Apocalypse

We have been fearing the Apocalypse for 100 days due to the closure of Hormuz. The blow is going to be given to us by a heat wave in China

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At the end of February, the clocks in the financial markets seemed to stop. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz was not a simple geopolitical skirmish; It meant amputating, from one day to the next, the main energy artery of the planet. Classical economics manuals dictated that the abrupt disappearance of 20% of the world’s crude oil would trigger industrial paralysis, widespread shortages and an imminent recession. However, more than one hundred days after the start of the blockade, Western economies are still standing and the barrel of crude oil, far from reaching the catastrophic 200 dollars that some investment funds even predicted, has been contained below the $100 barrier. We have survived what, on paper, is the greatest threat to energy security in history. The question that now resonates in the European chancelleries is unanimous: how have we achieved it and, above all, how long will the truce last? The architecture of an unexpected rescue The fact that the world has not collapsed is due to a complex network of counterweights that have absorbed the blow. The first revealing data it is provided by the agency Reuters: The production of OPEC countries has fallen this May to its lowest level since 2000 (16.13 million barrels per day) as a direct consequence of the siege of Iran. Despite this massive hole in supply, global supply has been reorganized in record time. The analyst Javier Blas unfolds in his column of Bloomberg the keys to this logistical miracle. The main lifeline, paradoxically, has arrived from Beijing. China has plunged its oil imports by ship to decade lows (nearly 40% less than last year’s average). According to Blas, this unexpected destruction of Asian demand has acted as a huge escape valve: “If Beijing were buying the same amount of oil as in the past, global inflation would be out of control.” Added to Chinese containment is a tectonic shift in energy hegemony. As documented Reutersthe United States has taken advantage of the chaos to become the largest oil exporter in the world, overtaking Russia and Saudi Arabia by shipping nearly 10.5 million barrels per day in May. Furthermore, the Gulf countries have not sat idly by. The producers They are using a network of pipelines less known through Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that circumvent the Hormuz bottleneck, keeping some five million barrels a day alive, in addition to maintaining “hot” extraction infrastructures for an eventual rapid restart. The silent blow The fact that there are no kilometer-long lines at service stations has generated a false sense of immunity. Hormuz’s economic blow is landing, but it is doing so through the financial system. The war conflict has blown up the roadmap by Christine Lagarde and the European Central Bank (ECB), since the sustained rise in fuel prices has caused eurozone inflation to rise to 3.2% in May. Given the fear that this extra cost will permanently spread to the shopping basket, the ECB has been forced to resume raising interest rates this June, placing them at 2.25%. The true price of the Iran war is already being paid by European households and companies through more expensive mortgages and restricted credit. And the scenario continues to be a powder keg: the extreme volatility of the markets after the latest crossed attacks between the United States and Iran, which have kept Brent crude stressed above $95. The Asian thermometer: the great threat to Spain While the global macroeconomy deals with interest rates, at the local level a perfect storm is brewing for the Spanish consumer in the coming months. And the trigger will not be military, but climate. According to the forecasts of the consulting firm Tempos Energía, collected by Europa Pressthe price of electricity in Spain this summer will not depend on what happens in the Strait of Hormuz, but on the temperatures in Asia. Until now, Europe has been importing American liquefied natural gas (LNG) without much competition because China was not demanding it. However, the general director of Tempos Energía, Antonio Aceituno, warns of an imminent reversal: “When the heat arrives and the thermometer soars in Shanghai, American freighters will be divided between demand from Asia and Europe.” If the Asian market absorbs the supply to feed its air conditioning networks, Europe will be left without cheap alternatives to cover its own summer demand peaks, and with tanks at less than half capacity. The consulting firm’s forecast for Spain is severe: if China breaks into the purchasing market, the electricity bill for July and August could rise to the range of 88 to 95 euros per megawatt hour. This represents an increase of up to 40%, which “would be equivalent to paying double what was paid in 2019.” A truce with an expiration date We have managed to avoid the precipice thanks to the inertia of pre-war inventories, a historic deployment of emergency reserves and the forced reconfiguration of the global market. If diplomacy triumphs, Blas explains how the intact infrastructure of the Gulf would allow 50% of production to be recovered in a matter of days. However, trusting economic stability to an imminent diplomatic agreement is a dangerous game. Emergency reserves are not infinite and the capacity to cushion shocks has a limit. The world has shown astonishing resilience in surviving without its main oil route, but the armor is cracking. If the situation continues and summer demand tightens, the apocalypse that we avoided in spring could arrive in the form of unaffordable bills and an induced recession. The Hormuz bill, sooner or later, will have to be paid. Image | Unsplash 1 and 2 Xataka | Ukraine turned drones into hunters. A helicopter shot down in Hormuz has transformed them into a Spielberg film

Europe feared an apocalypse due to Hormuz. A cocktail of batteries, rain and reactors is saving us in extremis

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The world seems to be burning from all sides and global logistics has gone into panic. We had been holding our breath for weeks before the Third Gulf War, the fear of a crisis identical to that of 2022 has materialized in tangible disasters: airlines like Lufthansa they had to cancel up to 20,000 flights for this summer due to the shortage and extreme rise in aviation fuel prices (jet fuel). However, in the midst of this oil cataclysm, something counterintuitive is happening that defies all predictions. As the expert Javier Blas sharply points out In his recent opinion column for Bloomberg“despite the oil shock due to the Iran war, Europe’s electricity markets are calm.” This is the great anomaly of 2026. Breaking down the phenomenon To understand the miracle, you must first understand the threat. In a normal scenario, the logistical shock that means that 20% of the entire planet’s oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) cannot pass through the Strait of Hormuz should have shredded European domestic economies. The contagion mechanism has a clear theoretical culprit: the marginalist system of the electricity market. In this model, the most expensive technology that comes in to cover demand (historically, gas) is the one that sets the final price of all electricity. Therefore, if the missiles in Qatar make global gas more expensive, the electricity bill in Madrid, Paris or Berlin should be through the roof. But surprisingly, this time the drive belt has broken. The invisible shield The backbone of this European resistance focuses on what energy analyst Javier Blas defines it as a miscalculation: many continue to look at the market “through a filter focused only on oil that belongs to a bygone era”, when today electricity is the true pulse of the economy. The current shielding is the result of a conjunction of factors that act as a providential recovery. First, the rescue in extremis of French nuclear energy. If in 2022 the French country had dozens of reactors stopped due to cracks and was operating at 30-year lows (less than 21 gigawatts), Today it is injecting between 45 and 55 GWproviding a vital energy base not only for France, but for its neighbors, including Germany. Added to this is the end of the drought. The heavy rains in southern Europe and normal rainfall in the rest of the continent has revived hydropower, the EU’s fourth largest source. But the real protagonist is someone else. Solar energy is breaking records, sinking short-term prices to negative levels on weekends in Germany, or to just 18 cents in Spain. In fact, the “fiscal shield” of the Spanish Government, together with the record deployment of 30 GW of solar and wind energy since 2022, have managed to sink the wholesale market to a low €41.5/MWh, allowing the regulated rate to drop by almost 5% year-on-year. The final piece of this puzzle is provided by a report from the IRENA agency: the miracle of batteries. Its cost has plummeted by 93% since 2010. Today, the combination of solar and wind farms with batteries is already capable of offering uninterrupted electricity at prices that compete head-on with Chinese coal or new global gas plants. The cracks in the shield. Despite this triumphalism, European armor is not titanium; It has significant cracks. Although Javier Blas emphasizes that the post-2022 investments in the electricity grid are bearing fruit, the system hangs by a thread every day when the clock strikes eight in the afternoon. Our “Spanish green shield” has a blind spot: the sunset. As the sun disappears, and as there is still no massive deployment of batteries nationwide, the gas combined cycles have to be turned on to sustain the network, returning tension to prices (with nighttime peaks that in March reached €247/MWh). Furthermore, experts agree that the hydroelectric mattress It will evaporate with the heat of the imminent summer. To this we must add that the French nuclear “miracle” hides some worrying fine print. France has broken its historical record by exporting 92.3 TWh, but it has done so, in part, because its internal consumption is stagnant and they continue to lag enormously behind in electrification. Worse still, in its eagerness to protect the profitability of its pharaonic atomic industry, the Elysée acts as a protective wall: it deliberately blocks interconnections with the Iberian Peninsula to prevent hyper-cheap Spanish solar energy from flooding Europe. Finally, structural problems plague the entire continent. According to platform data Earth40% of European transmission lines are more than 40 years old. They were designed for large fossil plants, not to integrate millions of solar rooftops. Without urgent modernization, the network could become our biggest Achilles heel. The new security doctrine. What this Third Gulf War makes clear is that the ecological transition has mutated. It is no longer a mere question of saving the planet; It is a matter of geopolitical survival. Renewables are being explicitly redefined as “weapons of energy security.” The figures speak for themselves: in the first weeks of the war in Iran alone, the European solar fleet saved more than 110 million euros per day in imported gas costs. This is why the European climate commissioner, Wopke Hoekstra, insists in statements to Euronews that Europe must be “more radical”. This involves accelerating electrification using heat pumps and betting on deep geothermal energy, capable of replacing up to 42% of current fossil generation operating 24 hours a day. War as a catalyst. As Blaise’s central thesis concludesEurope is resisting what many call the worst energy shock in history with an electrical fortitude that was unthinkable four years ago. However, catalysts alone do not guarantee results. Inflation and interest rate increases derived from this same war threaten to make more expensive financing future clean infrastructure. It is clear that we have bought a valuable truce thanks to the rain, the efforts of French nuclear power and the sweat of solar panels. This crisis has impressed upon us a definitive lesson: always It will be infinitely … Read more

If the oil apocalypse becomes a reality, Spain has known for years how long it can last: 92 days

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Faced with the logistical blockage of Hormuz that threatens to drown the global economy, the International Energy Agency (IEA) has decided to press the red button. The organization has proposed the largest release of oil reserves in its history: about 400 million barrels. To put it in context, this figure is more than double the 182 million barrels that were injected into the market in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Spain, as a member of the IEA, will not be left out. How to collect Europe Pressthe vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition, Sara Aagesen, has confirmed our country’s support for this plan. If the proposal is approved unanimously, Spain will contribute to the market the equivalent of about 12 or 12.5 days of its national consumption. The Spanish bunker. All this movement leads us to the big question: how much margin does Spain really have if the situation becomes entrenched? Legally, there is a global obligation to maintain minimum security stocks equivalent to 92 days of sales or computable consumption. According to calculations of The CountryAdding all the capacities, the country has about 105 days of autonomy. This safety mattress works through a mixed system: The Corporation of Strategic Reserves of Petroleum Products (CORES) must maintain 42 of those dayswhile the remaining 50 days are maintained directly by the industry. Currently, CORES custody more than 5.4 million cubic meters of stocks. It’s not just crude oil. To be truly useful in a crisis, CORES reserves are composed by 54.4% diesel, 29.2% crude oil and 6.0% kerosene. stocks They are strategically distributed by Spanish geography. The Levante area accounts for 44.8% of the total, followed by the central area with 19.2% and the northern area with 17.7%. The objective of these reserves is not to replace normal long-term supply, but to inject fuel into the market to stop sudden price increases and buy vital time to reorganize logistics and trade routes. We can’t relax. Just because we have a margin of three months does not mean that we are invulnerable. Spain is a country with almost absolute foreign energy dependence. In 2024, national oil consumption was 1,322,492 barrels per daybut own production barely reached 76,947 barrels. Our net crude oil imports represent more than 100% of our consumption. Furthermore, our economy she is addicted to black goldespecially to move. The transport sector is responsible for 71.1% of the final consumption of petroleum products in Spain, with diesel/diesel being the undisputed king, accounting for 61.1% of that consumption. The Iranian asphyxiation has a crack. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have activated a logistical “antidote” capable of rescuing up to 7 million barrels per day. The main asset is East-West Pipelinean oil pipeline connecting eastern Saudi fields with the Red Sea port of Yanbu. The machinery is already in motion, there is already an “army” of at least 25 supertankers sailing towards Yanbu to load this crude oil. Adding to this effort is the United Arab Emirates pipeline, which provides up to 2 million additional barrels directly to the Gulf of Oman. The refinery factor. But the macroeconomy hits a wall, Saudi oil pipelines transport crude oil, not diesel. As analyst Arne Lohmann Rasmussen warns, the real danger is the deficit of distillates. If Europe does not have enough refineries to process that oil in time, the desert pipelines are of no use. This is where the CORES bunker win the game. The 54.4% of already refined diesel that Spain stores is the only thing that guarantees that the trucks do not stop. In short, the Saudi “antidote” prevents total collapse, but our reserves buy the 100 days of peace necessary to avoid seeing the pump in the clouds. If diplomacy fails, not even the bunker will avoid the historic scare. Image | Volgotanker Xataka | The price of oil has plummeted overnight. The one at the gasoline pumps will remain the same

The “apocalypse” of snow and cold that awaited us for Reyes is going to be much less so

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The Three Wise Men, in addition to bringing us gifts (or some coal) have also brought the arrival of winter in Spain for the first time this year. Storm Francis has turned the first Monday of the year into a logistical and meteorological challenge for many, with white prints in inland capitals, and plummeting temperatures to values ​​that we have not seen for months. And the truth is that there are still some hours of great instability. A white map. The images we are seeing this Monday are undoubtedly impressive with Madrid capital with snow, snow plows on the main roads of the country like the A4 or the A6 and also with the cathedral of Segovia covered in a layer of white. Something that It is also accompanied by significant rainfall in the south of Spain.mainly affecting the province of Malaga, which activated yesterday a red alert. If we focus on the snow, during the last hours accumulations of up to 10 cm have been recorded in 24 hours in the Central System environment. Something that is accompanied by snowfall in other places that are common and are located at a high altitude. Less than expected. In the previous days, it was expected that these snowfalls would be much more intense, equating it in many cases with a Filomena 2.0. But in the end it has remained in more localized snowfalls at high levels and at the lower levels they have not been as relevant as what was reported in previous days. The same thing happened in previous days, where a New Year’s Eve covered in white was expected but in the end it did not happen. It is not a model of models. This meteorological change can be attributed to the fact that the prediction models are useless, but the reality is that they work quite well, as explains an AEMET researcher in X. The problem is that the use we give to these models is not the most appropriate, since all the catastrophic news of significant snowfalls come out within several days, and the reality is that the uncertainty here is very high. To have real data on what may happen in our country, we have to wait until we are closer to the specific date to have a prediction that is close to the reality that we are going to experience. Impact on mobility. In this way, if we look at the rainfall that has fallen on the roads, we find complications when traveling, or even impossible being cut, especially in Andalusia. But also effects on the railways, suffering interruptions, for example the line between Cercedilla and Segovia due to the accumulation of snow on the tracks. Some cold rides. With these meteorological events, all eyes are on what will happen with the traditional parades of the Three Wise Men that take place in different parts of Spain throughout the afternoon of this January 5th. In some locations already have had to be canceled due to the risk of precipitationand in other places they have been brought forward to this Monday morning, as has happened in the capital of Granada. What the AEMET points out is that the course of the parades will be marked by a significant drop in temperatures. They emphasize especially the northern, central and eastern areas of the peninsula, where temperatures below zero are expected at 8:00 p.m. And even in the areas of the Cantabrian Sea and the southeast of the peninsula they could be covered in snow or water. The forecast on January 6. For those who want to enjoy the holiday, on Three Kings’ Day, Storm Francis will tend to weaken. This will make them wait residual snowfall centered on the Cantabrian Mountains, the Pyrenees and northern mountain areasbut the intensity on the Plateau will decrease drastically. But the important thing is that even if the snow stops falling, the cold doesn’t go away. Temperatures will remain below normal, meaning the risk of extreme nighttime frosts will remain, turning accumulated snow to ice. This will mean that caution must prevail when traveling by road, especially in the early hours of the morning. Why now. Storm Francis is not an isolated phenomenon, but the result of a channeling cold arctic air over the Peninsula. While a more conventional trade wind regime dominates in the Canary Islands, the interior of the peninsula is trapped in a pocket of cold air that interacts with Mediterranean humidity. This explains why, in addition to the snow in the interior of the peninsula, we are seeing intense rains in the area of ​​Alborán and eastern Andalusia, where the snow level is higher, but the volume of water is being very significant, as we have commented previously. In Xataka | The “tropicalization” of the atmosphere is going to change Spain and not exactly for the better

The latest publishing sensation is a 410-page billet that talks about something very specific: how to overcome the apocalypse

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Another manual for preparationists in case it happens to us the final blackout? Well, not exactly: the recently published in Spanish ‘The Book: The definitive guide to rebuilding civilization’, by the Hungry Minds collective, is much, much more than that: an illustrated encyclopedia that recounts the crucial discoveries that have taken place throughout our history. But it’s not just an instruction book. What is ‘The Book’. Above all, an imposing tome that rejects any pretension of portability: it weighs more than two kilos and its dimensions (approximately 24 x 35 centimeters) make it a a museum piece rather than a table read. 410 pages containing more than 700 original illustrations and now Duomo Editions (who have already faced “difficult” books such as ‘The Ship of Theseus’ or ‘House of Leaves’) publishes in Spain fully translated. There are 23 thematic chapters that make up a progressive itinerary: from basic survival knowledge (obtaining water, lighting a fire, identifying edible plants) to complex conquests such as navigation, aviation, cultural festivals or psychotherapy. How it was born. In December 2020, while the world was still navigating the uncertainty of the pandemic, a collective of artists launched a seemingly far-fetched proposal on Kickstarter: creating a visual encyclopedia to rebuild human civilization after an apocalyptic collapse. The answer exceeded expectations with more than 21,000 patrons and $2.3 million raised: it was the third most successful publishing project in the history of the platform. crowdfunding. Since then, nearly 300,000 copies have been sold worldwide, going far beyond its initial niche of illustrated books. Some precedent. The question of how to reactivate civilization after a cataclysm is not new. British astrobiologist Lewis Dartnell published ‘Open in the Event of an Apocalypse’ in 2014, a manual that became a best-selleralthough it adopted a technical and textual approach, explaining chemical processes and physical principles. The Long Now Foundationa foundation led by Brian Eno and dedicated to promoting thought on a civilizational scale, in a time frame of 10,000 years and as a counterweight to the current accelerated culture, incorporated the work into the ‘Manual for Civilization’ project. Hungry Minds offers a radically different approach. Where Dartnell provides practical instructions, the collective creates a visual artifact that evokes medieval codices. The genesis occurred during the 2020 confinementwhen those responsible asked themselves: if everything stopped, what essential knowledge deserves to be preserved? With the incorporation of Artur Stelmakh, an expert in crowdfunding campaigns, they transformed that philosophical concern into a viable editorial project. Who are Hungry Minds? A decentralized creative studio without physical headquarters: its members (artists, illustrators, scientists and historians) work from different corners of the planet. Illustrator Lev Kaplan, an advertising veteran, took on the art direction of the book and spent months refining each illustration. The initial team was joined by university professors who were experts in specific disciplines, as well as writers, editors and proofreaders who verified the precision of each data. The result fuses historical references ranging from the mysterious Voynich Manuscript from the 15th century (considered the most enigmatic codex in the world) while the conceptual classification draws on the ‘Summa Technologiae’ of the Polish Stanisław Lem. The object-book market. As the entertainment industry migrates towards digital formats (streaming, downloadable files, ebooks), large-format illustrated books exhibit a certain paradoxical health. According to data collected by The Booksellersales of large-format artistic monographs experienced an increase of 70% in the British market, defying the general trend in the sector. In the United States, a similar phenomenon was experienced: Independent bookstores increased their orders for travel titles by 23%, design by 20% and art by 12%, always referring to large formats. This phenomenon responds to a demand that digital files do not satisfy: the tactile and visual experience of the book. He crowdfunding is partly to blame, democratizing editorial projects that traditional publishers would consider unviable. ‘The Book’ was originally published this way, without the backing of a major company, and in fact, Hungry Minds took the experience further, expanding the book’s concept with an experiential pop-up in Manhattan, transforming the book into an immersive installation. In Xataka | A new movement has emerged in the US: ordinary people with AR-15 rifles preparing for a social collapse

There have always been people preparing for the Apocalypse. The difference is that they now include AI in their survival kits

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For years there are people preparing for a nuclear war, for the end of the world, or For both. They are called ‘Preppers‘, that at times like the recent Spanish blackout They feel claimed. The movement is mutatingand as Mit Technology Review collects, the needs and possibilities of 2025 leave us people doing and proposing Collect Artificial Intelligence Language Models (AI) to save them in a USB pendrive. A good tool for the end of the world. The engineer Simon Willison, known for being the creator of the Django web development framework, has A plan For a future dystopian: keeping open artificial intelligence models, you can execute them at home if collapse civilization. In this way, even without internet access, it would be possible to continue accessing the enormous human knowledge located in its pesos. To carry out something like that, there is no need for resources beyond the reach of the homes of the homes. Today, there are already AI models that can be executed at home, Even in smartphones. Even something as powerful as Deepseek can work on our PCprovided we use a small version, the ‘distillate’ of 8,000 million parameters. As Share Evan Hahnthe Chinese Qwen 3 model, in its 600,000 parameters version, can occupy the ridiculous amount of 523 MB in our storage. With only 2 GB, we can download call 3.2 in its version of 3,000 million parameters. A powerful but “economical” team like a Mac Mini M4 can run models capable at home. An alternative to something more traditional: all Wikipedia. Download all the wikipedia To read it without connection, it is something possible with different options, and something equally useful in an apocalyptic scenario such as the proposal. Hahn has included what he would occupy with the great open language models, and using little space, enough information can be stored. With 356.9 MB we can access the 50,000 best articles in Wikipedia. And with 57.18 GB, which fit perfectly in a modern pendrive, we can have in our possession all the Wikipedia available in any language. Occupy less than half of the space, we can have QWEN 3 of 32,000 million parameters and Deepseek R1 of the same size. Limitations. Using artificial intelligence at home to have access to the knowledge of the world sounds very good, until not so much. Simon Willison himself told Mit Technology Review to use the local AI models “is like having a strange, condensed and defective version of Wikipedia.” The reason is simple: the models are trained with data available on the Internet, to the point that the AI bots are putting the future of Wikipedia at riskHowever, these models do not faithfully reproduce all the information when we enter Prompts o Indications to ask about a specific topic. The hallucinations problem. Not only are they confirmed by actors such as OpenAi, but for them we know that models such as O3 and O4-mini They hallucinate more than their predecessors. According to Jensen Huang, we need much more powerful hardware So that this phenomenon of AI disappears, and of course, it is not hardware that we have at home. In addition, small models executable at home, being very small versions in size and memory used, toThey look more. And more limitations. In our tests executing local AI models on smartphones, The results are irregularalthough promising. In that sense, Apple itself will open in iOS 26 his AI to any developerso that they can execute it on the device itself. Beyond the quality of small and local models against the gigantic Grok 4, O3-PRO either Claude 4 a ‘prepper’ plan with pendrive has more limitations, and is to trust such a unit for a situation that requires, above all, reliability. These USB units are not designed to last more than 10 years. If they have poor quality NAND chips, they can even stop working without use. And that is why there are companies like Machdyne UG, which has created a pendrive that It lasts 200 yearsor so they promise. Of course, even if I achieve that longevity, it has an 8 kB capacity, which only gives to save some text. If you want to store almost all the knowledge of humanity, it is best to think of a lasting environment in optimal conditions. And then, think about major disasters. Image | Antonio Sabán with Ia In Xataka | AI is one of the most advanced technologies that the human being has built. It also gets distracted with a cat

“Even in a nuclear apocalypse, the earth would be a paradise compared to Mars”

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Elon Musk wants to turn humanity into a multi -purpose species, with Mars as a second home and our “lifeboat”, in the event that a catastrophe occurs on earth. Musk’s vision is the engine after the Starship program, which mobilizes billions of dollars with the aim of building a rocket capable of taking us to the red planet. Adam Becker’s three scenarios Some scientists still do not see clear Elon Musk’s ambition to colonize Mars. And not because the Starship has exploded four times in a row. After all, it is an experimental rocket. “There are many reasons why it is a bad idea,” says astrophysicist Adam Becker. “I do not mean that ‘we will never have the technology to live on Mars’. What I say is that the earth will always be a better option, what happens to the earth.” In a blunt Interview with Rolling StoneBecker doubts some of the “messianic fantasies” of technological oligarchs, starting with Elon Musk’s Martian dream. His argument is as simple as devastating: no matter how bad things are put on our planet, the earth will always be a paradise compared to the icy hell that is Mars. In Becker’s words, Musk’s idea is “one of the most stupid things someone could say.” To illustrate his point, the astrophysicist raises three apocalyptic scenarios: 1) The impact of an asteroid the size of the dipes extinguished. 2) The detonation of all the nuclear weapons of the planet. And 3) the worst possible climate change scenario. “Even then,” he says, “the Earth would remain more habitable. A superficial examination of Mars makes it very clear.” Devastated land vs. Mars as it is Let’s put the data on the table to understand the abysmal difference between a devastated earth planet and the Mars we know today. In order for an environment to be “habitable” for humans without a perfect and autonomous life support technology, basic conditions that we often take for granted are needed. The atmosphere of the Earth would be contaminated, but it would remain dense, rich in nitrogen and oxygen, and with a pressure at the sea of ​​1 bar. On the current Mars, The atmosphere is extremely thin (0.6% that of the Earth) and is composed of 95% by carbon dioxide. It is disappointed and has a pressure on the surface of 0.006 bars, so that liquid water boils instantly (or rather it is sublimated, passing from solid to gas). The Earth’s magnetic field would continue intact, diverting most of the cosmic and solar radiation. The atmosphere, even contaminated, would offer an additional layer. Mars lacks a global magnetic field. Its surface is constantly bombarded with a dose of radiation that becomes lethal for a long -term human. On Mars, the average temperature is -63 ° C. All water is frozen in polar or underground caps. On earth, a nuclear winter or the impact of an asteroid would drastically cool the planet, but the oceans would act as a gigantic thermal regulator. The 1.4 billion cubic kilometers of water would continue here. Contaminated and partially frozen, but accessible and treatable, assuming we had access to some technology. The biosphere would be seriously damaged after a catastrophe, but the land of the earth would contain organic matter and the basic components for life. In addition, there would be geothermal and oceanic shelters, where microbial life would persist although other life forms would have disappeared. Martian soil is toxic. It contains high concentrations of perchlorates, dangerous chemical compounds for human health that complicate agriculture. Can Mars be terraft? Although Spacex renders show a gigantic pressurized base under the surface of Mars, Elon Musk has always fought his vision to the possibility of terrafting the red planet. So we already talk about transport millions of tons of load To build a city inhabited on Martian soil, but of a much more great project. There are many (and very diverse) Ideas to terraphormate Mars, but engineering to Megaescala that would mean any of them presents not a few obstacles. The first step would be to raise the temperature of Mars. The proposals van From nuclear bombs to install gigantic orbital mirrors that concentrate sunlight at the poles. By heating polar caps, water ice and carbon dioxide would sublimize, swelling the atmosphere. In theory, a densest atmosphere would catch more heat, which in turn would release more gas and soil gas. This positive feedback cycle would increase pressure and temperature until water could exist in a liquid state on the Martian surface. However, studies They doubt that Mars has sufficient CO2 To achieve this effect. Even if we could release the entire CO2 accessible in polar caps and trapped in surface minerals, the atmospheric pressure of Mars would only increase to 7% of the thickness of the Earth’s atmosphere. In this context, the affirmation of the astrophysicist Adam Becker charges even more strength. If transforming Mars into a habitable planet is practically impossible, living there would require a Total artificial habitat dependence incredibly complex and vulnerable. The logic dictates that any effort and resource would be better invested in preserving and, if necessary, repair the only life support system that we have and that works perfectly: the planet Earth. In spite of everything, and seeing how the world is going, perhaps a plan B would not be bad, even if it were only for the children of the children of whom they would voluntarily live on a worse planet could return. Images | Spacex In Xataka | An American physicist has found a shortcut to get to Mars in 90 days. It is key to surviving radiation In Xataka | China has just solved two problems for the conquest of Mars: you already know how to turn CO2 into electricity and batteries

Cybertruck wanted to be the car prepared for the Apocalypse. Lamborghini Rezzvani Knight has advanced him on the right

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You’ve ever thought about “how good a tank would make me buy the bread.” If the answer is affirmative, two things: what would you have to comment with someone … and there is a car for you. Whenever you have a baggy bank account, of course. The reason? American firm Rezzvani has created the Definitive SUV For apocalypse: a Lamborghini Urus that seems Christopher Nolan’s Batmobile. They have baptized him as Rezvani Knight, and even calambrazos who dares to touch him. Rezvani. This is a story of two firms aimed at being. One for its radical designs and another for the personalization that adds to the cars that pass through their workshop. Let’s start with Rezvani. It is a American manufacturer which has focused on converting high performance cars into something extremely exclusive. What they do is choose a supercar or powerful off -road and improve both base vehicle benefits and occupants protection. In the presentation of Tesla Cybertruck Emphasis was placed on the armor of some of its parts (Do not glue them with glue), But in the case of Rezvani models, they literally create armored vehicles. He Beast Alpha X Blackbird or the HERULES 6X6 They are two examples. The Urus. On the other hand, we have the Lamborghini Urus. The Italian firm does not need presentation at this point and one of its last creations is a SUV High performance equipped with a V8 biturbo engine that develops about 650 hp. This 2025 Han launched a plug -in model with a total of 800 hp by adding a 192 hp electric motor. It has an even faster acceleration, total traction and 8 -speed automatic change. It is a car that aligns, standard, with the aesthetic vision of Rezvani thanks to combining that typical bull brand with sports lines and high performance engines. The original Explosive mixture. And, condemned to understand each other, the Rezvani Knight. This name makes a lot of sense because, basically, it is a mixture between a lamb and a tank, exactly what Nolan devised for the Batmobo that Christian Bale leads in his Batman trilogy (the personal car when he was not Batman was a Lambo batby the way). The Rezvani Knight widen its body and add 22 -inch tires, a led bar on the ceiling, front lights divided into four and more angular and extreme lines than those carried by the URUS standard. It seems that they have taken as a reference the hybrid version, since they do not give details, but they claim that it has 800 hp. And the really striking is what hides. The Dark Knight Military Package carries the following extras: Chapa armor and crystals not only for bullets: also for explosives and grenades. Reinforced suspension and military tires with antibala protection. Doors with electrified handles, blinding lights, air filtering system against chemical agents, smoke dispensers and pepper gas, anti -strap defenses and even protection against electromagnetic pulses. Thermal cameras and, as accessories for occupants, gas masks and bulletproof vests. Price … dizzy. To the question of “how much this monstrosity costs”, the answer is “yes.” First, you have to contribute the car to modify. Urus costs about 260,000 euros and you must donate yours to the cause. Second, the conversion starts from $ 149,000 with external design, military gadgets and survival and partial armor. Third, the most extreme armor is revealed to whom one reserves. Because, in addition, it is limited: the idea of ​​Rezvani is to manufacture only 100 of these monsters worldwide, so if it is already a expensive car with a face modification, that aura of exclusivity can make that in the future it costs an authentic fog. Or maybe, as happened to ASVE AREX, unique in the world and Sold for what a Dacia Duster costs. Images | Rezvani, Alexander Migl Images | A youtuber has a car that is worth four million euros. To drive it you have to pay 7,000 every 60 kilometers

The US was prepared for total destruction in the cold war. This map for nuclear apocalypse illustrates it

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The launch of Nagasaki and Hiroshima atomic bombs It was a turning point. Practically, marked the end of the Second World War while starting a Cold war in which the United States and Russia were carried away by nuclear ecstasy. The two powers engaged in a nuclear career without controlbut it is not that they developed the crazy bombs: there were also lists of enemy objectives. And on an interactive map prepared by Future of Life We can see about 1,000 objectives to which the United States would launch a nuclear bomb. But there were many more. The map. In 2015, a study of the United States Strategic Air Command was declared – SAC – that showed a thousand potential objectives in the case of nuclear war. If this possibility flew over the heads of some with the recent Ukraine War, imagine the stage in a cold war in which you could have the feeling that the enemy could squeeze the “button” at any time. There are more than 800 pages in which the objectives of these strategic bombings with nuclear weapons are detailed to erase any enemy presence. In it map From the George Washington University we can not only appreciate some of the main objectives, but the secondary objectives of each of them. For example, if we select Berlin, we can see the objective list And consequences of that study of 1956. Beyond the cities, another priority was the aerodromes, keys to a Soviet counterattack, specifically those located in Belarus. Easting east. Apart from military objectives such as strategic points and aerodromes, the listIt includes more than 1,200 cities of the Soviet block. It is where we can see that more dots are gathered on the map of Future of Life and range from cities of Eastern Germany to China. Moscow would fall into the Red Square, directly (and on this map we can see the Impact of different bombs in any city). The Asian giant, will fight or not next to the Soviet block in case of war, was something that did not matter to SAC. He treated them as hostile, selecting military objectives, but also the Beijing capital. And something that several of the bombed cities have in common is that the SAC already assumed objectives of “population.” The bombs. The plan was well mounted because there was not only a list of objectives, but also the type of weapons that would be used. They would use a combination of atomic and thermonuclear weapons with yields between 1.6 to 15 megatons. Far from the 50 megatons of the Soviet Zar pump, but much more than the 16 kilotons of Little Boy and the 21 kilotons of Fat Man, which wreaked havoc in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, respectively. The megabomba. We have talked about the tsar pump, or tsar bomb, and in the United States there was also talk of it in 1956. It is not only the bomb that has caused the largest nuclear explosion so far, but it was 3,000 times more powerful than ‘Little boy’. The Russians had that bomb and the United States wanted an equal. In the declassified material, it is detailed how the SAC wanted a 60 megatones bomb. Not only did they identify him as something key in order to be tremendously deterrent but, in case of Soviet surprise attack, they could launch it at a strategic point to “ensure significant results even with a very small force.” In that nuclear ecstasy, the nuclear physicist Edward Teller (“Father” of the bomb H) proposed 1,000 metatones dissositive and up to 10 gigatons. 10 gigatons equals explosive power 670,000 times greater than that of the Hiroshima bomb. Luckily they did not do it, since affirmed that “would contaminate the earth”In the end, the US did not develop such a monstrous bomb. Nor the 60 megatones that the SAC wanted. And the media. And, within the plan, it also specified how the pumps would be launched. There were two systems: for the delivery of B-47 bombers, the United States would use its bases in the United Kingdom, Morocco and Spain. They would also use the B-52 from the US, although they were starting their journey. For the missile system, the eyelets would be loaded in the Snark, Rascal, Cross Bow and IRBM missiles. The first was a failure in the evidence and the great priority of President Eisenhower were the IRBM. These intermediate -reach ballistic missiles projected scope of up to 2,700 kilometers and the idea was to deploy them and throw them from the United Kingdom. Insured mutual destruction. But well, the United States had its Soviet axis attack plan, but the USSR also had its own. In the Soviet plans the Western military infrastructure, the industrial centers and large cities in both the US and its allies entered. They would do it by hydrogen pumps, tactical pumps that could mount on torpedoes and missiles released from mobile platforms. But although the logic could not reign in the massive development of weapons, the fear and that position of both ‘Mad’ countries did, or ‘insured mutual destruction’ that marked that, if a country launched a nuclear attack, automatically the other would respond with a proportional force. This led to threats over the years (such as the deployment of American missiles in Türkiye and Italy or the subsequent crisis of Cuba missiles, but fortunately it did not reach more. And what happens today. In 1986, the two countries reached the zenith of their nuclear arsenal and, from that moment, they dismantled much of their arsenal. The USSR came to have more than 40,000 heads while the United States reached 23,317, but as we say, different pacts and that tension that dissipated with the fall of the Berlin wall caused them to get rid of much of its arsenal. The problem is that other countries -china- have developed and are found enhancing its own nuclear arsenaland in recent years there is a kind of new … Read more

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