next, an -- annalee newitz. this program is a little over an hour. [applause] >> well, thanks so much for coming out to hear about the end of the world. and thanks to the town hall for putting on this amazing series. it's so terrific there's public

science education going on like this. especially in a time when funding is being cut to sciences at the national level so we need to keep pushing for as much science education as possible. i just finished writing an optimistic book about the apocalypse. i didn't realize this book would have a happy ending. it started because i have been fascinated with stories about destruction, especially massive global destruction, and apocalypses and everything from kind of the underground cannibal apocalypse to zombie stories and godzilla stories. godzilla is one of my spirit animals. and i wanted to -- a couple of years ago when i was thinking about this, i thought how could i write a kind of nonfiction version of a godzilla movie, and

what would that look like? if we delve into the scientific literature what history has to teach us, what would be the equivalent of some kind of massive destruction caused bay force that we don't understand, and i came upon the idea of mass extinctions which are the worst kind of disaster that can happen to the plan net, -- planet, and the more i researched them. , the more i read scientific papers and talked to scientists, i realized that actually one of the main character characteristics of a mass extinction is there are always survivors and that's how i began to change how i understood what this book would be about. so let me start by telling you about the destruction. a mass extinction is actually a scientific term of art which refers to any event where more

than 75% of all species on the planet die out. and usually they take about a million years, and so when you look at them, they're taking place in geological time. they're not a quick thing that we can see in a human lifetime. and one of the things that links pretty much all of the mass extinctions -- and there have been five of them so far in earth's history over the past half billion years or so -- is that all -- most of them are caused by climate change. so usually there's some horrific event that sets off the climate change, maybe an asteroid hit the planet, whiches the most famous mass extinction which extinguished the dinosaurs when an asteroid slammed into the planet. when that happened, actually it wasn't like a michael bay movie, like a big rock hit the planet

and there was like, fire, and dinosaurs were being barbecued, and although that sounds really cool -- and there were no lasers or anything like that. what actually happened was where the asteroid hit there were horrific fires and creatures were killed by the thousands, but over time, the material from the asteroid worked its way into the atmosphere and changed the climate over the long term, and actually what happened was most dinosaurs died out from the subsequent climate changes, and this is the case with, like i said, nearly all the mass extinctses. so let mel tell you.my favorite mass extinction. everybody has their -- every scientist has their favorite

extinction, so my personal favorite is the one at the end of the permean period, and if you look at this chart of periods you can see it down near the bottom, and even a little thing that says gigantic extinction. so this is 250 million years ago. and at that time the planet, due to plate tectonics, the continentses were completely different than they are now. they were one giant super continent from the north to the south pole and in the area that became siberia turn into a supervolcano -- that's not a

scientific term but refers to a massive, massive volcano, and this is a large area where lava is being released in multiple places. so you have to imagine great big vents opening up in the earth. not like a mountain where it's blowing up on the top. big vents opening up, like the iceland volcano we saw recently, and they just start extruding lava. big waves of lava. so it's not explosive. it's just oozing out of the huge cracks and vents. there's multiple vents, and so in this northern area opangia this event went on for about a thousand years. so, it was a thousand-year eruption, and what happened was, over time, the gasses and ash that were released from that volcanoic eruption were like a superindustrial revolution. they were releasing so much

carbon into the environment that the climate first started to cool down, and then it heated up into a super greenhouse, and the oceans became very acidic, and creatures died out in incredible numbers. it was the worst mass extincts the planet has ever seen and by the owned of the million year period, 95% of all species on the planet had died out. even insects. you end usually see insects deaths in a mass extincts. but sea creatures, lan create tours, plants, everybody was screwed by the volcano. but there was one survivor on land who kind of is the creature that actually turned me around on mass extinction and made me think about enemy a new way. it was a mammal-like credit

tour, kind of the uncle of humanity. and its name is listersaurus, and it had a couple of traits that made it an excellent survivor in this incredibly difficult time in earth's history. it was about a dog size, about three feet long, two to three feet long, looks like a little bit like a pig and a little bit like a lizard. and they were burrowers so you have to imagine them eating like pigs do, probably eating tube tubbers and roots and they probably bureau -- burrough in the evening and they were digging out holes and living underground. so for listersaurus is at awesome when the volcano start going off because the whole world was transformed into listersaurus heaven because they were used to being underground

and breathing kind of dirty air anyway, they had a great lung capacity, which means possibly they were able to get more oxygen from dirty air than other creatures that were similar in size. and the other thing about hissersaurus is that a lot of its natural predators died during the period that followed the permean. so no predators, dirty air, all of its food sources were mostly underground, so if the sunlight is blocked and temperatures are changing, that food source is probably going to be mostly unharmed by that transition. what are the other things that listersaurus did was it scattered across the southern continent. so, remember, this is a huge supercontinent. hissersaurus moved from a more northern region, down into the south. this is over a period of millions of years. and scattered across the

continent species -- evolved into many different specieses, possibly four or more, and adapted to new ecological nitches. it did two of the things i talk about. it scattered and adapted. it fled from the source of danger, the supervolcano, and learned how to live in new places, and this humble little weird faced guy sort of became my mascot when i was working on this book. i guess i traded in godzilla as my mascot and picked up hissersaurus, because this creature was very humble, and yet nevertheless it managed to make it through the toughest time in earth's history, while all of these other creatures around it were suffering because their food webs were unraveling, and this is a major cause of mass extinction, food web is just a way of talking about the

networks of basically who eats whom in an ecosystem and you have a food web where a lot of creatures start going extinct and it causes knock-on extincts for other creatures who eat them so if your food source dies, you die, too. so that one of the ways that mass extinctions get started you have a few die off and then these knock-on mass extinctions that cause 75% number. so, there's one thing that we can do as humans that hissersaurus cannot do or probably cooperate -- couldn't do. we have the ability in a crisis to basically do what listersaurus did which is adapt to different environments. humans have been terrific at that. we have managed to flee from danger when we have been lucky. but we also have a form of

memory that goes way beyond just remembering what happened yesterday and way beyond remembering, if i want to go to sleep tonight i need to dig a hole in the ground, the way listersaurus did. humans can remember not just their own lifetimes but we can use history to remember the whole of our civilization's history. we can use scientific fields like anthropology and geology to look back and consider the whole history of our evolution as a species, as well as the evolution of the planet, and look at all of the disasters that have happened and learned from them. and that is a very profound survival skill, and like i said, it's something that, as far as we know, is fairly unique to human beings as a species. we haven't found any other species that seem to be able to do that yet. and so part of my hope in sort of the center of writing this

book, when i realized it wasn't going to be all destruction and there was going to be some hope of survival, it is that we actually have traits of a survivor species, like hissersaurus, and this added ability to plan for the future. and that is really important and i talk in the book about ways we can start planning for the future basing those plans on what we know of disasters that have already happened to humans and disasters that have happened to the earth, balls that's important in planning, learning from history and learning from the great experiment that is human evolution and human civilization. so, let me put this in perspective for you. human beings are mammals, which is why we're so cute and furry and have live babies and the whole thing. and the typical species life span for a mammal, the typical

amount of time before the species evolves into another species or dies out, is a million years. that's a typical species life span, and humans, homosapien, evolved a $100,000 years ago or 200,000 years ago, depending where you stand in the debate over this question. but the fact is, either way, we're pretty early in our species' timeline. we have only got, you know, say, 900,000 years left to go. so when we're thinking about planning for the future as a species, planning for our survival as homosapiens, we need to think about not are we going to do next month or next week, but how are we going to setting thises up so we have a good experience living for another 900,000 years. what can we do now, what can we think about doing as a species,

what kinds of projects can we take on to make those 900,000 years really awesome instead of, you know, living like cannibals underground and turning into zombies. [laughter] >> so, in my book i talk about two kinds of very long-term plans we can start working on now and we can share with coming generations for the next several millenia and more, and the first area i'm most interested in is cities, and city building and city planning. the reason why is right now, the vast majority of humans -- well, not the vast majority -- the majority of humans, more than 50%, live in cities, and the u.n. has done some redisks -- predictions on how that trend will continue, and if things go as they have been, we're looking

as possibly 67 or 70% of people living in cities in 50 years. so, people are becoming more and more urban. the majority of humanity is going to be located in cities. so as we're thinking about the future, a good place to focus on ways to make our lives more survivable is the city, and there's different ways we can tackle making cities more survivable. first of all, we need be thinking about, how do you make a city robust against disaster, and there's a lot of different things we can do, from better earthquake engineering, and that's one thing i talk about a lot because i'm from san francisco where we deal with earthquakes all the time, and you guys live in a subduction zone so seattle should be thinking about earthquakes, too. and think about, how do you organize a city's evacuate plan in a flood?

or how do you organize how to respond to a pandemic that hits your city? that may not have to do with how you engineer the city but has to do with how you engineer the social infrastructure of the city. and turns out there are a lot of myths how to handle pandemics in a city that are not really true and that was very interesting for me to find out about. one of the really interesting areas -- this is going to get a little futuristic -- that i really think could help cities become not just more disaster-proof but also more sustainable -- is a movement that is just starting out that is called, living architecture. goes by bioarchitecture, and it's basically a combination of architectural designs that imitate nature and create new kind of building materials that

behave like living substances or partly made of living substances. one of the best examples of this is something called sealing -- self-sealing concrete. not a particularly scientific term. but you can see one experiment that was done a few years ago by some students who invented a substance that was partly made from bacteria, genetically modified bacteria, that when they were put into a crack in concrete -- you can see here there was on the left side, there's the crack, and this is magnified, and they put this substance they referred to as basilla basilla -- jibing i'm flat your laughing, a science crowd. so that's bacteria would go into the crack and then because it had been modified it would extrude this epoxy as well as some other kind of calcium-like

substances, and eventually fill in the crack, holding on to the concrete, and leaving behind this kind of scar that it actually looks like a kind of living skin that has healed up, and the important parent of the experiment and all experiments in synthetic biology, architecture, is that the bacteria are trained -- not trained -- they're engineered to die when they're done with filling in the cracks. so there's a fail safe mechanism. so they fill it in, give their lives to heal the concrete, and this is just one example of a self-healing material that could be used in cities. i talked to architects about how these kinds of materials smooth be used. self-healing materials of course make housing more sustainable

because the structures can heal themselves, and make bridges more safe because if they develop cracks they may be able to heal themselves before a real disaster hopes and we might be able to have self-healing structures that are maintaining themselves like living organisms, and the city itself can become a living organism, helped by this kind of biological innovation and also helped by things like a smart grid that really works. if you have a smart grid that really works, with a building gets just enough power from the grid to supply what it needs, while other buildings that don't need power don't get any power from the grid -- you're creating

a kind of organism where the buildings are talking to each other on the grid and agreeing who is going to get power when, and you start having almost like a body where different organs are getting blood or getting nutrients when they need them. so it's my idea and the idea of a lot of architects and designers working in this space that cities are going to slowly become more like organisms, and this will allow us to have hopefully carbon neutral or even carbon negative cities where we're ultimately using alternative fuels, maybe growing fuels, maybe cities would be full of algae vats, or every home would have its own algae vat and you can use that algae for fuel. you might use the algae for lighting. you could have genetically modified algae that would glow in the dark. and i talked to one designer who is really interested in living architecture, and she said in 100 or 200 years we might be cultivating mold in our houses, not killing it, and you'd be exchanging recipes with your neighbor, how to get the best mold to purify your water and light up at night. and so our cities might not be as much in contradiction with

nature and in contradiction with the environments where they are, and one day you might look out on your city and see something that looks kind of like a ruin or like a treehouse, and you come across these kind of crumbling structures and realize, actually, crumbling structure, structure covered in vines, might really be a living place. might look like it was crumbling because it had been self-healing so the build was be covered in scars and bumpy and wouldn't look all smooth and sexy like downtown seattle does now, but might be a lot more sustainable and better for the people in them and the environment. and ultimately -- again, looking further into the future, even further than biological cities, we might start extending our ability to farm our cities, and build our cities using organic materials, and start actually

farming the atmosphere. when i say farming the atmosphere, i choose those words because we have used farming to pretty much transform the surface of the earth. we few are kind of shepards -- shepherds of everything that grows on the planet, except for some areas and, ultimately if we want to maintain the climate at a level that we prefer, we're going to have to start thinking about how are we going to control climate? it's not going to be enough just to cut carbon emissions. obviously we need to do that. that a great start. but the planet goes through carbon cycles naturally. as i was talking about, there's absolutely times when the planet is going to create the results of an industrial revolution without any help from us. it's going to have mega volcanos, carbon will be

introduced into the atmosphere and heat things up all by itself. we don't need to be there to do it. so, humans are going to have to take on the burden or take on the project of actually keeping the environment in a state that we prefer. having ice caps on the north and south pole. that great for us. we like to be kind of cold. all the animals and plans are set up and evolved for that. but that's actually kind of weird in history of the planet. most of the history of the planet there have been no ice caps at the poles. things have been a lot warmer. the atmosphere at times has been much more carbon riff-rich. and it's unnatural to hope to keep the planet in a state that is nice and cool like we like it. so if we want tower species to enjoy life on earth we're going to have to think about what

kinds of technologies we can invent to draw carbon down out of the atmosphere when it naturally starts getting in there through either. stuff we have done, which one could argue is not very natural, or just through the natural carbon cycles of the planet. and so that would be -- those technologies are geo engineering technologies. ways of engineering the entire geology of the with earth, and i talk about that in the book and i point give you too many spoilers, but it's a long way off. there have been some experiments that have happened quite recently. there was a rogue geo engineer off the coast of canada who did an experiment trying to draw down carbon from the atmosphere by doing iron seeding in the ocean, and so far doesn't seem as if it worked out. the idea is you put iron in the ocean, and it attracts microbes

that like to -- that like the iron and then those microbes also draw down carbon, and when they die, hopefully they sink to the bottom of the ocean and take the carbon with them. the problem is they don't tend to sink all the way to the bottom of the ocean, so you have more car -- carbon. so that's just the start geo engineering is just in its infancy. finally, if we want to look long-term beyond biological cities, beyond geoengineering, still going to be problems with earth. for one thing we have this habit of running into giant rocks in space because we are a giant rock hanging in space. and those other rocks out here with us, and gravity brings us into contact sometimes. and we also, of course, have a planet which is full of magma, and volcanos happen. sometimes for really long time, and sometimes really

catastrophically. so, if we want, again to have our off in a million years and hopefully beyond, we need to be thinking about how to get off the planet. we need to think about how humans can have backup cities, and new civilizations on other planets, and maybe other structures in space, because if something catastrophic happens to the planet, we need to have a place where we can go be refugees. maybe we'll all be venussan rev >> referee: -- rev few -- refugees refugees ane think about space travel and think coloniesing space, we're kind of taking our first baby

towards space travel. let me gave you an example of the timeline. looking back into human history, humans -- 50,000 years ago used reed boats much like this one you're seeing over here, to get from asia to australia. 50,000 years ago. they crossed an entire ocean in reed boats. but it wasn't really until about 500 years ago that you had international travel using boats creating a global culture. it was not until really the advent of tremendous amounts of capital being poured into shipping as part of the colonization of the plant where you got a global culture. so that's a lot of lag time between the first use of boats to go from one continent to the other, to creating a culture where humans are traveling all

the time between the continents. so, if you think of this first boat here as the rockets that we have used to get to the moon and the rockets we have used to take our robot friends to mars, we may be pretty far away from a time when we're jetting between mars and earth all the time. i hope it's not going to be 50,000 years. i don't mean to suggest that we're going to have to wait that long. but it may be a lot longer than we hope. it may not be next decade or next century that we have a city on mars. it may take us hundreds of years before we really have a space-going civilization, and it may be nothing like what we expect. we may not be using rockets to get off the planet. we may using something like the space elevator here. a space elevator is -- it's great i'm in seattle because every year there is a space elevator conference in seattle where people who whatnot to

build a common ask discuss ideas, and since. the 18990s when -- 1990s when nasa worked on the model for the space elevator and thought through the things we might need to create one. nasa has actually had an annual prize offered to anyone who can build part of this elevator that doesn't exist yet, and i'll tell you about that in a second. as you can see this image is actually from nasa, and you can see the elevator car. there's earth very far in the background. the idea of a space elevator is -- it's answering a basic question which is how do you have sustainable space travel? right now we're using rockets, which require rocket fuel, which is expensive, heavy, and polluting, and there's a limited supply of it. so it's not a good long-term solution. we can't keep using rockets to get out of the gravity well. so what would we use?

how would we have a kind of train into space that would be completely able to be used over and over again, something that wouldn't pollute the environment. so, the space elevator. this is how it worksment you have a platform on earth, your elevator platform. somewhere along the equator. and then you have a very, very long tether attaching that elevator platform up about 60,000 miles, so you're partway to the moon, and at the other end of the tether you have a counterweight ask that counterweight is in geostationary orbit so it's orbiting the earth and is attached to the tether, and the tether is the problem. and right now we actually have the technology to do this. the course weight, not so much. counterweight might be a captured asteroid, or a happy version of the death star.

basically it's going be a port. going to be a destination for people to get to in space where they can then get on to a space ship that will take them somewhere else. so, the space elevator is just to get you out of the gravity well, into space, and then on your merry way. it will take you about three days to get up to that counterweight or port, so the car isn't really like an elevator as crowd think of it today. it's more like a train sleeper car. you're going to probably have a crappy bunk bed that will cost a lot of money but hopefully much, much cheaper than the amount of money it costs now to get into space, and of course you can use the elevator car over and over again and have people going constantly up and down, and of course, supplies going up and down as well. and the idea is that the elevator car would climb up that tether using robotic arms of the kind of that exist now in

industrial factories to build large machines. you have your robotic arms pulling this elevator car out of the gravity well of earth and into space. the big question is, what would you make the tether out of? it has to be flexible and thin. it has to withstand weather. has to withstand micrometeorites zooming around in space. has to withstand the space junk we have put into the atmosphere. although main by the time we build this we'll have a space vacuum. or we'll have robots collecting space junk. it's been suggested might be made out of carbon nano tubes but unclear whether carbon nano tubes could be used for something like this. so every year nasa has a contest where they offer up to a million dollars for anyone who could come up with a substance that would be strong enough and light enough to be the ribbon. so far no one has actually won the full amount, although people

are working on the carbon inner tube angle. if you have an idea for it go to the conference and help create the future of space travel. the point is that, things in the future might not look exactly the way we expect. , we've gone 900,000 years to change and develop new technologies that it will hopefully make the future a place where we can survive, where we can survive disasters from everyday stuff, like earthquakes and tsunamis, to mass extinction causing disasters like supervolcanos or encounters with asteroids from space, and the thing is that, as i said, no matter what happens, humans are probably going to survive. if we look even dispassionately at geological history and at

human history, we see that humans have all the traits required to survive even a really horrific disaster, even a mass extinction. the question is just how we're going to survive. what kinds of projects well we take on that will make our survival enjoyable or sustainable and not turn into a horrific scenario where we have to live underground eating worms itch don't mean to poop on eating worms but don't want to do it every way. humans have a survival instinct like every other creature on the planet. so the fact is no matter if we're good or bad, if we're bad to the planet or good to it, we're going to make it through. we're going to survive. it's just a question of how weird it's going to get, how different it's going to get, and at some point i think we may evolve into an entirely different species after that million years is up, and say we

wind up as part squid, part cyborg creatures, living on a moon of saturn. that's a win for us. we don't have to be human at the end of that journey. we may change a lot over that time. and we hopefully our progeny will look back and say, good job, guys, a great path. you helped us survive and now we have an awesome home on titan. so, again, like i said, that's a win for us, and i thing it's going to get weird, but we are going to make it through. thanks very much. [applause] >> we can do q & a. if people want to line up at the mic at the corner of the room.

>> the space elevator. you said there would be robot arms pulling up. >> that's a big question. the model that nasa worked on -- i think you would see -- i don't think you can see it in this picture -- actually be laser powered because there would be lasers on the surface powering it, basically sort of a version osolar power but with lasers beaming at receivers on the elevator car. the question is, again, how do you do that with weather patterns interfering, how do you make sure your laser continues to power it in space? i think once it gets into space it can probably use solar, but as it's leaving the gravity well of earth, that's a big question. show to answer now is lasers which is always an exciting abc but it's an open question. there's a lot of x factors in building the elevator.

the together is another obviously big question. >> so we adapt, scatter and remember, and i'm sure everybody is reading books on these things. what happens when the power goes snout how do you read? what happens to the books, the libraries? >> well, the libraries are made of paper. so i think -- i mean, there's a lot of answers to that question. humans luckily do have a lot of redundant storage mechanisms. we don't just use terabyte rays like i used at my house for perfectly legal storage of media. we also do have books. there's also a lot of groups who organize online, actually, who are working on creating storehouses of knowledge that can be printed out and used in the event of civilizational collapse. there's also the possibility that we could maintain some of those archives with generators. really depends on what the

collapse is -- we imagine like the giant fireball or -- any i of you watching the show "revolution." google is going to invent nab know technology that destroys the electrical grid. don't watch that show. the opinion is that most of these disasters i'm looking at are things that don't happen instantaneously. it's a slow are moving disaster that picks up speeds over hundreds of thousands of years, and even when you have something like an earthquake or tsunami or bombing, a radiation disaster, those tend to be localized so you're always going to have pockets where people have information and what humans are great at is sharing information over distances. so even if there's a time period where some people, like in seattle and san francisco, we department have the internet and a well stab our eyes out because we can't national what that

would be like. there's other people out there who will maintains those information stores and we recall have libraries and backups. >> so, what is the best thing we can do to ensure the survival of the human race? >> well, i've been talking about some of that today. i think that the main question is, how do we conceive of what we're doing as being part of a long-term pathway to survival? all of these threats take place over many, many generations and that's hard to think about. we think about, what can i do tomorrow to fix something next week? and these are things we can do in a human lifetime to fix things for people living 300 years from now. so how do we -- the real question is, how do we conceive of a project like rebuilding our cities to be more like biological organisms in a way that isn't frustrating, because obviously -- well, in my lifetime i am never going to see

a space elevator except if i'm playing a video game. so, how do we have steps along the way? how do we invent the technology in our lifetime that can add to a future where we have biological cities. and that's why i'm really excited about things like self-healing materials which are something we can invent in a lifetime, that we can even maybe perfect in a lifetime and could be part of a pathway toward having a more sustainable city. that's the difficult task, is realizing you won't get to see the end of the story in your lifetime. you won't get to have the happy moment of, and then we survived, because you're only going to know that at the end of a million years. so you have to hope to, like cyborg squid offspring. and we look back at the homo erect just, and tools, good job!

i think that's the -- has to be the hope, we get bite-size projects we can do in a lifetime, and go to space. >> you have actually already started answering my question. i was wondering, humans are uniquely able to learn from history but also haven't shown much inclination to learn from hoyt. so how are you going to motivate people to start down this path of things that will be useful to us a million years from now or a thousand years from now. >> or a hundred years from now. i always find it funny that people say, humans are so bad atlashing from history, or we're so lazy, like nobody is motivated to do anything, and the fact its if you look at humans -- look at is as a species. don't look at is as your brother or professors or whatever, just

an individual person who is like a total idiot for their whole life. you have to look at it as a really long-term narrative. so we're very early in that narrative. and also, pick something like climate change. when did humanity figure out that the stuff that we're doing with our industrial production is causing climate change? about 20 -- if you wanted to be generous you could say 30 years or 40 years. so in our lifetime we figured that out, and during that time it's become one of the most hotly debated political issues on the planet. and that's pretty damn good. no, we haven't fixed it, and in fact many would argue that we're screwing things up even worse. but the fact it that just in the short period of time since we figured out that we were screwing up, we have turned it into something where it's a huge question of how we're going to deal with it, and again, it's frustrating because probably all

of us will be dead before we find out who prevailed and what the alternative energy will be that we finally use instead of fossil fuels. will it be corn? please, no. will it be solar. that's what i'm hoping for because solar is a great technology in its infancy. so, really, i think our track record is pretty good. i feel like we have learned a lot from disasters that haven't historically, and that we are weirdly pretty agile at responding. it's just that it isn't within a lifetime. you look back at the last 500 years, there have been really awesome things humans have done and learned from. now we have sciences of incredibly widely accepted theory of dealing with the world. not everywhere but in most places. and that was also quite recent. so, i guess i just -- i feel like humans are doing okay. i think we're muddling through. we're not the greatest.

sometimes we're jerks. but on the whole we actually -- that urge to adapt and the urge to survive does percolate out into our politics and social structures, but again, takes a little time. thank you. >> hi. so you mentioned there were communities online where they're basically storehouses of knowledge. do you happen to know the names of those organizations? >> i talk about enemy my book. -- talk about them in my book. there's one group -- you have to google this. it's like three cds, something like that. they basically all of the. -on-three c c.d.es and stuff like how do you do basic medicine, how do you do basic farming techniques? also a helpful section on how men lead the family. so, there's sometimes a little bit of an ideological problem

with each project, but there's other projects -- a group that is trying to come up with fairly small number of machines you would need to restart civilization, everything from like a thrashing machine to a three-dd printer so the bot will survive the apocalypse, and if you can put all the information together from all the groups, it can be interesting. but again your always have to think about what ills the threat model here? there always seems to be this go-to scenario for humans where we say everything is going collapse. because we're not going to have the enter northwest anymore. we're not going to have in the pour. the cities -- i don't know what is going to happen to the cities. make nuked out of existence 0 so we have to start with men leading the charge into the agricultural economy again, and i don't mean to pick on these

poor guys. they're trying their best. they did amass an incredible amount of helpful information. but the fact is, not a lot of disasters like that where you see a complete loss of every kind of new technology. so i think as i said when i began, the apocalypse is a lot more complicated than we think it will be, and there will be pockets of people who have access to high technology, and even stay on the planet there are people who have access to high technology that many, many people in the world don't have access to. so the apocalypse may look a loot like the world does now, just slightly worse. and so we have to be prepared for that. just a little bit worse. and very slow. and that's part of why we really do need to be trying to take action now to kind of slowly, gently steer it away from the slightly worse but complicated world. so, yeah, if you fine other

stuff, e-mail me and let me know, other resources. >> i've had two kinds of thoughts. one is that if you focus a little bit more on food supply, maybe as part of the organizing effect of -- you know, losing control of the whole situation, so, i was surprised you hadn't spent a little more time talking about that. the second thing is, there are plants or plant communities that are really good examples of these living architectural people are looking at? >> plant communities like types of plants you would use? >> like -- let's say, mushrooms as an example. not to use but to look at how they survive in all kinded of odd and strange circumstances, or creatures underneath the sea. >> these are both super great questions in response to your

question about the food supply, that is actually a big concern in my book, and i didn't -- i talked about food webs a little bit today but i didn't good into all of the concerns about food webs. but i do have a section where i talk about famine, and famine is a very, very likely result of climate change and all of these example is talked about, or a few examples of how mass extinctses up fold slowly and take million years, part of what is happening there is species are experiencing famine because the more that species die out, the more that the food supply dwindles, and so that is really what you're talking about when you're talking about death by climate change. some of it is also death by habitat change. but habitat change isn't just about, like, it's way too hot to live. it's also way too hot for the grass live that i eat. so these are bound up with how mass extinctions work and that's

why food web are a good way to think about mass extinction, think about a food web unraveling. that's where the death happens is in the food web destruction. as for the plant question, i have a favorite plant -- it's actually not a plant, it's a back tiera, but kind of like a plant. blue-green algae. if anybody was at the lecture before me, probably played a big role in that lecture, cyano bacteria survived eave single mass inc. stinks. it's blue-green algae and it looks like sludge, and the ancestors made it through incredibly harsh conditions and they did it be evolving photosynthesis, so in other words, solar power.

so what made them so able to live anywhere, including on snowballheart, on the early earth where list aresaurus was hanging out and being all 'cute and wiggly, is because it has the ability to get energy in the food supply because it relied on the sun. and so i actually have a pretty extensive section of the book where i talk about not just the awesomeness of cyano bacteria as a survivor species but how we can learn from it to think about solar power as being a real cornerstone to survival, because, hey, it worked for cyano bacteria, plants. and cyano bacteria may be the source of -- creating plant cells so it's a really good survival mechanism. it's great we finally invented it. and we're just in infancy of

simulating cyano bacteria, so one day you, too, may have the bacteria. people say, like, humans are like bacteria upon the earth. and it's like, yeah, that's great. we should be like bacteria on the earth. oops. sorry. >> so, i'm going to ask a question that maybe diverges a little bit from the things you talked about. i think most of the people in the room probably have a share of this memory that i do of growing up -- living in the 70s and 80s and we worried about nuclear winter. do you preclude an event like senate i mean, the weapons that existed then, still exist now, and that potential still is there for some sort of a devastating nuclear exchange among nations, and it seems to actually be getting worse, proliferating, with -- and given the politics of the world.

so my question has to do with, do you preclude some sort of set of political disasters that would create that nuclear winter, and -- >> yes. >> -- would athlete vent be -- would that event be sufficient to kill off most people or would the few that survive be able to build beyond that. >> think my answer in order of no and yes, and i do talk a lot about radiation disasters, and the interesting thing about nuclear winter is that it's happened before othen planet. in fact when that asteroid hit 65 million years ago, that eventually led to the slow dying off of the dinosaurs, it caused a nuclear winter, and in fact that's one of the models that people use when they were coming up with theofed nuclear winter in the 80s, was this previous horrific set of explosions that happened. so we know for sure that in the event of nuclear winter, many,

many species did survive. we know it's a survivable event. there's also some evidence to suggest that the first mass extinction the plant went through 450 million years ago may have been caused by massive radiation bombardment. so, again, at it controversial because it's so long ago and very hard to say, but it seems as if some of the evidence points to the idea that there may have been a nearby supernova. the plan nate was bombarded by gamma radiation, caused a very rapid ice age. so, we know that survived that as well. so that's a huge radiation disaster. we also know that run good way to survive radiation disasters is have two feet of rocks between you and the incredibly energetic particles. so i have a chapter on underground cities, and i think

nuclear war is one kind of threat, and then there's other kinds of radiation disasters that can happen as well. so, radiation disaster is a very imminent threat. maybe not imminent but it's one of the threats. definitely a scenario. may have even caused mass extinctses -- extinctions in the past, yes. >> hello. >> hello. >> you mentioned you think there will be pockets of people with greatinger access to technology and i agree and say the apocalypse is here, just not evenly distributed. i recently spent time volunteering at a clinic in rural africa and once you get past how dirty everything is and no electricity, it's fascinating to see how people can do so much with so few resources. did you do how people in the developing world are able to already deal with an apocalypse in their own land? >> yes. i don't talk about it directly like that. but that is -- i mean what you're saying is absolutely true, and that's part of why

it's important to remember that the apocalypse is complicated and that people are capable of living in many different kinds of conditions, and in being incredibly resourceful in those conditions, and i think that as we look to the future it's really important to look to the developing world as a model, because there are a lot of ways in which the kinds of development taking place there kind of leap-frogging over the mistakes we made with industrialization could be a kind of pathway toward a future where we don't have to use fossil fuels for example, or we don't have to have a kind of massive cable infrastructure to have internet communications. maybe we can start fresh in some way. so, i think the answer is -- the simple answer is, yes. i think that's a really good model. the other thing is that some of

the disasters that have happened in the developing world, like famine is a really big one. which i do talk a lot about in the book. and one of the things we learned about famine is that it is a human created disaster, and that's something that we have learned from looking at how famines develop in different parts of the world, and, sure, there's natural causes for famine, especially in africa where irrigation is usually from rainfall. but the fact is that all those famines can be prevented with international cooperation, and if people actually have access to resources and those resources aren't overpriced. and so that becomes a really good model for us in thinking about the future, and how we're going to happen things like food shortages, what works and what doesn't work. so far most things haven't worked. but that's how experiments go. our first efforts may not work but we need to be thinking about those regions of places where we have to deal with famine and how

to do it effectively. >> one more? >> okay. this is the last question. >> i'm trusted i won't embarrass myself because i haven't fully formed the question but i'm taking the information you gave about the mass extinction of the dinosaurs and how there was certainly terrible deaths -- >> big explosion. >> yeah, but that it took some time in the atmosphere, and with the supervolcano at yellowstone, which as i understand from anymy reading in terms of geological time that should be happening pretty soon. would that be a -- maybe north america would be wiped out but the rest of the world would have some time to adapt? or should we have built those underground cities we can go to? do you have any thoughts or

comments? >> yes, i do. >> we don't have any control. >> we don't. and you use also be working on building underground cities. so, please start soon. but -- and actually underground city would we great if there were a supervolcano. so the volcano in yellowstone is actually not the same kind of volcano that ended the permean period. they were both supervolume cane knows because they eject a lot of material but the one that ended the permean was very long term eruption, lasted at least a thousand years and opened big vents that were powering tons t- pouring tons of laugh very and goo into the atmosphere. another scientific term, goo. so the volcano at yellowstone -- it would collapse. there i would woo be vents --

there would be vents that open up but probably only last for a week, and the main devastation would be, again, ash, ash entering the environment, getting into the stratosphere, and there wouldn't be -- beyond the boundaries of the park. ...

>> it would be the midwest so a lot of crops that are very the label for food and export would be ruined of course, a very expensive cleanup. so probably not a lot of death the infrastructure destruction. and crop destruction. and it is possible that global temperatures could go negative round of a tiny bit. there was a similar eruption in indonesia in 1812 with the super volcano that went off to lower temperatures but it is not like climate change situation. in it may last maybe four

years. it is the baby volcano i don't mean to downplay it but it would not read all of america and the law of the in seattle which is so i imagined it to be. no. sorry. it would not happen that way. but that volcano could erupt any time. it is unlikely but. >> let's and with that happy thought. [laughter] thank you for coming out. [applause] >> on your screen is a new book coming out this fall

called the of romney's family table ann when did you find time to put this together? >> i have written a month before but nobody would know that but to have a mother and grandmother that is a fantastic cook them to be blusters only boys in my life, i thought all of these family traditions and recipes will get lost because my boys are boys and will not cook. so i made a cookbook of family favorites and gave it to the daughters of law it has been greatly expanded since that time but the other amazing thing is my love of cooking, my love and sharing and love that the family table was passed on to my sons and some of my

boys really do cook so have recipes from my son that likes to cook your the one that likes to make soup fortunately it did get passed down a little bit. this is how is started and after the campaign was over my son josh said you should put together a cookbook. i thought that would be fun but this is not a moral cookbook because it has a lot of family traditions traditions, stories, written material about life. i think it will be interesting for people to say we know who mitt romney is or the rodney family but they will be surprised when we give a real peek into life struggles and the son of getting together.

>> host: are you a good cook? >> guest: i am a good cook in people would be surprised to know that i even ran a little cooking school out of my home. i don't talk about that in the book this is a great picture that i would love for people to know about which is tradition. the left side is mitt father he brought the family together every year on a fourth of july with homemade vanilla ice cream is what we celebrated when we got together and he is turning it in those are my sons, the three and guest waiting for their taste when it is already before it goes to the freezer burn on the other side is a pitcher of

my a husband turning it the same way with our grand children. waiting to taste the ice cream. these are themes that we love to pass on to bring it together. >> host: and is now run be a good cook? >> guest: he is fantastic in the kitchen. he helps me out on things give the warning he is stepping the bird sauteing the celery and onions aid he is very helpful in the kitchen. also he is one of the most responsible people i have ever known when the meal is over because anyone who is working hard in the kitchen and he he cleans up himself and sends them now. that is a nice gesture.

>> host: people getting family photos that have never been published before? >> guest: yes. the one on the cover makes me laugh everytime i see it because we get together in the summer with all the grandchildren and you hear about the romney's family olympics and the competition's but we had a watermelon eating competition part of it was they could not use their hands below notice in the picture they're all using there hands. it makes me laugh because they are competitive is started with no hands but then it got evidence quickly they would not eat much without their fingers see you can see they really grab onto it. >> host: hopefully you did outside. you put this together after the campaign. how did your life changed?

>> if you can imagine going 100 miles an hour flying all over the country here and there have the media following you busloads and planeloads every word you say everything you do, documented with intense scrutiny and intense activity political fund-raisers, interviews and you just go from the earliest morning and tell you crash in bet at night and it goes on several years and then the next day it is done. it is over. it is done. that kind of energy have been putting out with such intensity to end it suddenly it is a huge adjustment of course, i know we were disappointed with the loss but i kept feeling for months afterwards and this

is my sentiment, a coach, put me in. the game is over. but that is how we felt. put me in. i am ready. you sitting on the bench. but that's energy takes time to die of that back down again. it did for me but now has. and i am back to normal life with a normal schedule and my routine is much slower and life is wonderful. i have been busy with the book that eighth and another part of my life which is worse is that i ride a and compete than spending time with the grandchildren and mitt and i are writing and thinking about the country and the problems that "face the nation." politics is one way to answer some of the problems i really believe this is part of the thing with a

family that so many of our problems kid be solved with good strong family is and good strong values still to take care of each other the family can help solve the problems. >> host: you said you guys are riding? can we expect something? >> i don't think there is anything but we have been doing a lot of thinking and broad thinking about challenges that "face the nation" right now. in to do a lot of thinking about energy and how the energy needs will increase globally in the energy demands will be much bigger in china and india and and more than the united states. he is a broad thinker.

he was known as the turnaround guy in business and to this unique talent to think about big problems and to look at it for the unusual angle how to solve big problems i don't think you'll hear the yen to from either one of us because we love this country and we love our families and are concerned about their future. >> host: how can cut the dough can you be today? >> guest: not very much especially with makeup and hair. acajou pretty well no makeup and hair in a ponytail i can hide better than mitt. is difficult to go out in public because everyone has a camera found and once to be on facebook and if you can imagine every 10 seconds someone asks you to stop when all you want to do is walk down the street or go into a restaurant, it is

hard because we don't have security any more. it is just he and i. but it is all right because most people are just very carefree should've of what we went through and very grateful and so it is a testament to what we have been through and how broadly we reach people that he is still recognizable. >> host: we talked a lot about the rodney family of your family also grew up in michigan. what is this picture? >> guest: my father built this cabin on lake michigan i was campaigning in michigan and i love the great lakes i love my family taught me beyond how to cook but how to be strong, they adored me and house of its high was a and they taught me hard work and my father

was a welch and the grant a we had no money at all his children but we had a lot of love and a lot of joy and happiness my father built this cabin with his bare hands i remember him doing the public -- plumbing and wiring in pouring cement. i obviously was not helping but the impression i got from to just build with your own two hands to come to this country with nothing to have the opportunities and the blessings to be in this extraordinary country were taught to me by my father. that is a picture of my dad, myself and my brother. we were in the woods. i grew up catching frogs, snakes with the girl in a the michigan woods. >> host: would you encourage your sense to go

into politics? >> guest: and mother of two minds of that. because i recognize we need honest and good in decent people to run but i also love my children. it is very tough to put yourself out in public because you are an instant target. it is quite abusive and you really have to be prepared. i would say three of my five would have absolutely no interest but i think a couple of them love the game my oldest and number three. i feel safer with my oldest it is hard as a republican to do anything. but josh, i could see him doing something down the

line. >> host: shadow mountain is your publisher? >> guest: they will be representing the and they're the ones my son went to and said i have an idea and they jumped on it they thought it was a terrific idea. i think rinaldi a big success. >> host: the best recipe? >> guest: it is not my favorite but it is my favorite to cut kids mitt favorite dinner but this is a fleet and potatoes cook books. meatloaf is his favorite food. he is not cnc that he is meat and potatoes with homemade rolls and sweet potatoes