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This is inspired by various tv shows and web discussions, which try to answer, "What if all humans disappeared today?"
Make that first one, into the first book of a series.
Book two might be, "What if all fossil fuels disappeared today?"
Then consider... cars, buildings, computers, guns, the
moon, vermin (mice, rats, cockroaches), disease, ...
Projected date of resource exhaustion
http://terresacree.org/terbiumanglais.htm
At current usage rates, of course. [Zimmy, May 27 2009]
X-ing a Paragrab
http://books.eserve...ing_a_paragrab.html
Short story by Edgar Allan Poe [neelandan, May 28 2009]
Zinc Oxide and You
http://www.youtube....watch?v=4Z1EEUayPHA
What if there were no Zinc Oxide? [nomocrow, May 28 2009]
[link]
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X might be assigned randomly. The last episode of the series would discuss the disappearance of X itself. |
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There's a chance we will find out about some things. |
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2012 - Terbium, 2018 - Hafnium, 2021 - Silver, 2022 - Antimony, 2023 - Palladium, 2025 - Indium, Gold, Zinc.... (see chart on left of link for more). |
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For what it's worth, my calculations showed minable silver exhuasted in 2037, all things remaining the same, but it's a lot of guesswork. In theory, there's probably a lot more of it on Venus & Mercury. |
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Looking that up, I see the world production is 10 tons/year while the known reserves are 300,000 tons. So looks like the world will run out in the year 32,009. As for the other metals, these figures (if they are better than those for terbium) are for presently economic recovery methods. If a metal gets expensive enough, the reserves grow accordingly. |
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//If a metal gets expensive enough, the reserves grow accordingly// |
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...to infinity and beyond! |
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Take terbium, for example. A cubic mile of crustal rock contains 12,000 tons of the stuff, enough for over a thousand years at the present consumption rate. And that same cubic mile contains 60,000 tons of hafnium, also enough for a thousand years. |
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My apologies for linking to that, then. I had only looked into some of them on the list. 1 of them they had the same date I had looked into (oil) & 4 of them had an earlier date than I figured. (gold, silver, & palladium / platinum) I didn't know they might be way off on some of the others. |
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I did think the hafnium one was weird, considering that it's not exactly the rarest element there is. |
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I found a paper that seemed to think the article I linked to was based on the prices not increasing, therefore leaving resources that cost more than the current price to extract as unrecoverable. I wish they would have said that initially. That's kind of an annoying assumption to make when talking about scarcity. |
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I am leaning more towards the neutral vote because this is more of a WIBNI than an actual idea. |
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It's not that bad of an idea... it's just a bit dull, but worth a croissant or two. Could be the start of a list, but that's obviously not its intention. |
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"X-ing a paragrab" would have to be rewritten. Edgar Allan Poe might not like it. |
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"Now if 6 turned out to be 9,
I don't mind, I don't mind," |
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My e-wife might come back. Noooooooooo! |
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When all of the books talking about things going away forever...GO AWAY FOREVER! |
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As if I didn't know it already, a quick search on Amazon reveals that 'What If...' books is hardly a new concept. There is even one called 'What if There Was No Moon' so I think that baked hardly covers the status of this idea. More like baked, roasted, deep-fried and then buried in soft peat for a thousand years.
I could take a more literalist approach to the question posed in the idea title though. The answer is simple. There would be one less letter in the alphabet and this idea would be called 'What if ecks ceased to Ecksist?'. |
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It would certainly be harder to make treasure maps. |
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Imagine the global increase in productivity if the HB ceased to exist.
Does anyone have economic data to correlate with the Great HB Crash of '04? |
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[copro...] tech bubble burst at circa 2000 (lagtime from 'bakery onset), another tech bubble at circa 2005-06 (similar to price increases on all goods when oil goes up, when oil comes down, delays and "flowthroughs" are cited). Patent offices report massive increase of completely ludicrous ideas early 2005. 2004, Venture capital plows obscene amounts of money from CMOs and CDOs, into things like flavoured drinking straws, concrete spinning disks, social networking, reality TV, etc, that would only have existed on this site had it not collapsed, temporarily. |
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I am stunned that flavored drinking straws really exist. |
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well they did a study group... nobody voted for them. |
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What if the book called "What If x Ceased To Exist?"
ceased to exist? |
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What if the concept of nonexistence ceased to
exist? |
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Plato's dialog "The Sophist" deals with that question, [Ray]. |
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What if none of this stuff ever existed in the first place? What if it was all an illusion? Or maybe even the illusion never existed. |
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For that one, [poc], Descartes is your man. |
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"I think, therefore I appear to be" |
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