Stuff You Should Know - Will the moon save humanity?

Episode Date: January 21, 2010

In this disaster-themed episode of Stuff You Should Know, Josh and Chuck ponder ways the world could end -- and how projects like the lunar Doomsday Ark propose to save humanity. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Follow Operation Trade Bomb on Apple Podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, with me is always is Charles W. Chuck Bryant, who's making fun of the weight gain I've managed to accumulate over the holiday. I'm not. I just, you seem like you were pointing that out. And so I guessed. You honestly don't look like you gained any weight.

Thanks. Sure. Neither do you. Well, I gained some over Christmas, but I've dropped a few cents. Yeah, I was looking at you. I'm like, Chuck's face looks a lot slimmer. When was this? Like two days ago.

Not really. God bless you. Chuck, let's get started, shall we? Yes. What is your bet for how the world is going to end? 2012, the Large Hadron Collider, maybe a third world war starting in the Middle East. I'm going to go with natural disasters setting off a chain reaction of events. What would those chain reaction of events be?

Oh, you know, paranoia, chaos, dogs and cats living together, man fighting man, woman fighting man, woman fighting woman, my favorite. Yeah. And yeah, then everyone kills each other. That's what I'm going with. Okay. What do you think? I think it's going to be a single cataclysmic event.

I think that humans are really good at adapting to stuff, e.g., climate change, that kind of thing. I don't think it has the gumption to wipe out humanity. A natural event or a human-generated event? It could be either one, like a major asteroid impact or a nuclear holocaust. I think it's going to be something like that, something big and sudden. I think Facebook and Twitter will play a part in my scenario. Well, no, no.

It's the degradation of society. This is the destruction of humanity we're talking about. Well, no. I mean, once the chain reaction starts, I think things can get out of control with information being so easily doled out. This is why I love us, Chuck. We have not spoken about this at all. I sent you a link like, how about this for the stuff you should know?

And we haven't spoken about it, right? And one of the things that I came up with for the intro was that we're a very paranoid species, and you've just touched on that, too. Thank you for being you, Chuck Bryant. I was talking to Emily about that the other day, that no one really knows what social media is going to do, and I could definitely see paranoia spreading, false truth spreading so fast that it gets out of control. And what's the deal with Twitter?

Can you really say anything important 12, 15 times a day in 160 characters or less? You're asking the wrong guy. I don't think so. You've got a Twitter page? Yeah, but I don't ever use it. You don't? No. I did for a little while, and I just kind of stopped.

Like a week? Yeah. But it was a hell of a week, man. I bet. I've been saying hell a lot in podcasts lately, have you noticed? No. Yeah. Listen to the sun one.

Okay. Hell, hell, all over the place. Fire. Yeah. Speaking of hell and fire, so we're talking about the world ending, and we're talking about humanity being paranoid, and one of those, I guess, beneficial byproducts of that paranoia is planning, good sensible planning. Agreed.

Right? Mm-hmm. You ever heard of a little country called Norway? I have. Norwegians? Uh-huh. Live there? You going with the Seed Vault?

Let's start with that. Sure. What's the official name of it, do you know? The Seed Vault in Norway. The Seed Vault. Yeah, it's pretty cool what they've done is. They have taken pretty much every seed known to man. Like one and a half million species.

Yeah. Along with equipment, right, to help grow things. Sure. And they put it in a vault buried deep within the earth. Is it, I think it's in a mountainside? Somewhere in the Arctic. Okay. Yeah, I don't know exactly.

I think it is in a mountainside, actually. I think we should have researched this. Well, no, there's a, well, this isn't even, this is totally supplemental. Right. And we're doing this off the top of our heads. But yeah, I remember hearing that the entrance is in the side of a mountain. I think so. But yeah.

So there's a bunch of seeds. Yeah. And the idea is we grow things again, right, if we're wiped out. And then the British have an underground vault that is basically a DNA depository. Yeah. I didn't know about this one until today. Yeah. They have genetic samples from all manner of plant, animal, right, material, people

kind of things. And they said that you could potentially rebuild an ecosystem with this stuff. Yeah. Specifically which ecosystem? I'm not entirely certain. Yeah, that's true. Is it a desert? Because who really wants to rebuild that?

Yeah. Nobody. Good point. Right. And then, of course, we have the point of this article, right? There's a nice little moniker that gets tacked on to these things, like the Seed Vault in Norway, the DNA Vault in Britain, doomsday arcs. Yeah.

Right? Those are more than one? Yeah. The Norwegian things, the doomsday arcs. Oh, I thought you were going to talk about the specific one we're talking about, which is the lunar version. You have to say the lunar doomsday arc. You can't just say doomsday arc because people say which one, the one in Britain, the one

in Norway? So they all fall under that larger heading. Right. Did not realize that. It's true. Good info. Thanks, man. So we're talking today about the lunar doomsday arc, right, Chuck?

Yeah. The lunar doomsday arc is a concept that was first proposed in a 1999 book by a guy named Robert Shapiro, not the lawyer, called Planetary Dreams, I believe. Right. And then, again, in 06, right, by some actual scientists. Yeah. He's actually a member of the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, which sounds kooky, but Robert Shapiro and his colleagues that form the higher-ups at the ARC are actually really

well-respected. They're scientists, science writers, physicists, engineers, and they've come together to create this group that is trying to carry out this idea of creating a doomsday vault on the moon. Yeah. And they're based at NYU at New York University. And they officially actually tossed this out in 08 at a conference in France. And it has received a little bit of chiding and a little bit of support as well. Yeah.

And I think that I was reading a blog post on it, and you get kind of the sentiment that a lot of people are like, you guys are idiots, you know? This is never going to work. And here's why. I think it's super cool. One of the comments on a blog post I wrote about it was, what harm can it do, you know? How much money have we funneled into NASA just to get to the moon and been like, well, we're here.

Okay, cool. Right. And if it costs even billions of dollars, let's dissolve AIG and sell its holdings off and then, you know, put it into this. What can it hurt is the point. Right. And what could it help potentially is all of humanity. Right.

How? In the planet. Well, Josh, the idea, like most arcs and vaults, is to bury important things deep within, in this case, the moon, so they're protected in case something really bad happens. Right. So we're going to start with the Alliance to Rescue Civilization, which, by the way, was very much legitimized when the European Space Agency got on board with this plan. Absolutely.

So what this joint venture aims to do is to put all of humanity's knowledge, not all of it, because they are aware that there's not an infinite amount of storage, but selected most important stuff among humanity. So there won't be a drawer with our podcasts on a hard disk. Nobody, they won't even consider these. It'll be all of this American life. They want to put it all on hard disks, right, and bury it on the moon. Yes.

And they're going to record all this in different languages, pretty cool. Arabic, English, Chinese, Russian, French, and Spanish. So you got your bases covered pretty much. Right. But what the hell's the point? See, I just did it again. Uh-huh. Of burying some hard disks with all of humanity's knowledge on the moon.

Anyway. Well, what you got up there, dude, is DNA sequences, tech information, how to make metals, how to rebuild. Uh, that's, you know, what are you talking about, this valuable info? It is valuable info if, and the whole point, remember, is to help rebuild humanity, civilization, if the people here on Earth can access it. Oh, okay, I got you, right? That's the most important part, otherwise it's just going to sit there.

So let's say that there is a, um, a meteor. Let's go with mine. Yeah, yours makes more sense. A meteor hits Earth, kills off everybody except like 50 people across the planet. Okay. That's all it takes, buddy. I know. Um, and they, they, these 50 people start wandering around, uh, Water World style, the

Postman style, take whatever, bad Kevin Costner film you want. Um. How about Bull Durham style? It's probably the best style around. Okay. Uh, and they stumble upon one of 4,000 Earth based depositories, repositories. Right. And what they're going to find in these things are computers that run on wind power, solar

power, and some, uh, preserved food and medical supplies, that kind of thing. It would be like a bonanza for them, right? Yes. And when they hit the space bar on these computers to, to, uh, get the screen up, they're going to find that they are receiving transmissions from the moon. If they survive, which is, we'll, we'll get to the, um, the downside of this, but that's assuming that these receivers would survive that whatever cataclysmic event. Right.

So, but let's say they did. Okay. So the point of having these hard disks buried on the moon is that they're going to be hooked to radio transmitters that constantly transmit this information back to Earth. So in addition to, uh, Debussy's La Mer, which really has very little value when you're rebuilding civilization, right? Um, there's going to be things like how to grow wheat, how to grow corn, how to smelt iron, right?

And how to rebuild civilization, right? So they're going to do it in, like you said, I think seven different languages, I guess with an instruction manual that any post-apocalyptic dummy can understand. Smelting for dummies. Right. And how do they survive in there? What? Human and animal embryos.

Yeah. How's that? They were saying that the, the suspended animation, the temperature needed for suspended animation that they're figuring so far is something like, uh, 70 Kelvin, which is real low temperature. Oh yeah. You can't really do that here on Earth, uh, without sucking up all the energy on the planet, but you can in the shade of a lunar crater.

Oh, okay. So that's definite possibility. Well you also have to create, uh, an environment that these things can, can survive in. Right. It's not like Earth. No. Should we talk about that? Yes.

It's a three-step process. Let's hear it Chuck. Okay. First, what you have to do is, uh, build some machines that generate, uh, the proper gas mix that basically replicate our atmosphere. Yeah. Because you have to create a little mini-Earth inside the moon, which is kind of mind-blowing, actually.

Uh, because you- By the way. Yeah. By the way. And, uh, the plants, uh, you know, can thrive inside this atmosphere and then they eventually decompose and release what? CO2. Yes.

They release carbon dioxide. This is deadly to humans unless there's something present. Like algae perhaps? Sure. So they bring along Mr. Algae and Mr. Algae absorbs the CO2, emits oxygen, and basically establishes a, uh, cycle just like we have here on Earth. Yeah. And-

What- You know what you have right there? What? Atmospheric conditions that are suitable to sustain human life. Perfect. So, all of a sudden now you have a place, this, this, uh, lunar arc now becomes a lunar colony, potentially. Yeah.

Well, it'd be great if we had a colony up there first. Well, yeah. We need people to tend to the- Yeah. This stuff. That's the ideal scenario. In the meantime, uh, arc is saying that they, um, we could do it through the use of robotics. Right.

Yeah. Make sure that all this stuff is functioning properly, but if you can make it so that this is sustainable for, uh, human habitation, then you have a lunar colony, right? Right. So, let's say that, um, that meteor does hit. Okay. And it wipes out all but 50 people. Okay.

And by spectacular coincidence, all 4,000 sites, these, uh, repository sites, basically bomb shelters, right, um, are also wiped out. That's bad news. It is bad news for the 50 people on earth. Luckily, we've got the people up on the moon who can come back down here and say, hey, here's all the information you need to know. Let me show you how to smell iron, buddy. Right.

You know? Uh-huh. So that's, uh, kind of one of the big points of the plan is that if we can get humans up there, then we have taken a part of the human population out of the equation of a global disaster. And then they'll just be up on the moon like, that stinks. Right. And then they'll have to wait like a little while.

Sure. If all of humanity's wiped out, part of the contingency plan for this is that, um, the people up there on the moon will wait a century, maybe two, and then come back down to earth, and then the sexy business starts. Well, if they're waiting a century or two up there, then there's going to be sexy business on the moon, too. Sure, there will be sexy business on the moon, but then they're going to bring their sexy business back to earth.

Which means the first people will be born on the moon. Sure. They will not be earthlings, technically. No, they'd be moonlings. Nice point, Chuck. Cute little moonlings with their little edible kneecaps. Yeah. So then once that happens, uh, and in humanity, repopulates the earth through their sexy business,

um, everything is saved. Basically, we went to the moon, waited for the cataclysmic event to occur, waited for the dust to settle, went back, and we're like, all right, let's do this again. Right? What is wrong with this plan? Well, there's a lot of problems, potentially, um, that I, that I can see. One is a, like I said earlier, you have to count on the fact that these receivers will, uh, not be wiped out as well.

Their answer to that is, well, let's say they are wiped out, um, we'll still have the information for man to eventually rebuild them and make them work again. Right. And the, the lunar arc will be transmitting still that whole time. So when they, when they do get these radio transmitters and the receivers back up and operating, uh, they'll be like, oh, here's all the information we need from the moon. It sounds a little far fetched to me. Doesn't it?

Yeah. A bit. Uh, one of the other problems, Josh, is, uh, no one is going to know where these are, are hidden. Isn't that correct? Right. They're not exactly publishing that. No.

If you do, then you've got somebody like the creepy blonde guy from the movie contact trying to sabotage it. Right. Or geocachers. Um, or the, the, the most nefarious group of all, right? They take some, uh, take the radio transmitter and leave some Bhutanese money in its place or a Santana CD. Right.

And I say that because we got some Bhutanese money this week from a geocacher from a geocacher who, who is just this convergence of our podcasts, a walking convergence of stuff you should know. And really also, I think one of the reasons that this is, um, such a derided plan, not by me. Like I know I've sounded like I'm, I'm, I'm chiding it here there. I'm really not. Like I think it's a good idea to come up with the money and it doesn't, you know, take

food out of starving people's mouths. Let's do it. Right. That's, I agree. Um, but I think the, the, the whole thing hinges on a lunar colony. Like, yes, we could bury hard disks under the lunar surface. We could start broadcasting transmissions, but really we have to have people on the moon with an ability to get back and forth from earth to the moon for this to really, really

work. Right. That's the ideal. And that is, we're nowhere near that. No. We're a long way off. They've poked around that, that scenario a bit, but it's not, it's not ramped up anytime soon.

No. They do hope to have that, um, that stuff buried by 2020. Yeah. And then, uh, what was the other date by 2035? They want to have, um, living organisms in that, uh, three part atmospheric creator machine. All right. 2035 sounds like the serious future, but I said that about 2010 too, and I was, it's

not, no, it's a little seventh grader. And now it's the future. It is. Yeah. We're living the future. And there was one other point that, um, I thought was pretty interesting. I read about this, um, the whole sentiment of it, while it does underline our paranoia as a species, it also underlines our, um, disposable mentality.

Like we're like, okay, the earth is screwed up. We'll just move on to the moon. Yeah. You know what I'm saying? Yeah. Rather than try, you know, climate change was a big, uh, reason that this whole idea was proposed. Sure.

So rather than do anything about it, let's just figure out a way to get out of here. See what other planet we can mess up. Yeah. Have you heard of terraforming? Uh, no. They're talking about terraforming Mars. Uh, I'm not exactly sure what they would shoot into the atmosphere around Mars. Uh, but they are shooting to orbit around Mars, but they, there's, I guess, um, elements

that they can put into orbit around Mars that could spontaneously generate an atmosphere. Really? Which would? A habitable atmosphere. Right. Which would essentially turn Mars into, you know, the new earth. Cool. Yeah.

Get your ass to Mars. Thank you for that, Chuck. Name that movie. Uh, total recall, I imagine. Very good job. Yeah. All right. So Chuck, I think that's about it for the doomsday arc.

If you want to read about that or the Norwegian Seed Bank, uh, I don't know if we have one on the British Jean Bank. Oh, no, no, no. We got one on the Norwegian Seed Bank, though. Okay. Uh, you can type, uh, doomsday arc into the handy search bar at howstuffworks.com. It will bring up all manner of interesting stuff. Uh, and of course that leads us to listener mail.

Yes. Uh, I did want to say an official thank you to Mark from Massachusetts for sending us Bhutanese money. Yeah, thanks Mark. He leaves those as his little, uh, geocaching treats in the, uh, as little found items. And I did look it up. One US dollar is equal to 45, uh, however you pronounce that, Gultrums, Bhutanese Gultrums. Is that right?

Yeah. Nice. So it's not very much money. No, but it's pretty. It was the sentiment. Yeah, it was very pretty. Not like your ugly American money. Uh, okay, Josh, I'm going to call this, uh, funny email.

So you get on the air. This is from Kelly. Okay. Josh and Chuck, I recently heard a podcast where a woman wrote in to say her podcast saved her life. I felt compelled to tell you that you also saved another nearly unfortunate soul, that of my coworker. Oh yeah.

You see, you read this one. She's from Detroit. Yeah. You see, I work for a local magazine in a small office that consists of about 20 short cubicles for the most part. The people I work with are great, but I always assume there is the exception of one. Uh, I liken her to the case of the Mondays woman from office space. Great movie.

She chews and pops her gum incessantly. She repeatedly and loudly sighs, oh, they throughout the day. Someone taught her that word one day and she thought it was the greatest thing since she learned to blame everything on Murphy's law. She wears ungodly amounts of perfume that smells of my grandmother's couch and lingers well after she has left the area and possibly worse, but definitely not last. She whistles loudly Christmas carols in midsummer. Do you know what's more irritating than a poison ivy rash and a spot you can't reach,

what hearing, let it snow whistled through the mall of an obnoxious coworker in July. But let me assure you, I grew up with three older brothers. I'm a poster child for tolerance. This woman would try the patience of a saint. One day when I was at my wit's end, another coworker of mine came into the office looking a little under the weather. I asked him what was up and he said his brain had shrunk and went on to explain that he had won too many the night before and subsequently his body had stolen water from his brain.

And basically this is how she learned of our podcast because this guy had a hangover. Yeah. Now whenever I want to hear the unmistakable first notes of Oh Holy Night, my favorite Christmas song, I plug in and let your sweet voices of salvation take me away. So on behalf of me and my coworker that I nearly went postal on, thank you and keep up the good work. Kelly. Thanks Kelly.

Thank you for not murdering anybody. Yeah. She almost killed her coworker. Yeah. I think I would do. Yeah. She sounds kind of annoying. Boy vey.

Nice to check. Before I give a call out for emails, I want to mention our Kiva team. It's been a little while. Good job, Josh. Dude, we have generated since the beginning of October, right? The stuff you should know listeners who have joined the Kiva team and donated had made over $60,000 in donations since the beginning of October. That's awesome. Yeah.

It's awesome. It's amazing. Yeah. We are the seventh largest donation team and here's what gets me, Josh. What? What gets me is that a scant percentage of our total listenership has gotten involved here. Yeah.

I think it's like 2,000? 1,000? Yeah. Like 1,200? 1,300 members, I think. So that's like one half of a half of a percent of our listenership? I think so. Yeah.

Well, if you want to join our Kiva team, there's always room for one more or 100,000 more, whatever you like. Yes. Every once in a while, Chuck and I go on the team message board and say hi and there's all manner of interesting people on there. All manner. Yeah. You can check it out at www.kiva, that's K-I-V-A dot org slash team singular slash stuff

you should know. Right? It'll make you feel good. I promise. Yeah. And if you have an email that contains a descriptor of how your grandmother's couch smells, you can wrap it up and send it to StuffPodcast at HowStuffWorks.com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, visit HowStuffWorks.com.

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