may significantly reduce the x-risk posed by many other x-risk categories (bioengineered threats, catastrophic climate change, global nuclear catastrophe, grey goo scenarios, etcetera)
Wouldn’t Earth after catastrophic climate change or global nuclear war be still more livable than Mars? If we are OK with living in shielded colonies with artificial atmosphere and controlled climate, why not build them on Earth? We wouldn’t suffer from low gravity here.
If we consider malicious actions (like a big war), such colonies on Earth are just too convenient for military installations to be left untouched.
Mars colony is too far away to be able to deal a sneak attack; so wiping it is not as urgent, and after 3 hours there are no rockets anywhere on Earth for next 5 years.
Also, I am not sure that the cheapest way to “filter CO2 and CO, boost O2” is more expensive than “filter all possible chemical weapons and kill all designer bacteria”.
Whether a war that realy destroys every human (maybe not immediately, but over the range of a century) is likely is another question.
Of course, intact Mars colony would also have to keep quite a lot of physics, engineering and biology knowledge even if some of it were lost on Earth.
If we can transport 80,000 humans to Mars and keep them alive there long-term, we have the tech necessary to wipe out those Martian colonies as surely as comparable ones on Earth.
Fair enough—I tend to figure at the point where we’re talking about people knowingly taking actions that they are pretty sure will result in the extinction of local humanity, the additional motive to grab those guys over there within easy reach is not hard to tack on.
Well, it does look likely (not guaranteed—just 50% likely) that the primary target for the strike would be The Enemy (China-USA-Russia-EU-India-whoever). From what is publically known, the prepared plans from 20th century referred to first-strike/revenge dynamics...
Risking extinction on the Earth could be done just to slightly improve your chances not to be enslaved in the fallout or at least not to let The Enemy get away less destroyed than you. It means that you spend all that you can on your selected targets.
Africa would (except South Africa, maybe) would be collateral damage; striking Mars would be expending a lot of resources on bystanders.
If Mars has some interplanetary weapons, it can 1) credibly claim neutrality (we don’t even trade with any side—not that we could hide that...) and 2) try to destroy strike from Earth mid-transit (Mars has months to prepare interceptors, and doing counter-interception maneouvres during interplanetary flight is very expensive).
Radiation levels immediately following a nuclear war might be much worse than Martian radiation levels. Moreover, even if is Earth more habitable after the war, if everyone on Earth is dead, this won’t matter very much.
It the war killed everybody, including those who have moved to the hypothetical Mars-style colonies (on Earth), then yes. That would have to be a pretty intensive war, though.
It is much easier for the nuclear war on Earth to accidentally kill essentially everyone even as Mars is left alone (simply because no attacks occur on Mars at all). But I agree that this isn’t a very likely scenario.
Wouldn’t Earth after catastrophic climate change or global nuclear war be still more livable than Mars? If we are OK with living in shielded colonies with artificial atmosphere and controlled climate, why not build them on Earth? We wouldn’t suffer from low gravity here.
If we consider malicious actions (like a big war), such colonies on Earth are just too convenient for military installations to be left untouched.
Mars colony is too far away to be able to deal a sneak attack; so wiping it is not as urgent, and after 3 hours there are no rockets anywhere on Earth for next 5 years.
Also, I am not sure that the cheapest way to “filter CO2 and CO, boost O2” is more expensive than “filter all possible chemical weapons and kill all designer bacteria”.
Whether a war that realy destroys every human (maybe not immediately, but over the range of a century) is likely is another question.
Of course, intact Mars colony would also have to keep quite a lot of physics, engineering and biology knowledge even if some of it were lost on Earth.
If we can transport 80,000 humans to Mars and keep them alive there long-term, we have the tech necessary to wipe out those Martian colonies as surely as comparable ones on Earth.
I agree on the technology. I’m not sure though that people would have the same degree of motivation to actually do it.
Fair enough—I tend to figure at the point where we’re talking about people knowingly taking actions that they are pretty sure will result in the extinction of local humanity, the additional motive to grab those guys over there within easy reach is not hard to tack on.
Well, it does look likely (not guaranteed—just 50% likely) that the primary target for the strike would be The Enemy (China-USA-Russia-EU-India-whoever). From what is publically known, the prepared plans from 20th century referred to first-strike/revenge dynamics...
Risking extinction on the Earth could be done just to slightly improve your chances not to be enslaved in the fallout or at least not to let The Enemy get away less destroyed than you. It means that you spend all that you can on your selected targets.
Africa would (except South Africa, maybe) would be collateral damage; striking Mars would be expending a lot of resources on bystanders.
If Mars has some interplanetary weapons, it can 1) credibly claim neutrality (we don’t even trade with any side—not that we could hide that...) and 2) try to destroy strike from Earth mid-transit (Mars has months to prepare interceptors, and doing counter-interception maneouvres during interplanetary flight is very expensive).
Radiation levels immediately following a nuclear war might be much worse than Martian radiation levels. Moreover, even if is Earth more habitable after the war, if everyone on Earth is dead, this won’t matter very much.
It the war killed everybody, including those who have moved to the hypothetical Mars-style colonies (on Earth), then yes. That would have to be a pretty intensive war, though.
It is much easier for the nuclear war on Earth to accidentally kill essentially everyone even as Mars is left alone (simply because no attacks occur on Mars at all). But I agree that this isn’t a very likely scenario.