Once we were kings

Dr Fahim Chand | Monday July 11, 2022 06:00

Early man would have difficulty surviving a physical encounter with a Sabre tooth tiger.

Fortunately, the earth’s creative force evolved our synaptic exertions to allow for rational thought and inventiveness. It is this ability that allowed humans to morph into the dominant species on this planet.

Man’s neuronal buzz allowed us to fashion weapons such as spears and bow and arrows that tilted survivals playing field firmly in our favour. This cognitive renaissance allowed us not only to protect ourselves, but to use the conquered animals for food and clothing. Since that premier encounter, humanity’s intellectual prowess has known no bounds.

It is this unstoppable torrent of ability that has allowed us to develop not only medicine to protect and cure us, but to launch probes into space to allow us to explore and learn about the cosmos.

As we have forged ahead to not just conquer, but dominate our own planet, we have claimed our status as kings. But have we been benevolent and thoughtful rulers of our realm? We have forged ahead destroying our natural habitat for our own selfish gains, trespassed into neighbouring countries snatching and destroying along the way. Our egos exaggerated with each passing moment amidst the idea that we are invincible. But nothing is invincible. As we stand back and survey our environment, there are battles that have been lost.

Earthquakes, tsunamis and other natural disasters have destroyed property and extinguished lives, exposing the chinks in our supposedly indomitable armour. Hollywood has taken this apocalyptic concept and exploited it to its maximum potential. The industry is filled with cash generating blockbusters showing us as vulnerable and at nature’s mercy, but humanity always triumphs, as it must, at the end.

But real life is not penned as a Hollywood script. Could those apocalyptic visions transform into reality and cause humanity to lose the war? As we perch on our elevated pedestals, recent events have shaken our bloated psyche. In 2011, Matt Damon’s medical thriller Contagion entertained its way into our lives as he fought a battle to contain a deadly virus.

I’m not sure anybody in their wildest dreams might have imagined art imitating reality. And yet in March 2020, Damon’s fictional world transformed into our actuality. The only difference, there was no popcorn and as yet no happy ending. COVID-19 compelled us to our knees. Our distended egos as masters of this planet humbled into the reality that we were kings in our own minds only. Nature had other ideas.

But if we look back, history had already warned us that we were not always masters of our own destiny. What happened to the dinosaurs? Evidence suggests an asteroid impact was the main cause of their annihilation.

The Chicxulub crater buried below the Gulf of Mexico provides the proof that a Mount Everest-sized space rock was indeed the catalyst to the extinction of the creatures. But could a cataclysmic cosmic event occur today that would threaten life on earth? As we gaze up to the sky, we acknowledge that the universe’s divine force has enabled the sun to power all processes on earth. Without which, our floating rock would freeze and life would cease to exist. But could the sun, our cosmic sustainer turn the tables and exterminate life on earth? The sun, a flaming mass of gaseous activity, when paired with its magnetic field can trap matter. The dark areas created are called sunspots. These can then be violently released as magnetised plasma called photons. Most of these come nowhere near earth.

Though in 1859 one of these cosmic bullets reached earth and knocked out the nascent telegraph system, while providing some unwanted night time fireworks over New York City. In 1989, a moderate storm left Quebec in the dark for nine hours as it overloaded the regional electrical grid. The damage from these cosmic phenomena is directly proportional to humanity’s reliance on advanced technology; more grounded electronics, more risk.

Today, if a coronal mass ejection were to approach earth, we would only be able to assess its threat level when the cloud reaches the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a satellite a million miles from earth. Should the clouds magnetic orientation be dangerous, it would provide us at most ONE hour of warning before impact.

On impact it would knock out the electricity grid if transformers are not protected by capacitors and navigation and communication systems would fail, necessitating the 10,000 commercial airliners in the sky to eyeball a flight pattern and air traffic controllers to use light patterns to guide planes in. As the grid fails, traffic would crawl with no stoplights, oil production would grind to a halt as would shipping and transportation. The biggest killer would be the inability to treat our water. Disease would be rampant.

With no electricity to cool their reactor cores, nuclear meltdowns would begin. As inconceivable as it may seem, the sun, the inextinguishable furnace at the centre of our solar system, could potentially destroy as indiscriminately as it creates. Life on our floating rock depends entirely on the mercy of a cosmic nuclear power with an itchy trigger finger. No human triumph can ever change that.