You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News Page 18
THE good news is that most of the spectacular natural disasters Hollywood and the mainstream media worry over are either exaggerated or totally made up. The bad news: nature is chock-full of ticking time bombs quietly waiting to turn the world into one of the scary books in the Bible, and you’ve probably never heard of any of them.
4. DISASTER BY LAND!
What they said to worry about: the San Andreas Fault
You may remember when Lex Luthor tried to set the San Andreas to “coast disintegrating earthquake” mode in 1977’s Superman , or when it shook LA right off the continental shelf in the NBC miniseries 10.5. There’s even a geophysics professor who believes it will destroy LA sometime in the next decade with an earthquake he’s creatively nicknamed “the Big One.” While we’re in no place to argue with a geophysics professor, or even know if that’s a real profession, we can tell you Saint Andrew’s not the guy you should be worried about.
What you should worry about: the New Madrid Fault Line
The New Madrid Seismic Zone stretches from Illinois to Alabama and doesn’t care how unimpressive its IMDb page is. See, it’s not in the business of destroying recognizable landmarks. It drinks terror piss and eats nightmares, and it wants to make sure America’s always stocked with both.
And it can do it too.
Being underneath fly-over country makes its job easier, and not just because Alabama’s sewage system was built with balsa wood and slave labor. Its landlocked location means the New Madrid can wreck your shit from five states away. Coastal towns like Los Angeles are actually better off in an earthquake, since a good portion of the fury gets dissipated out to sea. No such luck for anyone living in the New Madrid’s million-square-mile seismic zone.
In 1968, it wrecked the civic building in Henderson, Kentucky, and made buildings sway in Boston and twenty-three other freaking states. That’s pretty terrifying when you realize that the quake’s epicenter was in Illinois. And that was just a blip compared to the New Madrid sequence, a series of 1811- 12 quakes that registered over an 8.0 on the Richter scale (multiple times), cracked sidewalks from Missouri to Baltimore, and permanently altered the course of the Mississippi River. The few unlucky bastards already living in the Midwest at the time saw waves rushing up rivers and something called “sand volcanoes.” Not content with claiming mere human casualties, the New Madrid took down the entire town of Little Prairie, Missouri, when it liquidated the ground it was built on. We’re not exaggerating. The entire town was just swallowed by the ground. It no longer exists. Try to imagine the ground you’re standing on suddenly going from solid to liquid, as though the earth, like you, was pissing itself uncontrollably. Now think about the fact that some moron took the land over the New Madrid Seismic Zone and built a large portion of America on top of it. Consider yourself warned.
3. DISASTER AT SEA!
What they told you to worry about: rogue tsunami!
In The Day After Tomorrow, New York City residents are blind-sided when the Statue of Liberty disappears into a gray-green mist of surging seawater. The Poseidon Adventure opened with a rogue wave flipping a cruise ship like a bathtub toy. The actual tsunami in 2004 seemed to come out of nowhere, wiping out entire swaths of Thailand. While the causes of the real and fictional waves were all different, one thing that seems to be clear is that tsunamis can rise out of the sea without warning and ruin your shit. Hey, at least there’s no sense in worrying about something we can’t see coming, right? Right?
What you should worry about: the collapse of Cumbre Vieja
If a volcanic ridge in the Canary Islands falls into the Atlantic Ocean and no one is around, does it make a noise? Well, not at first. The surge of furious seawater still has to rush across the pitch black ocean floor at the speed of a fighter jet. About six hours later, however, East Coast residents would begin to hear something like a thousand freight trains rushing up out of the ocean, followed by all 110 million of their uniquely ridiculous accents merging as one to scream, “Oh shit!”
After that, not much sound.
Cumbre Vieja is a cantankerous little volcano that’s erupted seven times in the last five hundred years. A group of British scientists predict that a future eruption may crack the volcano in two, sending an avalanche of rock “the size of the Isle of Man” (translated into American: Chicago) hurtling into the ocean. The resulting shockwave would reach speeds of eight hundred kilometers per hour and submerge the East Coast under fifty-meter waves (five hundred miles per hour and, “Holy shit, run!” respectively).
So Hollywood got a few details right: the Statue of Liberty being blinked out behind a surging wall of green-gray water, for instance. But it won’t be some one-in-a-million rogue wave or fixable environmental selfishness. Just physics.
In everyday terms, the entire East Coast is sitting next to a pool telling the kids in the shallow end to watch their damned splashing while a giant fat guy bounces up and down on the diving board, screaming, “Cannonball!” at the top of his lungs.
2 AND 1. DISASTER FROM SPACE!
What they told you to worry about: asteroids and comets!
When discussing asteroids, comets, and other celestial debris that pass close to our planet, scientists use the bland, awkward term near-earth objects. In early 2009, NASA published a fourteen-page document detailing how it would stop an incoming earth smasher. The paper reads like stereo instructions, but the big points get across: we’d have plenty of warning time to pull the object away or deflect it, just like in Armageddon. This is the rare case where Hollywood actually proposed a reasonable solution. Probably because the really terrifying shit wouldn’t make such a good movie since there’s absolutely dick that we could do to stop it.
What you should be worried about: solar ejections!
Take for example, the solar ejection. It could be poor self-image, or heavy space drinking, but every once in a while the sun starts projectile vomiting. Instead of chunks of HotPockets and Jello shots, though, the sun spews radiation, often giving off the equivalent of a few million atom bombs in an hour or two. Usually, by the time the radiation reaches the earth, all that’s left is a harmless light show. But in 1859, a huge solar ejection disrupted all the high technology of the day. Luckily, it was 1859, so the damage was limited to telegraph lines and countless monocles dropped in surprise. If they’d been so foolish as to build a fancy global economy that required information technology to function, power lines would have been fried, satellites destroyed, and cell phones rendered useless. It would have frozen civilization and cost trillions of dollars.
Thankfully, people in the past weren’t complete idiots.
Oh, also: deadly gamma rays from space
When our farty little sun dies in about 5 billion years, it will expand into a sickly red dwarf that will engulf the earth in a fiery apocalypse. But there are many stars fifty to one hundred times larger than our sun that will go hypernova when they kick the bucket, spewing deadly gamma rays across the galaxy. If we’re lucky, the exact right amount will hit the earth, transforming everyone into giant green-skinned monsters with anger issues.
If we’re less lucky, and the wrong star explodes, it would end life as we know it. (See how unlucky that is?) Ten seconds of gamma rays could deplete half the ozone layer, allowing our sun to sneak in and fry us all to a crispy golden brown. The most likely candidate for this sunburned apocalypse is Eta Carinae—it’s a scant 7,500 light-years away and scientists predict it will go boom very soon. That’s less helpful than you think—on a galactic scale “very soon” could be a million years from now or tomorrow. The only thing that we really know is that when it arrives, even if every scientific community from around the globe combines forces with Bruce Willis and the worst power ballad ever written by Aerosmith, ain’t shit we can do to stop it.
FIVE PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPERIMENTS THAT PROVE HUMANITY IS DOOMED
YOU have to be careful when you go poking around the human mind, because you can’t be sure what you’ll find there. A number
of psychological experiments over the years have yielded terrifying conclusions, not about the occasional psychopath, but about you.
5. THE GOOD SAMARITAN EXPERIMENT (1973)
The setup
Naming their study after the biblical story in which a Samaritan helps an enemy in need, psychologists John Darley and C. Daniel Batson wanted to test if religion has any effect on helpful behavior. So they gathered a group of seminary students and asked half of them to deliver a sermon about the Good Samaritan in another building. The other half were told to give a speech about job opportunities, and members of both groups were given varying amounts of time to prepare and get across campus to deliver their sermons, ensuring some students were in more of a hurry when heading to deliver the good news.
On the way to give their speech, the subjects would pass a person slumped in an alleyway, who looked to be in need of help.
The result
The people who had been studying the Good Samaritan story did not stop any more often than the ones preparing a speech on job opportunities. The only factor that made a difference was how much of a hurry the students were in.
If pressed for time, only 10 percent would stop to give any aid, even when they were on their way to give a sermon about how awesome it is to stop and give aid.
What this says about you
As much as we like to make fun of anti-gay congressmen who get caught gaying it up in a men’s bathroom, the truth is that we’re just as likely to be hypocrites. After all, it’s much easier to talk to a room full of people about helping strangers than, say, to actually touch a bleeding homeless man.
And in case you thought these results were restricted to seminary students, in 2004 a BBC article reported on some disturbing footage captured by the camera of a parked public bus. In the tape, an injured twenty-five-year-old woman lies bleeding profusely in a London road, while dozens of passing motorists swerve to avoid her, without stopping.
To be fair, the report doesn’t mention if there was anything good on TV that night, so they might have had somewhere really important to be.
4. THE STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT (1971)
The setup
You may have heard of the Stanford Prison Experiment, in which psychologist Philip Zimbardo transformed the Stanford Psychology Department’s basement into a mock prison. But you probably didn’t know just how ashamed it should make you to be a human being.
Seventy young men responded to a newspaper ad soliciting volunteers for an experiment. Zimbardo then gave each volunteer a test to evaluate their health and mental stability, and divided the most stable men arbitrarily into twelve guards and twelve prisoners.
Zimbardo wanted to test how captivity affects subjects put in positions of authority and submission. The simulation was planned to run for two weeks.
The result
It took less than one day for every subject to go crazier than a shit-house rat. On day two, prisoners staged a riot and barricaded their cells with their beds. The guards saw this as a pretty good excuse to start squirting fire extinguishers at the insurgents because, hey, why not?
The Stanford prison continued to ricochet around in hell for a while. Guards began forcing inmates to sleep naked on the concrete, restricting bathroom use, making prisoners do humiliating exercises and clean toilets with their bare hands. Incredibly, it never occurred to participants to simply ask to be let out of the damned experiment, even though they had absolutely no legal reason to be imprisoned.
Over fifty outsiders stopped to observe the simulation, but the morality of the trial was never questioned until Zimbardo’s girlfriend, Christina Maslach, strongly objected. After six days, Zimbardo put a halt to the experiment.
What this says about you
Ever been harassed by a cop who acted like a complete douchebag for no reason? The Stanford Prison Experiment indicates that if the roles were reversed, you’d likely act the same way.
As it turns out, it’s usually fear of repercussion that keeps us from torturing our fellow human beings. Give us absolute power and a blank check from our superiors, and Abu Ghraib- style naked pyramids are sure to follow. If it can happen to the sanest 35 percent of a group of hippie college students, it sure as hell could happen to you.
3. BYSTANDER APATHY EXPERIMENT (1968)
The setup
When a woman was murdered in 1964, the New York Times reported that thirty-eight people had heard or seen the attack but did nothing. John Darley and Bibb Latane wanted to know if the fact that these people were in a large group played any role in the reluctance to come to the victim’s aid.
The psychologists invited a group of volunteers to an “extremely personal” discussion and separated them into different rooms with intercoms, purportedly to protect anonymity.
During the conversation, one of the members would fake an epileptic seizure. We’re not sure how they conveyed, via intercom, that what was happening was a seizure, but we’re assuming the words, “Wow this is quite an epileptic seizure I’m having,” were uttered.
The result
When subjects believed that they were the only other person in the discussion, 85 percent were heroic enough to leave the room and seek help once the seizure started. This makes sense. Having an extremely personal conversation is difficult enough, but being forced to continue to carry on the conversation alone is just sad.
However, when the experiment was altered so that subjects believed four other people were in the discussion, only 31 percent went to look for help once the seizure began. The rest assumed someone else would take care of it.
What this says about you
Obviously if there’s an emergency and you’re the only one around, the pressure to help increases massively since you feel 100 percent responsible. But when you’re with ten other people, you feel approximately 10 percent as responsible. Problem: so does everybody else.
This sheds some light on our previous examples. Maybe the drivers who swerved around the injured woman in the road would have stopped if they’d been alone on a deserted highway. Then again, maybe they’d be even more likely to abandon her since nobody was watching.
We just need the slightest excuse to do nothing.
2. THE ASCH CONFORMITY EXPERIMENT (1953)
The setup
Solomon Asch wanted to run studies to document the power of conformity, for the purpose of depressing everyone who would ever read the results.
Subjects were told they’d be taking part in a vision test. They were shown a line, and then several lines of varying sizes to the right of the first line. All they had to do was say which line on the right matched the original. The answer was objectively obvious.
The catch was that everybody in the room other than one subject had been instructed to give the same obviously wrong answer.
Would the subject go against the crowd when the crowd was clearly wrong?
The result
If three others in the classroom gave the same wrong answer, even when the line was plainly off by several inches, one in three subjects would follow the group right off the proverbial cliff.
What this says about you
Imagine how much that figure inflates when the answers are less black and white. We all laugh with the group even when we don’t get the joke or doubt our opinion when we realize it’s unpopular.
“Well, it’s a good thing I’m a rebellious nonconformist,” you might say. Of course, once you decide to be a nonconformist the next step is to find out what the other nonconformists are doing and make sure you’re nonconforming correctly.
1. MILGRAM (1961) AND MILGRAM 2 (1972): ELECTRIC BOOGALOO
The setup
At the Nuremberg trials, many of the Nazis tried to excuse their behavior by claiming they were just following orders. So in 1961, Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted the infamous Milgram Experiment, testing subjects’ willingness to obey an authority figure.
Each subject was told they were a “teacher” and that
their job was to give a memory test to a man (actually an actor) located in another room. Subjects were told that whenever the other guy gave an incorrect answer, they were to press a button that would give him an electric shock.
As far as the subjects knew, the shocks were real, starting at 45 volts and increasing with every wrong answer. Each time they pushed the button, the actor would scream and beg for the subject to stop.
The result
Many subjects began to feel uncomfortable after a certain point and questioned continuing the experiment. However, each time a guy in a lab coat encouraged them to continue, most subjects followed orders, delivering shocks of higher and higher voltage despite the victims’ screams.
Eventually, the actor would start banging on the wall that separated him from the subject, pleading about his heart condition. After further shocks, all sounds from the victim’s room would cease, indicating he was dead or unconscious. Take a guess, what percentage of the subjects kept delivering shocks after that point?
Between 61 and 66 percent of subjects continued the experiment until it reached the maximum voltage of 450, continuing to deliver shocks after the victim had, for all they knew, been zapped into unconsciousness or the afterlife.
Most subjects wouldn’t begin to object until after 300-volt shocks. Exactly zero asked to stop the experiment before that point (pro tip in case you’re ever faced with a similar dilemma: Under the right circumstances 110-230 volts is enough to kill a man).
The Milgram Experiment immediately became famous for what it implied about humanity’s capacity for evil. But by 1972, some of his colleagues decided that Milgram’s subjects must have known the actor was faking. In an attempt to disprove his findings, Charles Sheridan and Richard King took the experiment a step further, asking subjects to shock a puppy every time it disobeyed an order. Unlike Milgram’s experiment, this shock was real. Exactly twenty out of twenty-six subjects went to the highest voltage.