Wednesday, November 30, 2011

29,000 Pounds Of Danger Falling From The Sky

If Russia is unable to regain control of the 29,000-pound Phobos-Grunt spacecraft, it will plunge into the atmosphere uncontrolled with a full load of really toxic propellant.


The Russians and NASA have stressed a re-entry of Phobos-Grunt would pose no threat to Earth, saying its full load of toxic rocket propellant inside aluminum fuel tanks would rupture and explode high in the atmosphere and pose no danger to the public.

On the other hand the same people who say its not a problem are also the same people who tell us never to touch a piece of fallen spacecraft as it could be dangerous.

The fact is that things falling from space have a strange habit of not behaving like we expect. A dish of worms survived the break up of the space shuttle.

So my advice is to have your go bag ready and if it lands in your back yard. RUN AWAY.

Saturday, November 26, 2011

1/2 of the World is DEAD. What will you do?

I already mentioned the H5N1 bird flu strain which was genetically altered to become a much more contagious virus. Some say it has the potential to kill up to half the world’s population. Now forget for a moment all the arguing the academic and bioterrorism experts are doing over whether to publish the recipe, and whether the research should have been done in the first place. Thats out of your hands. Think about what you are going to do if it ever gets free of the lab. DO YOU HAVE A PLAN?

Monday, November 21, 2011

Bird Flu. A BIG DANGER

It is said that H5N1 bird flu virus has killed about 500 people and outbreaks have sparked fear around the world about the possibility of a global pandemic. Lucky for us the virus has not been contagious enough to pose much of a threat. The simple truth is that its hard for sick people to pass it to healthy people.

However new bird flu research that shows that the dangerous virus can mutate to become easily transmissible among ferrets and perhaps humans has embroiled the scientific community in a difficult debate.

Some biosecurity experts are concerned the research could be used as a blueprint by nefarious forces and are arguing against publication of the work.

But others, especially influenza scientists, are countering that the flu world needs to know the possible paths the H5N1 virus could take to become one that can spread easily among people so laboratories can be on the lookout for those changes in nature.

Monday, November 7, 2011

'Third World' power outages plague US

In an annual report, Eaton, a multinational power management company, said power outages affected 17.5 million people in all 50 states last year when there were 3,419 separate power outages, up from 2,840 the year before. The average blackout lasted four hours, but together all the outages added up to 156 days. California had the most incidents by far (508) followed by New York (176) and Texas (145). Bad weather was responsible for one in four outages, and faulty equipment or human error caused one in eight incidents.

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