Interstellar

photo credit: IMDB

We watched Interstellar over the weekend. While I can’t say it’s one of my favorite movies, it does present an interesting premise. What if we stop spending money on space exploration and maintain the planet as is? If so, what happens if our planet becomes uninhabitable? How does mankind survive?

In the movie, Earth experiences such extreme temperatures, drought, and famine worse than the Dust Bowl of the 1930s that humanity faces extinction. A secret NASA (secret because nobody wants to spend money on space exploration when people are starving) sends a team of astronauts beyond our solar system to find an inhabitable planet. Of course, there are various crises and dilemmas. Wouldn’t be a good sci-fi action/adventure if there weren’t.

Much has been written lately about the discovery of new planets that appear to be capable of sustaining life. But it would be no quick trip to check out what telescopes and probes tell us. To get beyond our solar system we’d need either faster-than-light propulsion or wormholes (hypothetical shortcuts through spacetime). So far, we haven’t invented the former or discovered the latter.

Let’s say, scientists discover a wormhole that will let us travel to another part of our galaxy or into a different one. What would it take to get mankind to leave Earth? A global disaster? Would we see it coming? Would we heed the warnings in time? In Deep Impact (an asteroid will hit Earth), we hide underground until the Earth becomes safe again. In the movie 2012, we build an ark. But who is chosen to survive? How? A lottery? Your job? Bribes to officials?

I’ve written before about Mars One, the privately funded project to send a team on a one-way trip to establish a colony on Mars. NASA is also working on a plan to go to Mars. Progress is slow. Funding is always a challenge. If we knew that sometime in the future humanity would have to leave Earth, would we expedite that endeavor now? Or would we leave it up to future generations?

A lot of questions in this post. I love a good adventure movie. Disaster movies, not as much. But they do make me think. It’s that “what if” question that writers instinctively ask. It’s what makes a good story. But what if (see?) it’s not just a story? What if it’s real?

What do you think?

What Would You Do?

Credit: Russian Emergency Ministry via Space.com

In view of the meteor exploding over Russia last month and the asteroid that scooted past Earth a few hours later, it makes me wonder how do you prepare for such a disaster. Most of us who live in “tornado alley” or along the hurricane coasts have a preparedness plan. We hit the basement (or interior room with no windows) or evacuate. Meteors, comets and asteroids are a whole other thing.

In 1998, Hollywood captured movie-goers’ attention with two films about catastrophic disasters, Armageddon and Deep Impact. An asteroid and a comet will collide with Earth. In Armageddon, the world has less than a month to prepare; in Deep Impact, about two years. If you had time, what would you do to prepare for basically the end of the world?

A couple of years ago, I came across a YA novel that piqued my interest because of its end-of-the-world scenario. Life As We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer chronicles the life of a teenage girl and her family as they try to survive after an asteroid hits the moon, knocking it closer to Earth, which then sets off a series of increasingly calamitous events. If you had advance warning, would you think to stockpile canned foods and seeds to plant a garden so you would have food after all the stores were depleted?

End-of-the-world stories (in books and movies) capture our imagination because we know the main character survives. Entertainment value aside, they also make us think about what would happen if the story was real. I’m guessing most of give it a moment’s concern then stuff it into that region of our brain where we don’t have to think about it. Just call us ostriches, sticking our heads in the sand.

Pollyanna, here, likes to think that if faced with an impending global disaster our brilliant scientists would have already devised ways of preventing total Armageddon. Or maybe not. Maybe their budget was cut.

On this gorgeous sunny day, I’ll play like Scarlett O’Hara and think about it another day.

How about you?