FARK.com: (5225706) Need a Communist conspiracy theory to distract the gullible masses? What if Obama used HAARP to cause the volcanic eruption, to destroy the airlines, so Red China can build a Super Orient Express to London and take over the world?

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		Need a Communist conspiracy theory to distract the gullible masses? What if Obama used HAARP to cause the volcanic eruption, to destroy the airlines, so Red China can build a Super Orient Express to London and take over the world? (ft.com)		49
		More: Interesting, Red China, fiber optic cables, travel agents, business trips, high-speed rail, Super Orient Express, Buenos Aires, myriad

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2266 clicks; posted to Business » on 20 Apr 2010 at 2:52 PM | Favorite | share:

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GilRuiz1		2010-04-20 11:58:37 AM

Well yes, but what about the reverse vampires?

WaltzingMathilda		2010-04-20 12:00:29 PM

well, chinamen are very good at building railroads.

AdolfOliverPanties		2010-04-20 12:04:26 PM

"Dock that chink a day's pay for nappin' on the job!"

Blackbird		2010-04-20 12:21:21 PM

What a Super Orient Express that took over the world looked like.

ne2d		2010-04-20 12:21:45 PM

*reads headline*

WAT

*reads article*

WUT

JerseyTim		2010-04-20 12:29:21 PM

As crazy as that conspiracy is, it still is more plausible than the whole "born in Kenya" thing.

DamnYankees		2010-04-20 12:35:16 PM

I must say, a Beijing-London train does sound sort of awesome.

jerry2a		2010-04-20 01:00:59 PM

Damn Chinese Muslims.

what_now		2010-04-20 01:16:49 PM

When China's rail authorities recently announced plans to build a high-speed rail link connecting Beijing with London I had to pause and wonder who would be booking passage on this Eurasian super express?

Really? you couldn't think of a use for such a thing? REALLY??? Idiots.

Shostie		2010-04-20 01:21:01 PM

DamnYankees: I must say, a Beijing-London train does sound sort of awesome.

Awesome, yes. But the logistics of it would be a nightmare.

I mean, if they build it across Asia and Europe, they'll have to deal with dozens of countries to get permission to build the damn thing. And parts of Eastern Europe aren't exactly known for governmental stability.

If they go the other route mentioned in the article, eastward over the Pacific and Atlantic, they'd have to construct something over unforgiving seas.

Either way, I can't see how this could ever be affordable for the traveler and economically viable for China.

GurneyHalleck		2010-04-20 01:22:22 PM

HAARP is a pretty crazy device. All explanations have hinted at its power more than its limitations. I think it could cause a lot of rain or other atmospheric phenomenon, but I dunno about volcanic activity.

tototototo		2010-04-20 02:05:24 PM

I felt my IQ drop just reading that headline.

Funk Brothers		2010-04-20 03:08:01 PM

Alex Jones has already thought of it.

brantgoose		2010-04-20 03:13:29 PM

tototototo: I felt my IQ drop just reading that headline.

That's the hall mark of a really first rate conspiracy theory. The greater the whumpf, the greater the Dumbth.

Too bad there wasn't any room in the headline for the global warming conspiracy angle.

You know how those romantic old fool liberals love taking the train even though it's stupid, and liberals are stupid, and anything that allegedly reduces your carbon footprint actually increases your carbon footprint, so reducing your carbon footprint is stupid.

Teabaggers and birthers and AGW deniers should fight the liberal-commie conspiracy by mooning Amtrak trains.

All you have to do is wait until you hear a train coming then, you line up on the track and turn around and drop your drawers.

Dog Welder		2010-04-20 03:17:27 PM

WaltzingMathilda: well, chinamen are very good at building railroads.

Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.

zerkalo		2010-04-20 03:23:37 PM

What's scary is that 7% of the population would react by saying "I knew it!" A further 20% could be persuaded with a little background

deansheen		2010-04-20 03:27:22 PM

I believe WaltzingMatilda meant to reference the Orientals in that post.

vaderstg		2010-04-20 03:28:22 PM

tototototo: I felt my IQ drop just reading that ~~headline~~... article

bark_atda_moon		2010-04-20 03:35:02 PM

Didn't Remo Williams and the Quaker Oats guy find out that HAARP was a fake government satellite project?

Vacation Bible School		2010-04-20 03:36:02 PM

brantgoose		2010-04-20 03:36:08 PM

I'd be happy if they ran a train of any kind in Canada on a route that actually goes near where people live. Apart from the Windsor to Quebec City corridor, they mostly designed the routes for heavy freight, which doesn't mind travelling across hundreds of miles of wilderness with only the odd cabin here and there.

High speed trains would compete with the unprofitable airlines (such as they are) on mid-distances, but they would make a great back up system when flying is impossible. But the vested interests in the form of the bus companies and automobile dealers stand in the way of that happening any time soon, and the economics aren't great because they're so capital-intensive.

You have to build in a tremendous over-capacity and then run most of the system at a loss most of the time.

It's beginning to look like this is true of planes, trains and automobiles, though, especially city buses. They're only used to capacity about two hours a day and you need them to run every ten or fifteen minutes to make them worth using. I can walk about two miles in half an hour (average human walking speed: four miles per hour).

Horse drawn carriages were able to move at 12 mph in London in 1900, modern London traffic was down to 10 mph before the congestion charges came in and are probably right back down again by now.

The most efficient form of transportation remains the bicycle, but the people who use those in cities are maniacs and they're no good for long distance travel in the Winter in Canada because polar bears hate bicycles--it reminds them of their brown brothers' cruel exploitation by circuses.

Also, if need be, Canada, the USA and Russia could run their trains on wood. Wood-powered airplanes never caught on, because kerosene was too cheap and wood and coal were too heavy.

Lt. Cheese Weasel		2010-04-20 03:41:00 PM

It's been done.

Raptor Jesus		2010-04-20 03:46:25 PM

GurneyHalleck: HAARP is a pretty crazy device. All explanations have hinted at its power more than its limitations. I think it could cause a lot of rain or other atmospheric phenomenon, but I dunno about volcanic activity.

It sends a 3.6 Megawatt (MW) signal into the upper atmosphere, the ionosphere to be exact. Then they study the effect on that part of the atmosphere. That's it.

To give you a sense of scale, a UHF broadcast is rated up to 10 MW. A P-51 Mustang, a WW2 fighter, produces 1.3 MW. So, this has the same power output as three propeller-driven planes, or about a third of a television station, and these never had an effect on weather patterns.

For this to cause rain anywhere, it would have to draw in a lot of moisture. A typical thunderstorm contains about 10^15 joules of energy. This is a massive amount, more than the energy released in a nuclear explosion.

Now, watts is is a measure of power, or rate of work. In simple terms, its how much energy you can release in a certain amount of time. One watt is one joule per second. 3.6 Megawatts is 3.6 million joules per second. That seems like a helluva lot, and it is, but remember that a thunderstorm requires 10^15, or ten thousand billion joules. If you divide the amount of energy needed (10^15 joules) by the power (3.6 million joules per second), you get the time needed to produce that much power ,in seconds. Do that math and convert seconds to days, and you get a little over 8.8 years.

What this means is that you would have to run HAARP continuously for over 8 years in order to cause a thunderstorm, assuming %100 of the output went into making a storm.

Long story short, there is no way for HAARP to cause a thunderstorm, much less a volcanic eruption, which requires you to put energy into the ground, something HAARP can't do.

Wiki page on HAARP (new window)

Wiki page on orders of magnitude of Power (new window)

Wiki page on Thunderstorms, at the passage regarding energy (new window)

Raptor Jesus		2010-04-20 03:49:05 PM

... er, that should be 10 million billion joules. My bad.

eudemonist		2010-04-20 03:58:53 PM

Hah, that's just what they want you to think. Propagation of ULF and ELF waves through the earth's mantle, triangulated to meet back up and enhance one another at a specific point--that's where it's at. Keep in mind that the array doesn't need to provide all the energy, just enough to start the reaction. Microwaved mantle ftw!

Pants full of macaroni!!		2010-04-20 03:59:27 PM

By the end of the week, this will officially be part of The Narrative.

eudemonist		2010-04-20 04:08:22 PM

C. W. Hansell (1945)."Communication system by pulses through the Earth", U.S. Patent 2,389,432

Heh.

Raptor Jesus		2010-04-20 04:09:41 PM

eudemonist: Hah, that's just what they want you to think. Propagation of ULF and ELF waves through the earth's mantle, triangulated to meet back up and enhance one another at a specific point--that's where it's at. Keep in mind that the array doesn't need to provide all the energy, just enough to start the reaction. Microwaved mantle ftw!

HAARP is in the 2.8-10 MHz band, way above ELF. Tinfoil should still be effective at stopping in though.

MadSkillz		2010-04-20 04:14:26 PM

Oh come on that Muse album was pretty good and didn't cause the volcanic eruption.

Tyrone Slothrop		2010-04-20 04:22:30 PM

I love the Orient Express!
www.yog-sothoth.com

// hot as a flesh train

eudemonist		2010-04-20 04:33:55 PM

Raptor Jesus: HAARP is in the 2.8-10 MHz band, way above ELF. Tinfoil should still be effective at stopping in though.

Hmmm. From the wiki:

Some of the main scientific findings from HAARP include:

1. Generation of very low frequency radio waves by modulated heating of the auroral electrojet, useful because generating VLF waves ordinarily requires gigantic antennas
2. Production of weak luminous glow (below what you can see with your eye, but measurable) from absorption of HAARP's signal
3. Production of ultra low frequency waves in the 0.1 Hz range, which are next to impossible to produce any other way
4. Generation of whistler-mode VLF signals which enter the magnetosphere, and propagate to the other hemisphere, interacting with Van Allen radiation belt particles along the way
5. VLF remote sensing of the heated ionosphere

All the tinfoil will do is cook your brain faster.

wildsnowllama		2010-04-20 04:59:57 PM

Raptor Jesus: ... er, that should be 10 million billion joules. My bad.

Heh. Raptor Jesus saves...

tototototo		2010-04-20 05:02:04 PM

vaderstg: tototototo: I felt my IQ drop just reading that headline... article

I didn't read the whole article, I can still use English.

Handsome B. Wonderful		2010-04-20 05:11:05 PM

Here's a picture of the HAARP attack on London.

www.musebootlegs.com

vaderstg		2010-04-20 05:32:17 PM

tototototo: vaderstg: tototototo: I felt my IQ drop just reading that headline... article

I didn't read the whole article, I can still use English.

I wasnt correcting you. I was adding my perspective. Hence, the lack of "FTFY".

Raptor Jesus		2010-04-20 05:34:54 PM

eudemonist: Raptor Jesus: HAARP is in the 2.8-10 MHz band, way above ELF. Tinfoil should still be effective at stopping in though.

Hmmm. From the wiki:

Some of the main scientific findings from HAARP include:

1. Generation of very low frequency radio waves by modulated heating of the auroral electrojet, useful because generating VLF waves ordinarily requires gigantic antennas
2. Production of weak luminous glow (below what you can see with your eye, but measurable) from absorption of HAARP's signal
3. Production of ultra low frequency waves in the 0.1 Hz range, which are next to impossible to produce any other way
4. Generation of whistler-mode VLF signals which enter the magnetosphere, and propagate to the other hemisphere, interacting with Van Allen radiation belt particles along the way
5. VLF remote sensing of the heated ionosphere

All the tinfoil will do is cook your brain faster.

Huh. Well I'll be damned.

However, I seriously doubt that this is able to cause earthquakes or volcanic eruptions. Given, it's unlike generating a storm, in that you only have to release energy stored in a fault instead of generating it. However, HAARP released radio waves, not seismic waves.

Now, you may say that a microwave does the same thing but it has a considerable effect on whatever's inside, and you'd be absolutely right. But, a microwave focuses that radiation within the cooking area itself. There is no such mechanism at work here, so there's no way to direct energy into the fault, so you can't generate earthquakes or eruptions.

ra-ra-raw		2010-04-20 05:35:50 PM

Shostie: DamnYankees: I must say, a Beijing-London train does sound sort of awesome.

Awesome, yes. But the logistics of it would be a nightmare.

I mean, if they build it across Asia and Europe, they'll have to deal with dozens of countries to get permission to build the damn thing. And parts of Eastern Europe aren't exactly known for governmental stability.

If they go the other route mentioned in the article, eastward over the Pacific and Atlantic, they'd have to construct something over unforgiving seas.

Either way, I can't see how this could ever be affordable for the traveler and economically viable for China.

There already is a train going from London to Beijing. You can actually go all the way to Singapore. This is talking about a high-speed train that will take two days, and a little bit of research before you post will let you know it is already past the planning stages and in the prospecting and survey stages. It is not 'dozens of countries', there are seventeen countries involved in the negotiations. The next stages after the northern route will continue past Beijing to Singapore and will go to India and Pakistan and a third line will go to Vietnam, Burma, Thailand and Malaysia. The link to Burma is being built in exchange for Lithium. China already has a train that averages 350km/h and services a 1000 km route, so the technology is there. And if China has any pressing right now, it is somewhere to put it's vast stacks of cash.

invictus2		2010-04-20 05:51:00 PM

The Aristocrats!

eudemonist		2010-04-20 05:54:59 PM

Raptor Jesus: Now, you may say that a microwave does the same thing but it has a considerable effect on whatever's inside, and you'd be absolutely right. But, a microwave focuses that radiation within the cooking area itself. There is no such mechanism at work here, so there's no way to direct energy into the fault, so you can't generate earthquakes or eruptions.

Use the atmosphere as a big 'ol parabolic reflector. Not to mention HAARP sits on one of the plates that runs through Iceland.

/just sayin'

iamkion132		2010-04-20 06:08:53 PM

I really am concerned that someone somewhere contains this much derp in one location and has the ability to actually act upon said derp.

74rex		2010-04-20 07:37:31 PM

approves.

Raptor Jesus		2010-04-20 09:56:04 PM

eudemonist: Raptor Jesus: Now, you may say that a microwave does the same thing but it has a considerable effect on whatever's inside, and you'd be absolutely right. But, a microwave focuses that radiation within the cooking area itself. There is no such mechanism at work here, so there's no way to direct energy into the fault, so you can't generate earthquakes or eruptions.

Use the atmosphere as a big 'ol parabolic reflector. Not to mention HAARP sits on one of the plates that runs through Iceland.

/just sayin'

That doesn't work. The signal is absorbed by the atmosphere. Any low frequency signals are caused by excitation of atoms in the ionosphere, which are then emitted in all directions. These signals are not focused by the atmosphere, instead they are further scattered.

Not to mention that, even if you could use the atmosphere to focus radio waves, the focus would be the center of the Earth, not a point the surface.

Also, HAARP is not on the same fault line as Iceland. It's not even on a fault line.

www.countrywatch.com

Sure, it's on the same plate, but so is the rest of North America. Nothing is erupting anywhere else.

Robo Beat		2010-04-21 01:21:54 AM

So now apparently the President of the United States is a Bond villain?

And the teabaggers wonder why nobody takes them seriously.

Virulency		2010-04-21 03:02:50 AM

we have an earthquake generating machine and a malfunctioning hurricane machine??

BolloxReader		2010-04-21 04:06:50 AM

Dog Welder: WaltzingMathilda: well, chinamen are very good at building railroads.

Dude, chinaman is not the preferred nomenclature.

Chinaman (new window)

farscape		2010-04-21 11:03:04 AM

WaltzingMathilda: well, chinamen are very good at building railroads.

Not the issue here.

eudemonist		2010-04-21 11:13:06 AM

Raptor Jesus: That doesn't work. The signal is absorbed by the atmosphere.

Some signals are absorbed by the atmosphere, but some are reflected. That's how we can send a radio signal from one point on the surface to another even if the curvature of the earth is in between.

Not to mention that, even if you could use the atmosphere to focus radio waves, the focus would be the center of the Earth, not a point the surface.

That depends on the angle at which you bounce them.

Also, HAARP is not on the same fault line as Iceland. It's not even on a fault line. Sure, it's on the same plate, but so is the rest of North America. Nothing is erupting anywhere else.

It's true it's not on a fault line. To set up big vibrations at the edge of a plate, though, one would start a little ways in from the opposite edge. Also, wave enhancement happens in very specific points, so I wouldn't expect eruptions anywhere else. Wouldn't be a very good weapon if you couldn't aim it, now would it?