I don't want to turn the heartbreak of the Asian Tsunami into an academic exercise, but an excerpt from Douglas Mulhall's
Our Molecular Future on employing future technologies to prepare for tsunamis is timely for us all. We will continue to be at risk of tsunamis in the future. One scenario on how the Eastern United States is at risk, for example, is a potential eruption of the La Palma volcano on the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa. A half-trillion tons of volcanic rock could potentially slip into the ocean and, in a worse-case scenario, send a "mega-tsunami" across the Atlantic Ocean. A google search on
"palma tsunami" will yield many results, including this
detailed study (pdf).
But as I said, this post is intended to promote hope in a future where we just might be prepared for such disasters. Mulhall describes various disaster scenarios and how molecular technologies can give us hope in a future brighter than what we've experienced this week.
Excerpts from pages 222-224 of Douglas Mulhall's
Our Molecular Future: How Nanotechnology, Robotics, Genetics and Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Our World, with a figure of a theoretical tsunami barrier manufactured from carbon nanotubes on page 224.
Thousands of nanosensors implanted deep in the great caldera detect a huge magma buildup thousands of feet below. Weeks pass. The volcano erupts. High risk communities have already moved thanks to disassembly and reassembly capabilities that arrived with the deployment of nanotechnology. Tsunami warnings were raised along all coastlines. Millions of vehicles were airborne in half an hour. Millions more potential victims made it to the carbon-reinforced transport tunnels that permeate cities and double as evacuation corridors.
As the tsunami approaches the coastline, graphite nanotube-reinforced curtains lower themselves from a string of floating barriers that line the coast. As the curtains unravel toward the sea floor, they position themselves to form a slope: an artificial shoreline. At an electronic command, their molecular structure transforms from flexible to rigid. Still, a series of weakened pulses pass through, submerging coastal cities up to the fifth-story level.
Buildings are impregnated with carbon nanotubes thirty or more times stronger than steel, rendering them virutually indestructible against wave action. Doors and windows are hermetically sealed, turning buildings into submarines for the duration. External power lines don't exist, having been replaced by transparent solar coatings on every building and street.
Twenty-four hours pass and the flood subsides. Things are still ugly. Yet before residents have returned to check the damage, an army of biological nanites--nano-scale mechanical-biological mites--emerges to start consuming the gunk. Because everything has its own DNA or other nano-scale label, robots sort the debris and return it to its designated location, or send it for recycling if it was destroyed. In a few days, the gunk is gone. Bloated nanites have been transported to forests, where they fertilize the soil with their load of nutrients.
I'm old enough to doubt that we could ever exercise the wisdom necessary to put such a plan in place, but I am young enough to hope that some day we just might get there.