Fwd: Is it time for a 21st-century Ark?

From: Chen Yixiong, Eric (cyixiong@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Oct 31 2001 - 16:24:36 MST


Is it time for a 21st-century Ark?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/649960.asp

Oct. 30 — Plans to save civilization from doom by sending people and important documents into space in a 21st-century Noah’s Ark
may get a boost from heightened fears of bioterrorism.

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        PSYCHOLOGISTS, TERRORISM ANALYSTS and some space-settlement enthusiasts interviewed by Space.com said fear is the wrong motivation
for any effort to colonize the cosmos. But it might just work, others indicated, as the pie-in-the-sky dream of moving to another
planet meets the reality of biological terrorism on this planet.

        Expect to pay your way to survival, however, at least in the short run.

        The apocalyptic view that humans must leave Earth or perish was raised Oct. 16 by the eminent physicist and author Stephen Hawking,
who said a bioengineered virus will wipe out the human species in this millennium. “The danger is that either by accident or design,
we create a virus that destroys us,” he told The Daily Telegraph in London.



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