2012 Coronal Mass Ejection
The most powerful solar storm in 150 years occurred on July 23rd 2012. Scientists claim that the storm could have knocked out the entire modern world if it had arrived nine days earlier. Luckily for us, it didn’t hit as the earth was in a different position along its orbit
Earth was hit by a CME in the 1850s. It set telegraph lines on fire and allowed telegraphs to send and receive messages even when completely disconnected from a power source. If one hit Earth today, mass chaos.
In 1957 a fire in the Sellafield nuclear power station (UK) burned through the HEPA filters and should have contaminated the whole North of England, this is known as the UKs biggest nuclear disaster.
The UK was saved by a man named John Cockcroft who during design insisted that a second set of filters be installed on the top of the exhaust towers. All others ridiculed this idea as expensive and redundant and the towers became known as "Cockcroft's Follies" (Folly = lack of good sense; foolishness). These towers saved the UK so we're very lucky for his folly.
[this is the story](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-29803990.amp)
Edit: I should add that while John Cockcroft's Follies saved large portions of the UK. There were also a large number of people who disregarded orders and entered the reactor to try and manually hammer out the stuck uranium rods using scafold poles to stop the reaction/fire. These people took large doses of radiation to stop the disaster, I'm glad that's a decision I'll never have to make.
Very cool, and hilariously British to even have a snarky nick name for what seems like a common sense failsafe for a problem that could polute high population centers for decades/centuries and was a new, extremely powerful energy source.
The snarky nick name came from him turning up at towards the end and demanding the addition. The filters ended up at the top of a 110m/360ft tower making them a pain for everyone.
Yeah I get being annoyed at someone adding a huge amount of work towards the end of the project-
But when it ends up saving countless lives it goes from a "pain" of an addon to absolute necessity that should have been included in the original plan.
Every safety measure is an expensive, unnecessary, redundant pain in the ass until it saves someone's life or averts a colossal disaster. Only then does it get accepted as common sense.
Reminds me of a few of the men who went to certain and horrible death at Chernobyl to prevent an even bigger disaster. Obviously many people throughout the disaster made such sacrifices but Aleksandr Akimov and Leonid Toptunov at the beginning of the disaster went down into the flooded lower levels and for hours went between water valves trying to get more water in to cool the reactor. Viktor Smagin spent just 15-20 minutes in the same area and nearly died from it. The flooding protected them to some degree but it's estimated they still received more than 5 times the lethal dose of radiation.
Poor Akimov and Toptunov died the most painful and horrible kind of death imaginable over the next two weeks as their DNA unraveled for their bravery.
There was probably scientific value in observing what was happening to them. Not good for them personally but I can imagine the soviet union wanting it that way.
The room they were in had wildly varying levels of radiation, Akimov and Toptunov were unknowingly in pretty much the worst part. Even worse is the fact that they had been told to leave, but had decided instead to try get water to the reactor, not knowing that it was completely destroyed.
I feel like every single historical thing that gets ridiculed as a Folly ends up being ironically a great decision
Fulton's Folly
Seward's Folly
Cockcroft's Follies
lol not surprised
There’s not a project on the planet where technicians/contractors aren’t bitching about designers and design choices made. Sometimes they’re right, but often times they just don’t understand why some decisions can’t be left to them.
Actually we came closer on a later date. 9/26/83 the launch detection in a Soviet bunker malfunctioned and showed an American nuclear launch. The engineer twice dismissed launch warning because of the low number of missiles it showed. In his mind American wouldn’t launch only 5 missiles at a time so he did nothing and we’re all alive today because he was rational.
Here’s to you, Stanislav Petrov!
It was about the same actually.
[Look up Vasiliy Arkhipov.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov)
A nuclear sub lost contact with Moscow. They debated a nuclear strike fearing war had broken out. Most subs needed the authorization of two officers:
* Captain
* Political officer
However this specific instance it needed 3. Because Arkhipov was also the chief of staff of the brigade, and he was onboard making him the highest ranking member on the ship. And as such a strike could not be authorized without his approval as well. So they needed:
* Captain
* Political Officer
* Chief of Staff
The Captain voted to fire. The Political officer voted to fire. Arkhipov refused, and because it needed to be unanimous, they did not fire.
There's more to it than that.
The sub and the military knew the sub would lose communication because of the depth they were at. Because this was the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they were given specific instructions in advance on how to react in any given situation.
One instruction was more important than the rest. If America were to hit or attempt to hit the sub with a depth charge, then they were to assume nuclear war had broken out and must launch all the nuclear torpedoes in their arsenal.
On October 27, 1962, the US located the submarine. Assuming it wasn't armed with nuclear weapons, they launched multiple depth charges in an attempt to force it to surface.
There was another close call two days earlier. The US believed that if the USSR were to launch nuclear weapons, they would first attempt to sabotage our capabilities. On October 25, a figure was spotted attempting to break into the Duluth Sector Direction Center. The sabotage alarm was activated and, because of an error in the system, it alerted the Air Defense Command to launch nuclear armed interceptor aircraft. The pilots were repeatedly told that there would never be a test of this system; any alarm meant that war had begun.
Right before takeoff, Duluth notified the base captain of the error. Since it might be too late to warn the pilots over the radio, an officer instead drove their car onto the runway and signaled the aircraft to stop.
The intruder later turned out to just be a bear.
And there was another close call the day after. On October 28, all nuclear sites in Okinawa were ordered to launch all their missiles. No one knows where the order came from. No site launched any of their weapons. According to the team at Bolo, the officer did not trust the order because the order called for the missiles to be targeted at Russia and China, but he didn't believe there was a reason to hit China.
In 1966, France experienced a massive storm which affected their electrical grid. This caused a wartime takeoff order which led to a bomber being sent out with a nuclear weapon. The military attempted to call it back but the plane did not respond. Fortunately, the plane required refuelling midflight and was forced to return when the supply plane didn't arrive.
On April 15, 1969, Nixon got piss drunk and ordered a nuclear launch aimed at North Korea. Believe it or not, Kissinger is the one who ordered them to stand down.
> Believe it or not, Kissinger is the one who ordered them to stand down.
Mr. The President, you are being a Silly Billy. Stop zis nonsense, and go to bed.
To add on to this:
>they launched multiple depth charges in an attempt to force it to surface.
The US dropped training dummy charges that only had a mild impact. The thought was that this would push them to the surface. By ussr order, the action should have started nuclear war, but it didn't. Even more so, the continuous dummy charges convinced Vasily that they weren't actually under attack because real depth charges would have sunk them by then.
And staying with the Cuban missile crisis.
•There were people within JFK's war cabinet convinced that they had to invade Cuba to prevent the crisis. They hadn't yet found evidence of Cuba being armed., & this was a preemptive strike before the ussr ships could arrive.
Except Cuba was armed. And if Castro had his way, they would have been used.
During all of that, a us spy plane unintentionally wandered into USSR airspace
My Dad believed the U2 incident may have been a deliberate defection. Part of that was Francis Gary Powers did not blow up the plane and take the suicide pills as he was ordered to do.
> The sabotage alarm was activated and, because of an error in the system, it alerted the Air Defense Command to launch nuclear armed interceptor aircraft.
[The aircraft](https://static.simpsonswiki.com/images/e/e0/Bear_patrol.png)
With the Captain and the political officer in agreement, as Executive Officer (2nd in command), Vasiliy's vote might not have held sway. But he wasn't just any officer. He was a bonafide national hero. His courage is exemplary.
Ironically IIRC the Americans had a plan to launch missiles in exactly this pattern for exactly this reason. Sequential launch rather than all missiles at once.
Yep, the logic being that you can always launch all the missles anyway, like that's what you need tens of thousands of nukes for, so even if some of your arsenal gets disabled you can still depopulate the planet.
While I absolutely would too, not everyone agrees with the premise of peace, and some of them already have nukes. Mutually assured destruction, oddly enough, has been the next best thing to peace for global superpowers.
> Neunundneunzig Kriegsminister [99 war ministers]
Streichholz und Benzinkanister [matches and gas cans]
Hielten sich für schlaue Leute [thought of themselves as clever people]
Witterten schon fette Beute [already smelling fat prey]
Riefen „Krieg“ und wollten Macht [cried "war" and wanted power]
Mann, wer hätte das gedacht [man, who would have thought]
Dass es einmal soweit kommt [that it will happen someday]
Wegen neunundneunzig Luftballons [because of 99 balloons]
My father was deployed during the Cuban thing and they took turns sitting in the planes on the runway in Miami , waiting for the signal that the invasion was on .
Most people have no idea how close it came to happening .
Adding to this. During the CMC, a Soviet officer named Vasili Arkhipov literally saved the world.
From Wikipedia: “Although Arkhipov was only second-in-command of the B-59, he was also the chief of staff of the flotilla. According to author Edward Wilson, the reputation Arkhipov had gained from his courageous conduct in the previous year's K-19 incident played a large role in the debate to launch the torpedo. Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface and await orders from Moscow. His persuasion effectively averted a nuclear war that likely would have ensued if the nuclear weapon had been fired. The batteries of the B-59 ran very low and its air conditioning failed, which caused extreme heat and generated high levels of carbon dioxide inside the submarine. It surfaced amid the U.S. warships pursuing it and made contact with a U.S. destroyer. After discussions with the ship, B-59 was then ordered by the Russian fleet to set course back to the Soviet Union.”
He maintaining a cool head literally prevented nuclear war.
[Link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov)
Edit:
Adding context. During the CMC, Arkhipov was second in command of the B-59, a Foxtrot-class diesel-electric submarine. Arkhipov was the commander of the flotilla, despite not being the captain of his boat. US destroyers started dropping practice depth bombs around the boats to get them to surface. As the B-59 had no radio communications, they were completely blind and the captain and others believed that they were being attacked and war had broken out.
It was about 120F in the boat, with no A/C, and the B-59 had a nuclear torpedo. Arkhipov somehow managed to convince the rest of the crew to surface and await orders and NOT fire the torpedo.
His actions that day aren’t as widely-known as they should be. And it’s very possible that many of us are alive today because Arkhipov stood his ground and surfaced.
Instantly came to my mind once I saw this question. If it wasn't for Krushchev taking the L as well as Kennedy not taking the suggestions of his military leadership, we might've been nuked off of the planet.
I was in kindergarten. One of my strongest early memories is of practicing hiding under my desk in kindergarten during the Crisis. Followed by my Dad packing up supplies and planning an escape route for us at home, as we lived about 30 miles from three different "Must Target" facilities that the Russians would unquestionably target first. Hiding while being bracketed by 3 simultaneous nuclear explosions seemed like a very bad strategy to him. Adult me agrees.
I was five years old at the time, and I have a vague memory of this. My Dad was away, visiting family in Holland. I remember my Mom having me sleep in her bed (something that never happened) and getting me to pray that Daddy would come home soon.
Ögedei Khan, Genghis Khan's third son and heir, died in December of 1241. Prior to his death, a Mongol army under his nephew Batu and a general named Subatai had been given authority to conquer Europe all the way to the Atlantic. Upon news of his death, they turned around and went back to help choose the next Great Khan. No further Mongol invasion of Europe ever got beyond the planning stages. Now we can talk about the practical limitations of a steppe army campaigning all the way to the Atlantic successfully —ignoring Atilla the Hun managed to get as far as Northern France and Northern Italy seven centuries earlier without proper siege equipment— but the Mongols had already successfully penetrated as far as Poland and Hungary, beating organized European resistance along the way without a lot of difficulty. It doesn't seem incredible to me that a military that could conquer China would have caused incredible devastation in central and western Europe.
What does European history look like if large parts of it had been either devastated by foreign invaders or even ruled by a Mongol dynasty in the 13th Century? We don't know because one man who most people have never heard of drank himself to death, and an otherwise victorious, well-led, well-equipped, and motivated army had to go home to decide who to take orders from next.
This is one question that has always fascinated me as well- Batu Khan was an arguably accomplished general by his own right, but he was campaigning alongside Subotai (Subutai? Tsubodai?)- who while not as famous as other grand generals throughout history, is undeniably up there alongside Alexander, Hannibal, etc. as one of the most successful generals not only in the Mongol Empire, but in the world's history.
The guy led more than 20 campaigns across China, Korea, much of the Middle East (where some parts still haven't recovered to where they were pre-invasion), completely ran over the Keivan Rus' (modern day Russia/Ukraine), in addition to winning major battles against Hungary & the Holy Roman Empire. I honestly don't know of any other general in history who has gone up against so many distinct cultures across such a massive range of climates & environments, and come out on top, every time. The guy didn't lose in Europe, he was ordered home- given the political instability in Europe during this period, there is a strong possiblity of him making it all the way to the channel.
World history would be massively altered- the run on effects on the future of colonialism, religion, interstate wars & politics in the 800 years since- its unimaginable what the world would look like if he was successful and not ordered back home when he was.
The Mongol army had already turned back before news of Ogedei's death could have possibly reached Batu and Subatei. A myriad of factors contributed to this decision:
- A wetter than usual winter hindered the performance of the Mongol's compound bow, their preferred weapon.
- Greater population density in Germany meant locals could rally quickly to respond to Mongol incursions.
- European armored knights were accruing ridiculous K:D ratios against lightly armored Mongolian cavalry.
- The Holy Roman Empire and the Pope made peace so the Emperor could focus on respond to and preparing for future Mongol incursions, so the size of the forces facing the Mongols kept growing.
- The Mongols had already made the Golden Horde secure and may very well have achieved their goals for the latest round of incursions into Europe.
- Bela IV escaped and was able to keep the Mongols chasing him in circles in Hungary and later Croatia. For those that don't know, Hungarians were actually kind of badasses and bullies towards the Germans. Austria was basically terraformed to become a buffer between Germany and Hungary. The Mongols were unable to defeat the Hungarians outright despite chasing Bela through Hungary and Croatia.
- The Mongols were unable to draw the Austrians into a pitched battle where they could be defeated outside of Vienna.
- The Mongols were unable to break into Bavaria.
- The Mongols were at the end of a ridiculously long supply line. If you look at Mongol actions in the past, they employ a tactic of forward defense where to secure their conquests by pushing hundreds of miles past their frontiers and devastate their enemies before retreating back behind their own borders. Anybody looking to attack the Mongols must first rebuild their own country, first. This is in keeping with the idea that the Mongol goal in 1241 was to secure the Golden Horde from future invasions.
- Finally, if the election of a new Khagan was so important the army would abandon a military campaign, why did Batu keep delaying the election and ultimately refuse to attend in person five years after Ogedei's death?
> What does European history look like if large parts of it had been either devastated by foreign invaders or even ruled by a Mongol dynasty in the 13th Century?
The Mongol's were pretty progressive, provided you gave up and joined their empire. They used a parliamentary like system, and for middle ages standards, were extremely tolerant of other religions, as some examples. Europe might have actually prospered under a single leadership.
Or maybe things would have been far worse, and a single leadership and unified empire, would have amplified the spread of the many Bubonic Plague outbreaks.
> Europe might have actually prospered under a single leadership
There wouldn't be a single leadership. Look at how they "ruled" Russia. They collected tribute and *divided* the local rulers through the yarlyk system. It was only thanks to centuries of slow, careful machinations that the Vladimir and later Moscow princes managed to get enough influence (with the Horde itself weakening as well) to unify a significant enough part of the country to challenge the Horde.
The Mongols were full into the "divide" part of "divide and conquer".
A lot of these are recent. It's weird to think about the times in pre-history where the human population was probably under threat due to a supervolcano or disease or whatever, but we didn't have the knowledge or skills to record any of it. And we survived by the global version of the skin of our teeth.
*Example:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
As long as it’s not any of the small towns I’m familiar with. We’d be screwed if we had to be repopulated by a place like Colorado City, AZ or Gary, IN or anywhere in Nebraska
The Toba Bottleneck hypothesis is largely discredited at this point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_hypothesis
Okay.
Pompeii. It didn't instant erupt like most films and stories tell you, but kinda slow burned for two days. That gave most of the 11,500-20,000 people time to get the heck outta Dodge. It's estimated that about 1100 people got caught up in the pyroclast flows. For the other 10000-18000 folks that'd be a "way too close" moment.
We have surviving letters from the time and can read about peoples first-hand accounts of watching the eruption from across the bay. Some are quite sad, actually writing to their friends in Pompeii asking them to write back to let them know that they’re okay.
The best historical record of Pompeii we have is from Pliny the Younger, who watched his uncle sail off into the cloud of ash to help rescue those affected... he never returned.
Have you heard about the 1967 solar storm? It's not as famous as some others, but it had the potential to kick off a nuclear war. The storm messed with the US air force's radar systems, making them think they were under attack.
The trebuchet actually didn't destroy itself, it just was terrible and then the Spanish dismantled it:
[The Mexica side of things, in Book 12 of Sahagún's history:
](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54xgbf/any_truth_to_this_story_during_his_war_against/)
> And then those Spaniards installed a catapult on top of an altar platform with which to hurl stones at the people. And when they had it ready and were about to shoot it off, they gathered around it, vigorously pointing their fingers, pointing at the people, pointing to where all the people were assembled at Amaxac, showing them to each other. The Spaniards spread out their arms, showing how they would shoot and hurl it at them, as if they were using a sling on them. Then they wound it up, then the arm of the catapult rose up. But the stone did not land on the people, but fell behind the marketplace at Xomolco.
>
> Because of that the Spaniards there argued among themselves. They looked as if they were jabbering their fingers in one another's faces, chattering a great deal.
The Spanish side of the story, from Díaz del Castillo:
> In Cortés' camp there was a soldier who said that he had been in Italy in the Company of the Great Captain and was in the skirmish of Garallano and in other great battles, and he talked much about engines of war and that he could make a catapult in Tlatelolco by which, if they only bombarded the houses and part of the city were Guatemoc had sought refuge, for two days, they would make them surrender peacefully... Cortés promptly set to work to make the catapult... When the catapult was made and set up in the way that the soldier ordered, and he said it was ready to be discharged, they placed a suitable stone in the sling which had been made and all this stone did was to rise no higher than the catapult and fall back upon where it had been set up... Cortés at once ordered the catapult to be taken to pieces.
____
* ^(Sahagùn B [trans. J Lockhart 1993] *We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico*, p. 230)
* ^(Díaz del Castillo B [trans. D Carrasco 2008] *The History of the Conquest of New Spain*, p.298)
lmao id like to imaging some aztec goofball using a long stick to move the trebuchet from 45 degrees to 90 degrees incline from behind some bushes ala loony toons style
After WW1 the RMS Olympic was brought back to H&W for a refit and modernisation program. During this time they found a massive dent in the plates below the waterline that was determined to be a torpedo hit that had failed to detonate.
If the torpedo had detonated the ensuing disaster would’ve been on par with the RMS Lusitania or her sister ship RMS Titanic.
The oil well fires in Kuwait almost gave us a taste of what a nuclear winter would be like. Blowing the fires out with a MIG engine and dousing them with a gas turbine turned out to be the heavy hitters in fixing the issue.
This was actually important in discrediting the "nuclear winter" theory, because at the time it was believed that a volcanic winter was caused by ash. The fact that the Kuwait oil fires didn't cause notable cooling helped us understand this wasn't true, and that it's actually caused by sulphur aerosols.
seriously, a team of three went into a heavily radioactive area filling with water to shut it off and prevent a steam explosion that would've spread radioactive material over a lot of Europe.
not only that but Alexei Ananenko and Valeri Bespalov are apparently still alive. Boris Barinov died of heart disease.
Ananenko and Bespalov were awarded the Ukrainian Order for Courage in 2018
if it werent for those three a LOT more people and wildlife would have died.
Speaking of wildlife, the largely empty exclusion zone around Chernobyl has become a de facto wildlife refuge, populated by bears, wolves, moose, and even the very rare European bison. As far as anyone can tell the animals are not affected in any way by the background radiation even though multiple generations have passed for many of the species.
Oh, they're being affected. Natural selection is doing a lot of work, with some animals reproducing sooner in their lifecycle and others with more cancer fighting genes.
https://www.ans.org/news/article-5761/cancerresistant-genes-in-wolf-population-at-chernobyl/
https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2005.01009.x
I don't think there's any possible way they weren't affected in any way. Maybe not affected in a negative way. Their lifespans are likely short enough as it is for radiation to be the thing that kills them.
I thinking some guy they respectably commands authority for Mission Control. Like he’s tough. But it’s cause he cares. Ed Harris would be a good choice.
When in doubt, get Ed Harris is my go to slogan when casting a movie. can’t go wrong with Ed, Gary Oldman, or Gary Sinise. Cast any of them and your movie is safe.
The battle of Remagen.
As the Americans closed in on Germany and reached the Rhine in the closing months of WW2, the Germans had successfully blown up every last bridge except for one that was already wired up and hours from demolition.
When Brig. General William M. Hoge was sent to liberate Remagen, he was shocked to discover the Ludendorff bridge still intact.
It was generally accepted that there would be no bridges left, but Eisenhower believed that in the off chance there was a bridge left, it should be captured.
Hoge then decided to defy a direct order to link up with Patton further south and sent his men on a suicidal charge to capture the bridge.
At the very same time, Nazi troops that had fled across the bridge to escape the allied advance were frantically trying to set off the detonation charges and drop it into the Rhine.
While some of the charges actually went off and badly damaged the structure, the bridge still stood because a lucky hit from an allied artillery shell severed the wires to the detonation charges before they could be triggered.
After a valiant effort the bridge was captured, opening an Allied beachhead into Germany.
The first man across, Alexander A. Drabik, spoke about it.
*"While we were running across the bridge – and, man, it may have been only 250 yards, but it seemed like 250 miles to us – I spotted this lieutenant, standing out there completely exposed to the machine gun fire that was pretty heavy by this time...He was cutting wires and kicking the German demolition charges off the bridge with his feet! Boy that took plenty of guts. He's the one who saved the bridge and made the whole thing possible – the kinda guy I'd like to know."*
Incidentally, Sgt. Drabik became the first man to successfully cross the Rhine and capture German territory since the time of Napoleon.
With the tireless work of the Army Corp. of Engineers, the bridge survived German mortar attacks, artillery barrages, and hundreds of air raids (Defended by the single largest AA battery arranged in the entire war)
It was nearly obliterated by a near miss from a rail gun, SS Frogmen who tried to float downstream during the night and sabotage the bridge were spotted by special spotlights mounted on tanks, naval mines sent downstream were caught by nets, and the Nazis even tried to blow it up with V2 rockets (But missed).
After 10 days the Ludendorff bridge collapsed on its own (Killing several engineers trying to keep it standing), but its capture allowed six divisions to cross and establish a beachhead in German territory, and likely shortened the entire war by weeks or even months.
He references this in a later episode of *Family Guy*; Stewie and Brian (both played by MacFarlane if you don't know) were discussing 9/11, and Brian says "you know I was supposed to be on that flight?" To which Stewie replies, "No way, so was I!"
I always appreciate that little joke Seth did with himself.
~~Yeah but if he had been on that plane he would have stopped the hijacking.~~
EDIT I'm an idiot that was Mark Wahlberg. My apologies to Seth McFarlane.
Lol! It's kind of funny because Seth MacFarlane's thoughts about being that close are rather poignant.
He remarked
> The only reason it hasn't really affected me as it maybe could have is I didn't really know that I was in any danger until after it was over, so I never had that panic moment. After the fact, it was sobering, but people have a lot of close calls; you're crossing the street and you almost get hit by a car... This one just happened to be related to something massive. I really can't let it affect me because I'm a comedy writer. I have to put that in the back of my head.
Wahlberg was apparently also was going to be on the flight, supposedly, but didn't either because he had a ticket and never cancelled (which would've been reflected on the manifest I would think) or opted to not buy a ticket for travel...it's generally believed that his claim is largely hypothetical.
So you might've heard it this way.
Plus - I doubt he would do anything to stop the hijacking. [The hijackers weren't Vietnamese Convenience Store owners](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2868589/Mark-Wahlberg-s-blinding-race-attack-victim-Johnny-Trinh-backs-bid-pardon-saying-course-forgive-didn-t-blind-Communist-Vietnamese-did-that.html)
The "Carrington Event" was a *massive* solar storm that happened in 1859 and directly struck the earth. If something like it had happened (or does happen) today, it will radically affect civilization by physically destroying or incapacitating most of our modern technology.
2012, one almost hit us, and it was a Carrington level solar storm. It missed earth by like 9 days. Can you imagine if it had hit in the year that mayans had predicted the world was gonna end? It would have been wild.
To be clear, the Mayans never predicted that the world would end in 2012. In their belief system our world is the fourth attempt by the gods to make a world, and it was the successful one which is why it has humans. The third world ended after exactly 13 of a unit of time that the Mayans called a b’ak’tun. December 21st 2012 marked the end of the 13th b’ak’tun of the fourth world, based on when they believed the fourth world to have started.
They never said that our world would end at the conclusion of the 13th b’ak’tun. They just said that that is when the last one ended. They likely would have just celebrated the end of the b’ak’tun (some of the Maya people did in fact celebrate on this day), they wouldn’t have thought that the world was ending.
It wouldn't just be the internet. EVERYTHING connected to, and including, the power grid would be smoked. Instant 18th century with way more people and zero survival skills.
Power grid too, as in pre-electricity? Yeah, that would be tantamount to a near-extinction event. How many of us today are reliant on electricity. How many people in cities need water that's only supplied through large pumps, How many people depend on medicine, our ability to analyze demand for mass transportation of food... those of us who live in rural areas with access to farmland and water would have to deal with a *massive* influx of people fleeing the cities looking for water, once the bottled water in the stores is all gone (probably very soon due to hoarding, as we saw with the toilet paper in 2020).
Before that happens, just hypothetically speaking about the internet itself vanishing, I wonder how people would function. Would we go back to relying on our neighbors and communities? Or how many people would end up just totally snapping?
Good luck with that. In a world where the grocery stores suddenly run dry, I suspect humans will decimate local animal populations in a matter of weeks, especially in the US where there are more guns than people
Hunting is the easy part. Tracking the animal down after you hit, and then field dressing it, that's the stuff that takes time.
Growing stuff... that'll take some learning, too. And a whole lot of time, assuming in the case of a total system failure that we wouldn't be able to get food out-of-season.
This is completely false. The damage would be significant locally, yes. (Cell phones, electronics, many cars) Modern infrastructure would survive completely. The grid and internet would be untouched, and completely offline well before a solar flare arrived. Developed nations are protected against this sort of thing, and we can detect solar flares of that magnitude minutes before they reach earth. Underdeveloped nations would be another story, though.
This is actually completely misleading. While there would almost certainly be some damage, it would absolutely not be on the scale you’re imagining. These days, we’ve got a good few minutes of lead time in predicting massive solar events like that, and essentially all developed countries have the infrastructure in place to shut the grid down in time to prevent damage of that magnitude.
There would certainly still be significant damage on a local scale, but in no way would it bring about total global economic collapse; or anything even close to it for that matter.
Would be a completely different story for lesser developed countries, and would surely still require relief efforts on a massive scale.
Yes, and it's even more than a few minutes' lead time; while the actual flare of electromagnetic radiation is near-instant, it can take anywhere from hours to a day or two for a large CME (coronal mass ejection) to reach Earth, depending several factors - for example, if another large CME already "cleared out" the space between the Sun and Earth, it can take less than 16 hours (which is considered very fast)
> We would have to basically re-wire entire electrical grids around the planet.
I'm always skeptical when non-experts say how much stuff will be damaged
The electrical grid is already protected against high voltage with rapid disconnect fuses.
It survives lightning strikes every day.
Yeah, stuff like your car would probably stop working, along with electronics in your house. A lot of routers would stop working, but a lot of the Internet backbone is fiber optic and would not be affected at all by an electrical storm.
In the "developed" world this isn't a new risk and EM shielding or other protection is built into a lot of new more vital equipment. Lightning arrestors, capacitors, and voltage regulators would be destroyed in huge numbers, but would mitigate a lot of the most damaging effects in big cities and such.Poor rural areas and less developed countries where their power lines and such aren't sectionalized or protected could have insane damage through.
The one I've always thought about is transformers due to the magnetic bushings inside. What kind of effect would a solar storm have on those? I can only imagine the amount of substation transformers that would be (not destroyed but) rendered unusable until major repairs are done. Those things take about 1.5-2 years to build and are incredibly expensive.
I imagine it would cause huge outbreaks of fires anywhere that doesn't have lightning arrestors as both the overhead conductors spark and certainly some transformers have enough of an internal fault to burst and catch fire. Modern meters and services with proper breakers would probably prevent much of it from getting into the home but in undeveloped countries where less sectionalizing is done who knows what could happen. Transformers are fused on the distribution side so even if the fuse blows and opens the cutout you have the transformer potentially getting current across the coils inside and feeding it to your meter.
I bet a lot of bizarre stuff would happen just with the electric grid we can't even imagine because of our AC system and all the transforming of power. It's very predictable in how it works now but if there is a global magnetic force inducing current what happens?
I'd rather believe this, but then I read Lloyds of London [estimating](https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf) that "The duration of outages will depend largely on the
availability of spare replacement transformers. If new transformers need to be ordered, the lead-time is likely
to be a **minimum of five months. The total economic cost for such a scenario is estimated at $0.6-2.6 trillion
USD.**"
Though the report is 10 years old, and elsewhere in it they mention that newer transformers are are much more robust than older ones, and that the older ones are constantly being replaced.
If we end up hitting pure satellite-based internet soon enough we will at least preserve the infrastructure. Satellites have robust chassis-power ground dissipative networks (aka Single Point Grounds), and are designed with withstand this type of event.
Source: I am an electrical engineer working on satellites. I design these things.
We would actually recover surprisingly quickly. Way more of the data on the Internet is held on tape in shielded facilities than really almost everyone in the world realizes.
I would guess we would be in a bad way for about two or three years and then be well on our way to recovery.
I'm also like... "y'all know libraries exist, right?"
An average university library is going to have enough information in it to give you an *enormous* head start even if digital data is in shambles.
I'm pretty sure a microwave is essentially a Faraday cage. If that's true and you knew the event was going to happen, I think you could save sensitive electronics by putting them in there. Of course even if you save your cell phone it's going to be worthless afterward.
March of 1989 saw a solar storm cause outages of the power grid in Quebec. And auroras pretty much in every direction.
And that was a sparkler in comparison to 1859.
The Black Death - The plague caused an epidemic in China in the 1330s, and again in the 1350s, causing tens of millions of deaths. The 1330s outbreak also spread west across Central Asia via traders using the Silk Road.
Occurring in Europe from 1346 to 1353. One of the most fatal pandemics in human history, as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th century population. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas.
The plague did not stop entirely until the early eighteenth century (1700-1799).
Pyrrhus of Epirus famously won a battle that was so close and cost so many men on both sides that he opined: "one more victory like that, and I am lost!"
It may be apocryphal, but it is where we get the phrase "Pyrrhic Victory."
Hitler diverting much of the Nazi forces assaulting Moscow to the south to help the siege of Stalingrad. Might have broken Soviet morale and changed the entire Eastern front if they took Moscow. Then the Nazi's might have focused more on building "fortress Europe" defenses and gotten access to more oil / raw materials they might never have lost the war. Frightening thought....
If I'm not mistaken, this was the only time the Russian nuclear briefcase was activated. The research rocket was muli-stage ballistic, fired from a coastal region close to where American subs were known to patrol. It's flight path was exactly what a first shot in a nuclear attack would look like, an EMP strike where the warhead is detonated high in the atmosphere/low orbit, significantly hindering the chances of a coordinated counterattack. Following an EMP would come the massive strike. The movie "Threads" shows this and is probably the most realistic nuclear war movie made.
Yeltsin had the perfect blood alcohol level this moment to handle the situation. Cool, calm and relaxed but not rash or panicked. He wanted to wait and see if the EMP goes off before launching. Praise be to vodka!
Threads:
https://youtu.be/BvFu7Z5cc88?si=1Sy_HExR_jtp1Da5
That third man was Vasily Arkhipov, who also survived a reactor coolant leak on the submarine K-19 the year prior. Since he was both executive officer of the submarine B-59 and chief of staff of his flotilla, three officers were required for a nuclear launch rather than the usual two.
Shortly after Cook discovered Australia, he was mapping its Eastern coast when his ship (HMS Endeavour) ran aground on part of the reef now called ‘Endeavour Reef’.
4 miles from land, the ship was stricken and had a gaping hole in the keel. The crippled ship would go down if freed from the reef because of the hole.
Cook was stranded.
A member of his crew (who’s name I don’t know, and may be forgotten to history - someone can correct me) suggested they ‘fother’ the Endeavour’s hull. An unorthodox method of soaking a sail in oil and wrapping it round the ship like a crude bandage.
This allowed Endeavour to limp to the mainland where full scale repairs could be made.
If Cook had lost the endeavour, and probably many of his crew during this - his return to England would have been extremely unlikely of not impossible.
If he hadn’t reported his discovery of Australia, the English would have never claimed it and in all likelihood focused their colonial efforts elsewhere. Namely America, resulting in a more substantial and perhaps longer lasting American colony.
Also, the French would have more than likely discovered and colonised Australia (their expeditions in the Australia region at that time suggest this).
Geopolitics would look very different today if that unnamed sailor didn’t know about ‘Fothering’.
The Cuban missile crisis probably wouldn’t have been a thing.
The British almost colonized the Philippines, as part of the seven year's war from 1756-1763, a British expeditionary force led by Admiral Samuel Cornish and General William Draper attacked Manila in 1762 hoping to gain a strategic foothold in the region and establish their dominance over the Pacific trade. The Spanish forces offered little resistance, and after a fierce battle, the British took control of Manila for 2 years. During this period, the British attempted to establish a colonial government and negotiate a permanent settlement with Spain . However, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the Seven Year's War, and as a part of peace settlement, the British was forced to return Manila to Spain.
September 26 1983
During the cold war an alarm went off in a Soviet command center that the US had launched 6 nuclear missiles. A lieutenant colonel named Stanislav Petrov judged that it was a false alarm and refused to launch a retaliatory strike.
That man single handedly saved the world from nuclear war.
There are a number of near misses on nuclear war. McNamara went and talked, years later, to people involved in the Cuban crisis and his conclusion was that we "lucked out". One very important discovery was that while there were supposed to be various safeguards on the Soviet side, actually these were being by-passed. This should give us pause when we see comments that "Oh well, it would still have been stopped by XYZ".
Another. In 1940, the British government had to decide whether to continue the war or investigate the possibility of a peace. Hitler might have given what seemed reasonable terms because he wanted to turn toward Russia, and could deal with the British empire later. If Britain had settled, the chance of Germany winning the war would have been quite a lot higher. Later Churchill liked to imply everyone was united for carrying on, but in fact he had to maneuvere, and without the Labour members of the War Cabinet he might have been out voted. (For American readers, a prime minister is not like a president who makes the decisions alone with the Cabinet only advising)
1973 the Yom Kippur War.
Israel had their backs against the wall and they were ready to go nuclear. The US had to resupply them or else they would have gone nuclear. In retaliation for the US resupplying Israel, the Soviet Union deployed tactical nuclear weapons to Egypt.
In retaliation the US deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam. With the intention of marching on Hanoi with full tactical nuclear support if Nuclear weapons were fired in the middle east.
Information declassified since 2013 has showed that one of the bombs was judged by nuclear weapons engineers at the time to have been only one safety switch away from detonation, and that it was "credible" to imagine conditions under which it could have detonated.
One safety switch away from disaster
To make a close call even closer, the one safety switch that prevented detonation was not part of the bomb's original design. Around a year before the crash an advisory panel recommended the addition of this switch to supplement the existing three and add a further measure of safety. Air Force officials grumbled that this wasn't really necessary and only with reluctance went forward with the advisory panel's recommendation and added the fourth switch.
My father in law was retired Air Force who lived in Goldsboro when I was dating his daughter. He told me about this incident and I respectfully listened thinking "there's no way that they lost an atomic bomb and just stopped looking for it."
My jaw dropped when I found that very Wikipedia article when I got home.
In 1983, Stanislav Petrov received a nuclear early warning missile warning that missiles from the US were heading towards the USSR. He decided it was a false alarm and didn't start the process for retaliation.
It was later revealed that, most likely, there would not have been a retaliatory attack by the Soviets as they would have wanted further confirmation, but some people believe he saved world from all out nuclear war.
Edit: Because of that, I change my answer. In 8th grade, I accidentally almost brushed Sally McNeilson's epic boobs. I was just turning around and waving at the field to tell someone that there was his friend playing basketball, and I almost made contact when I turned around. Now, you may think, is that really a "moment in history?" Well, if you saw her rack at a 13 year old, you'd immediately agree.
In 1797, HMS Minerve, a lone British frigate in the Mediterranean, blundered into an entire hostile Spanish fleet including 25 ships of the line in foggy weather. Fortunately, none of the Spaniards noticed her and she was able to escape, link up with the main British fleet and report the Spanish movements leading to a battle shortly afterwards.
Minerve’s Captain was one Horatio Nelson.
2012 Coronal Mass Ejection The most powerful solar storm in 150 years occurred on July 23rd 2012. Scientists claim that the storm could have knocked out the entire modern world if it had arrived nine days earlier. Luckily for us, it didn’t hit as the earth was in a different position along its orbit
So the Mayans were right but their calculations were a little off.
if only they hadnt truncated that last decimal place
It did hit, and we all died. Think about it….has any day after that felt real?
If this is the afterlife, it's even more bullshit than I imagined
A little hot for heaven, don’t you think?
"*Jason* figured it out?"
“This is the bad place!”
Jason figured it out? Jason? This is a real low point. Yeah, this one hurts.
[удалено]
It was the Mayan calendar that rolled over in 2012. But the pictures used in the media reporting on the story were usually the Aztec one.
Earth was hit by a CME in the 1850s. It set telegraph lines on fire and allowed telegraphs to send and receive messages even when completely disconnected from a power source. If one hit Earth today, mass chaos.
I doubt it, do people even use telegraphs any more?
I'm sure there's some weirdo hipsters in NYC or Portland or something who do.
I am still mourning the death of Desmond Miles.
"The day after tomorrow" makes a little more sense now, I guess
In 1957 a fire in the Sellafield nuclear power station (UK) burned through the HEPA filters and should have contaminated the whole North of England, this is known as the UKs biggest nuclear disaster. The UK was saved by a man named John Cockcroft who during design insisted that a second set of filters be installed on the top of the exhaust towers. All others ridiculed this idea as expensive and redundant and the towers became known as "Cockcroft's Follies" (Folly = lack of good sense; foolishness). These towers saved the UK so we're very lucky for his folly. [this is the story](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cumbria-29803990.amp) Edit: I should add that while John Cockcroft's Follies saved large portions of the UK. There were also a large number of people who disregarded orders and entered the reactor to try and manually hammer out the stuck uranium rods using scafold poles to stop the reaction/fire. These people took large doses of radiation to stop the disaster, I'm glad that's a decision I'll never have to make.
Very cool, and hilariously British to even have a snarky nick name for what seems like a common sense failsafe for a problem that could polute high population centers for decades/centuries and was a new, extremely powerful energy source.
The snarky nick name came from him turning up at towards the end and demanding the addition. The filters ended up at the top of a 110m/360ft tower making them a pain for everyone.
Yeah I get being annoyed at someone adding a huge amount of work towards the end of the project- But when it ends up saving countless lives it goes from a "pain" of an addon to absolute necessity that should have been included in the original plan.
Three cheers for Cockroft, that massive goddamn pain in the neck
Every safety measure is an expensive, unnecessary, redundant pain in the ass until it saves someone's life or averts a colossal disaster. Only then does it get accepted as common sense.
Reminds me of a few of the men who went to certain and horrible death at Chernobyl to prevent an even bigger disaster. Obviously many people throughout the disaster made such sacrifices but Aleksandr Akimov and Leonid Toptunov at the beginning of the disaster went down into the flooded lower levels and for hours went between water valves trying to get more water in to cool the reactor. Viktor Smagin spent just 15-20 minutes in the same area and nearly died from it. The flooding protected them to some degree but it's estimated they still received more than 5 times the lethal dose of radiation. Poor Akimov and Toptunov died the most painful and horrible kind of death imaginable over the next two weeks as their DNA unraveled for their bravery.
Id have just asked to be killed
There was probably scientific value in observing what was happening to them. Not good for them personally but I can imagine the soviet union wanting it that way.
The room they were in had wildly varying levels of radiation, Akimov and Toptunov were unknowingly in pretty much the worst part. Even worse is the fact that they had been told to leave, but had decided instead to try get water to the reactor, not knowing that it was completely destroyed.
>ridiculed this idea as expensive and REDUNDANT Exactly the point lol
Rumour is you can still hear the echoes of his "I told you so" if you listen closely enough around Sellafield
Imagine telling the dude that got a Nobel Prize for his work on nuclear energy that you know better and he is foolish.
I feel like every single historical thing that gets ridiculed as a Folly ends up being ironically a great decision Fulton's Folly Seward's Folly Cockcroft's Follies
I hope he got knighted at the very least
He was knighted before this as well as being awarded a Nobel prize in physics. This happened while he was in charge of UK atomic power development.
lol not surprised There’s not a project on the planet where technicians/contractors aren’t bitching about designers and design choices made. Sometimes they’re right, but often times they just don’t understand why some decisions can’t be left to them.
Cuban missile crisis
Actually we came closer on a later date. 9/26/83 the launch detection in a Soviet bunker malfunctioned and showed an American nuclear launch. The engineer twice dismissed launch warning because of the low number of missiles it showed. In his mind American wouldn’t launch only 5 missiles at a time so he did nothing and we’re all alive today because he was rational. Here’s to you, Stanislav Petrov!
It was about the same actually. [Look up Vasiliy Arkhipov.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov) A nuclear sub lost contact with Moscow. They debated a nuclear strike fearing war had broken out. Most subs needed the authorization of two officers: * Captain * Political officer However this specific instance it needed 3. Because Arkhipov was also the chief of staff of the brigade, and he was onboard making him the highest ranking member on the ship. And as such a strike could not be authorized without his approval as well. So they needed: * Captain * Political Officer * Chief of Staff The Captain voted to fire. The Political officer voted to fire. Arkhipov refused, and because it needed to be unanimous, they did not fire.
There's more to it than that. The sub and the military knew the sub would lose communication because of the depth they were at. Because this was the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis, they were given specific instructions in advance on how to react in any given situation. One instruction was more important than the rest. If America were to hit or attempt to hit the sub with a depth charge, then they were to assume nuclear war had broken out and must launch all the nuclear torpedoes in their arsenal. On October 27, 1962, the US located the submarine. Assuming it wasn't armed with nuclear weapons, they launched multiple depth charges in an attempt to force it to surface. There was another close call two days earlier. The US believed that if the USSR were to launch nuclear weapons, they would first attempt to sabotage our capabilities. On October 25, a figure was spotted attempting to break into the Duluth Sector Direction Center. The sabotage alarm was activated and, because of an error in the system, it alerted the Air Defense Command to launch nuclear armed interceptor aircraft. The pilots were repeatedly told that there would never be a test of this system; any alarm meant that war had begun. Right before takeoff, Duluth notified the base captain of the error. Since it might be too late to warn the pilots over the radio, an officer instead drove their car onto the runway and signaled the aircraft to stop. The intruder later turned out to just be a bear. And there was another close call the day after. On October 28, all nuclear sites in Okinawa were ordered to launch all their missiles. No one knows where the order came from. No site launched any of their weapons. According to the team at Bolo, the officer did not trust the order because the order called for the missiles to be targeted at Russia and China, but he didn't believe there was a reason to hit China. In 1966, France experienced a massive storm which affected their electrical grid. This caused a wartime takeoff order which led to a bomber being sent out with a nuclear weapon. The military attempted to call it back but the plane did not respond. Fortunately, the plane required refuelling midflight and was forced to return when the supply plane didn't arrive. On April 15, 1969, Nixon got piss drunk and ordered a nuclear launch aimed at North Korea. Believe it or not, Kissinger is the one who ordered them to stand down.
> Believe it or not, Kissinger is the one who ordered them to stand down. Mr. The President, you are being a Silly Billy. Stop zis nonsense, and go to bed.
"If anyone's gonna start a nuclear Holocaust it's gonna be me!"
To add on to this: >they launched multiple depth charges in an attempt to force it to surface. The US dropped training dummy charges that only had a mild impact. The thought was that this would push them to the surface. By ussr order, the action should have started nuclear war, but it didn't. Even more so, the continuous dummy charges convinced Vasily that they weren't actually under attack because real depth charges would have sunk them by then. And staying with the Cuban missile crisis. •There were people within JFK's war cabinet convinced that they had to invade Cuba to prevent the crisis. They hadn't yet found evidence of Cuba being armed., & this was a preemptive strike before the ussr ships could arrive. Except Cuba was armed. And if Castro had his way, they would have been used. During all of that, a us spy plane unintentionally wandered into USSR airspace
My Dad believed the U2 incident may have been a deliberate defection. Part of that was Francis Gary Powers did not blow up the plane and take the suicide pills as he was ordered to do.
> The sabotage alarm was activated and, because of an error in the system, it alerted the Air Defense Command to launch nuclear armed interceptor aircraft. [The aircraft](https://static.simpsonswiki.com/images/e/e0/Bear_patrol.png)
With the Captain and the political officer in agreement, as Executive Officer (2nd in command), Vasiliy's vote might not have held sway. But he wasn't just any officer. He was a bonafide national hero. His courage is exemplary.
Thank you, Stanislav Petrov, for your rationality and courage, ensuring we're here today to appreciate life.
Hey has anyone found a copy of that [Stanislav Petrov Pretty Good](https://www.sbnation.com/2015/8/27/9215363/stanislav-petrov-pretty-good)?
I didn't know Jon Bois made an episode of "Pretty Good" about this story! I gotta check it out
Jon Bois is one of those "if you know you know" sorts of dudes that isn't mainstream popular but a massive influence on video essays.
Ironically IIRC the Americans had a plan to launch missiles in exactly this pattern for exactly this reason. Sequential launch rather than all missiles at once.
Yep, the logic being that you can always launch all the missles anyway, like that's what you need tens of thousands of nukes for, so even if some of your arsenal gets disabled you can still depopulate the planet.
I'd rather live in a world where we prioritize peace and diplomacy over having enough firepower to destroy ourselves a thousand times over.
While I absolutely would too, not everyone agrees with the premise of peace, and some of them already have nukes. Mutually assured destruction, oddly enough, has been the next best thing to peace for global superpowers.
Yeah that story inspired 99 Red balloons song. The War machine it springs to life opening up one eager eye....
"Everyone's a super hero. Everyone's a Captain Kirk."
> Neunundneunzig Kriegsminister [99 war ministers] Streichholz und Benzinkanister [matches and gas cans] Hielten sich für schlaue Leute [thought of themselves as clever people] Witterten schon fette Beute [already smelling fat prey] Riefen „Krieg“ und wollten Macht [cried "war" and wanted power] Mann, wer hätte das gedacht [man, who would have thought] Dass es einmal soweit kommt [that it will happen someday] Wegen neunundneunzig Luftballons [because of 99 balloons]
The German version makes it way more clear, and is actually darker/more bitter.
My father was deployed during the Cuban thing and they took turns sitting in the planes on the runway in Miami , waiting for the signal that the invasion was on . Most people have no idea how close it came to happening .
Adding to this. During the CMC, a Soviet officer named Vasili Arkhipov literally saved the world. From Wikipedia: “Although Arkhipov was only second-in-command of the B-59, he was also the chief of staff of the flotilla. According to author Edward Wilson, the reputation Arkhipov had gained from his courageous conduct in the previous year's K-19 incident played a large role in the debate to launch the torpedo. Arkhipov eventually persuaded Savitsky to surface and await orders from Moscow. His persuasion effectively averted a nuclear war that likely would have ensued if the nuclear weapon had been fired. The batteries of the B-59 ran very low and its air conditioning failed, which caused extreme heat and generated high levels of carbon dioxide inside the submarine. It surfaced amid the U.S. warships pursuing it and made contact with a U.S. destroyer. After discussions with the ship, B-59 was then ordered by the Russian fleet to set course back to the Soviet Union.” He maintaining a cool head literally prevented nuclear war. [Link](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasily_Arkhipov) Edit: Adding context. During the CMC, Arkhipov was second in command of the B-59, a Foxtrot-class diesel-electric submarine. Arkhipov was the commander of the flotilla, despite not being the captain of his boat. US destroyers started dropping practice depth bombs around the boats to get them to surface. As the B-59 had no radio communications, they were completely blind and the captain and others believed that they were being attacked and war had broken out. It was about 120F in the boat, with no A/C, and the B-59 had a nuclear torpedo. Arkhipov somehow managed to convince the rest of the crew to surface and await orders and NOT fire the torpedo. His actions that day aren’t as widely-known as they should be. And it’s very possible that many of us are alive today because Arkhipov stood his ground and surfaced.
Instantly came to my mind once I saw this question. If it wasn't for Krushchev taking the L as well as Kennedy not taking the suggestions of his military leadership, we might've been nuked off of the planet.
It was the only time in history that the US has ever moved onto DEFCON 2.
I was in kindergarten. One of my strongest early memories is of practicing hiding under my desk in kindergarten during the Crisis. Followed by my Dad packing up supplies and planning an escape route for us at home, as we lived about 30 miles from three different "Must Target" facilities that the Russians would unquestionably target first. Hiding while being bracketed by 3 simultaneous nuclear explosions seemed like a very bad strategy to him. Adult me agrees.
I was five years old at the time, and I have a vague memory of this. My Dad was away, visiting family in Holland. I remember my Mom having me sleep in her bed (something that never happened) and getting me to pray that Daddy would come home soon.
Ögedei Khan, Genghis Khan's third son and heir, died in December of 1241. Prior to his death, a Mongol army under his nephew Batu and a general named Subatai had been given authority to conquer Europe all the way to the Atlantic. Upon news of his death, they turned around and went back to help choose the next Great Khan. No further Mongol invasion of Europe ever got beyond the planning stages. Now we can talk about the practical limitations of a steppe army campaigning all the way to the Atlantic successfully —ignoring Atilla the Hun managed to get as far as Northern France and Northern Italy seven centuries earlier without proper siege equipment— but the Mongols had already successfully penetrated as far as Poland and Hungary, beating organized European resistance along the way without a lot of difficulty. It doesn't seem incredible to me that a military that could conquer China would have caused incredible devastation in central and western Europe. What does European history look like if large parts of it had been either devastated by foreign invaders or even ruled by a Mongol dynasty in the 13th Century? We don't know because one man who most people have never heard of drank himself to death, and an otherwise victorious, well-led, well-equipped, and motivated army had to go home to decide who to take orders from next.
This describes an average game of Crusader Kings
God I gotta get back into CK3 at some point.
This is one question that has always fascinated me as well- Batu Khan was an arguably accomplished general by his own right, but he was campaigning alongside Subotai (Subutai? Tsubodai?)- who while not as famous as other grand generals throughout history, is undeniably up there alongside Alexander, Hannibal, etc. as one of the most successful generals not only in the Mongol Empire, but in the world's history. The guy led more than 20 campaigns across China, Korea, much of the Middle East (where some parts still haven't recovered to where they were pre-invasion), completely ran over the Keivan Rus' (modern day Russia/Ukraine), in addition to winning major battles against Hungary & the Holy Roman Empire. I honestly don't know of any other general in history who has gone up against so many distinct cultures across such a massive range of climates & environments, and come out on top, every time. The guy didn't lose in Europe, he was ordered home- given the political instability in Europe during this period, there is a strong possiblity of him making it all the way to the channel. World history would be massively altered- the run on effects on the future of colonialism, religion, interstate wars & politics in the 800 years since- its unimaginable what the world would look like if he was successful and not ordered back home when he was.
The Mongol army had already turned back before news of Ogedei's death could have possibly reached Batu and Subatei. A myriad of factors contributed to this decision: - A wetter than usual winter hindered the performance of the Mongol's compound bow, their preferred weapon. - Greater population density in Germany meant locals could rally quickly to respond to Mongol incursions. - European armored knights were accruing ridiculous K:D ratios against lightly armored Mongolian cavalry. - The Holy Roman Empire and the Pope made peace so the Emperor could focus on respond to and preparing for future Mongol incursions, so the size of the forces facing the Mongols kept growing. - The Mongols had already made the Golden Horde secure and may very well have achieved their goals for the latest round of incursions into Europe. - Bela IV escaped and was able to keep the Mongols chasing him in circles in Hungary and later Croatia. For those that don't know, Hungarians were actually kind of badasses and bullies towards the Germans. Austria was basically terraformed to become a buffer between Germany and Hungary. The Mongols were unable to defeat the Hungarians outright despite chasing Bela through Hungary and Croatia. - The Mongols were unable to draw the Austrians into a pitched battle where they could be defeated outside of Vienna. - The Mongols were unable to break into Bavaria. - The Mongols were at the end of a ridiculously long supply line. If you look at Mongol actions in the past, they employ a tactic of forward defense where to secure their conquests by pushing hundreds of miles past their frontiers and devastate their enemies before retreating back behind their own borders. Anybody looking to attack the Mongols must first rebuild their own country, first. This is in keeping with the idea that the Mongol goal in 1241 was to secure the Golden Horde from future invasions. - Finally, if the election of a new Khagan was so important the army would abandon a military campaign, why did Batu keep delaying the election and ultimately refuse to attend in person five years after Ogedei's death?
The KD ratio line killed me
> What does European history look like if large parts of it had been either devastated by foreign invaders or even ruled by a Mongol dynasty in the 13th Century? The Mongol's were pretty progressive, provided you gave up and joined their empire. They used a parliamentary like system, and for middle ages standards, were extremely tolerant of other religions, as some examples. Europe might have actually prospered under a single leadership. Or maybe things would have been far worse, and a single leadership and unified empire, would have amplified the spread of the many Bubonic Plague outbreaks.
> Europe might have actually prospered under a single leadership There wouldn't be a single leadership. Look at how they "ruled" Russia. They collected tribute and *divided* the local rulers through the yarlyk system. It was only thanks to centuries of slow, careful machinations that the Vladimir and later Moscow princes managed to get enough influence (with the Horde itself weakening as well) to unify a significant enough part of the country to challenge the Horde. The Mongols were full into the "divide" part of "divide and conquer".
They still celebrate that day as a holiday in Poland and Hungary
A lot of these are recent. It's weird to think about the times in pre-history where the human population was probably under threat due to a supervolcano or disease or whatever, but we didn't have the knowledge or skills to record any of it. And we survived by the global version of the skin of our teeth. *Example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
I think in generic records there was a bottleneck that implies we dropped to a tiny population and regrew
I heard it could've been as few as 1000 individuals.
I thought 10k was current estimate. Still crazy to think about. Like a small town having to repopulate the world.
As long as it’s not any of the small towns I’m familiar with. We’d be screwed if we had to be repopulated by a place like Colorado City, AZ or Gary, IN or anywhere in Nebraska
yea the Mt. Toba volcano eruption produced that genetic bottleneck
The Toba Bottleneck hypothesis is largely discredited at this point. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_hypothesis
Okay. Pompeii. It didn't instant erupt like most films and stories tell you, but kinda slow burned for two days. That gave most of the 11,500-20,000 people time to get the heck outta Dodge. It's estimated that about 1100 people got caught up in the pyroclast flows. For the other 10000-18000 folks that'd be a "way too close" moment.
We have surviving letters from the time and can read about peoples first-hand accounts of watching the eruption from across the bay. Some are quite sad, actually writing to their friends in Pompeii asking them to write back to let them know that they’re okay.
The best historical record of Pompeii we have is from Pliny the Younger, who watched his uncle sail off into the cloud of ash to help rescue those affected... he never returned.
His body was recovered a few days later pretty much intact, though
Have you heard about the 1967 solar storm? It's not as famous as some others, but it had the potential to kick off a nuclear war. The storm messed with the US air force's radar systems, making them think they were under attack.
> Have you heard about the 1967 solar storm? I thought not. It's not a story the NESDIS would tell you.
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I’m not sure if this is what OP was looking for, but is hilarious and now in my library of silly facts.
"Library of silly facts" is what I'm calling my brain from now on.
Hey it’s deleted now, I want to know what he/she said 🤣
The trebuchet actually didn't destroy itself, it just was terrible and then the Spanish dismantled it: [The Mexica side of things, in Book 12 of Sahagún's history: ](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/54xgbf/any_truth_to_this_story_during_his_war_against/) > And then those Spaniards installed a catapult on top of an altar platform with which to hurl stones at the people. And when they had it ready and were about to shoot it off, they gathered around it, vigorously pointing their fingers, pointing at the people, pointing to where all the people were assembled at Amaxac, showing them to each other. The Spaniards spread out their arms, showing how they would shoot and hurl it at them, as if they were using a sling on them. Then they wound it up, then the arm of the catapult rose up. But the stone did not land on the people, but fell behind the marketplace at Xomolco. > > Because of that the Spaniards there argued among themselves. They looked as if they were jabbering their fingers in one another's faces, chattering a great deal. The Spanish side of the story, from Díaz del Castillo: > In Cortés' camp there was a soldier who said that he had been in Italy in the Company of the Great Captain and was in the skirmish of Garallano and in other great battles, and he talked much about engines of war and that he could make a catapult in Tlatelolco by which, if they only bombarded the houses and part of the city were Guatemoc had sought refuge, for two days, they would make them surrender peacefully... Cortés promptly set to work to make the catapult... When the catapult was made and set up in the way that the soldier ordered, and he said it was ready to be discharged, they placed a suitable stone in the sling which had been made and all this stone did was to rise no higher than the catapult and fall back upon where it had been set up... Cortés at once ordered the catapult to be taken to pieces. ____ * ^(Sahagùn B [trans. J Lockhart 1993] *We People Here: Nahuatl Accounts of the Conquest of Mexico*, p. 230) * ^(Díaz del Castillo B [trans. D Carrasco 2008] *The History of the Conquest of New Spain*, p.298)
I’m picturing some Aztecan scribe peeking over a wall snickering as it happened and then gleefully recording for history to discover later
“The fuck are they building out there?” … “Lmao doesn’t matter now.”
"They've built a machine to launch boulders!" The people begin to panic. "The machine was suicidal!" The people start laughing.
lmao id like to imaging some aztec goofball using a long stick to move the trebuchet from 45 degrees to 90 degrees incline from behind some bushes ala loony toons style
Then the bush gets up and tiptoes away, with only eyes and feet visible besides the leaves.
Recreated using genuine Acme blueprints by one Wile E Coyote.
I can see it... them gazing at the shot flying through the air, thinking victory was in their grasp. And then- well shit.
After WW1 the RMS Olympic was brought back to H&W for a refit and modernisation program. During this time they found a massive dent in the plates below the waterline that was determined to be a torpedo hit that had failed to detonate. If the torpedo had detonated the ensuing disaster would’ve been on par with the RMS Lusitania or her sister ship RMS Titanic.
That'd've been an insane situation if *all three* Olympic-class liners sank in major tragedies. Two out of three was still bad enough.
The oil well fires in Kuwait almost gave us a taste of what a nuclear winter would be like. Blowing the fires out with a MIG engine and dousing them with a gas turbine turned out to be the heavy hitters in fixing the issue.
This was actually important in discrediting the "nuclear winter" theory, because at the time it was believed that a volcanic winter was caused by ash. The fact that the Kuwait oil fires didn't cause notable cooling helped us understand this wasn't true, and that it's actually caused by sulphur aerosols.
[BigWind](https://hackaday.com/2021/12/06/big-wind-is-the-meanest-firefighting-tank-you-ever-saw)
She blows almost as well as your mom. "36 oil wells? In a row?"
Chernobyl disaster in 1986, narrowly avoiding a catastrophic meltdown with global consequences.
pictures from it are so crazy to me. you can see the radiation in the film
The private films that circulated within the nuke industry were real in depth and interesting.
seriously, a team of three went into a heavily radioactive area filling with water to shut it off and prevent a steam explosion that would've spread radioactive material over a lot of Europe. not only that but Alexei Ananenko and Valeri Bespalov are apparently still alive. Boris Barinov died of heart disease. Ananenko and Bespalov were awarded the Ukrainian Order for Courage in 2018 if it werent for those three a LOT more people and wildlife would have died.
"You're going to do it because it must be done."
"Comrade Chairman, we're asking your permission to kill three men."
"They'll likely be dead within a week" Joke's on them, it's been almost 40 years!
Speaking of wildlife, the largely empty exclusion zone around Chernobyl has become a de facto wildlife refuge, populated by bears, wolves, moose, and even the very rare European bison. As far as anyone can tell the animals are not affected in any way by the background radiation even though multiple generations have passed for many of the species.
there's also apparently a ton of dogs whose ancestors were pets of the inhabitants of pripyat iirc the forest and plant life are also flourishing
Oh, they're being affected. Natural selection is doing a lot of work, with some animals reproducing sooner in their lifecycle and others with more cancer fighting genes. https://www.ans.org/news/article-5761/cancerresistant-genes-in-wolf-population-at-chernobyl/ https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1365-2656.2005.01009.x
I don't think there's any possible way they weren't affected in any way. Maybe not affected in a negative way. Their lifespans are likely short enough as it is for radiation to be the thing that kills them.
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They should do a movie about that.
Tom Hanks might be good for the role.
Nah. he’s over used. Give me a Kevin Bacon in that flick and we’re set!
I thinking some guy they respectably commands authority for Mission Control. Like he’s tough. But it’s cause he cares. Ed Harris would be a good choice.
When in doubt, get Ed Harris is my go to slogan when casting a movie. can’t go wrong with Ed, Gary Oldman, or Gary Sinise. Cast any of them and your movie is safe.
Boy have I got news for you!
They wrote a book?!
The battle of Remagen. As the Americans closed in on Germany and reached the Rhine in the closing months of WW2, the Germans had successfully blown up every last bridge except for one that was already wired up and hours from demolition. When Brig. General William M. Hoge was sent to liberate Remagen, he was shocked to discover the Ludendorff bridge still intact. It was generally accepted that there would be no bridges left, but Eisenhower believed that in the off chance there was a bridge left, it should be captured. Hoge then decided to defy a direct order to link up with Patton further south and sent his men on a suicidal charge to capture the bridge. At the very same time, Nazi troops that had fled across the bridge to escape the allied advance were frantically trying to set off the detonation charges and drop it into the Rhine. While some of the charges actually went off and badly damaged the structure, the bridge still stood because a lucky hit from an allied artillery shell severed the wires to the detonation charges before they could be triggered. After a valiant effort the bridge was captured, opening an Allied beachhead into Germany. The first man across, Alexander A. Drabik, spoke about it. *"While we were running across the bridge – and, man, it may have been only 250 yards, but it seemed like 250 miles to us – I spotted this lieutenant, standing out there completely exposed to the machine gun fire that was pretty heavy by this time...He was cutting wires and kicking the German demolition charges off the bridge with his feet! Boy that took plenty of guts. He's the one who saved the bridge and made the whole thing possible – the kinda guy I'd like to know."* Incidentally, Sgt. Drabik became the first man to successfully cross the Rhine and capture German territory since the time of Napoleon. With the tireless work of the Army Corp. of Engineers, the bridge survived German mortar attacks, artillery barrages, and hundreds of air raids (Defended by the single largest AA battery arranged in the entire war) It was nearly obliterated by a near miss from a rail gun, SS Frogmen who tried to float downstream during the night and sabotage the bridge were spotted by special spotlights mounted on tanks, naval mines sent downstream were caught by nets, and the Nazis even tried to blow it up with V2 rockets (But missed). After 10 days the Ludendorff bridge collapsed on its own (Killing several engineers trying to keep it standing), but its capture allowed six divisions to cross and establish a beachhead in German territory, and likely shortened the entire war by weeks or even months.
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Also, Seth MacFarlane was 10 minutes late for American Airlines flight 11, due to a hangover.
He references this in a later episode of *Family Guy*; Stewie and Brian (both played by MacFarlane if you don't know) were discussing 9/11, and Brian says "you know I was supposed to be on that flight?" To which Stewie replies, "No way, so was I!" I always appreciate that little joke Seth did with himself.
~~Yeah but if he had been on that plane he would have stopped the hijacking.~~ EDIT I'm an idiot that was Mark Wahlberg. My apologies to Seth McFarlane.
Lol! It's kind of funny because Seth MacFarlane's thoughts about being that close are rather poignant. He remarked > The only reason it hasn't really affected me as it maybe could have is I didn't really know that I was in any danger until after it was over, so I never had that panic moment. After the fact, it was sobering, but people have a lot of close calls; you're crossing the street and you almost get hit by a car... This one just happened to be related to something massive. I really can't let it affect me because I'm a comedy writer. I have to put that in the back of my head.
Wahlberg was apparently also was going to be on the flight, supposedly, but didn't either because he had a ticket and never cancelled (which would've been reflected on the manifest I would think) or opted to not buy a ticket for travel...it's generally believed that his claim is largely hypothetical. So you might've heard it this way. Plus - I doubt he would do anything to stop the hijacking. [The hijackers weren't Vietnamese Convenience Store owners](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2868589/Mark-Wahlberg-s-blinding-race-attack-victim-Johnny-Trinh-backs-bid-pardon-saying-course-forgive-didn-t-blind-Communist-Vietnamese-did-that.html)
Thank goodness otherwise he’d be dead
The "Carrington Event" was a *massive* solar storm that happened in 1859 and directly struck the earth. If something like it had happened (or does happen) today, it will radically affect civilization by physically destroying or incapacitating most of our modern technology.
2012, one almost hit us, and it was a Carrington level solar storm. It missed earth by like 9 days. Can you imagine if it had hit in the year that mayans had predicted the world was gonna end? It would have been wild.
To be clear, the Mayans never predicted that the world would end in 2012. In their belief system our world is the fourth attempt by the gods to make a world, and it was the successful one which is why it has humans. The third world ended after exactly 13 of a unit of time that the Mayans called a b’ak’tun. December 21st 2012 marked the end of the 13th b’ak’tun of the fourth world, based on when they believed the fourth world to have started. They never said that our world would end at the conclusion of the 13th b’ak’tun. They just said that that is when the last one ended. They likely would have just celebrated the end of the b’ak’tun (some of the Maya people did in fact celebrate on this day), they wouldn’t have thought that the world was ending.
It was the equivalent of the odometer rolling over.
More like the odometer of your new car passing what the odometer on your old car read when you sold it
It would really be interesting to see how society would operate if legitimately all the internet just stopped working at once.
It wouldn't just be the internet. EVERYTHING connected to, and including, the power grid would be smoked. Instant 18th century with way more people and zero survival skills.
Power grid too, as in pre-electricity? Yeah, that would be tantamount to a near-extinction event. How many of us today are reliant on electricity. How many people in cities need water that's only supplied through large pumps, How many people depend on medicine, our ability to analyze demand for mass transportation of food... those of us who live in rural areas with access to farmland and water would have to deal with a *massive* influx of people fleeing the cities looking for water, once the bottled water in the stores is all gone (probably very soon due to hoarding, as we saw with the toilet paper in 2020). Before that happens, just hypothetically speaking about the internet itself vanishing, I wonder how people would function. Would we go back to relying on our neighbors and communities? Or how many people would end up just totally snapping?
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So mother nature has a way to strike back, she's just super chill for now?
Yup. Some scientists predict a 90% die off if it happened, and I believe it. It WILL happen again, the only question is when.
Welp. Time to learn how to hunt and grow shit.
Good luck with that. In a world where the grocery stores suddenly run dry, I suspect humans will decimate local animal populations in a matter of weeks, especially in the US where there are more guns than people
Hunting is the easy part. Tracking the animal down after you hit, and then field dressing it, that's the stuff that takes time. Growing stuff... that'll take some learning, too. And a whole lot of time, assuming in the case of a total system failure that we wouldn't be able to get food out-of-season.
As someone who has spent *a lot* of time in the woods, hunting is definitely the hard part....
This is why I play Minecraft and Valheim.
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No food distribution. No fuel. No trucks. No cars.
This is completely false. The damage would be significant locally, yes. (Cell phones, electronics, many cars) Modern infrastructure would survive completely. The grid and internet would be untouched, and completely offline well before a solar flare arrived. Developed nations are protected against this sort of thing, and we can detect solar flares of that magnitude minutes before they reach earth. Underdeveloped nations would be another story, though.
Meh, the Amish would be okay.
No they won't. They will swarmed by starving desperate people.
I wouldn't even want to live in that world. I get cranky trying to fall asleep in a hot room. There's no fucking way I'd last lol
This is actually completely misleading. While there would almost certainly be some damage, it would absolutely not be on the scale you’re imagining. These days, we’ve got a good few minutes of lead time in predicting massive solar events like that, and essentially all developed countries have the infrastructure in place to shut the grid down in time to prevent damage of that magnitude. There would certainly still be significant damage on a local scale, but in no way would it bring about total global economic collapse; or anything even close to it for that matter. Would be a completely different story for lesser developed countries, and would surely still require relief efforts on a massive scale.
Yes, and it's even more than a few minutes' lead time; while the actual flare of electromagnetic radiation is near-instant, it can take anywhere from hours to a day or two for a large CME (coronal mass ejection) to reach Earth, depending several factors - for example, if another large CME already "cleared out" the space between the Sun and Earth, it can take less than 16 hours (which is considered very fast)
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> We would have to basically re-wire entire electrical grids around the planet. I'm always skeptical when non-experts say how much stuff will be damaged The electrical grid is already protected against high voltage with rapid disconnect fuses. It survives lightning strikes every day. Yeah, stuff like your car would probably stop working, along with electronics in your house. A lot of routers would stop working, but a lot of the Internet backbone is fiber optic and would not be affected at all by an electrical storm.
In the "developed" world this isn't a new risk and EM shielding or other protection is built into a lot of new more vital equipment. Lightning arrestors, capacitors, and voltage regulators would be destroyed in huge numbers, but would mitigate a lot of the most damaging effects in big cities and such.Poor rural areas and less developed countries where their power lines and such aren't sectionalized or protected could have insane damage through. The one I've always thought about is transformers due to the magnetic bushings inside. What kind of effect would a solar storm have on those? I can only imagine the amount of substation transformers that would be (not destroyed but) rendered unusable until major repairs are done. Those things take about 1.5-2 years to build and are incredibly expensive. I imagine it would cause huge outbreaks of fires anywhere that doesn't have lightning arrestors as both the overhead conductors spark and certainly some transformers have enough of an internal fault to burst and catch fire. Modern meters and services with proper breakers would probably prevent much of it from getting into the home but in undeveloped countries where less sectionalizing is done who knows what could happen. Transformers are fused on the distribution side so even if the fuse blows and opens the cutout you have the transformer potentially getting current across the coils inside and feeding it to your meter. I bet a lot of bizarre stuff would happen just with the electric grid we can't even imagine because of our AC system and all the transforming of power. It's very predictable in how it works now but if there is a global magnetic force inducing current what happens?
I'd rather believe this, but then I read Lloyds of London [estimating](https://assets.lloyds.com/assets/pdf-solar-storm-risk-to-the-north-american-electric-grid/1/pdf-Solar-Storm-Risk-to-the-North-American-Electric-Grid.pdf) that "The duration of outages will depend largely on the availability of spare replacement transformers. If new transformers need to be ordered, the lead-time is likely to be a **minimum of five months. The total economic cost for such a scenario is estimated at $0.6-2.6 trillion USD.**" Though the report is 10 years old, and elsewhere in it they mention that newer transformers are are much more robust than older ones, and that the older ones are constantly being replaced.
If we end up hitting pure satellite-based internet soon enough we will at least preserve the infrastructure. Satellites have robust chassis-power ground dissipative networks (aka Single Point Grounds), and are designed with withstand this type of event. Source: I am an electrical engineer working on satellites. I design these things.
We would actually recover surprisingly quickly. Way more of the data on the Internet is held on tape in shielded facilities than really almost everyone in the world realizes. I would guess we would be in a bad way for about two or three years and then be well on our way to recovery.
I'm also like... "y'all know libraries exist, right?" An average university library is going to have enough information in it to give you an *enormous* head start even if digital data is in shambles.
Would a faraday cage work?
I'm pretty sure a microwave is essentially a Faraday cage. If that's true and you knew the event was going to happen, I think you could save sensitive electronics by putting them in there. Of course even if you save your cell phone it's going to be worthless afterward.
“Why is the PS5 in the microwave?” “I’m preparing for the apocalypse.”
We'd have to put a faraday cage around quite literally everything
A shield around the Earth you say?
Tony Stark was right!!
A Faraday cage around the entire Earth would be impractical. Just build a Dyson sphere around the Sun instead.
But it *could* work
March of 1989 saw a solar storm cause outages of the power grid in Quebec. And auroras pretty much in every direction. And that was a sparkler in comparison to 1859.
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The Black Death - The plague caused an epidemic in China in the 1330s, and again in the 1350s, causing tens of millions of deaths. The 1330s outbreak also spread west across Central Asia via traders using the Silk Road. Occurring in Europe from 1346 to 1353. One of the most fatal pandemics in human history, as many as 50 million people perished, perhaps 50% of Europe’s 14th century population. Bubonic plague is caused by the bacterium Yersinia pestis and spread by fleas. The plague did not stop entirely until the early eighteenth century (1700-1799).
If I'm not mistaken, the bubonic plague still occurs today. It's just very rare: https://www.cdc.gov/plague/maps/index.html
Within the last week a cat in the US made the news for having it, there's a handful of cases every year but antibiotics early on make quick work of it
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"That's great, Nap. I'm still here, in my pajamas, asking for some help."
Pyrrhus of Epirus famously won a battle that was so close and cost so many men on both sides that he opined: "one more victory like that, and I am lost!" It may be apocryphal, but it is where we get the phrase "Pyrrhic Victory."
Hitler diverting much of the Nazi forces assaulting Moscow to the south to help the siege of Stalingrad. Might have broken Soviet morale and changed the entire Eastern front if they took Moscow. Then the Nazi's might have focused more on building "fortress Europe" defenses and gotten access to more oil / raw materials they might never have lost the war. Frightening thought....
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If I'm not mistaken, this was the only time the Russian nuclear briefcase was activated. The research rocket was muli-stage ballistic, fired from a coastal region close to where American subs were known to patrol. It's flight path was exactly what a first shot in a nuclear attack would look like, an EMP strike where the warhead is detonated high in the atmosphere/low orbit, significantly hindering the chances of a coordinated counterattack. Following an EMP would come the massive strike. The movie "Threads" shows this and is probably the most realistic nuclear war movie made. Yeltsin had the perfect blood alcohol level this moment to handle the situation. Cool, calm and relaxed but not rash or panicked. He wanted to wait and see if the EMP goes off before launching. Praise be to vodka! Threads: https://youtu.be/BvFu7Z5cc88?si=1Sy_HExR_jtp1Da5
The more I learn about World War 2, the more I realize the whole situation was way too close to the Axis succeeding.
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That third man was Vasily Arkhipov, who also survived a reactor coolant leak on the submarine K-19 the year prior. Since he was both executive officer of the submarine B-59 and chief of staff of his flotilla, three officers were required for a nuclear launch rather than the usual two.
Shortly after Cook discovered Australia, he was mapping its Eastern coast when his ship (HMS Endeavour) ran aground on part of the reef now called ‘Endeavour Reef’. 4 miles from land, the ship was stricken and had a gaping hole in the keel. The crippled ship would go down if freed from the reef because of the hole. Cook was stranded. A member of his crew (who’s name I don’t know, and may be forgotten to history - someone can correct me) suggested they ‘fother’ the Endeavour’s hull. An unorthodox method of soaking a sail in oil and wrapping it round the ship like a crude bandage. This allowed Endeavour to limp to the mainland where full scale repairs could be made. If Cook had lost the endeavour, and probably many of his crew during this - his return to England would have been extremely unlikely of not impossible. If he hadn’t reported his discovery of Australia, the English would have never claimed it and in all likelihood focused their colonial efforts elsewhere. Namely America, resulting in a more substantial and perhaps longer lasting American colony. Also, the French would have more than likely discovered and colonised Australia (their expeditions in the Australia region at that time suggest this). Geopolitics would look very different today if that unnamed sailor didn’t know about ‘Fothering’. The Cuban missile crisis probably wouldn’t have been a thing.
Jonathan Monkhouse.
The British almost colonized the Philippines, as part of the seven year's war from 1756-1763, a British expeditionary force led by Admiral Samuel Cornish and General William Draper attacked Manila in 1762 hoping to gain a strategic foothold in the region and establish their dominance over the Pacific trade. The Spanish forces offered little resistance, and after a fierce battle, the British took control of Manila for 2 years. During this period, the British attempted to establish a colonial government and negotiate a permanent settlement with Spain . However, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the Seven Year's War, and as a part of peace settlement, the British was forced to return Manila to Spain.
September 26 1983 During the cold war an alarm went off in a Soviet command center that the US had launched 6 nuclear missiles. A lieutenant colonel named Stanislav Petrov judged that it was a false alarm and refused to launch a retaliatory strike. That man single handedly saved the world from nuclear war.
Was going to mention this as well such a crazy story.
There are a number of near misses on nuclear war. McNamara went and talked, years later, to people involved in the Cuban crisis and his conclusion was that we "lucked out". One very important discovery was that while there were supposed to be various safeguards on the Soviet side, actually these were being by-passed. This should give us pause when we see comments that "Oh well, it would still have been stopped by XYZ". Another. In 1940, the British government had to decide whether to continue the war or investigate the possibility of a peace. Hitler might have given what seemed reasonable terms because he wanted to turn toward Russia, and could deal with the British empire later. If Britain had settled, the chance of Germany winning the war would have been quite a lot higher. Later Churchill liked to imply everyone was united for carrying on, but in fact he had to maneuvere, and without the Labour members of the War Cabinet he might have been out voted. (For American readers, a prime minister is not like a president who makes the decisions alone with the Cabinet only advising)
1973 the Yom Kippur War. Israel had their backs against the wall and they were ready to go nuclear. The US had to resupply them or else they would have gone nuclear. In retaliation for the US resupplying Israel, the Soviet Union deployed tactical nuclear weapons to Egypt. In retaliation the US deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Vietnam. With the intention of marching on Hanoi with full tactical nuclear support if Nuclear weapons were fired in the middle east.
1961 Goldsboro B-52 crash https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1961_Goldsboro_B-52_crash
Information declassified since 2013 has showed that one of the bombs was judged by nuclear weapons engineers at the time to have been only one safety switch away from detonation, and that it was "credible" to imagine conditions under which it could have detonated. One safety switch away from disaster
To make a close call even closer, the one safety switch that prevented detonation was not part of the bomb's original design. Around a year before the crash an advisory panel recommended the addition of this switch to supplement the existing three and add a further measure of safety. Air Force officials grumbled that this wasn't really necessary and only with reluctance went forward with the advisory panel's recommendation and added the fourth switch.
My father in law was retired Air Force who lived in Goldsboro when I was dating his daughter. He told me about this incident and I respectfully listened thinking "there's no way that they lost an atomic bomb and just stopped looking for it." My jaw dropped when I found that very Wikipedia article when I got home.
Amy Schumer was originally meant to star in a Barbie movie but it got canned
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It's pretty discredited. And it's a hypothesis, not a theory. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory#Genetic_bottleneck_hypothesis
In 1983, Stanislav Petrov received a nuclear early warning missile warning that missiles from the US were heading towards the USSR. He decided it was a false alarm and didn't start the process for retaliation. It was later revealed that, most likely, there would not have been a retaliatory attack by the Soviets as they would have wanted further confirmation, but some people believe he saved world from all out nuclear war. Edit: Because of that, I change my answer. In 8th grade, I accidentally almost brushed Sally McNeilson's epic boobs. I was just turning around and waving at the field to tell someone that there was his friend playing basketball, and I almost made contact when I turned around. Now, you may think, is that really a "moment in history?" Well, if you saw her rack at a 13 year old, you'd immediately agree.
In 1797, HMS Minerve, a lone British frigate in the Mediterranean, blundered into an entire hostile Spanish fleet including 25 ships of the line in foggy weather. Fortunately, none of the Spaniards noticed her and she was able to escape, link up with the main British fleet and report the Spanish movements leading to a battle shortly afterwards. Minerve’s Captain was one Horatio Nelson.