The Kessler Syndrome

 The Kessler Syndrome is a neat little accident waiting to happen.  It fits in nicely with recent topics here.  The longer problems are put off and our leaders dismiss science as less meaningful than unbridled capitalism and personal wealth.

Now solar flares are outside our control.  If we get a big one, our best case scenario is enough advance notice to turn off the grid before electromagnetic pulses fry everything.  This interruption in the taken granted for convenience of things working right will be bad enough.

For the Kessler Symdrome, think of the way that nuclear fission operates.  One atom “explodes” and sends high speed shit out exploding other shit, turning it into more high speed shit until there’s a shitstorm of shit until no more shot remains to shitify.

We’ve known for a long time now that collisions in satellites would be a bad thing.  Those aren’t just lazily floating like clouds up there.  In order to orbit the planet they have substantial velocity.  It’s when that velocity ceases the satellite comes crashing to Earth.  Usually landing in an ocean, but at that point we don’t have any control over the debris destiny.  If it’s going to hit a populated area, we’ll that could be bad.

I’m kind of a fan of this actually happening in some ways.  Since conspiracy gematria grifting can’t be used without an operating Internet it would be an interesting experiment in crisis management without the misinformation economic empire able to operate.  Replacing enough satellites to hook everybody together again would take quite some time.  When Hubbard makes a video about him traveling out of his computer station area, it’s not because that is an effective method of communicating a truth community message.  It’s all about the video and attached fundraiser.  Traveling to the grocery store post Kessler Syndrome?  To talk to a mob of people worried about how every thing is super inconvenient because the Jesuits did a ritual?  When they could have simply stopped him from having Internet access a long time ago if he was dangerously close to exposing their plans?  I can’t see that happening when people are forced to adapt to a previously unknown crisis.  

Mainly though.  This is one of those math related hypotheticals that are easily dismissed by the way societies operate these days.  If you make a bacteria culture grow in an enclosed system it will eventually choke itself to death with no food remaining amid a butt ton of toxic byproducts.  If the Earth temperature keeps rising it will start lowering life expectancy and killing people off, be it super energetic weather events, starvation from failing crops or wars over dwindling resources.  If more shit is put into orbit it will eventually cross paths.  Based on the way we handle pandemic response and burning fossil fuels, looks like that would easily get relegated to the same basement where ignorance is bliss rules.  It will start off as not an immediate problem, therefore no concern.  Then it will reach a scientific consensus that agrees it’s a serious problem.  Then the grifters will declare it a hoax.  Then the leaders will latch on to that to get re-elected.  Then the smart people with empathy will start to try to counter the false narrative.  Then the leaders will go, “Yeah, but we can’t pay for it to be resolved.”  And that will be true because we’re so addicted to convenience that stopping something before the problem explodes into unmanageability is just what humans do.

Oh wait, I forgot a couple of events in that chain.  There has to get a point where we consider solutions that are the cure being as bad or worse than the disease.  Like trying to go full nuclear and seeding the atmosphere with stuff to block out the sun for climate change.  (Real issues being discussed).  We need drones to go up and do controlled demolition space force laser clean up.  Then the grifters can talk about the elites and secret societies creating global chaos to starve us to remain in control and keep us poor.  And they can insist that the Constitution gives them a God given right to have their own laser equipped drone, because the forefathers knew that evil governments want to attack us and only my right to a laser equipped drone is what’s important.  Food, job, convenience be damned.

It wouldn’t get that far.  Realistically a more likely failed solution would be leaving things in control of well intentioned AI.  AI currently being trained by megadoses of misinformation.  And whatever it picks could be really stupid, because social media algorithms have proven that they don’t do diddly squat for monitoring misinformation.