Photo Source: Clipart.com

In case there is someone out there that hasn't figured it out yet, the world is a dangerous place. There are many different dangers just waiting to nail us. The dangers can be divided into two main categories:
1. Man made
2. Natural
Sometimes the distinction is not that clear since a natural disaster can come from a man made incident. Lets take global warming for instance. Global warming is the average temperature around the world rising. You might think that this is a natural thing and you would be right, but it is caused by us. We have dumped all our waste into the atmosphere until it couldn't support it any longer and had to react. It reacted by maintaining these harmful fumes, such as C02, which block some of the heat from escaping from our planet. As more and more C02 builds up, the hotter we get because the less heat escapes. Looking at the planet Venus we see a world that is extremely hot because its atmosphere doesn't release heat. It is so hot that we believe there can be no life on the planet. Is this the future of the Earth? Could Venus have been like Earth once? Maybe there was even life on it that became too industrialized and caused this phenomena to start?

Another man made disaster is the loss of land area due to radiation. We don't have to look very far to see this. In Russia there are huge portions of land that have been declared uninhabitable due to radiation, radiation that was caused by the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant explosion. Even the reactor building itself was covered in a shroud of concrete. This shroud is leaking badly and presents us with an opportunity for an even bigger release of radioactive material if something is not done immediately, yet there it sits, just leaking away. Looking at what happened to some of the people of the area due to exposure to radiation, makes one feel extremely bad. Will this be the fate for many more people in Russia, I hope not? Not only Russia is effected by these radiation leaks. The first cloud went around the world poisoning many people, but damage like this is hard to measure because the effects are not immediate and may take years. The experts state that if if happens again because the containment built around the building fails, it will be much worse the second time around.

Photo Source: USAID

Sometimes man is his own worst enemy. In ancient times through the 1700s man mostly wanted to live near the sea shore. It was understandable because he could make a living by fishing, but today there is really no need for this. Yet, here we are, most of the sea shores are more densely populated that inland. These places are usually at sea level or sometimes even below it. This leaves us very vulnerable to flooding and tsunamis. One large tsunamis. can kill hundreds of thousands of people in a densely populated sea shore area. If a big one were to hit Manhattan Island, millions could die. Why are we so drawn to being near the water? The same holds true with rivers and lakes to a lesser degree. True there are no tsunamis. on rivers or lakes, but there is flooding as rivers overflow their banks and some lakes, like the Great Lakes in the U.S. are almost as dangerous as the ocean. These lakes can have terrible storms and the storms are so severe that many large ships have been lost to them.

Photo Source: DOE

So far we have been very lucky with nuclear weapons. We have dropped them in accidents, burned them in accidents and lost them in accidents, yet not one has exploded accidentally, at least that is what we are told. We have spread some radiation because of them and have had to clean up some areas in foreign countries. I am sure that other countries have had the same problems. Nuclear weapons are just an accident waiting to happen, I don't care how safe we are told that they are. Then there is the terrorist and the rogue country factors. Ever since we invented the nuclear weapon, well almost ever since, we have had to worry about having one dropped on us. When the cold war ended, we felt much more secure. I don't know why since China probably has all their nukes aimed at us and us at them and this is probably still true for Russia and us also. Aside from this, it is getting easier and easier for any country to make nukes. The reason is that companies can't resist making a profit by supplying nuclear weapons technology to anyone and some governments do it on principle. Will we, we being the people of the world, cause a nuclear war? Most experts think that it is only a matter of time and many governments are creating underground bunkers at an accelerated pace, including the U.S.,Russia and China to name a few.

We all know how deadly the AIDS epidemic is. It seems to be worse in Africa than most anywhere else. It has never been proven, but many people think that we created AIDS and it got away from us. Supposedly it came from a monkey virus and we, while trying to create a weapon out of it, let it escape. This is not too hard to imagine. There is always this danger of a virus escaping from a lab, after all we do make a lot of mistakes. It has been admitted that there have been 60 critical accidents in national laboratories around the world since 1945. I wonder how many there have really been? This report by Los Alamos National Laboratory was put out in the year 2000. Ironically Los Alamos has a terrible record of security and we don't know how many of security failings there have been or exactly how they have effected us. Another thing we don't really know is the lab's definition of critical. There may have been ten times as many accidents, but since most were not considered critical, they weren't noted.

Sometimes disasters are caused by shoddy workmanship or poor design. Bridges have been designed that collapsed shortly after opening them to the public. The Tacoma Narrows bridge, also known as Galloping Gerdy was one of the most famous bridge failures. It was a suspension bridge that had only been open for a short time, but began to sway in the wind. If finally swayed so much, that it shook itself apart. Another example of humans being responsible for their own disasters was the Inez coal tailings dam failure in Kentucky. The dam, made of coal waste, failed and tainted water spread into streams and drinking water releasing toxins that killed fish and according to some people, tainted the water they were drinking without them knowing it, causing all sorts of illnesses. Some of these dams created by coal waste have given way killing many people. Many of the companies had been warned before hand that the dams were unsafe or leaking and yet failed to do anything about it.

If we take this topic even further, we have to talk about the 10,000 industrial deaths that are estimated to occur in the U.S. every year. We think that we have the safest work place in the world. This may be, but it is not safe, even if it is the safest. Some things could be made safer, but the cost might be too high. The bottom line is profit with most companies and I can understand this, but not at the cost of human lives. I can not say with certainty that what I am about to tell you is 100% true, but this is what I have been hearing. I have heard that safety requirements in our factories have gotten lax and that inspections are down. An example of this is the U.S. Coast Guard's factory visit program. The Coast Guard was supposed to visit boat manufacturers to check on safety, but according to different sources, they are still at the dock, if you get my meaning.

You can see that the human race is it's own worst enemy. It is almost like we have this desire for destruction and we are rushing headlong toward it. I can never understand this. It is as if there is some higher intelligence saying to us that we must wipe ourselves out. Perhaps we are a failed experiment or one that succeeded too well? In any case we seem to have an inbred urge for destruction and by gum, we are going to carry it out sooner or later.