Tag: disaster

Irene Darwin Awards

we should collect the best darwin award pics from irene. here is a start.

NYC is now Zurich

now new yorkers know what weekends in zurich are like: everything is closed.

Hurricane updates on Maps

pushing some new data for crisis response. should have links to nyc maps in a bit.

What are groceries?

took the unprecedented step of buying some groceries. no water jugs though, dignity doesn’t allow it.

NYC Hurricane Zones

someone helped nyc.gov out and converted their PDF map into an actually useful map. plus you know, the site isn’t down, so there is that.

Googlers are not ready

given that the average Google New York employee’s fridge contains only ketchup, beer, and very old takeout… this could be a real disaster.

Japan Earthquake Perspective

Japan is exceptionally well-prepared to deal with natural disasters: it has spent more on the problem than any other nation, largely as a result of frequently experiencing them. (Have you ever wondered why you use Japanese for “tsunamis” and “typhoons”?) All levels of the government, from the Self Defense Forces to technical translators working at prefectural technology incubators in places you’ve never heard of, spend quite a bit of time writing and drilling on what to do in the event of a disaster.

Vacuum Collapse

the “measure problem” of eternal inflation posits that the local void bubble will collapse in 3.7b years.
2013-12-13: good news everyone: there is an upper bound on the probability of earth being utterly destroyed of 1 in 1B per year.

Mexican gulf bleed-out?

a massive collapse of the Gulf floor itself is in the making,” “fracturing and a complete bleed-out are already underway”. 2B barrels of oil could leak into the Gulf before the reservoir has fully depleted itself.

EMP Aftermath

A what-if of the aftermath of a high power EMP blast in the stratosphere.

Suppose, one fine spring day, with no warning or evident cause, the power went out. After a while, when it didn’t come back on, you might try to telephone the power company, only to discover the phone completely dead. You pull out your mobile phone, and it too is kaput. Nothing happens at all when you try to turn it on. You get the battery powered radio you keep in the basement in case of storms, and it too is dead; you swap in the batteries from the flashlight (which works) but that doesn’t fix the radio. So, you decide to drive into town and see if anybody there knows what’s going on. The car doesn’t start. You set out on foot, only to discover when you get to the point along the lane where you can see the highway that it’s full of immobile vehicles with their drivers wandering around on foot as in a daze.