August 8, 2013 • 35 mins
Satellite Junkies and the Day of the Fall: Humanity has become addicted to satellite technology. In this episode of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, Robert and Julie explore the sort of withdrawals we'd feel if the satellites all fell from the sky.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, we wasn't the stuff to blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
our good world are good culture. We have something of
an addiction going on right now. We could say we're
(00:24):
junkies and are junk that we're hooked on satellite. That's right,
those eyes and the sky looking down at us, we
need them. It's the good stuff. It's the bad stuff
fuelled every aspect of our life. Our phones are GPS systems,
our Internet. Yeah, we grow increasingly dependent upon satellites to
(00:46):
the point where to really understand all that they provide
us with, you have to take them out of the equation.
You have to sort of go the the go the
way of spring fever. That's short, where the guy wishes
that springs didn't exist, and uh, and really the spring
comes and says, all right, there are no springs, and
and then the world falls apart. Uh. And it's a
(01:07):
similar thing happens with satellites. So using this addiction model, uh,
a junkie depends on his junk, and when that junk
is no longer available, perhaps uh the supplier of said
junk has been arrested, or um junkie has run out
of money with which to purchase said junk. Uh, then
things began to fall into ruin and go into uh
(01:28):
into into withdrawals and uh. And that's what we're gonna
talk about in this episode. We're going to talk about
what the would withdrawals would look like should our satellites
vanish from the sky. Yeah. I mean essentially we're talking
about is the day that the satellites died? Yes, and
we're gonna get there. We're gonna talk about what that
might look like. But of course before we do that,
(01:49):
we need to talk a little bit about satellites because
they really have changed the face of communication. They've helped
us to network in ways that we could have really
never dreamed of previous to nineteen five d seven, when
it was still just an inkling of the possibilities of
what satellite could do for us, what sort of information
and data they could provide us with. So you can say,
as a species, it's sort of upp to our game
(02:10):
in terms of communication. Yeah, definitely. Now what is a satellite?
There's of course natural satellites, Uh, the moon is a satellite.
It's true. The Earth is essentially a satellite. I mean,
all of this is fair game. But what we're talking
about here, of course, are artificial satellites. They performed some
sort of function for us. Yeah, I mean, satellite could
be a machine that's uh, that's that's launched into space,
(02:33):
and it could be so massive, such as like say
the International Space Station, or it could be a three
pound box that's sent up there for for a various
data collection. Yeah, it could be something that's doing nothing
other than sending a signal back to Earth and saying, hey,
look at me, I'm in space. Or it could be
something that is doing some some really heavy analysis of
(02:53):
weather patterns or even you know, analyzing the the the
Earth's gravitational changes. It's true, um, and it's definitely given
us a deeper understanding of Earth. I mean, you had
SPUNTI being the first satellite that was launched in seven
by the Soviet Union, and uh, since then, every satellite
that has gone up has accumulated more and more data.
(03:14):
In fact, now we know what our atmosphere is truly
composed of satellite satellites absolutely, Uh, the amount of radiation
that a manned or unmanned space flight would have to
contend with. So this really was the precursor of the
space Age. It allowed us to collect enough information to
really plan for for for flights into space. Yeah, we
(03:37):
had to figure out what was out there. We had
to we had to do the all these test runs.
We had to. In other way, it's kind of like
the anchor that we climbed up that we ascended to
beginner space Age in earnest And it did kind of
give us this big picture of what the Earth looks like,
because again, previous to this, we just sort of had
an inkling of what the Earth might look like, you know,
(03:57):
suspended out there in space. But all sudden you had
satellites that were transmitting back data streams that could be
converted into colored pictures, and you get this blue marble
concept of Earth, this lustrous blue swirl that's just hanging
out there, and all of a sudden, we do have
a different picture of what it is to be hanging
(04:18):
out in the universe. So let's talk a little bit
about the the spent needles of our dependency. I stole
that from you, but I think it's an apt metaphor because, uh,
in an addics home, you may see various signs of
their addiction piling up in the corners. They're even addicted to, say, twinkies.
You'll see Twinkie rappers just covering every available surface. And
(04:40):
if you travel into orbit, you will of course find
plenty of orbital and suborbital Twinkie rappers. It's true, there
are Twinkie rappers all over. We've littered them all over
the place. Yes, we've gotten our data, and we love it,
and we need it, and we will continue to want it.
In fact, it's pretty it's a growing business. Um But
according to Richard mancowitz And is drawing on data from
(05:01):
Seller's Track, which is funded by the Center for Space
Standards and Innovation. As of December, there are over thirteen
thousand satellites in orbit and over twenty thousand, five hundred
satellites have been decaying since nineteen fifty seven. So he
says that if you look at the data carefully, they're
just under thirty satellites that are both functioning and in
(05:22):
their correct orbit, compared to nearly ten thousand that are
classed as debris, but they haven't decayed yet. So his
estimate is that about seventy of the satellites orbiting the
Earth are junk. Yeah, I mean if easy to fall
into the trap of thinking that they're all going to
just eventually re enter the atmosphere. And you know, eventually
is a big word. That's the thing. Um Spotnik one,
(05:45):
for instance, UM burned up on January four night, so
it didn't stay up there that long. But then you
have other bits that are that are that have stayed
up there for a while and may continue to stay
up there for uh centuries or even decades. Anything above
two thousand kilometers. They say we'll take a thousand years
to return to Earth. Think about that long since uh decayed,
(06:06):
I mean in terms of its usefulness, but the orbit
itself will not decay for a thousand years, It's true.
And you have a couple of choices. When you decommission
a satellite. You can move it into um an upper orbit,
which is called the graveyard orbit, because you want it
because farther away from from the planet. You want to
get it away from the more useful orbits. Yeah, you
(06:28):
want to get it out of the way of basically
other satellites, So you kick it up. There are a
couple of hundred kilometers and UM. This is also known
as the L two lagrange point. So you can hang
out there or and it can decay, or you can
move it into lower orbit and eventually it will just
move into Earth and something like ten to its mass
is going to um survive re entry. The most of
(06:51):
it though, is just gonna blow up. And then there's
you know, vast stretches of the Earth where there's no
danger of it actually hitting anybody that didn't make it
all the way right because you have to do. There
are ways to maneuver into positions so that it is
as safe as possible. So that's a good indications. You
say the swinky wrappers that the evidence of our our
(07:12):
dependency on satellites. Now, what could possibly knock out all
the satellites or knocked out a majority of the satellites
are in some way impact our satellite array in a
mean in a way that would actually impact life here
on Earth. There are basically three main scenarios. First, of course,
is a massive solar store um. We've talked about this before.
(07:34):
The the Sun is continually pumping out all of these
waves going out of this energy, and then it new
and undergoes flares and surges, and it's possible for that
material to impact the satellites themselves. Yeah, these are called
coronal mass ejections. We're talking about clouds of particles in
the form of sometimes very rare ten billion ton ball
(07:56):
of plasmas just being injected out worthy Earth. So when
solar storms hit the Earth in a certain way, it
can disrupt our magnetic field, and then that allows for
strong electric currents in the upper atmosphere to induce currents
on the ground. So that's when you begin to see
some sort of failures in our electrical grid happen. Yeah,
(08:18):
so obviously also take out a majority of those satellites. Now, well,
we'll talk more about, um the plausibility of this later. Yeah,
but that's definitely the extraterrestrial threat satellites. I mean, not
counting an alien attack that watches them out. I like
that one too, but we kind of have to loot
that in into the same area, right. So Yeah, that's
one way that we could decrease our stash of satellites here.
(08:41):
Another is a cyber attack. Yeah, definitely a terrestrial version
of the threat, and certainly more in line with aliens
attacking us, except us attacking ourselves. Uh, there's really not
much you have to say about this one as to
why it would happen. Packers attack stuff all the time
for varying numbers of reasons, ranging from you know, nationalistic
reasons to um, you know, civil rights issues or you know,
(09:05):
what have you, often just because they can. And we
have this h We have all these satellites up there,
many of which are looped into a network. It's unvarying
levels susceptible to attack, right because some of those satellites
are are used by the military, UM, and they're they're
streaming back data that's pretty sensitive, and so it goes
(09:26):
without reason that a hacker could want to get into
that and and not only access that information, but maybe
even decommission that satellite. U the Terra e O s
a M one satellite, which is used to study climate
environmental changes, experienced nine or more minutes of interference in
October two thousand eight. And this is according to a
draft report by the US China Economic and Security Review Commission.
(09:49):
And apparently this has happened a couple of times since
where some of the satellites have been taken over by
cyber hackers. So we know it's possible. There you go,
and then of course another more or less terrestrial threat
to our satellites space debris. And this just falls back
in line again with not only the twinkies, but all
the other stuff that ends up up there. We talked
about space junk in the past. We just have a
(10:11):
growing amount of kibble up there in orbit, speeding around
at incredible speeds, and when it when they crash into
each other, stuff happens. You can also have a killer
asteroid here take out satellites. Apotheus, which Neil de Grasse
Tyson has talked a lot about, is one of those
asteroids that people are keeping an eye up because, as
he says, um it is large enough to fill the
(10:34):
Rose bowl and on Friday, April nine, it will dip
below the altitude of our communication satellites. He says, if
it's trajectory on that day passes within a narrow range
of altitudes called the keyhole, then the influence of the
Earth's grabbing on his orbit will guarantee that seven years later,
in six it will hit the Earth. No that let's
(10:58):
just kind of you know, look at this in a
positive light. He says, there's a possibility it won't reach
that keyhole area and and mess with the orbit. But
it's something to keep an eye on. Yeah, and certainly
another reason that we have to track all of the
near Earth objects that could potentially pose a threat to
the planet itself or our satellite array. Um now, as
(11:19):
far as space debric gosh, as far as terrestrial space degregos.
It's also worth pointing out that a lot of these
satellites are also explosive. They have fuel on board because
they need to have a means of of going to
a higher orbit or descending to a lower one, and
therefore there's stuff on there that could blow up. And
it does blow up sometimes, Yeah, they do, and they're
not supposed to. But the fact of the matter is,
(11:40):
if you're going to maneuver it into the graveyard orbit,
you need some fuel to get in there. So it
stands to reason that there might be some fuel left over. Yeah,
all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
we come back, we'll actually run through some possibilities of
how this would break down in the course of a
day as satellites uh blink out in the sky above.
(12:05):
All right, we're back, and we are discussing what happens
when the satellites fall? What happens when the satellites fail? Uh,
we've grown so dependent upon them, on the data they
provide us with, on the on the communications network that
they enable around the world. What happens when that goes away? Luckily? Uh,
there's a wonderful article that we found that we're gonna
(12:26):
be referencing here. Uh, and it's by Richard Hollingham of
BBC titled what would happen if all satellites stopped working?
That's right. He actually went to an international conference on
space hazards and he listened to a series of speakers
outlined doomsday scenarios, and so he thought, you know what,
to a nod to all of those out there who
(12:47):
are in charge of space chunk and satellite communications, UM,
I'm going to, like orson well, sort of compose this
article about if scenario what would happen if all the
satellites were wiped out? What would that withdrawal look like?
And the first thing that he points out is it's
(13:09):
eight am that on the day that the satellites died.
What happens you go to turn on the television set,
there's no Fox and Friends. Where Steve Doocey, where are
the said these familiar faces of the two men and
the blonde lady that that provide us with our mornings
joy and news, They're gone, just static. There should be
a new show called Two Men and a Blonde Lady.
(13:31):
I'd watch that one. Uh. Yeah, email would work in
the Internet would seem okay, but your international phone calls
would fail. And uh, this this communication systems that ties
the world together would begin to unravel. Um, so as
he says, Hollingham Hands says, rather than shrinking, it would
seem as if the Earth was getting larger. Yeah. I
(13:54):
thought that was a wonderful way to put it, because
in a sense, all of the satellites tying us together
do give us, uh a sense that we have a
location that we're Um, there's a center to all of this.
But take that away in its Yeah, and a number
of things that would occur. For in since uh drones,
military drones flying overhead, they suddenly their operators lose contact
(14:18):
with them. That's right. As you pointed out, there'd be
that loss of television radio programming, some radio programming. Um,
there would be a failure of secure satellite communication systems
left for soldiers and ships and aircraft would be cut
off from their commanders and vulnerable to attack. Yeah, and
then as they suddenly find themselves vulnerable to attack, they
(14:39):
might think, oh, who did this. I'm close to Nation X,
maybe I should we should contact Nation X and find
out what the deal is. You can't really get in
touch with Nation X because the satellites are down, so
you end up you're not able to immediately diffuse potentially
volatile situations. It's true you have world leaders who are
unsure of what steps to take or even what has happened.
(15:00):
And and also think about those UM airline flights. They're
in mid air at that very moment, the pilots aren't
able to reach anybody. Uh, they know that something is awry,
and then the passengers would be completely oblivious. Yeah, they
would just be happily oblivious on the plane while the
pilots trying to figure out how they're gonna land and
(15:20):
where they're gonna land these things. Um. Meanwhile, down below,
you're gonna have without satellite phones, You're gonna have containerships
in the Arctic, fishermen in the China see aid workers
in the Sahara. All of them just suddenly isolated from
the rest of the world. There's one electronic lifeline that
they had, you suddenly cut off from them. Um. Now,
as you said, email is gonna continue to work, Internet's
(15:40):
gonna seem to work okay, but international phone calls are
gonna start failing. If you've gone into work that morning,
your email is gonna still work all right, But if
you had a call with somebody in the UK, call
with somebody even across the country, you're not necessarily gonna
be able to make any contact with them. Now at
eleven o'clock, Hollingham says that we need to start thinking
(16:01):
about how our infrastructure is held together by time. He's
saying from time stamps on financial transactions to the protocols
that hold the Internet together. Uh. He says, when these
packets of data passed between computers and they get out
of sink, the system starts to break down, and then
without accurate time, every network controlled by computers is at risk.
(16:23):
This talks about everything. Yeah, this falls into a line
with some of the stuff we talked about in our
Nature of Time and Clocks episode. We're talking about how
there are individuals out there who say we we really
need to have like an Earth time, a solid Earth time,
And even though we don't have that in place, we
essentially have it, or at least our machines essentially have
it in their ability to sink everything together and look
(16:45):
at it in a given timescape. And as the satellites
break down here, um Hollingham is is stating that you
would see the cracks appear, and then the cracks grow larger.
Suddenly all those lines on the map um suddenly may
since again in terms of what time it is here
versus what time it is there. A drift begins to occur, right,
(17:06):
And that just reminded me about the time dilation that's
built into the algorithms for satellites when when they're trying
to sink everything together. So yeah, as you say, this
drift begins. He says the first power cuts would come
later in the evening as a transmission network struggled to
balance the demand, and he says computerized water treatments, they
(17:27):
would have engineers switching to manual backup systems, and then
in major cities, traffic lights and railway signals would be
defaulted to red. So all of a sudden, you know,
you really get these very obvious signals that the world's
out of whack. So so the traffic is just going
to come to a standstill or it's gonna be a
quagmire and uh, and people are gonna have trouble getting
(17:48):
to and from work that day. Then your phone service,
which was already kind of acting patchy, would finally fail
in the late evening. So when we take away the phone,
then you begin to cut a lifeline off of people here.
That's when you begin to really see that this is
a very serious situation, um which meanwhile, our web searches
(18:09):
are growing slower and slower for real. That's that's another
thing that starts to happen. Well, because that's the interesting
thing about those information packets, right because if you take
down with satellite, that's um that that's influencing some Internet connections,
that Internet connection will find a different route to get
that information to you. But as the system continues to
(18:30):
fail across the board, it has fewer and fewer resources
or areas to connect to. And that's where you begin
to see, Um, the Internet and email began to fail
in a in a very big way, right all Right.
Obviously aircraft have been grounded at this point because hopefully
(18:51):
anybody in the air has that they've actually landed somewhere,
they've landed, but if they're not, if they haven't landed, uh,
they don't have access to the information that there could
be some severe weather going on. That's right. We really
grow to to depend upon accurate understandings of what the
weather is doing now. Certainly our prediction models continue to
improve and have a fair amount of room for improvement,
(19:14):
but we really grow to depend upon this this accurate
snapshot of what the weather is doing now providing us
with some some rather dependable data about what it's going
to do in the immediate future. And that that affects
everything from from what is the storm system doing that
might turn into a hurricane, as to what storm systems
may be in the in the path of a given flight.
(19:34):
So how are you going to get into the airport
when you don't know what kind of storm systems may
be in the path. And you take it for granted
because everybody has heard that message that comes on the
pilots is using driven whom we are approaching some touches
of turbulence. We're gonna take it down a couple of thousand,
you know, and they don't have that information. They're flying
(19:56):
right into the eye of the hurricane or to some
other storm, and as a result, you know, you're gonna
be jostled around. And assuming that you could survive that,
because I'm sure that there are many instances that a
flight could go through the center of restorm and survive it,
you're still gonna have passengers who are severely injured. Yeah,
and then what if you have to land in Nebraska
(20:18):
and then you're you're there forever because there's no taken
back off again because the sate lights are down. How
are you You're gonna have to walk? I guess you're
in that corn field. You can't take a train, It's true,
But at least you've landed, presumably safely. Yeah. Now on
the other end of the world, you have travelers who
are stranded thousands of miles from home. And then we
(20:38):
saw some of this at play, at least in the
grounding of flights with not eleven yes, and then again
to a very limited amount of time with the volcano
eruptions in Iceland. People who grow to depend on a
pretty systematic international travel and suddenly there's a halt, and
people are just stuck somewhere, right, and the communication is
(20:59):
completely out. So you you have um survived this harrowing
journey on the plane and you're in Nebraska in the cornfield,
or you're sitting somewhere on the other side of the
world wondering what's going on with your friends and your families. Alright,
things are beginning to look look pretty grim. And again
(21:20):
it's not even a whole day that's past yet in
the scenario, uh that that the author lays out here.
So communications, transport, power, computer systems all been severely disrupted.
Global businesses ground to a halt. Uh, and it's reaching
the point where uh leaders and organizers having to worry
about food supply chains. Yeah, because your food supply chains
(21:41):
would begin to break down there and people are going
to panic and they are going to try to get
their food supplies for themselves built up. I imagine that
you begin to see some looting at this point, because
again you have uncertainty and uh, you know, there's there's
the point that this is the actual complete systems failure.
(22:03):
So in the void of information, chaos begins to rain. Yeah.
For instance, suddenly we can't monitor illegal logging in the Amazon,
you know, so it's suddenly, uh, you can just go
out and cut down whatever. And then it's also this
has brought up in another article, but GPS technology is
used to uh used often by farmers nowadays to track
(22:26):
where their cows are. Suddenly these cows just can roam
wherever they want. And also, uh, thirty rock yours think
back to Tracy Jordan's and his his his ankle band
that keeps him from leaving his house. Suddenly everyone that
is on the house arrest with their with their electronic
GPS bands, They're free to just roam the streets and
do whatever. But more to the point, civil unrest as
(22:49):
food supply chains grow uncertain and uh and those in
power having to uh introduce emergency measures to maintain order.
So in the course of just uh under a day,
we've already descended into kind of a new dark nag. Yeah,
I mean we haven't even really extrapolated that to to
what what might mean, you know, weeks from that period,
(23:09):
because you would have backup generators that nuclear power plants
that would have run down, and the electric pumps that
supply water to cooling ponds where radioactive spent fuels are
stored which shut off, So within weeks you would really
begin to see, um, the entire infrastructure crumble. And what
would that mean. I mean, in terms of dollars, it
(23:29):
would be I don't even think you could put a
price on that. But um, a rebuilding effort would take
years with that sort of full scale wipe out of satellites. Yeah,
because again, we've built this system kind of piece by piece,
and the elaborate system that we've grown to depend on. Absolutely. Yeah,
and if that's and if that's taken away from us,
(23:50):
if if that fails due to some sort of extraterrestrial
accident or terrestrial accident or terrestrial attack, then the consequences
could be pretty dire. Okay, So if you're feeling a
little bit freaked out, rest assured that this is highly
unlikely that every single satellite would be wiped out and
one fell swoop. So, yeah, we the coronal massage accidents
(24:17):
are there or there a problem right because everyone's while
they do mess with the electromagnetic field, and they do
disrupt some satellite, but you would really have to have
a doomsday wad of plasma coming at you. And some
people say, hey, we're about do because something like a
there was something called the Carrington event in which a
(24:37):
huge ball plasma came shooting at the Earth and um.
So that was a really powerful coronal mass ejection, and
it over overloaded the telegraph wires, actually setting paper messages
on fire. So you imagine what it would do then
to all of our various electronic devices. Yeah, but you
can take comfort in knowing that for the most part, Uh,
(24:58):
you know, these ejection sort of shoot out harmlessly into
other parts of the Solar System and they tend not
to hit the Earth. Yes, space is big, and the
chances of us being right there in the bull's eye
pretty slim. Yeah. And then in terms of you know,
cyber hacking, to have a across the board concerted effort
(25:19):
that would take down every single satellite would would be
I would say, incredibly hard to pull off. Yeah, I'm
not going to see impossible there No, But the idea
of like like a soul individual or even just a
few individuals carrying out such a massive hacking, um too.
It's just it's it's not likely. And I have to
say in that instance, that would definitely be cutting off
(25:40):
your nose despite your face if you are a cyber hacker,
because what do you have left to hack after that? Yeah?
I mean I could see where somebody could you know
where that would be their aim? You know, maybe your
your whole of things. You want to expose the vulnerability
of our satellite dependency. Maybe you want us to go
cold turkey. You realize we've got a problem. So what
you're doing is gonna take all the twinkies away from
it and then teach us some tough love. But but still,
(26:03):
the chances of it happening are probably pretty slim. The
chances of it of them being able to carry it
out are pretty slim, right, Or maybe you're just trying
to get one million dollars. Yes, that's so restore satellite
functionality exactly. That would would be a great Bond movie
uh plot, But like all great movie blond Bond movie plots,
it doesn't necessarily match up with reality. True and space
(26:26):
junk uh space debris asteroids. Again, you'd have to have
something that would wipe out every single style. It would
be difficult to do. It would have to be like
the ultimate pool crack shot. You know where you know
where the where they're just able to sink all the
balls at once. It's just in there are a lot
of balls up there, so it would it would be
rather difficult to pull that off. It would be I'd
(26:48):
be a lot of trigonometry there, left pocket, right pocket,
left pocket. So there you have it. Um. I think
it's it's fascinating to look at this data and to
and to really think long and hard about our depend
that's the on technology, what vulnerabilities are there. It reminds
me a lot of Stephen King's short story Trucks, but
more to the point, Stephen King's movie adaptation, his own
(27:10):
movie adaptation, Maximum Overdrive, in which all the vehicles and
the electronics and and all Man's technological devices rise up,
uh and and revolt and start running him over, at
which point I said, oh, yeah, that kids movie cars. Yeah,
well it's kind of it's kind of like cars, except
with more uh yeah, except less believable. I guess that's
(27:31):
the thing, because it was it's a rather silly movie.
I love the short story that the movie is is
just is wonderful in its own right, but very silly.
But it but it gets down to some of the
same stuff here. We grow to depend up on all
of this uh, these these artifacts that we've created, and
then what happens when they fail us, what happens when
they turn against us, or that there is quit obeying
us all together. Well, one of the things that I
(27:52):
won't go too deeply into because it could be a
podcast episode onto itself. But the fact of the matter
is that US satellites are in rapid decline and there
are very few plans to replace them. And some of
this has to do with UM governmental red tape, and
some of it just has to do with budget cuts.
But the fact of the matter is is that we
(28:12):
will begin to see a huge decline in the amount
of satellites, and some of those satellites are weather satellites,
and we'll have to start to depend on other countries
for that information. And moreover, there may not be as
sophisticated UM satellites going up or satellite information coming back
at US. So again that's for another doomsday scenario, but
(28:34):
it's probably worth mentioning as we extrap late what satellites
might mean to us in fifty years. All right, well,
let's call the robot over and uh, assuming that the
satellites still work, then the road it should be able
to provide us with some listener mail. All right, So
we recently did an episode about cubicles, cube death, open
(28:57):
floor office plans, and we receive a lot of replies
from people that that do work in cube farms, UH,
several of which mentioned that they listened to our podcast
on the way to work and we're very depressed rolling
into their their cubicles. So I wanted and we received
a lot of cool emails from people where they're just
laying out with their workspaces. But this one, I think
is UH is worth reading UH and sharing with everyone
(29:18):
because it provides kind of a possibility of hope for
anyone in a cube environment. So we heard from Joseph.
Joseph writes in and he's from Jonesboro, Arkansas. Rights and
this is Hi, Robert and Julie touching on the last
two podcasts. While at my day Jibe, I work in
a five by four work area cleaning screens used for
screen printing. The only way I keep from going insane
(29:39):
is drink a bunch of coffee, listen to allowed music
or stuff to blow your mind, and use the ink
from the screens to paint the wall behind me. I
have painted the whole wall and need suggestions on what
to do next. Uh. And he sent a picture with
this too, where it's like all these different like cubes
and then some like red handprints as well, and it
looks really really cool. Uh. And I think that that's
(30:00):
just one cool idea if your employers allow you to
do everything you can to transform that workspace into some
sort of a personal space that means something and it's beautiful. Yeah,
I mean some self expression going on there. I don't
think we could get away with that. With the painting, yeah,
I don't know we could get away with a lot.
I think at this point we don't. I mean, you
don't really have a paintable surface in our every surface
(30:23):
is paintable. Now you're you're breaking out the fabric paint here. No, yeah,
every surface is paintable. Okay, Yeah, I think it could
work all right, Yeah, ask for suggestions about what to paint. Um,
I don't know. I mean I feel like his aesthetic
is kind of uh, you know, abstract and minimalists, so
I don't feel like I can suggest, hey, why don't
you paint a squid attacking a bone because the boat,
(30:44):
because that's not really what he's doing. But what about
a concept like love or time, or a particular place,
a particular vista. I remember in the Silence of the Lambs.
Remember Hannibal Elector's painting like scenes of Florence in his
cell I remember, like he paints a window looking out,
So you could always do that. Um but but no,
(31:06):
uh yeah, I think I think the important thing about
about your cube is to is to give it some
sort of personality, make it a little less dreadful and
and and more to the point, get out of it.
Whenever you can go out for a walk, go smell
some dirt. As we discuss in the other episode from
that week. That's right, that that there is highly important
for your body to try to actually fortify itself against
(31:28):
the world, strengthen itself. All right, let's hear from one
other listener. Rachel writes in and says, Robert and Julie,
I was listening to some older episodes when I heard
your episode Unfinished Education. Wow, what a fascinating educational system
and podcast. I played it from my thirteen year old daughter,
who now wants to move to Finland. She had a
project this past school year for seventh grade called do Something,
in which she had to do something about an issue
(31:50):
she felt strongly about is about created a survey about
homework and had fifty kids take it. She found that
the amount of homework correlated to the average income in
the town and the graduation rate. She studied those results
and then wrote a letter to the President, Secretary of Education,
and govern superintendent and principle. She has heard back from
our governor, but no one else. Isabel's conclusions match a
(32:12):
lot of what sin Finland has implemented. I'm inserting her
letter now. Thank you for continuing to give us great
discussion topics, Rachel. And that letter is beautifully written and
it makes the point so well about how teaching needs
to be done in the schools and kids need to
be supported in schools and you can't just rely on
(32:32):
the families to essentially enhance the learning for a child.
Because what she said is that if you look at
the study, and you look at the informal study that
she took, that it does correlate with this idea that
families that are living in um higher scio economic brackets
are able to provide more opportunity outside of school for
for for better learning. And again her point is really
(32:55):
well taken that the learning should take place in school,
and I was just I have to say, um, really
inspired by that and very impressed. And now I feel
like I should do something excellent. Well mission accomplished then
all right. Well, as for the rest of you, if
you have something you would like to add, we would
love to hear from you being about a past episode.
(33:16):
Those are always up for a discussion, or if you
have something you want to share about satellite doom scenarios,
about our dependency on satellites. But how prepared are you
for the loss of satellites? How would it impact your life?
You know, I couldn't help but think about that. As
we were preparing this, uh this podcast episode, I would
started thinking like how much food do I have in
(33:37):
the house? Um? Not enough to survive the Santa scenario?
I think so? Yeah. And I think that if you
look at the sort of scenario a year out, you
will see that there is a measure of stability that
comes online with people. But it wouldn't be Corna McCarthy's
the road like the next day, No, but you would
you know, a year year out you would be living
(33:57):
an entirely different life that was probably more community driven,
because that's when you really began to see that the
human species has been so successful because of the cooperative effort.
It's not rugged individualism that has allowed us to to
take our position in the world. Yeah, and what would
(34:17):
happen to the last season of Magnet? Would we ever
get to see it? No? Man? Or would it? Would
it just be like a story that would be told
in different towns, and like John Ham would travel around
from village to village with a with a bindle stick
and he would he would tell you the tale of
the final since Magnet. That would be pretty great. Uh yeah,
I was about to say that there would probably be
some sort of myth making going on about what happened.
(34:41):
All right, So where do you find us? All the
usual places you go Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's our main website is when we throw everything we do.
You can find us in social media. We're on Facebook,
We're on Tumbler, Stuff to Blow your Mind on both
of those, and on Twitter we go by the handle
blow the Mind. And you can also drop us a
line and below the mind at Discovery dot com. For
(35:03):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
staff works dot com.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Works dot com. Hey, we wasn't the stuff to blow
your mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Julie Douglas. Julie,
our good world are good culture. We have something of
an addiction going on right now. We could say we're
(00:24):
junkies and are junk that we're hooked on satellite. That's right,
those eyes and the sky looking down at us, we
need them. It's the good stuff. It's the bad stuff
fuelled every aspect of our life. Our phones are GPS systems,
our Internet. Yeah, we grow increasingly dependent upon satellites to
(00:46):
the point where to really understand all that they provide
us with, you have to take them out of the equation.
You have to sort of go the the go the
way of spring fever. That's short, where the guy wishes
that springs didn't exist, and uh, and really the spring
comes and says, all right, there are no springs, and
and then the world falls apart. Uh. And it's a
(01:07):
similar thing happens with satellites. So using this addiction model, uh,
a junkie depends on his junk, and when that junk
is no longer available, perhaps uh the supplier of said
junk has been arrested, or um junkie has run out
of money with which to purchase said junk. Uh, then
things began to fall into ruin and go into uh
(01:28):
into into withdrawals and uh. And that's what we're gonna
talk about in this episode. We're going to talk about
what the would withdrawals would look like should our satellites
vanish from the sky. Yeah. I mean essentially we're talking
about is the day that the satellites died? Yes, and
we're gonna get there. We're gonna talk about what that
might look like. But of course before we do that,
(01:49):
we need to talk a little bit about satellites because
they really have changed the face of communication. They've helped
us to network in ways that we could have really
never dreamed of previous to nineteen five d seven, when
it was still just an inkling of the possibilities of
what satellite could do for us, what sort of information
and data they could provide us with. So you can say,
as a species, it's sort of upp to our game
(02:10):
in terms of communication. Yeah, definitely. Now what is a satellite?
There's of course natural satellites, Uh, the moon is a satellite.
It's true. The Earth is essentially a satellite. I mean,
all of this is fair game. But what we're talking
about here, of course, are artificial satellites. They performed some
sort of function for us. Yeah, I mean, satellite could
be a machine that's uh, that's that's launched into space,
(02:33):
and it could be so massive, such as like say
the International Space Station, or it could be a three
pound box that's sent up there for for a various
data collection. Yeah, it could be something that's doing nothing
other than sending a signal back to Earth and saying, hey,
look at me, I'm in space. Or it could be
something that is doing some some really heavy analysis of
(02:53):
weather patterns or even you know, analyzing the the the
Earth's gravitational changes. It's true, um, and it's definitely given
us a deeper understanding of Earth. I mean, you had
SPUNTI being the first satellite that was launched in seven
by the Soviet Union, and uh, since then, every satellite
that has gone up has accumulated more and more data.
(03:14):
In fact, now we know what our atmosphere is truly
composed of satellite satellites absolutely, Uh, the amount of radiation
that a manned or unmanned space flight would have to
contend with. So this really was the precursor of the
space Age. It allowed us to collect enough information to
really plan for for for flights into space. Yeah, we
(03:37):
had to figure out what was out there. We had
to we had to do the all these test runs.
We had to. In other way, it's kind of like
the anchor that we climbed up that we ascended to
beginner space Age in earnest And it did kind of
give us this big picture of what the Earth looks like,
because again, previous to this, we just sort of had
an inkling of what the Earth might look like, you know,
(03:57):
suspended out there in space. But all sudden you had
satellites that were transmitting back data streams that could be
converted into colored pictures, and you get this blue marble
concept of Earth, this lustrous blue swirl that's just hanging
out there, and all of a sudden, we do have
a different picture of what it is to be hanging
(04:18):
out in the universe. So let's talk a little bit
about the the spent needles of our dependency. I stole
that from you, but I think it's an apt metaphor because, uh,
in an addics home, you may see various signs of
their addiction piling up in the corners. They're even addicted to, say, twinkies.
You'll see Twinkie rappers just covering every available surface. And
(04:40):
if you travel into orbit, you will of course find
plenty of orbital and suborbital Twinkie rappers. It's true, there
are Twinkie rappers all over. We've littered them all over
the place. Yes, we've gotten our data, and we love it,
and we need it, and we will continue to want it.
In fact, it's pretty it's a growing business. Um But
according to Richard mancowitz And is drawing on data from
(05:01):
Seller's Track, which is funded by the Center for Space
Standards and Innovation. As of December, there are over thirteen
thousand satellites in orbit and over twenty thousand, five hundred
satellites have been decaying since nineteen fifty seven. So he
says that if you look at the data carefully, they're
just under thirty satellites that are both functioning and in
(05:22):
their correct orbit, compared to nearly ten thousand that are
classed as debris, but they haven't decayed yet. So his
estimate is that about seventy of the satellites orbiting the
Earth are junk. Yeah, I mean if easy to fall
into the trap of thinking that they're all going to
just eventually re enter the atmosphere. And you know, eventually
is a big word. That's the thing. Um Spotnik one,
(05:45):
for instance, UM burned up on January four night, so
it didn't stay up there that long. But then you
have other bits that are that are that have stayed
up there for a while and may continue to stay
up there for uh centuries or even decades. Anything above
two thousand kilometers. They say we'll take a thousand years
to return to Earth. Think about that long since uh decayed,
(06:06):
I mean in terms of its usefulness, but the orbit
itself will not decay for a thousand years, It's true.
And you have a couple of choices. When you decommission
a satellite. You can move it into um an upper orbit,
which is called the graveyard orbit, because you want it
because farther away from from the planet. You want to
get it away from the more useful orbits. Yeah, you
(06:28):
want to get it out of the way of basically
other satellites, So you kick it up. There are a
couple of hundred kilometers and UM. This is also known
as the L two lagrange point. So you can hang
out there or and it can decay, or you can
move it into lower orbit and eventually it will just
move into Earth and something like ten to its mass
is going to um survive re entry. The most of
(06:51):
it though, is just gonna blow up. And then there's
you know, vast stretches of the Earth where there's no
danger of it actually hitting anybody that didn't make it
all the way right because you have to do. There
are ways to maneuver into positions so that it is
as safe as possible. So that's a good indications. You
say the swinky wrappers that the evidence of our our
(07:12):
dependency on satellites. Now, what could possibly knock out all
the satellites or knocked out a majority of the satellites
are in some way impact our satellite array in a
mean in a way that would actually impact life here
on Earth. There are basically three main scenarios. First, of course,
is a massive solar store um. We've talked about this before.
(07:34):
The the Sun is continually pumping out all of these
waves going out of this energy, and then it new
and undergoes flares and surges, and it's possible for that
material to impact the satellites themselves. Yeah, these are called
coronal mass ejections. We're talking about clouds of particles in
the form of sometimes very rare ten billion ton ball
(07:56):
of plasmas just being injected out worthy Earth. So when
solar storms hit the Earth in a certain way, it
can disrupt our magnetic field, and then that allows for
strong electric currents in the upper atmosphere to induce currents
on the ground. So that's when you begin to see
some sort of failures in our electrical grid happen. Yeah,
(08:18):
so obviously also take out a majority of those satellites. Now, well,
we'll talk more about, um the plausibility of this later. Yeah,
but that's definitely the extraterrestrial threat satellites. I mean, not
counting an alien attack that watches them out. I like
that one too, but we kind of have to loot
that in into the same area, right. So Yeah, that's
one way that we could decrease our stash of satellites here.
(08:41):
Another is a cyber attack. Yeah, definitely a terrestrial version
of the threat, and certainly more in line with aliens
attacking us, except us attacking ourselves. Uh, there's really not
much you have to say about this one as to
why it would happen. Packers attack stuff all the time
for varying numbers of reasons, ranging from you know, nationalistic
reasons to um, you know, civil rights issues or you know,
(09:05):
what have you, often just because they can. And we
have this h We have all these satellites up there,
many of which are looped into a network. It's unvarying
levels susceptible to attack, right because some of those satellites
are are used by the military, UM, and they're they're
streaming back data that's pretty sensitive, and so it goes
(09:26):
without reason that a hacker could want to get into
that and and not only access that information, but maybe
even decommission that satellite. U the Terra e O s
a M one satellite, which is used to study climate
environmental changes, experienced nine or more minutes of interference in
October two thousand eight. And this is according to a
draft report by the US China Economic and Security Review Commission.
(09:49):
And apparently this has happened a couple of times since
where some of the satellites have been taken over by
cyber hackers. So we know it's possible. There you go,
and then of course another more or less terrestrial threat
to our satellites space debris. And this just falls back
in line again with not only the twinkies, but all
the other stuff that ends up up there. We talked
about space junk in the past. We just have a
(10:11):
growing amount of kibble up there in orbit, speeding around
at incredible speeds, and when it when they crash into
each other, stuff happens. You can also have a killer
asteroid here take out satellites. Apotheus, which Neil de Grasse
Tyson has talked a lot about, is one of those
asteroids that people are keeping an eye up because, as
he says, um it is large enough to fill the
(10:34):
Rose bowl and on Friday, April nine, it will dip
below the altitude of our communication satellites. He says, if
it's trajectory on that day passes within a narrow range
of altitudes called the keyhole, then the influence of the
Earth's grabbing on his orbit will guarantee that seven years later,
in six it will hit the Earth. No that let's
(10:58):
just kind of you know, look at this in a
positive light. He says, there's a possibility it won't reach
that keyhole area and and mess with the orbit. But
it's something to keep an eye on. Yeah, and certainly
another reason that we have to track all of the
near Earth objects that could potentially pose a threat to
the planet itself or our satellite array. Um now, as
(11:19):
far as space debric gosh, as far as terrestrial space degregos.
It's also worth pointing out that a lot of these
satellites are also explosive. They have fuel on board because
they need to have a means of of going to
a higher orbit or descending to a lower one, and
therefore there's stuff on there that could blow up. And
it does blow up sometimes, Yeah, they do, and they're
not supposed to. But the fact of the matter is,
(11:40):
if you're going to maneuver it into the graveyard orbit,
you need some fuel to get in there. So it
stands to reason that there might be some fuel left over. Yeah,
all right, we're gonna take a quick break and when
we come back, we'll actually run through some possibilities of
how this would break down in the course of a
day as satellites uh blink out in the sky above.
(12:05):
All right, we're back, and we are discussing what happens
when the satellites fall? What happens when the satellites fail? Uh,
we've grown so dependent upon them, on the data they
provide us with, on the on the communications network that
they enable around the world. What happens when that goes away? Luckily? Uh,
there's a wonderful article that we found that we're gonna
(12:26):
be referencing here. Uh, and it's by Richard Hollingham of
BBC titled what would happen if all satellites stopped working?
That's right. He actually went to an international conference on
space hazards and he listened to a series of speakers
outlined doomsday scenarios, and so he thought, you know what,
to a nod to all of those out there who
(12:47):
are in charge of space chunk and satellite communications, UM,
I'm going to, like orson well, sort of compose this
article about if scenario what would happen if all the
satellites were wiped out? What would that withdrawal look like?
And the first thing that he points out is it's
(13:09):
eight am that on the day that the satellites died.
What happens you go to turn on the television set,
there's no Fox and Friends. Where Steve Doocey, where are
the said these familiar faces of the two men and
the blonde lady that that provide us with our mornings
joy and news, They're gone, just static. There should be
a new show called Two Men and a Blonde Lady.
(13:31):
I'd watch that one. Uh. Yeah, email would work in
the Internet would seem okay, but your international phone calls
would fail. And uh, this this communication systems that ties
the world together would begin to unravel. Um, so as
he says, Hollingham Hands says, rather than shrinking, it would
seem as if the Earth was getting larger. Yeah. I
(13:54):
thought that was a wonderful way to put it, because
in a sense, all of the satellites tying us together
do give us, uh a sense that we have a
location that we're Um, there's a center to all of this.
But take that away in its Yeah, and a number
of things that would occur. For in since uh drones,
military drones flying overhead, they suddenly their operators lose contact
(14:18):
with them. That's right. As you pointed out, there'd be
that loss of television radio programming, some radio programming. Um,
there would be a failure of secure satellite communication systems
left for soldiers and ships and aircraft would be cut
off from their commanders and vulnerable to attack. Yeah, and
then as they suddenly find themselves vulnerable to attack, they
(14:39):
might think, oh, who did this. I'm close to Nation X,
maybe I should we should contact Nation X and find
out what the deal is. You can't really get in
touch with Nation X because the satellites are down, so
you end up you're not able to immediately diffuse potentially
volatile situations. It's true you have world leaders who are
unsure of what steps to take or even what has happened.
(15:00):
And and also think about those UM airline flights. They're
in mid air at that very moment, the pilots aren't
able to reach anybody. Uh, they know that something is awry,
and then the passengers would be completely oblivious. Yeah, they
would just be happily oblivious on the plane while the
pilots trying to figure out how they're gonna land and
(15:20):
where they're gonna land these things. Um. Meanwhile, down below,
you're gonna have without satellite phones, You're gonna have containerships
in the Arctic, fishermen in the China see aid workers
in the Sahara. All of them just suddenly isolated from
the rest of the world. There's one electronic lifeline that
they had, you suddenly cut off from them. Um. Now,
as you said, email is gonna continue to work, Internet's
(15:40):
gonna seem to work okay, but international phone calls are
gonna start failing. If you've gone into work that morning,
your email is gonna still work all right, But if
you had a call with somebody in the UK, call
with somebody even across the country, you're not necessarily gonna
be able to make any contact with them. Now at
eleven o'clock, Hollingham says that we need to start thinking
(16:01):
about how our infrastructure is held together by time. He's
saying from time stamps on financial transactions to the protocols
that hold the Internet together. Uh. He says, when these
packets of data passed between computers and they get out
of sink, the system starts to break down, and then
without accurate time, every network controlled by computers is at risk.
(16:23):
This talks about everything. Yeah, this falls into a line
with some of the stuff we talked about in our
Nature of Time and Clocks episode. We're talking about how
there are individuals out there who say we we really
need to have like an Earth time, a solid Earth time,
And even though we don't have that in place, we
essentially have it, or at least our machines essentially have
it in their ability to sink everything together and look
(16:45):
at it in a given timescape. And as the satellites
break down here, um Hollingham is is stating that you
would see the cracks appear, and then the cracks grow larger.
Suddenly all those lines on the map um suddenly may
since again in terms of what time it is here
versus what time it is there. A drift begins to occur, right,
(17:06):
And that just reminded me about the time dilation that's
built into the algorithms for satellites when when they're trying
to sink everything together. So yeah, as you say, this
drift begins. He says the first power cuts would come
later in the evening as a transmission network struggled to
balance the demand, and he says computerized water treatments, they
(17:27):
would have engineers switching to manual backup systems, and then
in major cities, traffic lights and railway signals would be
defaulted to red. So all of a sudden, you know,
you really get these very obvious signals that the world's
out of whack. So so the traffic is just going
to come to a standstill or it's gonna be a
quagmire and uh, and people are gonna have trouble getting
(17:48):
to and from work that day. Then your phone service,
which was already kind of acting patchy, would finally fail
in the late evening. So when we take away the phone,
then you begin to cut a lifeline off of people here.
That's when you begin to really see that this is
a very serious situation, um which meanwhile, our web searches
(18:09):
are growing slower and slower for real. That's that's another
thing that starts to happen. Well, because that's the interesting
thing about those information packets, right because if you take
down with satellite, that's um that that's influencing some Internet connections,
that Internet connection will find a different route to get
that information to you. But as the system continues to
(18:30):
fail across the board, it has fewer and fewer resources
or areas to connect to. And that's where you begin
to see, Um, the Internet and email began to fail
in a in a very big way, right all Right.
Obviously aircraft have been grounded at this point because hopefully
(18:51):
anybody in the air has that they've actually landed somewhere,
they've landed, but if they're not, if they haven't landed, uh,
they don't have access to the information that there could
be some severe weather going on. That's right. We really
grow to to depend upon accurate understandings of what the
weather is doing now. Certainly our prediction models continue to
improve and have a fair amount of room for improvement,
(19:14):
but we really grow to depend upon this this accurate
snapshot of what the weather is doing now providing us
with some some rather dependable data about what it's going
to do in the immediate future. And that that affects
everything from from what is the storm system doing that
might turn into a hurricane, as to what storm systems
may be in the in the path of a given flight.
(19:34):
So how are you going to get into the airport
when you don't know what kind of storm systems may
be in the path. And you take it for granted
because everybody has heard that message that comes on the
pilots is using driven whom we are approaching some touches
of turbulence. We're gonna take it down a couple of thousand,
you know, and they don't have that information. They're flying
(19:56):
right into the eye of the hurricane or to some
other storm, and as a result, you know, you're gonna
be jostled around. And assuming that you could survive that,
because I'm sure that there are many instances that a
flight could go through the center of restorm and survive it,
you're still gonna have passengers who are severely injured. Yeah,
and then what if you have to land in Nebraska
(20:18):
and then you're you're there forever because there's no taken
back off again because the sate lights are down. How
are you You're gonna have to walk? I guess you're
in that corn field. You can't take a train, It's true,
But at least you've landed, presumably safely. Yeah. Now on
the other end of the world, you have travelers who
are stranded thousands of miles from home. And then we
(20:38):
saw some of this at play, at least in the
grounding of flights with not eleven yes, and then again
to a very limited amount of time with the volcano
eruptions in Iceland. People who grow to depend on a
pretty systematic international travel and suddenly there's a halt, and
people are just stuck somewhere, right, and the communication is
(20:59):
completely out. So you you have um survived this harrowing
journey on the plane and you're in Nebraska in the cornfield,
or you're sitting somewhere on the other side of the
world wondering what's going on with your friends and your families. Alright,
things are beginning to look look pretty grim. And again
(21:20):
it's not even a whole day that's past yet in
the scenario, uh that that the author lays out here.
So communications, transport, power, computer systems all been severely disrupted.
Global businesses ground to a halt. Uh, and it's reaching
the point where uh leaders and organizers having to worry
about food supply chains. Yeah, because your food supply chains
(21:41):
would begin to break down there and people are going
to panic and they are going to try to get
their food supplies for themselves built up. I imagine that
you begin to see some looting at this point, because
again you have uncertainty and uh, you know, there's there's
the point that this is the actual complete systems failure.
(22:03):
So in the void of information, chaos begins to rain. Yeah.
For instance, suddenly we can't monitor illegal logging in the Amazon,
you know, so it's suddenly, uh, you can just go
out and cut down whatever. And then it's also this
has brought up in another article, but GPS technology is
used to uh used often by farmers nowadays to track
(22:26):
where their cows are. Suddenly these cows just can roam
wherever they want. And also, uh, thirty rock yours think
back to Tracy Jordan's and his his his ankle band
that keeps him from leaving his house. Suddenly everyone that
is on the house arrest with their with their electronic
GPS bands, They're free to just roam the streets and
do whatever. But more to the point, civil unrest as
(22:49):
food supply chains grow uncertain and uh and those in
power having to uh introduce emergency measures to maintain order.
So in the course of just uh under a day,
we've already descended into kind of a new dark nag. Yeah,
I mean we haven't even really extrapolated that to to
what what might mean, you know, weeks from that period,
(23:09):
because you would have backup generators that nuclear power plants
that would have run down, and the electric pumps that
supply water to cooling ponds where radioactive spent fuels are
stored which shut off, So within weeks you would really
begin to see, um, the entire infrastructure crumble. And what
would that mean. I mean, in terms of dollars, it
(23:29):
would be I don't even think you could put a
price on that. But um, a rebuilding effort would take
years with that sort of full scale wipe out of satellites. Yeah,
because again, we've built this system kind of piece by piece,
and the elaborate system that we've grown to depend on. Absolutely. Yeah,
and if that's and if that's taken away from us,
(23:50):
if if that fails due to some sort of extraterrestrial
accident or terrestrial accident or terrestrial attack, then the consequences
could be pretty dire. Okay, So if you're feeling a
little bit freaked out, rest assured that this is highly
unlikely that every single satellite would be wiped out and
one fell swoop. So, yeah, we the coronal massage accidents
(24:17):
are there or there a problem right because everyone's while
they do mess with the electromagnetic field, and they do
disrupt some satellite, but you would really have to have
a doomsday wad of plasma coming at you. And some
people say, hey, we're about do because something like a
there was something called the Carrington event in which a
(24:37):
huge ball plasma came shooting at the Earth and um.
So that was a really powerful coronal mass ejection, and
it over overloaded the telegraph wires, actually setting paper messages
on fire. So you imagine what it would do then
to all of our various electronic devices. Yeah, but you
can take comfort in knowing that for the most part, Uh,
(24:58):
you know, these ejection sort of shoot out harmlessly into
other parts of the Solar System and they tend not
to hit the Earth. Yes, space is big, and the
chances of us being right there in the bull's eye
pretty slim. Yeah. And then in terms of you know,
cyber hacking, to have a across the board concerted effort
(25:19):
that would take down every single satellite would would be
I would say, incredibly hard to pull off. Yeah, I'm
not going to see impossible there No, But the idea
of like like a soul individual or even just a
few individuals carrying out such a massive hacking, um too.
It's just it's it's not likely. And I have to
say in that instance, that would definitely be cutting off
(25:40):
your nose despite your face if you are a cyber hacker,
because what do you have left to hack after that? Yeah?
I mean I could see where somebody could you know
where that would be their aim? You know, maybe your
your whole of things. You want to expose the vulnerability
of our satellite dependency. Maybe you want us to go
cold turkey. You realize we've got a problem. So what
you're doing is gonna take all the twinkies away from
it and then teach us some tough love. But but still,
(26:03):
the chances of it happening are probably pretty slim. The
chances of it of them being able to carry it
out are pretty slim, right, Or maybe you're just trying
to get one million dollars. Yes, that's so restore satellite
functionality exactly. That would would be a great Bond movie
uh plot, But like all great movie blond Bond movie plots,
it doesn't necessarily match up with reality. True and space
(26:26):
junk uh space debris asteroids. Again, you'd have to have
something that would wipe out every single style. It would
be difficult to do. It would have to be like
the ultimate pool crack shot. You know where you know
where the where they're just able to sink all the
balls at once. It's just in there are a lot
of balls up there, so it would it would be
rather difficult to pull that off. It would be I'd
(26:48):
be a lot of trigonometry there, left pocket, right pocket,
left pocket. So there you have it. Um. I think
it's it's fascinating to look at this data and to
and to really think long and hard about our depend
that's the on technology, what vulnerabilities are there. It reminds
me a lot of Stephen King's short story Trucks, but
more to the point, Stephen King's movie adaptation, his own
(27:10):
movie adaptation, Maximum Overdrive, in which all the vehicles and
the electronics and and all Man's technological devices rise up,
uh and and revolt and start running him over, at
which point I said, oh, yeah, that kids movie cars. Yeah,
well it's kind of it's kind of like cars, except
with more uh yeah, except less believable. I guess that's
(27:31):
the thing, because it was it's a rather silly movie.
I love the short story that the movie is is
just is wonderful in its own right, but very silly.
But it but it gets down to some of the
same stuff here. We grow to depend up on all
of this uh, these these artifacts that we've created, and
then what happens when they fail us, what happens when
they turn against us, or that there is quit obeying
us all together. Well, one of the things that I
(27:52):
won't go too deeply into because it could be a
podcast episode onto itself. But the fact of the matter
is that US satellites are in rapid decline and there
are very few plans to replace them. And some of
this has to do with UM governmental red tape, and
some of it just has to do with budget cuts.
But the fact of the matter is is that we
(28:12):
will begin to see a huge decline in the amount
of satellites, and some of those satellites are weather satellites,
and we'll have to start to depend on other countries
for that information. And moreover, there may not be as
sophisticated UM satellites going up or satellite information coming back
at US. So again that's for another doomsday scenario, but
(28:34):
it's probably worth mentioning as we extrap late what satellites
might mean to us in fifty years. All right, well,
let's call the robot over and uh, assuming that the
satellites still work, then the road it should be able
to provide us with some listener mail. All right, So
we recently did an episode about cubicles, cube death, open
(28:57):
floor office plans, and we receive a lot of replies
from people that that do work in cube farms, UH,
several of which mentioned that they listened to our podcast
on the way to work and we're very depressed rolling
into their their cubicles. So I wanted and we received
a lot of cool emails from people where they're just
laying out with their workspaces. But this one, I think
is UH is worth reading UH and sharing with everyone
(29:18):
because it provides kind of a possibility of hope for
anyone in a cube environment. So we heard from Joseph.
Joseph writes in and he's from Jonesboro, Arkansas. Rights and
this is Hi, Robert and Julie touching on the last
two podcasts. While at my day Jibe, I work in
a five by four work area cleaning screens used for
screen printing. The only way I keep from going insane
(29:39):
is drink a bunch of coffee, listen to allowed music
or stuff to blow your mind, and use the ink
from the screens to paint the wall behind me. I
have painted the whole wall and need suggestions on what
to do next. Uh. And he sent a picture with
this too, where it's like all these different like cubes
and then some like red handprints as well, and it
looks really really cool. Uh. And I think that that's
(30:00):
just one cool idea if your employers allow you to
do everything you can to transform that workspace into some
sort of a personal space that means something and it's beautiful. Yeah,
I mean some self expression going on there. I don't
think we could get away with that. With the painting, yeah,
I don't know we could get away with a lot.
I think at this point we don't. I mean, you
don't really have a paintable surface in our every surface
(30:23):
is paintable. Now you're you're breaking out the fabric paint here. No, yeah,
every surface is paintable. Okay, Yeah, I think it could
work all right, Yeah, ask for suggestions about what to paint. Um,
I don't know. I mean I feel like his aesthetic
is kind of uh, you know, abstract and minimalists, so
I don't feel like I can suggest, hey, why don't
you paint a squid attacking a bone because the boat,
(30:44):
because that's not really what he's doing. But what about
a concept like love or time, or a particular place,
a particular vista. I remember in the Silence of the Lambs.
Remember Hannibal Elector's painting like scenes of Florence in his
cell I remember, like he paints a window looking out,
So you could always do that. Um but but no,
(31:06):
uh yeah, I think I think the important thing about
about your cube is to is to give it some
sort of personality, make it a little less dreadful and
and and more to the point, get out of it.
Whenever you can go out for a walk, go smell
some dirt. As we discuss in the other episode from
that week. That's right, that that there is highly important
for your body to try to actually fortify itself against
(31:28):
the world, strengthen itself. All right, let's hear from one
other listener. Rachel writes in and says, Robert and Julie,
I was listening to some older episodes when I heard
your episode Unfinished Education. Wow, what a fascinating educational system
and podcast. I played it from my thirteen year old daughter,
who now wants to move to Finland. She had a
project this past school year for seventh grade called do Something,
in which she had to do something about an issue
(31:50):
she felt strongly about is about created a survey about
homework and had fifty kids take it. She found that
the amount of homework correlated to the average income in
the town and the graduation rate. She studied those results
and then wrote a letter to the President, Secretary of Education,
and govern superintendent and principle. She has heard back from
our governor, but no one else. Isabel's conclusions match a
(32:12):
lot of what sin Finland has implemented. I'm inserting her
letter now. Thank you for continuing to give us great
discussion topics, Rachel. And that letter is beautifully written and
it makes the point so well about how teaching needs
to be done in the schools and kids need to
be supported in schools and you can't just rely on
(32:32):
the families to essentially enhance the learning for a child.
Because what she said is that if you look at
the study, and you look at the informal study that
she took, that it does correlate with this idea that
families that are living in um higher scio economic brackets
are able to provide more opportunity outside of school for
for for better learning. And again her point is really
(32:55):
well taken that the learning should take place in school,
and I was just I have to say, um, really
inspired by that and very impressed. And now I feel
like I should do something excellent. Well mission accomplished then
all right. Well, as for the rest of you, if
you have something you would like to add, we would
love to hear from you being about a past episode.
(33:16):
Those are always up for a discussion, or if you
have something you want to share about satellite doom scenarios,
about our dependency on satellites. But how prepared are you
for the loss of satellites? How would it impact your life?
You know, I couldn't help but think about that. As
we were preparing this, uh this podcast episode, I would
started thinking like how much food do I have in
(33:37):
the house? Um? Not enough to survive the Santa scenario?
I think so? Yeah. And I think that if you
look at the sort of scenario a year out, you
will see that there is a measure of stability that
comes online with people. But it wouldn't be Corna McCarthy's
the road like the next day, No, but you would
you know, a year year out you would be living
(33:57):
an entirely different life that was probably more community driven,
because that's when you really began to see that the
human species has been so successful because of the cooperative effort.
It's not rugged individualism that has allowed us to to
take our position in the world. Yeah, and what would
(34:17):
happen to the last season of Magnet? Would we ever
get to see it? No? Man? Or would it? Would
it just be like a story that would be told
in different towns, and like John Ham would travel around
from village to village with a with a bindle stick
and he would he would tell you the tale of
the final since Magnet. That would be pretty great. Uh yeah,
I was about to say that there would probably be
some sort of myth making going on about what happened.
(34:41):
All right, So where do you find us? All the
usual places you go Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
That's our main website is when we throw everything we do.
You can find us in social media. We're on Facebook,
We're on Tumbler, Stuff to Blow your Mind on both
of those, and on Twitter we go by the handle
blow the Mind. And you can also drop us a
line and below the mind at Discovery dot com. For
(35:03):
more on this and thousands of other topics, visit how
staff works dot com.
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Joe McCormick
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