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Revelations of the Future KindPlease help us keep this site onlineThis page last updated on or about 12-5-04(Free JavaScripts provided by The JavaScript Source) |
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This page mostly serves as a reference/index/portal to future-related sites around the world; if you'd prefer the latest news about these matters instead, try my What's New and News and Magazines pages.
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The Signposts Timeline is an entire illustrated book online, offering an in-depth look at what I regard to be the most likely long term scenario ahead of us in terms of technology and social change. I've so far spent more than ten years doing research related to this work. Major updates and expansions to the site typically are made every 3-6 months.
The small file size limit was meant to discourage use of the system for trading copyrighted works like videos and music. The system didn't include a search function either-- another element hoped to minimize its use as an instrument of piracy.
Unfortunately, it appeared that censorship remained alive and well in Publius-- as those in charge were essentially making it impossible for anyone to post files which they (the controllers) considered uninteresting. This selective posting filter was said to be there to prevent the system's use for pornography, piracy, and terrorism-- but there appeared to be no safeguards to prevent the censors from banning political material they disliked, too.
Of course, if there were to develop a multitude of similar systems on the internet, but each with its own varying standards regarding the filtering of material, perhaps censorship overall might someday be defeated.
| -- AT&T vows no censorship on new network By John Borland, CNET News.com August 7, 2000, URL: http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1004-200-2458275.html |
Really all that stands between us and total annihilation now and for centuries to come is our capacity to compromise, understand, and tolerate one another with a minimum of violence and suffering for all. And I speak here of the full range of human experience, from schoolyard fights among children to domestic violence in the home to nuclear and biological warfare between superpowers. Hopefully links like Yahoo! Social Science:Peace and Conflict, People On War and World Problems and Global Issues Project might give us some useful starting points.
If you expect or wish for an apocalyptic post nuclear war world resembling the "Mad Max" films, then you might need or want to spend a few thousand dollars at http://www.loompanics.com/.
Forbidden knowledge. Taboo Topics. At some point in their life, almost everyone wants something along these lines. http://www.loompanics.com/ is one of the major sources.
It's been years since I personally perused a Loompanics catalog, so it may have changed some. But back then it was sort of a survivalist's/anarchist's smorgasbord of info on just about anything 'outside the boundaries' you might want to know. Lock picking, guns, growing marijuana, martial arts, guerilla warfare, the underground economy, solar and wind power, you name it, they had it. Basically Loompanics seems to try to offer you info about how to be self-sufficient to the point of extremism, and achieve dominance over any possible foe, on any possible battleground, be it nuclear war, hacking, a stand off with the feds, etc., etc., in order to do what you damn well please, and to hell with everyone else.
Of course, excessive self-sufficiency-- especially to the point of belligerency-- just isn't practical, convenient, or desirable for hardly anyone these days (try reloading your spent ammo casings, grinding your own wheat and making bread every day, or manufacturing your own toilet paper-- it's much harder, expensive, and time consuming to do so manually than you might expect). And as technology and the economy continue to advance, excessive self-sufficiency and related goals only become that much harder to achieve and live with, comparatively speaking. Of course, it might not hurt to have a general purpose library of such information around (as well as a few other judiciously chosen supplies) just in case nuclear holocaust surprises us all anyway, leaving us to cope with a Mad Max world after all. On the other hand, life would be so hard and painful afterwards, who'd want to live there? And civilization-as-we-know-it likely could never climb back up from the ashes again, since we will have already used up all the easy-to-get-at petrochemicals and minerals on the planet. So most of us could probably just get a good book with the formulas for making up some nice suicide pills or potions for such an eventuality, and forget about spending tens of thousands of dollars on guns and other survivalist tools for a 'Mad Max' scenario.
Having said all this, I still think some folks might find more limited and practical uses for some of Loompanics' materials. For example, I know of quite a few folks who became better people after some Loompanics books showed them how truly easy and mindless destruction really is. The capacity to destroy or kill something is rarely something to brag about, in the modern world. Everything dies or breaks down on its own eventually, without any help at all. It's called entropy. So how dopey do you have to be to think you're hot stuff if you can kill something or destroy it? Trashing stuff is easy-- it's creating it that's hard. A toddler that can't even talk yet is capable of pulling the trigger on a gun and killing someone. The same goes for a monkey. Do you know of grown men who actually brag about having these same abilities as a toddler or a monkey? I do.
Don't get me wrong. I own various weapons, and will shoot anyone trying to harm me or mine through violence. I also keep a few hundred rounds of ammo in storage just in case of a few weeks of local crisis coming about for some reason I can't anticipate right now. Besides having guns/ammo for defense, you might have to hunt down dinner, too. But I dislike talking about guns, or even having lots of money invested in them. I worry a lot about guns sharing households with young children, and urge parents to keep such guns locked up, and also to train their youngsters (and spouses) to safely handle guns as early as possible, to minimize accidents. The physical recoil and ear-splitting report of gunfire from most weapons, experienced firsthand under adult supervision, might be one of the best ways to insure your child will never treat a real gun as a toy. For this reason I'm not too keen for children's first experiences with firearms to involve only BB guns or .22 caliber weapons. Small caliber firearms or BB guns use exclusively might make kids regard real firearms too casually for their own good. Therefore I recommend their first experiences be with something like a 12 gauge shotgun or large caliber pistol. Keep in mind you may have have to physically help them fire such weapons, depending on the kids' ages. And the shotgun might leave a nasty shoulder bruise, if held incorrectly.
And yes, I realize some folks will say it sounds like I'm trying to unnecessarily scare young folks during their first gun experiences-- and they are correct. Kids must learn respect for firearms early on, in order to reduce their risk of accidents with the weapons later. In my opinion, those kids most at risk for firearms accidents and injury are those who know nothing about them whatsoever but for TV or films, and/or are allowed or encouraged to use toy guns, BB guns, and .22 caliber weapons, to the exclusion of heavier weapons.
PLEASE take every precaution you can to prevent your firearms from becoming a source of injury or death for anyone's children, including your own.
Though various crises that might lead to local anarchy for some vicinities in years to come are described in the Signposts Timeline, I don't expect more than a few weeks of horrendous turmoil such as that to occur in the continental USAmerica any time soon. The rest of the world, however, is another matter-- as Asia, Africa, and parts of South America have been for quite some time now, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.
EQUIPPED TO SURVIVE, Frugal Squirrel's Homepage for Patriots and Survivalists, and Kroll-O'Gara, The Risk Mitigation Company are more suvivalist type resources...
...while NOVA Online | Escape! may be a more general purpose (but still related) resource.
Getting a little further out there is Information Unlimited - Science Projects, Electronics Kits, Lasers,Tesla Coils, High Voltage Engineering, Plans, Books, Parts, Kits.
Infiltration: the zine about going places you're not supposed to go, Urban Spelunking, and Society for Underwater Exploration might be handy sources of tips for some theoretical survival-related missions; here's you one great tip for the early 21st century folks-- most security measures of the time offer little or no resistance to airborne incursions-- i.e., there's few fences around capable of keeping out small aircraft-- especially those with virtually no runway needs for launching or landing. Make the craft very quiet, and capable of maneuvering in darkness and below radar, and the thing will be virtually invisible and unstoppable. Single person motorized ultralights plus night vision equipment can fit this bill at present-- although one-man balloons and gliders could also be utilized given sufficient proficiency and preparation. WARNING: Power lines and the towers which support them are the biggest threat to covert operations like these today, as they are often UN-lighted or otherwise well marked from the air. Secondary low altitude threats include trees/foliage and mountains (but at the typical speeds we're talking here the pilot shouldn't impact very hard). Tertiary threats include similar weather hazards to those small boat and conventional small aircraft owners should stay alert for; don't mount an assault in the face of bad weather unless you judge it truly worth the risk of life and limb.
Nuclear BlastMapper shows the devastation region of nuclear blasts for various locations (get a preview of world war III here), while Nuclear Forces Guide displays who has what in the way of the latest nuclear weaponry (at least according to public and official sources).
Unfortunately, the gravest threats we may face between 2000 and 2015 are likely biochemical weapons use and development, and environmental damage stemming from human activities-- and any purely natural phenomenon like a major volcanic eruption blanketing the planet in ash clouds for several years or longer would only amplify the bad news from the first two items. My own take on the threat can be found in Biochemical weapons and related defenses; status of infectious disease worldwide; hazardous waste disposal/recycling (1998-2013). Other links relating to these matters include the following:
Emerging Infectious Diseases Journal, Biological Weapons FAQ, Terrorist Use of Chemical Weapons, The Hidden Killers, EPIDEMIC | the world of infectious diseases, and Climate Change and Human Health offer information on these topics.
Catastrophism, Lost Prehistoric Civilizations, Forgotten Technologies, and Missed Opportunities:
Surprising facts and possibilities regarding prehistoric catastrophism, lost civilizations and technologies, and astonishing evolutionary twists
A possible history of the Antarctic and Kerguelen continents (544 million BC through the present) Antarctica exists as a warm, lush place for millions of years, connecting with other continents via tectonics frequently enough to host a diversity of life as rich as anywhere else on Earth. It's very possible that many species of dinosaur and other animals evolved there that remain unknown to us today-- since eventually Antarctica turned frigid, and became ice-covered.
A lost civilization on the Kerguelen continent, circa 21 million BC? In the deep south of the Indian Ocean, a whole lost continent a third the size of Australia nestled close to Antarctica throughout much of Antarctica's warm past. It could well have shared much of Antarctica's diversity of life forms. If an unknown pseudo-primate rose to human-like status there, it could have enjoyed many millions of years to first evolve and later develop technology and civilization; it could have even made the leap to space, before its home continent finally sank beneath the seas around 20 million BC. Twenty million years later it could be tough to find any sign of them on Earth, without substantial exploration of the undersea Kerguelen plateau, now under kilometers of water for the most part. This region is so remote and (today) inhospitable, very little study has so far been done upon even the plateau's highest mountain peaks, which still protrude above sea level as islands.
If you want a glimpse of what may be coming in the first stage of all this (VR), a good place to start may be humanity's ancestral mythology and legends, dreams, nightmares, and fantasies as linked below. Imagine a VR park where you really can visit a thriving Olympus or Asgard...(other good VR bets are the sci fi links listed further down on this page)
Of course, the timeline and perspectives above represent merely my background research towards a greater goal: writing the online science fiction novel The Chance of a Realtime. I hope you enjoy it!
