birth and death as all forces become balanced, continuing like a wave. All things are connected through magnetic and electric forces, it's just to complicated to understand in practice.
If we are to then inspect civilization, we see a rise in evil. There is an epoch fairly frequently, about 80 years, or one human lifetime, that oscillates between evil and good. The last time it happened was WW1/WW2. We are right on point for another collapse of our values. There are plenty of signs, like the prevalence of homosexuality, which is evil in nature because it destroys the vessel it's in. Western society is on the brink of population collapse, suicide rates have risen sharply, especially among younger people, and faith in the principles of our society has never been weaker. Divorce is commonplace, dating is a nightmare, and quite simply, people see less value in life and each other. People on the street dress like mental patients and children go to school to learn that queer is good and they should distrust their parents. Free speech is under assault and Liberal Democracy is on the verge of collapse.
How long can we go without blowing ourselves up in nuclear war? Or allow AI to destroy us? Or spread devastating bioweapons? Or even a large scale conventional war? Evil destroys the vessel it occupies.
From these ends, I believe we're on the verge of the end of an epoch.
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THE END OF AN EPOCH
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But what is happening before our eyes?
What is happening to the world?
France is about to stand to attention under the rule of a man who has barely passed his baccalaureate, but who is nonetheless charming and appealing. An angel's face that has managed to conceal an entire history of adulated hatred, obvious racism, claimed segregationism and the overt fascism of the party it embodies. As if by magic, with the help of the bought-in media, the young bachelor managed in the twinkling of an eye to disguise an entire ideology and bamboozle the people of France, who would eventually realise that Vichy was no accident and that a very large proportion of the population at the time was not in the Resistance but rather in the Collaboration...
France is moving to the right, but nothing is really likely to change, at least not immediately, because for that to happen you need full power, and that requires a RN President, a RN Prime Minister and a RN parliamentary majority. The RN are not stupid and will know how to wait... unless young Bardella is in a hurry and has his own agenda aimed at overtaking Mme Le Pen and putting her out of the running for the next presidential elections. Will he be in such a hurry to move quickly? Possibly, but unlikely. In any case, the attitude of the amateur President, a poker player, will have been the cornerstone in accelerating the success of the RN and is now the propellant of the expected rise to the presidency of Mme Le Pen, in a short time... Because with Bardella, Macron will no doubt be kept under "house arrest" at the Elysée Palace by his sweetheart, and no more.
Far from it, in South Africa we were expecting the real change desired and wanted by the rainbow people, after decades of ill-fated 'dictatorship' by the ANC, which has made memory rent the sole basis of a policy that has led to disaster and the hopeless impoverishment of a large fringe of the population. This will not be the case. The ANC has just obtained 20 of the 32 ministerial posts in the new so-called government of national unity. The most important missions have not escaped it in this unprecedented government. Finance, Energy, Foreign Affairs, Police and Justice remain in ANC hands. The main opposition party, the Democratic Alliance, has only been given six portfolios in the new government: Agriculture, Environment, Home Affairs and Public Works - in other words, the breakthrough ministries.
On the other side of the Atlantic, things are not looking good. The recent Biden-Trump debate revealed an America staggering to the rhythm of the crumbling president. America is going through a real disaster, a moment unprecedented in its history, a moment of confusion and political fatigue. A moment that makes you wonder whether it was possible for Americans to have sunk so low and for their major parties to have become so locked in a historically astonishing blindness. The world's leading power thus appears to be in a state of serious decrepitude, presenting the world with a spectacle of desolation and shipwreck. The American people have a choice between a colourful, neo-authoritarian old man and another old man who is crumbling and still president, but who won't give up... Isn't it embarrassing for the American people (50 million live viewers) to see their president's memory failing, a president who has lost the coherence of his words, lining up words in sentences that are as inaudible as they are confused. Isn't it embarrassing for them to see that, opposite them, their only choice is a colourful character whose run-ins with the law are not about to get any easier.
Let's go back to Africa and see that the Mauritanians have chosen continuity with Ould El Ghazouani, whom they re-elected with nearly 56% of the vote... Will this time be the right time for stability in this Sahelian country, a colonial legacy with a population of barely 5 million, which has undergone more than one brutal change through successive coups d'état, a country where political crisis is an almost permanent feature of daily life; tribal and personal rivalries are bitter and unremitting.
This is the way the world is going, a world that is certainly changing but not very reassuring... In any case, this is not the world that we dreamed of and that we are preparing to bequeath to future generations.
But what is happening before our very eyes?But what is happening before our very eyes?
That's the way the world works. Doubts here, worries there, but there's no doubt that tomorrow will be different - yesterday was already different from today...
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But what is happening before our eyes?
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A weak G7, weaker than ever...
Giorgia Meloni, the woman propelled to power by the Italian outer right-hand, received the G7 in an unprecedented situation. Of all those present, she is probably the only one to feel strong, while the others are almost all politically weakened or moribund.
The situation in Great Britain is in the process of pushing Mr Rishi Sunak out of office, with Brexit just around the corner and the situation far from stabilising, especially economically. Its French neighbour is going through the same nightmare, having been forced to call a general election following the debacle of his majority in the European elections, to the benefit of Mr Jordan Bardella,with only the baccalaureate in hand, who no doubt dreams of attending the next G7 summit alongside Mr Macron. Cohabitation is not far off... Macron has played Russian roulette and risks receiving the only bullet in the barrel in the heart.
Not far from there, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, unable to become a worthy successor to Angela Merkel who is back to normal life, is also in great difficulty and has been genuinely weakened since the last European elections. Among other things, he has come under fierce criticism from within his own coalition.
The representatives from across the Atlantic at this summit are in no better shape. Mr Justin Trudeau, who is going through a difficult time both at home and politically, looking more attenuated than ever. Some Canadians are even saying that Canada has never been in such bad shape. His American neighbour is also exhausted and is not certain of staying in the White House, with Donald Trump bullying him and showing his fangs.
So it was a G7 of people bathed in weakness that Ms Meloni received in a superb pink suit, as if to signal to her peers that she, the woman in the group, was the only one comfortable in her chair.
Madame Meloni, who called Macron irresponsible few months ago, was there strutting her stuff and looking down on him. She'll probably be there, at another G7 with a triumphant president Mme Lepen...or who knows, President Bardella.... an Italian next to a italian...Bardella is Italian origin.
So in this G7 of weakness, once decried, fascism finds itself powerfully rehabilitated and frequented... Mussolini and why not Hitler are so happy about it in the depths of their graves... Their offspring are doing a good job and today dominate the most powerful political and economic group, the G7, which is also becoming the group of shame in the eyes of those who still believe in the greatest lie of modern history: humanism and universal values...
The question that arises is whether the real winner in this situation of Western uncertainty is none other than the Absent-Present Vladimir Putin... who has just won the elections by a landslide, and who awaits all these fine people on Ukrainian soil...
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A weak G7, weaker than ever...
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HYBRID VIGOUR
You may remember that quaint old adage, ‘Keep Politics Out of Sport’. It had its heyday among apologists for the South African government at the time of the sporting boycott of the apartheid era. There has probably never been a dumber slogan. It would be like Castor without Pollux or Laurel without Hardy. Politics has as much relevance on the playing field as in Parliament, in the dressing room as in the boardroom. I don’t doubt that the boycott of sports-mad South Africa contributed substantially to the end of racial separation.
And thanks to the collision of the European Athletics Championships in Rome and the Europe wide elections - save in that isolated outpost of the once Roman Empire, Great Britain & Northern Ireland – you cannot have failed to notice that a preponderance of countries represented here in the Stadio Olimpico feature, well, a lot athletes of colour.
Even ignoring, for example, that Britain’s crumbling National Health Service would fall apart completely, were it not for immigrant labour, from surgeons to janitors, what better antidote than this parade of multi-racial excellence to those people and parties who are lurching to the right if not the far-right, driven by anti-immigration policies?
Other nations in Europe have long been used to British and French teams fielding athletes whose parents, one or both, hail from colonial outposts. But, gradually other European countries’ immigrants or their offspring began to make their presence felt if not in all walks of life, then certainly on the sports field. Countries from Sweden in the north to Portugal and Italy in the south, to Ireland in the west and Romania in the east have joined in as is apparent in Rome; and that includes conservative Switzerland where women only secured the vote in 1971.
I am reminded of a fascinating hour or so I spent with Lee Evans in Athens 40 years ago. Evans was the first man to run under 44 seconds (43.86sec) when he won the Olympic 400 metres in Mexico 1968. A Fulbright scholar and a vocal proponent of racial equality, Evans and his fellow US medallists Larry James and Ron Freeman wore Black Panther berets on the victory rostrum in Mexico, emulating with less clamour the black-gloved salute of their 200 metres colleagues Tommie Smith and John Carlos. Aussie silver medallist Peter Norman sported a badge of the Olympic Project for Human Rights in sympathy. Following his relegation to third by Norman, Carlos incidentally made a comment, maybe tongue-in-cheek, but which still resonates today, ‘I didn’t know a white guy could run that fast!’ When Norman died in 2006, Smith and Carlos repaid the compliment; they flew to Melbourne to be pall-bearers at his funeral.
But, back to Evans: we had been invited to an Olympic symposium in Athens in the mid-1980s, he for his celebrity and subsequent teaching and coaching career in Africa, me since I had managed to con my way into a job on a newspaper which still had a vestige of prestige around the world. I don’t know how we got on the subject, and I was very wary of saying the wrong thing, but Evans had no such constraints. He lectured me on ‘hybrid vigour’ or cross-pollination, a term better known in botany, and something that racists would call miscegenation, ie inter-marriage and procreation. Evans had no qualms, citing several leading athletes of mixed race from that period four decades back, including Daley Thompson, a product of a Nigerian father and Scottish mother, who had recently won his second Olympic decathlon title.
Evans claimed that humans are nothing special, and although he didn’t use the term, he argued that we, like animals and plants are simply part of the same eco-system, responding to the same dynamics; whence his championing of hybrid vigour.
The evidence of his thesis is manifest in the continuing rise of rainbow nations on the track and field of endeavour called Athletics.
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HYBRID VIGOUR
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The West Misunderstands Putin
Putin can't go to war with NATO (the West is right on that point), but he's not being given an option. Western forces are ramping up the support for Ukraine as progress stalls and Russian forces see significant gains. Putin's perspective is that he is already at war with NATO because he's fighting Western arms from Western funds. The West sees it as a question of Ukrainian sovereignty. Ukraine is independent, it should be able to defend itself, even against the threat of a nuclear weapon. Western leaders have blocked all communication channels for a ceasefire under the naive assumption that Ukraine can win back all the territory and everything will be merry.
Putin now is threatening to launch a nuclear bomb in Ukraine. Putin thinks he's at war with NATO, a war he can only win with nuclear weapons. The Russian army vs NATO with sanctions would smoke Russia's forces 99 out of 100 days unless there are nuclear weapons. Nukes are the only defense Russia has against a major conflict with NATO.
Remember, Putin went into the war telling his people that Ukraine was becoming too friendly to the West and needed to be stopped from joining NATO. He can't go back to his people and say we lost, Ukraine got all their territory back, and they're going to join NATO. It's a Western fantasy. He will drop a nuke first.
He is pleading to the West to take his warnings seriously, but Western leaders think he's bluffing. He is being given no choice but to demonstrate that Russia is a force that needs to be respected. His only way to do that is to drop a nuke.
The Russian people don't take kindly to being embarassed on an international stage. Neither did the Germans before WW2. It's why Russians care so much about winning at the Olympics, or having the best chess players.
The Russian mentality is suicidal. They still love Stalin after he killed 20 million of his own people because Stalin made the Russian people seem formidable. The Russians will die before they look like cowards. That's why Putin's only choice is to win territory in Ukraine or drop a nuke.
I think WW3 is about to begin. According to Russian newspapers, Putin does too.
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The West Misunderstands Putin
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The future of AI is Small and then Smaller.
We need smaller models, but don't expect big tech to develop them.
Current state-of the-art architectures are very inefficient, the cost of training them is getting out of hand, more and more unaffordable for most people and institutions. This effectively is creating a 3 tiers society in AI:
1- Those who can afford model development and training (Big tech mostly). And make *foundation models* for everybody else
2- Those who can only afford the fine tuning of the *foundation models*
3- Those who can only use the fine tuned models through APIs.
This is if far from an ideal situation for innovation and development because it effectively creates one producer tier (1) and 2 consumer tiers (2 and 3). It concentrates most of the research and development into tier 1, leaves a little for tier 2 and almost completely eliminates tier 3 from R&D in AI. Tier 3 is most of the countries and most of the people.
This also explains why most of the AI startups we see all over the place are at best tier 2, this means that their *Intellectual Property* is low. The barrier to entry for competition is very low, as someone else can easily replicate their product. The situation for tier 3 AI startups is even worst.
This is all due to two things:
1- It took almost 20 years for governments and people to realize that AI is coming. In fact they only did it after the fact. The prices for computer hardware (GPUs) where already through the roof and real talent already very rare. Most people still think they need *Data scientists*, in fact they need: AI Researchers, DevOps Engineers, Software Engineers, Machine Learning Engineers, Cloud Infrastructure Engineers, ... The list of specialties is long. The ecosystem is now complex and most countries do not have the right curriculums in place at their universities.
2- The current state-of-the-art models are **huge and extremely inefficient**, they require a lot of compute ressources and electricity.
Point number 2 is the most important one. Because if we solve 2, the need for cloud, DevOps, etc... decreases significantly. Meaning we not only solve the problem of training and development cost, we also solve part of the talent acquisition problem. Therefore, it should be the absolute priority: __we need smaller, more efficient models__.
But why are current models so inefficient. The answer is simple, the first solution that works is usually not efficient, it just works. We have seen the same things with steam machine and computers. Current transformer based models, for example need several layers of huge matrices that span the whole dictionary. That's a very naive approach, but it works. In a way we still have not surpassed the Deep Learning trope of 15 years ago: Just add more layers.
Research in AI should not focus on large language models, it should be focusing on small language models that have results on par with the large ones. That is the only way to keep research and development in AI alive and thriving and open to most. The alternative is to keep using these huge models than only extremely wealthy organisation can make, leading to a concentration of knowledge and to too many tier 2 and tier 3 startups that will lead us to a disastrous pop of the AI investment bubble.
However, don't count on Big Tech to develop and popularize these efficient models. They are unlikely to as having a monopoly on AI development is on their advantage as long as they can afford it.
Universities, that's your job.
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Impending Nuclear Apocalypse
An atomic blast releases three types of radiation: beta particles, neutron radiation, and gamma rays. After a few days the only radiation are neutron radiation and gamma rays from radioactive fallout. It's believed most people outside cities would survive the initial blasts. There will also be a nuclear winter, estimates show it could last from days to a decade, making it extremely difficult to grow food. Everything will be poisoned from fallout. I already have the basics: air filters, water filters, geiger counters, gold, guns, 6 months worth of canned foods, etc.
Many would survive up to this point, but come out realizing they have no source of clean water, food, and are already on the brink of death. Most would later die from radiation poisoning, cancer, starvation, or conflict over resources. It's believed that after two years, almost everybody would die.
Given the current war in Ukraine and it seemingly not having a resolution, nuclear war is more concerning every year. It is irresponsible to consider something potentially so devastating as irrelevant to our everyday concerns. The fact is that preparing a little can significantly increase your odds of survival and something everyone should do. As much as we don't like to think about it, it could actually happen.
**WHERE ARE THE TARGETS?**
In the case of a full-blown nuclear exchange, if you live in Europe, The Middle East, North America, Russia, China, Korea, or any countries in proximity, you are at high risk of being a direct nuclear target. The goal of a nuclear exchange isn't to kill as many people as possible in the blasts, but to make the aftermath as hellish as possible for the survivors. Primary targets will be military bases, major cities, and intermediary infrastructure. The aftermath will be absolute anarchy, as people are killed over shoes and canned beans.
**WHO'S PREPARED?**
There isn't a comprehensive list. Switzerland has fallout shelters to house her entire population.
**ARMOR YOURSELF**
Conflict over resources will be a major tension in a post-apocalyptic world. You want to protect yourself, not only from the potential of violence, but also radiation exposure. You want to be bulletproof. You want to be radiation resistant. Hydrogenated Boron Nitride Nanotubes (H-BNNTs) are 100x stronger than steel with best-in-class protection against neutron radiation. And unlike other ultra-high-strength materials, H-BNNTs are astonishingly easy to manufacture in bulk and spin into sheets. They're typically used to reinforce other materials and can be purchased in a powdered form for that purpose.
What I'm going to do is buy a full body cooling garment as an underlayer and build an exolayer of radiation-resistant plates. It sounds kind of silly, but in a radioactive world you need to protect cover yourself or you will probably get sick and die. This can only be done with impractically heavy layers or by using cutting-edge materials. H-BNNTs are also hydrophobic so radioactive matter won't stick to you. They also self-heal. Another reason this is an absolute must: unless sufficiently protected, nuclear radiation can make you impotent.
People will provoke you if you have things. Being resistant to small bullets with armored plates is invaluable. I'll also build a helmet I can screw air filters into. Consider the predicted mortality causes: radiation poisoning, cancer, starvation, or conflict over resources. An armored suit of such specification would effectively protect against radiation poisoning, cancer, and conflict over resources. It's remarkably valuable and there is no substitute.
How to make BNNT according to Jun Hee Kim et al.: "Ball milling is a promising technique to synthesize BNNT at industrial scale with low cost. In principle, direct reaction between boron and nitrogen in ambient conditions can be stimulated by introducing defective or amorphous structure in boron starting powders. This transformation is easily done by applying sufficient amount of mechanical energy that is controlled by several parameters such as milling time, and intensity (round per minutes). Therefore, the quantity of BNNT can be immensely produced in a typical run. This process is dependent on the milling time that could be extended to hundreds of hours, and the subsequent annealing of treated boron powder has an essential role in the formation of BNNT."
**BE SCARY AF**
Suppose your starving and have no weapons. You see someone walking and eating an apple from the bushes. If they don't look armed, you might want to jump them and steal their food. If they're wearing a full bullet-resistant armor suit with a semiautomatic rifle strapped to their back, you might think twice.
**SOURCES OF FOOD**
What are the best sources of food during the nuclear winter? Your neighbors and pets, and not in the way you'd like to think. You might not be able to grow anything outside. Sourcing energy for a greenhouse will be exceptionally difficult. People will also try to kill you if you do have food. You can mill flour out of cambium, the inner layer of tree bark, to make bark bread. You can also grow mushrooms and nutritional yeast. Dinner a la oyster mushrooms, nutritional yeast, bark bread, and bat meat. Not bad given the circumstances. Other than that, you're pretty much hopeless. There is no easy answer to the problem of finding food. Clean water can be sourced from a well or collected from the condensate of boiling water.
**WHERE SHOULD YOU HIDE?**
When you learn that nuclear war has been initiated, you should consider the amount of time you have, and go to your basement or another underground dwelling before the blast. It's important to stay underground for a 2-3 weeks, then you can come up and assess the circumstances. Make sure you have a geiger counter to assess your exposure to radiation.
**WHO'S IN CHARGE??**
The government would collapse. Some places would remain untouched by direct nuclear bombing. Countries in Africa, South America, Australia, South East Asia, Oceania, and of course Antarctica, may remain safe. Getting there would be a top priority. Aid packages may also arrive, but probably not. Every country would be suffering it's own ecological crisis as a result of radioactive material carried by weather.
There is also the possibility of haven cities that were not destroyed by blasts through shear luck. READ THE ROAD. Gangs will block the roads to take your things, but if you can't survive by yourself, it would be wise to try to find a haven city.
**NUCLEAR FANTASY**
Some places could be hit REALLY hard. In America, England, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and other major targets, it would be a mistake to assume that society will ever be remotely similar. Some people hold out hope for gov aid. It won't be coming. The government will collapse. As Einstein said, WW4 will be fought with sticks and stones
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Impending Nuclear Apocalypse
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El Salvador: The most important country you barely hear about
El Salvador has a significant diaspora, so much that money coming from the US is a major source of income. **Not so long ago you would have been pressed to find a Salvadorian who wanted to go back to El Salvador. Now things seems to be changing.**
El Salavador, used to have one of the highest homicide rates in the Americas, now it looks relatively safe. El Salvador showed an interesting strategy. First boost the economy before handling the crime situation. Crime is indeed a part of GDP, albeit a hard one to quantify. Since it is an economic activity, it participates in exchanges and provides people with activities that supports them and their families. Drastically reducing crime has the effect of creating *'unemployed criminals'* people with a skillset that's hard to sell in a traditional economy.
El Salvador probably did take a hit to its GDP, but that was compensated by the increase in economic activity and investments.
Bitcoin was a big part of that.
Bitcoin got a lot of bad press as a technology only used by criminals, or a crazy investment for crazy speculators. These takes failed to understand the technology and it's potential. What Bitcoin offers is a decentralized, fast and secure payment system for free. El Salvador doesn't have to maintain it, regulate it, or even monitor it. All very costly activities that a small country can do without. Bitcoin is a mathematically secure way of payment.
In a country where road infrastructures are challenging, Bitcoin offers people in remote areas the possibility to pay their bills without travelling for hours. In a country that was unsafe, Bitcoin offered people the possibility to go out without the fear of being robbed.
It also attracted a kind of investors that would go nowhere else. And even if these investment can appear small, for a country like El Salvador it's a big change.
The Salvadorian experiment in a freer economy, crypto-friendly and smaller government, in a time of increasing inflation, has a lot of people watching. In a continent that leaned left for so long, this is a big change.
My opinion is that there would be no Javier Millier hadn't there been a Nayib Bukele before. Argentina has been a bastion of the left for decades. If the libertarian policies of Millier succeed in bettering the lives of Argentinians, we might be on the brink of a major cultural shift in the Americas and then the world.
Argentina is a far bigger country than El Salvador, with far more people watching.
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El Salvador: The most important country you barely hear about
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