Steam Heat…

July 20th, 2007

It was a crazy Wednesday, July 18 here in New York when the street erupted up the block from my office after an 83-year-old steam pipe exploded near Grand Central Terminal.

The pipe burst near 41st and Lexington (we’re about a mile down the street and a block over), flipping a tow truck and unleashing a torrent of scalding steam, mud and debris through a crater in the street.

We could see the steam and hear its thunderous roar from our perch on the ninth floor of our office building. The event, which is not unprecedented here in the City, left 30 people injured and one woman died of a heart attack, according to the New York Times.


FDNY Members Respond to a Steam Pipe Explosion in Manhattan. Credit: FDNY Gallery.

So, suffice to say, it was a pretty crazy day where, for a few hours, folks revived old fears of terrorist attacks that were thankfully unfounded.

The roar and thick, billowing clouds of steam did in fact call to mind some sort of urban volcano, but one a lot more believable than Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York. Even more than a volcano in L.A., for that reason.


Steam explosion headline in the New York Post yesterday.

1) Click here for New York Fire Department video [via the New York Post] of the blast from traffic cams.
2) New York Times follow-up and Multimedia (galleries, video, and steam pipe schematics).
3) Latest update from the New York Office of Emergency Management

Crazy day, man.

Global Concerts for the Fate of the Planet

July 7th, 2007

So all around the world today, folks are flocking to concert halls and stadiums for Live Earth, Al Gore’s brainchild to help raise awareness for the coming climate crisis that will have us all literally sweating in our boots come winter.

Image credit: Live Earth

CNN has been covering the concert series literally all day and you can actually watch them live, courtesy of MSN. Bonus!

And I tell you, if 95 degree F temps BEFORE DAWN isn’t enough of a warning for you global warming poo poo-ers, than I don’t know what is.

We get some freaky weather here in the city, and it may already be too late for any changes our climate-wounding ways to avert the bulk of Mother Nature’s global warming wrath. But at least wife, cat and I can try. You should too…

1) Fight Global Warming, your planet needs YOU.
2) A Global Warming Primer, courtesy of the wife.
3) Eco Tips for your own life, courtesy of my cat.

Luckily, the folks at Live Earth have put together a handy guide to help us all get through the worst of it. In case of a TOTAL climate meltdown, feel free to consult the Live Earth Global Warming Survival Handbook (image excerpt below):

Image credit: Live Earth

Fallout 3: It’s Coming…

June 2nd, 2007

Fallout 3, the long-awaited third sequel in the slamtastic computer game series of life in a future post-apocalyptic wasteland. In less than three days, the teaser hits home.

If you mozy on over here, you’ll find a series of concept art images and sound for Fallout 3, which is being prepared by Bethesda Softworks and is - in this humble disasterInk fiend’s opinion - way long overdue. I mean, the original Fallout hit stores in 1997 with Fallout 2 following in 1998.

Here’s a few of the new concept images you’ll find at Bethesda’s teaser site:

Credit for all images resides with Bethesda Softworks: http://fallout.bethsoft.com/

< sulu > Oh my. < /sulu>

These concept shots are awesome and I just can’t wait.

For those Fallout neophiles who have been under a digital rock for the last decade,
No Mutants Allowed has a great Fallout 3 news archive here. You can also track Fallout 3’s progress via João Vieira’s nifty site: fallout 3 - a post apocalyptic blog.

The story so far:

Interplay’s original Fallout in 1997 followed the Vault Dweller, a member of a subterranean enclave that survived a global nuclear war by staying tucked inside a mountain in a shelter dubbed Vault 13.

But it turns out the Vault’s Water Chip is failing, and someone - that’s YOU - has to go out into the wasteland and track down a new one. So the Vault Dweller wanders the wastes, building skills, making friends, finding the oh so handy Power Armor and alien ray gun until you final nab that Water Chip in time, only to be sent out on a second mission to find out what’s the deal with all the super mutants running around.

Even after 10 years, it is still oh so much fun. (I’m playing it again these days).

In Fallout 2, you also play a wasteland survivor - the Chosen One, a descendant of the Vault Dweller - and head off on more shenanigans to save your village from post apocalyptic ravages.

There are also two other games: Fallout: Tactics for PC and the console-based Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, neither of which I’ve played though the latter because I didn’t have the proper console at the time. (Now that I do, though, I haven’t tracked down a copy.

And that brings us up to Fallout 3. I do hope the game turns out to be as great as it looks to be. I do know it will be on my list.

If you’re looking for a definitive history of the Fallout legacy, No Mutants Allowed - my preferred source for all things Vault-related - has a nifty one here.

One Year Later…

June 2nd, 2007

So.

Here we are nearly one year after the last entry with nary a word to show for it but humble excuses and apologies. Consider this a reboot.

Let’s try this again…

Tokyo Dispatch: Triple Six, Yo…

June 11th, 2006

By the way, The Omen remake opened this weekend on June 6, 2006 or 6-6-06 (I think it was Tuesday) in an uninspired, yet equally entertaining, play for mark of the beast marketing.

On the way to my office, there’s a wicked giant billboard all in black with the tripe six numbers blazing out in stunningly polluted-by-exhaust white. At first it said “The signs are all around you” and I was like, hey…new disaster flick? or warning from the religious right?   

I did not heed the omen because Damien is a jerkwad. Credit: 20th Century Fox.

But no, it’s a 2006 remake of, proving once and for all that Damien will never stop making a mess of things or crying to his mommy. Is he really Satan’s son? Does his birth mark the end of time as we know it?Obviously not, since the world didn’t end in 1976 when the debuted.

The 2006 remake - which may be good or blowtastic, who knows -also sported adverts that decared “You have been warned” or “Heed the Omen,” and according to some reports fun-filled triple sixes spray painted in a lovely floral pattern ala that 12 Monkeys (bit of entertaining, post-apocalyptic time travel goodness in its own right) campaign way back in what, 1995? (It is 1995, I just checked).

So, fun with the Book of Revelations. Score. Let’s just hope the movie doesn’t blow The Seventh Sign chunks, man.

PS - I have typing issues on this Japanese keyboard.

Singapore Dispatch: Do we really need 10 ways…

June 6th, 2006

There’s been a long gap, sorry, but here in Singapore the Discovery Channel Asia is launching a new show tonight dubbed Ten Ways.

Ostensibly a paranormal show - Ten Ways to Meet a Monster, Ten Ways to Lift a Curse - there is at least one which the DisasterInk readership may choose to pursue.

Does the world REALLY need 10 ways to end?

Ten Ways the World Will End is a what if show that appears to posit several potential catastrophes that could lead to a final global calamity. Such collections aren’t new - the sf collection Armageddons offers many potential disasters, for example, and I have many others in my own personal library.

Discovery Channel Asia’s Ten Ways the World Will End seems to follow last year’s BBC-National Geographic Channel production of End Day, which came up with four basic ways the Earth could die - from a meteorite to a black hole - with fantastic aerial views. Disclaimer: LiveScience.com, a sister publication to my won employer SPACE.com, ran their own Top 10 Ways to Destroy the Earth last year.

Ten Ways, however, may reach for more fanciful endtimes with robot uprisings, the end-all World War 3 and an Earth spinning wildly off its axis. Remote at best and wildly speculative at worst for the typically factual Discovery Channel, Ten Ways seems like yet another ploy to grab viewers hooked on the apocalyptic wave that seems to have dominated television this year. That said, I’ll probably watch it.

As an aside, if anyone caught last year’s horrific NBC earthquake-themed miniseries 10.0, than you probably are glad you missed its sequel 10.5: Apocalypse last month. God…awful…but at least nuclear weapons didn’t save the day.Wife and I have our own mini-CATastrophe of our own named Chekhov. If you’re tired of bad sf disaster entertainment or crazy cats, than be aware that there are some REAL LIFE disasters going on right now.In Indonesia, where a 6.3 earthquake struck late last month, recovery efforts are still underway. The earthquake struck in Java, killing about 5,800 people and injuring 36,000 others. North of the quake zone, some 11,000 villages have been evacuated around Mount Merapi - a volcano that is billowing out superheated gases and lava.

According to the Associated Press, some scientists believe the recent earthquake may have contributed to Merapi’s activity.

You can find out you can help the American Red Cross support recovery efforts in Indonesia by donating or volunteering here.

When the Ground Shook…

April 18th, 2006

A century ago today, the earth beneath San Francisco shook in a 7.8-magnitude quake that killed at least 3,000 people – possibly as many as 6,000 – and sparked three days of fires that devastated the city.

Photographer Arnold Genthe’s famous image of residents watching San Francisco aflame after the 1906 quake. Click to enlarge.

Now I’m from California relatively near the City, and no stranger to earthquakes – the 1989 Loma Prieta of which was the strongest I was in, but at 6.9 in magnitude, it was 16 times weaker than the 1906 temblor that rocked San Francisco – and they are awesome in their power. Not that I revel in their occurrence, I just find it amazing that with all of our technology and doodads, we still can’t match our planet’s tectonic slips.

San Francisco held a special memorial service today at 5:12 a.m. Pacific Time, when the 1906 quake struck, sounding sirens and remembering the city.

Wife and I watched National Geographic’s The Great Quake Sunday, a two-hour docu-drama about the century-old temblor, and it was a quite good chunk of infotainment. There’s a tie-in with this month’s NatGeo magazine – which I bought because I’m a disaster chump.

National Geographic’s The Great Quake will re-air on Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT.

I told wife today that we really have to get our “Disaster Pack” together in case of another emergency. Basically, it’s just a couple of backpacks with canned food, water, batteries, etcetera, stuff you’d need in case of an emergency. Both wife and I were here in New York during the 9/11 attacks, got stuck in Queens during the Feb. 2003 Blizzard, and stuck again in Queens during the August 2003 Blackout.

None of those would really have required us to abandon home and head out for ourselves, but an emergency pack would be useful to have, I think. If you’re building your own pack and have pets, don’t forget to stock vittles for your dog or cat. They need food too, you know.

But that’s all aside from the task at hand, which is the 1906 quake. If you missed it Sunday, you can catch The Great Quake again on Thursday at 9 p.m. EDT (Check your local listings, really).

Also, it’s worth a quick mention that Alaska’s Augustine Volcano…yup, still active. Also, Folks in Indonesia are watching Mount Merapi which is showing increasing signs that it will erupt pretty soon.

Volcanoes Get Serious…

March 15th, 2006

As if we were running out of reasons to fear volcanoes, scientists have found yet another quirky fact to help us tremble in terror.

The Reventador volcano’s weird plume. Credit: Armando Alvarez Sanchez, Cruz Roja Ecuatoriana via LiveScience.

Studies of the 2002 eruption of South America’s Reventador volcano near Quito, Ecuador have found that its ash plume fell much faster than expected. Fallout from the heavy ash – which differed from the regular, snow-like ash fall from most volcanoes and the destructive pyroclastic flow that accompanies large eruptions like Pompeii – apparently swept several small bridges away and destroyed an empty pipeline according to reports.

You can read all about it at LiveScience here.

Volcanoes are big this year – SciFi Channel’s Disaster Zone: Volcano in New York not withstanding.

Not only is the supervolcano caldera lurking beneath Yellowstone National Park rousing geysers from slumber, but Alaska’s Augustine volcano continues to erupt with low-level activity.

Update: Bird Flu

March 6th, 2006

Credit: CDC.

For those of you distracted by the war in Iraq, the President’s falling approval ratings of the Academy Awards, the Avian Bird Flu is steadily spreading across Europe, Asia and Africa and it’s only a matter of time before it reaches the Americas, scientists say.

According to an article in today’s New York Times, scientists are increasingly find it difficult to track and understand the spread of  the A(H5N1) virus – aka Bird Flu – as birds migrate. While outbreaks have been confined to Africa, Europe and Asia to date, some wading birds are known to migrate to North America and, if infected, could deliver the virus to Canada and the U.S., the Times says.

Bird flu doesn’t readily infect or spread among humans, though scientists are concerned it could acquire that capability and touch of a global human pandemic. There is no commercially available vaccine for the virus either, according to the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), though research into one has been underway since April 2005, with clinical trials currently being performed.

CDC officials say that A(H5N1) has caused the largest amount of detected cases of severe disease and death in humans than all other avian influenza viruses to cross the species barrier. Hence, bird researchers and epidemiologists are working double time to track the disease, identify hotspots – migration hotspots where uninfected birds can contract the flu repeatedly – and rectify the situation.

The trick is that it’s not just wild bird migrations that allow the disease to spread. An outbreak in Croatia was likely caused by fertilizer made by humans from the manure of infected poultry, which was then used to fertilize fish ponds - A(H5N1) can exist in water for weeks – that are frequent stopping points for migrating birds, the Times says.

The point is that bird flu is not just something happening far away to other countries and people, and it is something to keep abreast on because of its global implications. So listen up.

For more on the current status of Bird Flu’s spread:

Zombies vs. Ghosts

March 3rd, 2006

While zombies and ghosts are each equally likely to bring about the end of the world, it’s important to note their differences.

George A. Romero does a fantastic job if illustrating the dangers inherent to the zombie menace in his Living Dead series, while alien ghosts not only bring about full scale war on Earth in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, they are also capable of destroying a Mars base in John Carpenter’s Ghosts of Mars.

So ghosts and zombies: Different phenomena, but equal dangers.

Imagine my chagrin when Reuters News Agency blurs the zombie-ghost line in its story: Living Dead Win Oddest Book Title Award.

Apparently author Gary Leon Hill’s book People Who Don’t Know They’re Dead: How They Attach Themselves to Unsuspecting Bystanders and What to Do About It beat out Simon Milledge’s Rhino Horn Stockpile Management: Minimum Standards and Best Practices from East and Southern Africa.

Hill’s book chronicles the exploits of ghosts, not zombies, hence they are not the living dead. Knowing the difference between the two is essential when deciding whether to use a proton gun or baseball bat to protect your family.

An interesting side note, a previous winner of the Odd Book Title mantle was Bombproof Your Horse: Teach Your Horse to Be Confident, Obedient, and Safe No Matter What You Encounter by Rick Pelicano and Lauren Tjaden, which apparently has nothing to do with bombs.