The Billionaires Already Have Plans Where to Go When it All Falls Apart

Billionaires from Silicon Valley and other rich Americans, are buying large areas of land in New Zealand in preparation for doomsday, which many believe will come about due to the collapse of liberal democracies and catastrophic climate change.Paypal co-founder and Facebook billionaire Peter Thiel has had a $4.7 million home built in Queenstown, New Zealand, complete with a panic room. But others are having underground bunkers sent over from the US.

However, it is not necessary to travel so far from home if you are filthy rich and you see an apocalyptic future, because a California-based company known as The Vivos Group, is already building deep underground shelters, strong enough to survive future catastrophes and disasters, in various places. The South Dakota underground village is made up of 575 military bunkers, which were originally built by the Army Corps of Engineers in 1942, as a military fortress, which has been repurposed. About 10,000 people should be able to live in the underground village once completed.

Deep down under London, there is a nuclear-proof shelter standing at the ready in case of war. The prime minister and Britain's military leaders can gain access to the bunker, which lies deep beneath the Ministry of Defence, Whitehall. Photographs taken of the Pindar facility in 2008 show stockpiling of such items as toothpaste, toothbrushes, and mouthwashes.
Elon Musk the co-founder and CEO at Tesla, is planning to personally ride to Mars on one of his SpaceX rockets, taking other people with him to start building a colony there. Perhaps this planned flight to Mars is related to Musk's concerns about artificial intelligence, which he has said is more dangerous than nuclear weapons. He has also spoken about how a Mars colony would be a much better option for saving humanity in the event of an apocalyptic disaster.

Meanwhile, Sweden, operating in a more egalitarian manner, has about 65,000 bunkers, which will fit seven million people of the almost ten million population, in the event of war. Sweden's shelters can be identified by a sign showing a blue triangle in an orange square, with the word "skyddsrum." Switzerland, however, has enough nuclear fallout shelters to accommodate its entire population.

How the Death of Native Americans Caused Climate Change

As we know from the words of the children's song: "In fourteen hundred and ninety-two; Columbus sailed the ocean blue. He had three ships and left from Spain; He sailed through sunshine, wind and rain.

Christopher Columbus on Santa Maria in 1492

After this, the Spanish conquistadors followed and not only brought diseases with them, like smallpox, measles, influenza to which the Native Americans had no immunity, but they also disrupted their lives and waged war, which caused the Native American population to go from about 61 million in 1492 to six million in 1650.

With the huge drop in the population of Native Americans, the environment of the Americas began to change. The Native Americans had used fire to clear land for agriculture and improve grazing land and with the decline in their populations, forests began to grow back and revert to woodlands. By 1610, the growth of all those trees had absorbed enough carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere to cause a drop of at least seven parts per million in atmospheric concentrations of the most prominent greenhouse gas and start the Little Ice Age.

Five Indians and a Captive, painted by Carl Wimar, 1855

Archaeological surveys and tree ring data support the case that human impacts on the planet have been dramatic. And evidence also points toward the period of cooler temperatures from the 16th to 19th centuries being caused by depopulation and the reforestation in New World.
So, a major contributor to the Little Ice Age was the massive depopulation of the Americas and reforestation, which created carbon sequestration by forests. Just imagine what is happening now with increasing growth in human population, continuing CO2 emissions through burning fossil fuels and our failure to reduce human greenhouse gas emissions.

When Humans Almost Went Extinct

The Earth, our home, is around 4.5 billion years old, according to accumulated research from many scientific disciplines, including geology and astronomy. However, While our ancient common ancestors, which we share with chimpanzees and bonobos lived between 8 and 6 million years ago, the modern form of humans (us) only evolved about 200,000 to 350,000 years ago. Interestingly, since separating from our ape cousins humans have lost about 37,000 genes.

Ape and Human Evolution Tree

Today our planet is home to over 7 billion humans. In the year 1800 there were about 1 billion humans and in 1950, about 2.5 billion individuals. In just over a decade's time, the human population of the planet is estimated to go over 12 billion people, which is mind-boggling. And yet, in 70,000 BC, humans as a species almost became extinct.

This severe reduction in human population which occurred around 70,000 years ago is thought by some to be related to the Toba volcanic eruption which occurred about 75,000 years ago at Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia (scientists don't agree about this). This eruption resulted in a global volcanic winter of six to ten years and extreme climate change, which resulted in the homo sapien population, being reduced to about between 1,000 and 10,000 breeding pairs. Other scientists discount the nuclear winter theory, as human populations in India, for example, appeared to recover quickly from the eruption event. 

All other archaic human species have become extinct and we Homo Sapiens just narrowly missed out on becoming ancient history ourselves. Homo Erectus became extinct around 70, 000 years ago and Neanderthals about 28,000 years ago. Things changed for our relatives with the development of farming about 12,000 years ago, which allowed a surplus of food and the resulting development of towns and cities and the rapid increase in human populations. 

A model of the face of an adult female Homo erectus

Over 99 per cent of all species that ever lived on Earth are estimated to have become extinct. And while we might have dodged a bullet 70,000 years ago, this near extinction of humans had some big effects on our species, resulting in a genetic bottleneck and less genetic variation in the human population, because of the reduced variation in the gene pool and so the ability to adapt to change.

However, analysis of human DNA shows that humans who lived 1 million years ago had greater genetic diversity than we do today. And chimpanzees have about twice the genetic variability of all humans. And yet, the greatest threat to chimpanzees is human encroachment on their habitats and we humans have become the most dominant species on Earth, with our ability to control and manipulate nature. 

But our success as a species is now resulting in the destruction of the foundations of the natural world, which is collapsing from the weight of humanity and we can only wonder, what is in our future?

Why So Many Indigenous People Died When The Europeans Arrived?

When Europeans arrived in the New World and Australia, the Indigenous people of those lands died in enormous numbers. Some estimates claim that about 20 million people may have died in the years following the arrival of Europeans in the Americas; whilst, the population of Australia is estimated to have been between 315,000 to 750,000 before British arrival, but was at 50,000 in 1930.

The main weapon that the Europeans brought with them had already decimated the populations of the much of the world in times past. In fact, these Europeans were the descendants of those who had survived thousands of years of the onslaught of this weapon, called disease.

New South Wales Blacks practising fighting before going to war-Sketchbook of Aboriginal activities, c, 1890

It was the early rise of agriculture in Eurasian societies which conferred a technologic and immunologic advantage to the Europeans when they entered the lands occupied by societies who still lived a mostly hunter-gatherer way of life. The European people had descended from people who had developed farming and who had lived in close proximity with animals; they also tended to live in densely populated communities. Such conditions favoured the transmission of disease, including diseases which had jumped from animals to humans, like Smallpox, measles, and influenza. Not to mention the Black Death which is estimated to have killed 30–60% of Europe's total population.

Miniature out of the Toggenburg Bible (small pox), c. 1411

The Indigenous people of the Americas and Australia had never encountered epidemics of smallpox, measles or flu before and so with the arrival of the Europeans they had no immunity to these diseases and their populations were ravaged in a very short time. The same diseases had also caused devastation across Europe, but because this occurred over a greater time period, natural selection had enabled immune defence traits, in these populations.

Many of the descendants of Indigenous people must wish that the Europeans had stayed at home and that their societies had been allowed to continue on in its traditional way (and who could blame them). However, that would just be postponing the inevitable. Today, such isolated peoples still exist and they are often referred to as uncontactable tribes, as Western people must stay away from them due to their lack of immunity to common diseases and pathogens.

One such uncontactable tribe of people are the Sentinelese of the Andaman Islands of India, whose population is estimated at 40 to 500 individuals. This group still live a hunter-gatherer lifestyle with no evidence of agriculture or fire making. In 2004, the Sentinelese survived the Tsunami in the region and then rejected the help offered by rescue teams. In 2007, two Indian fishermen were killed by the Sentinelese, when they went too close to their islands while fishing. However, the Sentinelese and other such isolated people, need to stay separate, as they have no immunity to even common diseases such as the flu and measles, and their very survival is precarious.

 Group of Andaman Men and Women, c. 1903

Read
Guns, germs, and steel: the fates of human societies, By Jared Diamond.

Did The Body of King Henry VIII Explode?

King Henry VIII of England, was king from1509, until his death in 1547. When we think of
this despotic ruler today, we may remember his six wives, of which one died, one survived, two he divorced and two he had beheaded. Or, as the children's rhyme goes; “Divorced, Beheaded, Died: Divorced, Beheaded, Survived.”

We may also picture the ageing Henry and his prodigious appetite. Game pies were a favourite, as were dishes based on cooked larks, snipes, quail, crane, partridge and sparrow; as well as eels, salmon, porpoises and dolphin. Such fare, undoubtedly, added to Henry's ever-growing girth; he reached a waist measurement of 54 inches (140 cm), as he was wheeled about in wheelchair like contraptions.
 There is no doubt that Henry is remembered often, as a sort of monster; especially, after he suffered jousting injuries, the first of which occurred in 1524. It is speculated that the various accidents that Henry sustained, like the one that left him "speechless" for two hours, may have caused brain injuries which made Henry act erratically and affected his whole personality. As historian Lucy Worsley has said about his first jousting injury: "From that date, the turnover of the wives really speeds up, and people begin to talk about him in quite a new and negative way."

Henry, essentially, goes from being a charming, handsome and intelligent man, to an obese, cruel and paranoid tyrant. An ambassador at the Tudor court reported that in his youthful days: "His Majesty is the most handsomest potentate I have ever set eyes on. Above the usual height with an extremely fine calf to his leg and a round face so very beautiful it would become a pretty woman." However, Pope Paul III, in 1538, described Henry as a “most cruel and abominable tyrant.”

 Portrait of Henry VIII of England

It was when Henry was in his mid-forties that his health began to deteriorate and his good looks began to fade away. A leg injury he suffered whist jousting became ulcerous and the resulting incapacity probably led to other health problems like Type II diabetes and hypertension. He was deteriorating fast and his health was probably further compromised by the bloodletting which occurred in accordance with the waxing and waning of the moon. And the smell from his infected ulcers could be noticed three rooms away.

The Marquis of Exeter and Lord Montagu were beheaded for treason after discussing Henry's health. Saying of the King: "he has a sorre legge that no pore man would be glad off, and that he should not lyve long for all his auctoryte next God" and "he will die suddenly, his legge will kill him, and then we shall have jolly stirring."

When Henry did die, morbidly obese, in 1547, aged 55 and 7 months, probably from renal and liver failure, his body was prepared for burial by "spurging, cleansing, bowelling, searing, embalming, furnishing and dressing with spices." And then, the coffin, draped in cloth of gold with an effigy of the king, dressed with crown and crimson velvet shoes, was accompanied by a thousand men on horseback and hundreds more on foot, to Whitehall, where his body lay for a few days, then stopping overnight at Syon House, on the way to Windsor.

Henry's black marble sarcophagus, which he had callously confiscated from Cardinal Wolsey, contained his 300-pound corpse. And, according to Gilbert Burnet, Scottish theologian and bishop of Salisbury, the coffin leaked during the night, with “putrid matter” from the body, onto the floor and in the morning, a stray dog was seen licking the bodily fluids.

Coffins of King Henry VIII (centre), Queen Jane Seymour (right) by Alfred Young Nutt, Surveyor to the Dean and Canons of St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle. Nutt recorded that Henry's coffin was about two metres in length and was in a state of disrepair with some bodily remains visible.

But the origin of this story is a Friar Peto, a Franciscan of Greenwich, who made the prophecy about King Henry following Henry's scandalous divorce, warning Henry that there may be consequences in the future for his actions, such as having dogs lick his blood, as they had Ahab's, after death.

So, afterwards, some people may have told the coffin-leaking/dog licking story, which would neatly fulfil Peto's prophecy. The only problem being that, it probably didn't happen.

 

The Royal Disease and The Decline of European Monarchy

It is still a mystery how the haemophilia gene came into Queen Victoria's family, as this gene mutation helped to bring about the downfall of some of the most powerful Royal Houses of Europe.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert, Buckingham Palace, 11 May 1854

Evidence shows that up to a third of haemophiliac males do not have a family history of the condition and that the gene mutation, is usually thought to be the result of a relatively high mutation rate occurring in either affected males or female carriers.

Haemophilia mostly affects males, because while females carry the defective gene on one of their X chromosomes, they have another X chromosome which will balance the abnormal gene. Males, however, have only one X chromosome and so they have no way to compensate for the missing clotting factor in the blood, which results in blood that takes days instead of minutes to clot. Of course, nobody is to blame for this, us none of us get to pick our genes.

But how did the haemophilia gene appear in Queen Victoria's family when it was not evident in her family history? Did the mutation appear spontaneously in Victoria's DNA because her father was over 50 years of age when Victoria was born and so his sperm was more likely to have genetic mutations to pass along? Perhaps.

Queen Victoria, who arranged advantageous marriages for her nine children across Europe, was called "the grandmother of Europe", as her descendants became twenty-one reigning monarchs and nineteen consorts. However, haemophilia was to severely damage many of these European Royal Families.

Prince Albert, Queen Victoria and their nine children. c.1857

Prince Leopold, who was born on 7th April 1853, was the first of Queen Victoria's descendants to suffer from haemophilia; he also had epilepsy. Leopold was a delicate child and he had been "4 or 5 times at death’s door", but he did get married to a German princess, Helena of Waldeck-Pyrmont. Sadly, Leopold died at the age of 31, after suffering a seizure and hitting his head, which resulted in a cerebral haemorrhage. 

However, Leopold was the only one of Queen Victoria’s descendants with haemophilia to have children, as his marriage to Helena of Waldeck produced two offspring. His daughter, Princess Alice of Albany, was a haemophilia carrier and her son Prince Rupert who was born on 24 August 1907 was a haemophiliac, who died as the result of an intracerebral haemorrhage after a car crash in France. The family title, Earl of Athlone, became extinct in 1957, when Prince Rupert's father died.

Two of Queen Victoria's daughters, Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse and Beatrice, Princess of Battenberg, were both carriers of haemophilia and they both helped to spread the mutated gene to many of the Royal Families of Europe.

Princess Alice married Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt and gave birth to a son, Frederick of Hesse, who had haemophilia; he died at a young age of a brain haemorrhage in 1873 after falling from a window. Two of Alice's daughters, Irene and Alix were also carriers of the haemophilia gene and so when Irene married her first cousin, Prince Henry of Prussia, she passed the disease along to two of their sons, Princes Waldemar, who married but died without children, due a lack of blood transfusion facilities; and Henry of Prussia, who died at the age of four. 

Prince Leopold and Alice of Albany in 1883

Alice's fourth daughter Alix, became Empress Alexandra of Russia when she married Nicholas II—the last ruler of the Russian Empire. Alix gave birth to four daughters before giving birth to their only son, the Tsarevitch Alexis, heir to the Russian throne. Unfortunately, in her desperation to cure her son and heir to the throne, Alix fell under the influence of the faith healer Grigori Rasputin, who believed that he could treat the disease and this helped bring about the end of the Romanov dynasty. The whole family were shot by a Bolshevik firing squad in a cellar at Ekaterinberg on 17th July 1918.

Alexandra Fyodorovna (Alix of Hesse) and Nicholas II of Russia. C. 1894

Princess Beatrice was Queen Victoria's youngest daughter and she married the dashing Prince Henry of Battenberg and had three sons and a daughter. The two sons, Leopold Mountbatten and Maurice, Prince of Battenburg inherited haemophilia. Lord Leopold died on 23 April 1922 (aged 32), during a hip operation and Maurice died whilst serving in the armed forces during the First World War.

The only daughter of Princess Beatrice, Victoria Eugenie of Battenburg married into the Spanish royal family and became Queen of Spain. Two of her sons were afflicted with haemophilia. 

Alfonso, Prince of Asturias, died at the age of 31 after a car accident, when his haemophilia led to fatal internal bleeding. The other son, Infante Gonzalo of Spain died from severe abdominal bleeding after a car crash and he died at age 19.

Princess Beatrice in mourning with Queen Victoria C 1880 (coloured photo)

“The royal disease” affected the royal families of England, Germany, Russia and Spain in the 19th and 20th centuries, creating significant family trauma. Haemophilia also weakened the foundations of monarchy and exacerbated the political issues of the times.

Captain Cook's Crew and the Cannibals

Resolution and Discovery

The second voyage of James Cook, from 1772 to 1775, sought to circumnavigate the globe as far south as possible and to try and find more evidence of the great southern land (Terra Australis). Cook was in command of HMS Resolution, while Tobias Furneaux commanded the sister ship, HMS Adventure.

During the voyage, the ships visited many islands, including, Tahiti, Easter Island, Tonga, South Sandwich Islands and New Caledonia. However, on 8 February 1773, Cook's Resolution and the Adventure, commanded by Furneaux, were separated due to thick fog and Furneaux decided to head for the agreed rendezvous, Queen Charlotte Sound, New Zealand.

Furneaux arrived at Queen Charlotte Sound only to find that he had missed Cook by days and that Cook had already left for the south to explore the Antarctic.

In need of fresh food to combat scurvy, Furneaux sent a party of ten men in a cutter to collect wild edible greens in nearby Grass Cove. But the men did not return. On the next day, December 18, Furneaux sent out a search party in a long boat to look for the lost men. 

Near Grass Cove, on the beach in Wharehunga Bay, Lieutenant James Burney soon discovered twenty baskets of human flesh and several belongings and body parts, including the head of Captain Furneaux's black servant.

Burney wrote:

we found no boat—but instead of her—Such a shocking scene of Carnage & Barbarity as can never be mentiond or thought of, but with horrorr; for the heads, hearts and lungs of several of our people were seen lying on on the beach, and, at a little distance, the dogs gnawing their intrails.

The Adventure had lost ten of her crew to cannibalism. Furneaux departed New Zealand on 23rd September 1773 and arrived back in England on the 14th July 1774.

Captain Cook was murdered by the Hawaiian people, On February 14, 1779, whilst on his third voyage. Interestingly, according to legend, the Māori people came to New Zealand from Hawaii. However, DNA evidence from three-thousand-year-old skulls found in the Pacific shows that the early ancestors of Maori people were actually from Asian farming groups and these people later mixed with Papuans.

After his murder, Cook was disembowelled and baked to enable the removal of the flesh, and the bones cleaned. This funerary ritual was supposedly reserved for those of high status.

The Wild Beasts That Once Roamed Britain

Giant lions which were 25% larger than the lions of today once roamed about Britain. The fossil evidence from Yorkshire, Devon and London, also shows that these British lions weighed up to 317kg (50 stone) which is similar to the weight of a small car.

These super-sized lions became extinct 13,000 years ago but genetic evidence shows that the extinct lions and the lions of today, were very closely related. Dr Barnett, who led research by Oxford University, also found that the lions split into two major groups with one group living in Europe and Alaska and the other group in North America. As a land bridge linked Siberia and Alaska, during the ice age, these ancient lions were able to cross from Eurasia into North America. But, believe it or not, the North American lions were even bigger than their British lion cousins.

The environment in which the British lions once lived was similar to how Siberia is today, as the lions hunted giant deer and mammoths until they all became extinct.

Other giant animals also rambled about Britain and Europe, such as the Eurasian Brown Bear, which grew to 8ft tall and lived in Forrests. Brown bears died out during Medieval times (1000AD), which is unsurprising when the popularity of fur coats and the "sport" of bear-baiting is taken into consideration. Bear-baiting involved tormenting a bear and then getting the bear to fight another bear or other animals, such as savage dogs.

The remains of the European jaguar have been found in Italy (first appearance in the fossil record about 1.5 million years ago), England, Germany, Spain, France, and the Netherlands. It was a predator with a body weight range between 70 and 210 kg, which was much larger than the modern jaguar from South America.

During the Ice Age, herbivorous Woolly Rhinoceros were roaming about Britain, as an area between France and Britain, called Doggerland, had allowed these rhinos and other animals to travel to Britain from southern Europe. During the coldest part of the Ice Age period, sea levels were more than 330ft (100m) lower than today.

An image of the area known as Doggerland which connected the British Isles and the European continent. 

Straight-tusked elephants also travelled the Doggerland route into Britain but they went extinct around 120,000 years ago when the climate became particularly cold.

Most of the world's megafauna like the Woolly Mammoth and Woolly Rhinos were extinct by 10,000 years ago and scientists have argued about whether it was climate change or humans which was the main driving force. The evidence is tending toward human activity as being the main force of extinction.