UN Mounts Asteroid Defense Plan Following Chelyabinsk Meteor 163
Philip Ross writes "Astronomers have warned that our planet is long overdue for a defense plan against catastrophic asteroid collisions. When it comes to deflecting Earth-obliterating celestial bodies, short of a superhero capable of punching the approaching rock back into outer space, there is no single force dedicated to stopping cosmic bullies from striking our little blue planet straight in the eye. That's why the United Nations said it will establish an International Asteroid Warning Group to intercept and divert dangerous asteroids."
Deflection (Score:5, Funny)
Because nothing is as effective at deflecting tons of rock coming towards Earth at extremely high speeds as... a committee.
Re:Deflection (Score:5, Funny)
Because nothing is as effective at deflecting tons of rock coming towards Earth at extremely high speeds as... a committee.
If you fire them out of a barrel fast enough, it might work..
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If you fire them out of a barrel fast enough, it might work..
Can we use a 3D printed cannon just for the added slash dot trolling action?
Re:Deflection (Score:5, Funny)
Someone needs to do he calculations for this!
Or we could just use trial an error. It's not like we'll run out of committees
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Raiden: "You got enough?"
Snake: "Absolutely." *points to bandana* "Infinite ammo!"
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Well if we launch the UN in to the asteroid early enough, their bureaucracy may have enough mass to deflect it.
Re:Deflection (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't work. I know because I tried that in Kerbal.
Re:Deflection (Score:4, Funny)
You jest, but a roof that opens to direct a massive blast of hot air at the asteroid is probably as effective as anything else we've got.
Fool me (Score:2)
Hit Earth with a massive asteroid once; shame on me.
Hit Earth with a massive asteroid twice; shame on the few surviving cockroaches.
Been there, done that. (Score:2)
Could I say, "Ea is my copilot"? Ea, the clever prince, Ea, the one who said that to rescue the dead, an immortal would have to give up his immortality? Ea -- ummm, EaShua, 'salvation of Ea' --- who did exactly that, 2000 years ago?
We've already been hit with a massive asteroid, and it made the Chevrons of Madagascar; it caused the few survivors around the world to focus on building pyramids; and it is recorded in the stores of Noah.
Excerpt from the Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet XI:
Ea, the Clever Prince(?), w
Put your hats on people (Score:2)
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... Because...the UN has it's HQ in NY?
I don't see the link here. The tinfoil must be weak in me.
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"... Because...the UN has it's HQ in NY?
I don't see the link here. The tinfoil must be weak in me."
No, because Ted Turner will have to pay for your part.
Again.
Re:Put your hats on people (Score:4, Interesting)
To an non-American all this is just too fucking bizzare to be real, it's just as bat-shit crazy and "mean spirited" as the nutty General in Burma who suddenly decided the entire economy should be based on the number '3', unsurprisingly the Burmese economy fell into an open sewer and drowned at that very same moment.
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To an non-American all this is just too fucking bizzare to be real, it's just as bat-shit crazy and "mean spirited" as the nutty General in Burma who suddenly decided the entire economy should be based on the number '3', unsurprisingly the Burmese economy fell into an open sewer and drowned at that very same moment.
We have this problem with billionaire right wingers who managed to pack the Supreme Court with judges who think it's OK for billionaires to pay politicians to do their bidding.
It seems that if you spend enough money on TV attack ads, you can win elections. At least in America.
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It seems that if you spend enough money on TV attack ads, you can win elections. At least in America.
We're not that far behind in OZ, we just elected the Mad Monk as PM, one of the first things he did was symbolic, he abolished the cabinet position of Science Minister and put it under the Industry portfolio.
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We have this problem with billionaire right wingers who managed to pack the Supreme Court with judges who think it's OK for billionaires to pay politicians to do their bidding.
Odd; it is billionaires who are more likely to be "disabled" as they usually only acquire that money later in life.
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Actually - no. I think it safe to say that most of the world's billionaires inherited huge fortunes. How many billionaires alive today started with nothing, or near to nothing? Steve ain't alive, but he's recent enough that I'll give you one for him. There's the Microsoft schmuck, and the Facebook douche - who else?
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How many billionaires alive today started with nothing, or near to nothing? ... There's the Microsoft schmuck, and the Facebook douche - who else?
Depends on what you mean by "started with nothing", but there is Bernie Ecclestone, Alan Greenspan, Richard Branson, Alan Sugar, Sean Quinn, the Ikea guy - how many more examples do you need?
Re:Put your hats on people (Score:4, Interesting)
Recently the majority of republicans voted against .... ratifying ... A treaty that takes poppa Bush's (bipartisan) disability act of the early 90's and promotes it as a global minimum standard .... To an non-American all this is just too fucking bizzare to be real
As a non-American (UK) it is the lengths gone to here in favour of the "disabled" that I find bizzare. For example, the fee for some toll bridges is waived for them (why??? they don't even to leave the car), they get reserved parking spaces even if their disability is nothing to do with their mobility (like a missing finger), and I have known small companies give up their business because they cannot afford the changes to their premises required just in case someone who cannot get up a step wants a job there. The railways here have had to spend millions on disability features - they add something like 10% to the cost of a railway carriage.
The treaty (according to Wikipedia) requires "Prohibit discrimination on the basis of disability with regard to all matters concerning all forms of employment". ALL forms? What about roofing? It's bullshit. One of those things that politicos sign because it is good PR (to some) without thinking through the implications.
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Every time we sign a treaty, we lose a little more sovereignty. It's the rest of you suckers who haven't figured out the truth. That is why the US keeps insisting on trade agreements and copyright treaties. My government is busily eroding the sovereignty of all your nations with those idiot treaties. You think WE are going to be suckered into playing that game from the LOSING SIDE?
The rules of the house are "House always wins". Why become a player, when you can write your own damned rules?
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And no, other countries do not lose their sovereignty by signing this particular treaty, not everything that co
You've got to spot them first (Score:4, Insightful)
The main issue we've got is the lack of warning we have. Even a year is too late if you want to divert large lumps of rock.
Once you're going to divert something then you have to work out where its going to end up - no point diverting it from the earth this year, to have it end up crashing into something else which ends up sending 100 rocks at us.
Re:You've got to spot them first (Score:4, Insightful)
The main issue we've got is the lack of warning we have. Even a year is too late if you want to divert large lumps of rock.
Once you're going to divert something then you have to work out where its going to end up - no point diverting it from the earth this year, to have it end up crashing into something else which ends up sending 100 rocks at us.
Depends on the size, if diverting an extinction causing asteroid now means we have to divert 4 in 100 years, I'll take that.
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Anything bigger than your fist doesn't burn up on reentry.
Doesn't completely burn up. Just because the residue didn't have time to heat up doesn't mean that the rest didn't burn up.
The problem isn't the head sized meteorite, but its zillion compatriots doing the same thing and dumping all that kinetic energy into the atmosphere and surface at the same time. It would be interesting to see what the effects of a shattered asteroid would be. And it might be a good idea even in the absence of asteroid shattering strategies since some asteroids may well be piles of l
Re:You've got to spot them first (Score:5, Interesting)
Reliable, visual-range detection of meteors is doubtful since they get covered by dust which can be very dark.
What's needed is a type of active radar with Doppler shift detection. You might be able to put an existing one of those on the ISS to start with, say from tech developed for fighter airplanes. Better not sink money into developing them all over again unless that is actually needed.
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That's for the info. I didn't know it was that high and I'm not aware of any cooling effect aside from the easily detected, sublimated comet's tail which would act as an IR stealth-mode.
I don't think 90% is good enough though, simply because of Murphy's Law.
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No idea about asteroids meteorites and stuff like that, but if "diverting it to something that will send 100 rocks at us back" is a problem, then divert it towards the sun.
Or am I missing something ?
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Given a year's warning, a 1m/s deltaV applied to the rock should be enough to make it miss. This time.
Given the same year's warning, it would take around 30000 m/s deltaV to make the rock impact the Sun.
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If an asteroid is deflected to avoid a collision with earth then its orbit is now changed. Where previously it might have transited the asteroid belt without colliding with another object, there is now the risk that on its new orbit it might hit something else.
While the risk of collison is very minor, it is still there, and we might be trading an impact now for one or more in the future.
Either way - we need to improve our detection of these objects, we've got some of the way there over the last 30 years, bu
The UN? (Score:5, Funny)
I don't think a strongly worded protest/condemnation and/or sanctions will be noticed by an incoming asteroid. ;-)
no single force? (Score:2)
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The first step is detecting them. At this point it is not feasible to get funding for an asteroid deflection program. Once we have detected a killer we can get the funding to try and deflect it. I just hope we'll be abl
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If you need funding to deflect a planet-killing asteroid, your planet deserves to die. Seriously do you live on a planet full of Arabs?
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Supposedly the holy Free Market will provide the one true solution.
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Sir, we are OUT OF BUDGET! We can't afford these new booster throats!
thats great (Score:3)
You Fires The Missile ... (Score:2)
UN Official #1: "Sir! An asteroid on a direct collision course has been spotted! Impact in 5 days!"
UN Official #2: "Plenty of time. We've fired the missiles, each loaded with a STERNLY-WORDED letter ..."
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Weeell .... Priorities? (Score:2)
Re:Weeell .... Priorities? (Score:5, Informative)
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Rather wonder if the current rate of medium-size meteors isn't just a statistical fluke. Comet Shoemaker-Levy was described as a once in a hundred or even once in a thousand year event that we were being treated to. Since that time there have been three or possibly four more similar-sized events on Jupiter that we didn't see happen, we just saw the effects of. The first meteor impact that we managed to observe on the Moon was also described as something that was supposed to be exceedingly rare, and now w
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"and the probability is only twice in a hundred years"
Which is clearly wrong, because we've had cities for about 5000 years and exactly zero such kill events.
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5000 years ago there were perhaps 15 cities in all of North America, none in Europe, a couple dozen in South America and Asia, a dozen in India, and a couple score in Africa and the Middle East. Not much in the way of targets, and they were pretty small. Even then, Ubar in the Arabian Peninsula seems to have been destroyed by a nearby meteor strike while at the height of its power.
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You shouldn't consider the number of actual kill events. You should consider the number of events in general. Eventually a meteor will "get lucky" and take out a major city. Any such event, anywhere in the world, will have world-wide impact (no pun intended). It would be wise to prepare a solution, if we have the technology (which we do).
What your suggesting by not preparing is like the insurance question: "I've never been sick, been in an accident or had my home damaged; so, why should I carry insur
Unfeasible (Score:2)
1. A system to track "anything larger than a certain size"(tm) moving within out solar system and within "a certain maximum amount of time"(tm)
2. A reliable way to deflect/destroy "anything larger than a certain size"
3. A system to implement that way within "a certain maximum amount of time"(tm) available 24x7
4. The same as above multiplied by 2 or maybe 3, just in case.
It would take not less than 100 or 200 years, just to reach the agreement about who is going to look into it.
Impossible technology. (Score:3)
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But they do.
Medical fields, electronics and semiconductor industry, chemical industry all spend billions each year. Automotive industry income sheets read in the billions per quarter and they all have substantial R&D expenses. The cost to build and maintain power plants and infrastructure runs into billions per year, nationwide.
Research into lighting technology, not so much; but, without the supporting infrastructure there would be no electric lights to begin with. I referred to lighting and refr
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A few countries were able to work together to put a science station in orbit for the sake of scientific experiments, I think protecting the future of mankind is important enough that even more countries would help in any way they can to support this ADP.
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Just imagine how stupid the rest of the world will look when an asteroid gets on a collision course with earth, so North Korea nukes it and saves the planet.
NASA looks for funding from UN? (Score:3)
To me this looks like an agreement by the UN to help fund NASA's existing NEO program ( http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ [nasa.gov] ).
Bah. (Score:2)
"Astronomers have warned that our planet is long overdue for a defense plan against catastrophic asteroid collisions"
Meanwhile, we do nothing about all those earthquakes, which actually kill people.
Man against Nature! On to Victory!
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Have you some new method of preventing earthquakes? I'm sure the Nobel Prize committee would be interested in hearing about it.
Klendathu is going to attack us! (Score:2)
Want to know more? [slashdot.org]
How can this not involve (Score:2)
UN-SPIDER [un-spider.org]?
Won't matter (Score:2)
As if anything will happen anyway. First thing will be to set up a commission and staff it with representatives mostly from the Earth-destroying asteroids (Human Rights Commission) or they will endlessly discuss whether the asteroid really represents a danger or not (Security Council).
Re:Priorities? (Score:5, Insightful)
The UN does have specific hunger and poverty eradication goals and organizations that look into those issues. See these:
http://www.unicef.org/mdg/poverty.html [unicef.org]
http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/poverty.shtml [un.org]
That doesn't mean the UN shouldn't have unrelated committees/arms investigating other issues and see if something can be done to address those.
Re:Priorities? (Score:4, Informative)
UN should focus on basic / REAL people problems, not playing star wars.
1 - Being well fed doesn't stop meteorites.
2 - The UN's objective is to defend against basic/REAL threats against humanity (which essentially boils down to assuring world peace to avoid a third world war). Millions of people dying of hunger, sad as it may be, doesn't threaten the humanity unless those people also have an army with nuclear power.
3 - (the most important one) The UN is perfectly capable of doing several things at the same time.
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- Nuke it -- not ideal, as we'll probably lose a few satellites, however the smaller pieces won't cause nearly so much damage. Most of the fragments will burn up in the atmosphere. Many will miss the earth entirely.
- Send a probe out to it when it's still far away. Position the probe close to the asteroid for a long time (months) -- the pull of gravity exerted by the probe will nudge the asteroid off its collision course.
- Wrap it in a giant piece of plastic, and mount some engines on it, so we can capture
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You don't have to put the nuke right next to it as to smash it. With a reasonable distance you should be able to sublimate the meteor's dark and dust-covered surface surface, which creates quite a bit of pressure which can be further increased with additional detonations.
The risk to satellites is very real though. Just like the gravity probe you have to have an early detection and launch. A nuke in space too close to Earth will over-excite the van Allen Belt, which then damages satellites over a period of m
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A nuclear weapon detonated in space is far less powerful than one detonated within the atmosphere. The shockwave produced is far less powerful then what is needed to alter a fast moving mid-size asteroid trajectory. Depending on how much advance time you have a mission to place nukes directly on the asteroid would probably be the best option we currently have. And if we are ever faced with an incoming asteroid the last thing anyone needs is the UN getting in the way. There are 2 and possibly 3 countries cap
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A manned mission is laughable, and only fit for the movies.
Actually, going from past experience, not even that.
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That "pull of gravity" thing is so fucking ridiculous. You're going to have a probe being pulled toward a massive rock much more than the rock is being pulled toward the probe. The only reason it doesn't get laughed out of science entirely is you can't just land the probe on a pile of loosely coherent gravel and fire boosters [youtube.com], so you need to gravity-drag it. Otherwise, you're going to expend a ton of fuel keeping a distance that should be close, but not too close that expending fuel will create thrust a
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Also sometimes movies are right: Lunking a nuke at the surface of a giant rock won't do much.
We have thousands of them and they aren't much good for anything else. Most of us would be happy just to get them off the face of the planet and somehow imagine the nuclear arms race wasn't just an economic holocaust.
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It's like saying Cambodian children aren't much good for anything else, so we should use them for sex tourism and somehow imagine that at least they won't all starve when they've got all that semen to swallow.
The only thing you'll end up with is a bunch of starving, exploited eight year olds. Just like you'll end up with a heated ball of nickle-iron instead of a cold one. It might weigh slightly less. If you want to use that nuke power to move the thing, you're going to need to produce thrust; you'll
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You don't detonate on the surface, nor do you detonate a low altitude. You hit it with a penetrator. The deeper you can penetrate, the better. If you can actually SPLIT the huge ass rock, the several largest parts begin moving away from each other, at fairly rapid speeds. If it's so huge you can't split it, you at least launch many tons of debris in one direction at high speed, while the remaining larger body moves in the opposite direction at a much slower speed. And, that much slower speed is precise
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You won't make tons of high speed debris as a thrust source. Consider if you split the rock 50/50 mass-wise, you have to launch one 50% size chunk at a velocity V to produce enough thrust to launch the other 50% chunk at -V. If you launch a proportionally smaller piece--say a 1% chunk, 1/99--you have to launch that chunk at velocity V to launch the other chunk at -V/99. So if you want to move a 200 ton rock by launching 2 tons of rock off it, to get it moving 100mph you need to mechanically launch the di
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massive_Ordnance_Penetrator [wikipedia.org]
If the big ass rock doesn't crack, you still ejected material in one direction at extremely high speed. Did you actually read my post? And, how many asteroids are pure nickle/iron?
And, what is this "100 mph" nonsense? We don't NEED to make any delta changes that drastic. Try to visualize this now. A quarter million miles out, there is a big rock aimed DIRECTLY at earth. It's going to take six weeks to get here. We detonate a warhead, which la
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Bunker busters don't split the earth; they penetrate an outer shell to damage something squishy inside. Still, the 'digging' part of this is useful. This one goes 200 feet.
A quarter million miles out there is a rock traveling in excess of 30,000mph (YU55 was traveling at 29,000mph; Chelyabinsk was traveling 41,750mph). The earth is 8000 miles in diameter, so we need to move this rock 4000 miles in about 8 hours. We can consider that for each 30,000 miles it approaches us we need it to move 500 miles
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Actually - most of the stuff that can hit the earth has already been seen one or more times, their trajectories roughly plotted, etc. We already know to watch for much of it. The asteroid that is going to hit us may or may not hit us on the first pass. We get time to prepare, to calculate how much thrust, and in which direction. The one that intersected our lunar orbit? We have an idea when it will be back again, and from which direction it will approach. We already have warning - all we need do is wa
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The New Scientist had an article about this. If it's just big enough to destroy a city, but not to destroy the planet, the most practical solution would be to evacuate the city.
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I was secretly referring to Carol Rosin's relaying of Werner von Braun's warning about the militarization of space. I felt I'll probably earn the Troll mod just for thinking about it... But both of these people are to be considered reliable non-cranks and respected scientists.
However, if we don't have any tactical ability in space it means we are relying on the presumed aliens for our safety. - That would be the same aliens which let 1000 people get hurt in Chelyabinsk. - If meteor-deflecting aliens did eve
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If meteor-deflecting aliens did ever exist, perhaps this means they think we are ready to handle it ourselves?
Why is everyone so sure aliens exist?
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Because it seems like at least some form of life in the universe besides us is a near statistical certainty.
We used to think stars with planets would be pretty rare. Now we find planets all over the place, and find them at an ever increasing pace.
Are you telling me that across billions and billions of galaxies, each with billions and billions of stars, leading to billions and billions and billions (and billions) of planets, that life in the universe evolved on only one
Re:It begins (Score:5, Informative)
Thank you for your uninformed, knee-jerk anti-UN comment.
They did eradicate smallpox, you know.
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How about a non-knee-jerk anti-UN comment?
I've believed the UN to be as worthless as teats on a boar hog for almost as long as I've appreciated a nice pair of teats on a female homo sapien. That's almost fifty years of careful consideration for you, rather than a knee-jerk.
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My parents and grandparents remember the time before the existence of the UN, and the two world wars that prompted its creation. Having an outlet to vent disagreements publicly helped prevent their being vented privately and exploding into the conflict that would have left Earth uninhabitable by life forms higher than moles. It that's worthless to you, so be it. I'm glad it was there so Khrushchev (?) could bang his shoe on the table and Reagan could play to his base and no one started shooting.
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/sarcasm/ Oh yes, I forgot - the UN has prevented the US from invading literally DOZENS of countries, for fun and profit. In 2002, the UN put it's foot down, and firmly denied permission to invade Iraq. Yep, I remember now.
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So you are thinking that if either the U.N. or some similar body existed before either WWI or WWII that possibly either/both wars would not have happened....well, I am pretty confident in stating that the League of Nations sure didn't due the trick preventing a world war. Yes, the League of Nations is not exactly like the U.N., but they sure try to operate in the same capacity.
Crazy people typically can't be talked off the ledge or taught that world domination is a bad thing.
Just my $0.02.
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I don't know about that, we somehow managed to keep Ronnie Raygun from starting the nuclear war in Europe that he seemed to think was "winnable". That was even with Wolfowitz whispering "Nuke them now" in his ear.
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Thank you for your stupid, uninformed anti-UN comment.
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As usual - when you've run out of arguments, resort to insults. Thanks for playing!!
And the WHO is.... (Score:5, Informative)
...an agency of the UNITED NATIONS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization [wikipedia.org]
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...an agency of the UNITED NATIONS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Health_Organization [wikipedia.org]
You don't know who The WHO [wikipedia.org] are? I assure you they have nothing to do with the UN!
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http://www.historyofvaccines.org/content/timelines/smallpox [historyofvaccines.org]
Actually, the effort spanned three centuries.
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That's what they want you to think.