If China decided to take out all the satellites in the Earth’s orbit, you would be late for your party. The geosat that gives u directions in your car would fail.You would not be able to call your friends….
…. asall cell phones would go dead. But then you would probably head home as the baby sitter could no longer call u. On the way u would face the most horrendous traffic jams as people would be trying to get home just like yourself. The terrestrial local radio would be issuing broadcasts asking people to calm down.
But panic would spread as the news comes that thousands of aircraft are flying with no navigation pointers left. Airport staff would be unable to communicate with them, and the airports will soon be full of crashed aircraft landing into one another.
A large number of people would settle for a night of sex as their would be no football, as Satellite TV would be off the air. The internet would no longer work anyway.
Large corporations would find their delivery systems and plans going to pieces. Expect your supermarket to run out of supplies as the supply chain breaks down. And as there is panic buying, you will have to walk to the stores as the roads will be clogged with cars that ran out of gas.
Government communication will break down, and most governments in the West will start shoring up for defense against imagined enemies rather than looking after their civilian population.
But for 40% of the Indian rural population nothing will have changed. The only hint they will get is that that the distant orange reflections of the lights from the nearest city on the clouds no longer exist. The power grids have shut down.
And one guy will come from the train station 10 miles away, to say that for some reason the train never came.
“Sheher mein koi lafda chall raha hai”. He would say before he settled down for a cup of warm chai.
Shekhar
True Shekhar… Suddenly after reading your blog I felt so relaxed… “sheher mein koi lafda chal rahaa hai”… Ignorance is bliss…
But then there will be another “development”. Somebody will recognize that internet needs an underwater CONNECTION…or someone else will find a way of using humans – which generates more bio-electricity than a 120-volt battery or that the neurons in human brains can create the same effects a microchip can!
May be there is going to chaos, until someone finds this out. But where are we going …back to Satya Yuga!? Or have we actually moved from one yuga to the other at all?
Space is already militarised at least a couple of decades ago. All these scenarios have already been ‘war gamed’ – by India included and for the moment – China with its ambigious intentions raises hackles , no doubt.
What is however , alarming is our credulous acceptance of the US intentions . America’s values are not driven by universal good , nor are China’s – this makes the future quite bleak for the collective humankind.
Killer satellites armed with Gigawatt Laser Beam weapons have existed in space since two decades and this talk of space free from warfare is all hogwash – Space is already heavily militarised , not just by Humans alone – something that Americans learnt the hard way.
As for India, its chaos may yet be one of its best defence , next only to its assorted spirituality – something we should look into seriously . Some of the advances in Multi – dimensional relativity sounds a lot like lore from our ‘myth’ologies – fantastic puranic recountings of various ‘astras’ and ‘vimanas’ and their performance sound more like a future warfare scenario .
hey,
a really nice one 🙂 true, I agree with Sheetal. Ignorance indeed is bliss at times. Just shows how dependent we have become on technology. The other day, a discussion with a friend just got me thinking ‘how the hell was I communicating without cell phones a few yrs ago when they weren’t so common?’ and when I cut off from it, I just feel a sense of loss.
What China hit was a satellite in low earth orbit (LEO) at 800 kilometre. Reconnaisance and imaging satellites operate at this height or less. Most communication satellites operate at geostationary orbits which are 40 times higher (at about 36,000 kilometres or more). As far as I know no nation has demonstrated abilities at killing sattelites at that height. Also, 90 percent of global internet traffic is through undersea cables.
thank u for corresting me, xyz. But two questions. How long before China or some other country has the technoogy to hit a sattelite at 37,000 feet. And is there no link at all that at one time or the other depends upon sattelite communications ? Is it continuous cable connection ? shekhar
hi shekhar, of course the capability of hitting a satellite at geo orbits is quite possible. i think it will be far more challenging though to hit with pinpoint accuracy a satellite as big as a car or a SUV 36,000 kilometers or more away, hurtling through space at thousands of kms per hour. i didn’t think any country has demonstrated that yet.
the point i was trying to make however was that from a strategic/military point of view countries would be happy with being able to hit things in LEO as almost all recon/imaging and satellites with other military applications operate at this height.
(China specifically has been quite pissed off about the US’s constant prying eyes in its skies. Remember one of China’s air force planes had a collision with a US recon aircraft forcing it to land on a Chinese island called Hainan in 2001?)
i do agree that satellite co-ordination is probably very much present even when the main internet traffic is routed through undersea cables. the point i was trying to make here was that internet traffic may be disrupted for a while if comm satellites were taken out but the disruption will probably be temporary as the major internet backbones are mostly undersea and must be capable of operating in standalone mode if needed.
thank u for educating us Rudra, thats quite a loy of great info out there ! shekhar
Wonderful Guys!!
n the unexpected happens….no light, no TV. no internet…people will do what they like most at these time…Baby Creation process.. Baby boom will come similar to what happened in Newyork, when there was a power failure.
Ignorance is bliss which we all enjoy..
He He
Very imaginative! Wonder how many of you ever given a thought to how many Indian cities China would be able to target in case China gets over ambitious in terms of her expansionist policies?