Communicating the end of the world

Where did it first strike? If not in the ocean, then there might have been guys just to the east of it. They'll see it go west, wreaking havoc. They'll get on the internet. The internet will stay alive for a very long time. It was, after all, designed to withstand a nuclear attack (ARPANET).

Journalist picks up wierd chat on message boards. He hangs out on AW at night, because what he really wants to be is a writer. A guy keeps posting 'The End Is Nigh' threads. Mods come in, telling him to get off. Then someone replies, saying something about a burning-ray. Wierd stuff.

Journalist goes to a gaming forum. He figures he's too tired to think about writing tonight, anyway. Wierd thing though -- here too are bizarre posts about death rays. Some guy insists he has it from his brother in the Navy that Hawaii is gone. Gone!

Intrigued now, the journalist cheks out YouTube. Searches 'death ray hawaii'. Gets two results, posted one hour ago. Grainy home video clip of what looks like a ray from space slowly moving along the ground, burning what it hits. The unseen camera man keeps swearing -- other unseen people scream, yell incomprehensibly.

The other clip. From a boat, it looks like. Maybe a yacht. An island off in the distance. And some sort of light spreading in a band from the sky. Black smoke from the island.

Now the journalist starts googling. The web is already filling with wierd reports. So he calls a colleague at the night desk, has him take a look at these things. They make some calls seperately. The military won't talk to them, but the beaureau of meteorology confirms that something is going on, but can't say anything more at the moment. No calls to Hawaii get through.

The two journalists decide that whatever is going on, it's not nothing. Tomorrow maybe, they'll know, and whatever it is, it will be news everywhere. But right now, these two guys have the chance to break the story -- even if they're not entirely sure what the story is.

They guy at the night desk decides to to a short article on what they have: Hawaii apparently cut off from the outside world. He sends it to the web editor on duty, who puts it up as an ongoing story on the paper's website.

From there the story spreads lightening quick. Newspeople all over the world start digging, doing their own research. Within 12 hours all the world knows. The US military has tracked this thing, and knows what it's doing. By now, Sydney, Australia is gone. In fact, the entire east coast of Australia is obliterated. Japan is gone.

Now's the time for global panic.

A tsunami wave travels near the speed of sound across the ocean. Yet the idea of a tsunami warning system is based on existing technology. communication satelites, terrestrial radio, undersea cables, can all pass the warning to islands and coastal areas that will be hit hours later.

Yeah, ham radio is still active and still helping out at disaster areas by providing communication services. they can bounce messages pretty far, but they also broadcast and people who pick it up will repeat it from their location.

Uh, my question to you is, where are you going to evacuate people TO? if this thing is wiping out everything on the planet, there isn't anywhere to go to. If the "field" leaves nothign but dirt and wipes out satellites, people can go underground, but how deep is deep enough? And what will they do on a dead rock of a planet after the attack is over?

what sort of weapon has a narrow beam that is 8 thousand miles long and vaporizes eveything in its path for 24 hours straight?

no, I don't think the rest of us would be oblivious. if nothing else, internet tech people who monitor the health of company networks would quickly become aware that Hawaii isn't responding to "ping" anymore. then California. Figure how many people are in the areas first hit and how many of them are talking long distance to people outside the area at any given time. I don't think it would take long for word on teh street to be that something massively wrong is going on.

yikes!

interesting post and interesting question

if the force had some kind of magentic field associated with it (laser, EMP, cosmic ray never known to man before, sound wave?, Alien attack from afar, haha), it might just knock out all electronic communication over half of the world in an instant, or at least one-third; the third facing the attacker. That might also affect air-wave and micro-wave propagation.

Also, the earth would probably become very unstable very quickly, in it's rotation and it's axis, meaning it wouldn't take 24 hours for the Earth to be destroyed. The atmosphere would more than likely evaporate leaving the Earth to choke in it's own vomit of debris and dust with the Magma Core rushing to the Earth's crust fracturing the already brittle surface.

I don't see how any kind of communication would last for more than a few hours, if at all. More than likely, mass hysteria, looting, spiritual awakening would result in a world in chaos. There might be a few rogue spots that weren't affected by the blast, dust, magma or loss of atmosphere. But I would assume those would be the first to go or not be fit for world-wide communication, let alone the island next door.

If magma, loss of atmosphere, dust and debris, and Earth's loss of rotation or axis didn't occur, then it's possible the transmission would be internet communication since the world knew within an hour what had happened with 9/11 or with Kuwait.

One question, didn't NASA see it coming?

J.J.Hamilton said:

Also, the earth would probably become very unstable very quickly, in it's rotation and it's axis,

Click to expand...

This makes no sense. You'd need a seriously big impact or a major gravity disruption to unstable the planet. Unless this is some sort of gravity beam, it won't do anything of the sort.