Danger in Mexico, Terraforming Mars, and Doomsday Scenarios

and David Almada and Helen Mun

At RACAIA Architecture & Interiors in Downtown Los Angeles, David is the Senior Architectural Designer and product designer, Helen is the Interior Designer and Tony’s the Programming & Communications Coordinator. Working together day-in and day-out, these three go to lunch all the time and rant. This time, Tony brought a voice recorder.

HELEN: There was a big earthquake today in Mexico. 6.0, right in Mexico City.

TONY: Poor Mexico, they’re got the cartel going crazy, swine flu pandemics and now an earthquake. Maybe they did something to piss off God. Although Mexico would be the perfect place to do your superdevelopment. It’s totally lawless there! We could design some pretty awesome stuff.

H: Yeah, as long as you pay the right people ... probably the drug lords.

DAVID: Architects down there have designed awesome stuff down there. You’ve gotta grease all the right hands though.

T: I wonder if you have to keep paying the drug lords, even after you build your development.

D: Probably. If you’re that wealthy in Mexico, you’ll have people coming after you. You’re definitely going to need protection.

T: Well, if you’re that wealthy you should hire a private military. I mean, if we had the kind of cash Bill Gates has we could hire Blackwater and have our own little military protecting our awesome development from gang warfare.

D: Well, what about protecting from swine flu or the earthquake?

H: Yeah, imagine living in a place where your house could collapse, your family could get swine flu, and the mafia could go after your family all in the same week.

D: Maybe things will calm down when marijuana’s legal.

T: Maybe, but when it’s legal, as long as the tax money from its sales goes to health stuff like cigarette tax does.

D: We’ll probably have to pay a state and a federal tax on marijuana’s sales. Vendors will probably have to pay to sell it.

T: If there was a federal tax for marijuana, there should have to be a federal law that legalizes it right? It would suck if we paid a tax on marijuana sales and the money left California. If other states want marijuana tax money, they should legalize marijuana themselves. Anyway, I’m pretty sure it would only be a state tax.

D: But they’re going to limit where we can smoke. Like Amsterdam, create coffee shops or something. We’ve already got smoking laws that keep you from smoking outside, or in bars and restaurants.

T: Mexico would have a lot less drug crime, I’m sure.

H: Yeah, right now it’s a “triple threat” down there: pandemics, drugs and earthquakes.

T: Man, if you want to build a development in Mexico you need to keep everything airtight.

D: Yeah, have guards and posts everywhere.

T: Now it sounds more like you’re building a jail. Although inside it would be a vacation paradise. With that kind of lawless poverty, how long do you think it’ll take before Mexico has pirates of their own?

D: What are you talking about? They already do! A buddy of mine was driving through the middle of nowhere in Mexico and pirates drove right up on both sides of them to try and rob them.

T: Oh man, car pirates.

D: Yeah, but now think about how many cruise ships come in ...

T: And there’s a lot of stuff that comes into L.A. ports. Would we go to war with Mexican pirates? Our constitution basically requires us to take on pirates with tons of prejudice.

H: I’m sure our military would totally destroy Mexican pirates.

D: I doubt their own government would stop them.

T: I wonder how much cash we’d have to give them to boost their economy enough that they wouldn’t have to be pirates anymore.

D: Seriously, people out there probably think it’s cheaper to kill them.

T: What? How? Nuke them?

D: Basically.

H: Do you think we have a space station up there pointing nukes downward at earth?

D: I wouldn’t be surprised.

T: Isn’t that the plot to Diamonds are Forever?

D: We never really know what they’re sending up in all of those satellites.

H: There has to be a bomb in one of them.

D: If I remember my physics, it’ll only take 12 minutes to enter the atmosphere and hit the Earth. I’m pretty sure anyway.

T: Maybe they’re up there so we can start nuking stuff in space.

D: What? Instead of using fireworks, we’ll nuke space stuff?

T: Or maybe the satellites do other stuff… like, have you heard that scientists are trying to hack the Earth to combat global warming? It’s not just about chem trails, it’s about geo-engineering our atmosphere. Anyway, it would be cool to see if we could do that on Mars first. The red dot is a storm: maybe we could re-engineer that storm and slowly change Mars. We should install satellites around Mars to try that out.

D: Like terraform it?

T: Yeah. Or we could do it to other planets. There was one they found recently that’s similar to Earth, but it’s totally covered in water like that movie Waterworld. We’d just have to move it closer to a sun.

H: Sure, Tony. We could slingshot it. Or play Pong with it. Except that the planets would probably slam into each other.

D: Isn’t the moon a broken-off piece of the Earth? It’s crazy that the Earth is made of two collided planets, and gravity made it a sphere again. We seem to think that gravity is weak, but think of the intense force it applies.

T: Maybe we could terraform Mars and you could start building there ... we could masterplan the entire planet from scratch!

D: I know.

H: That’s too much effort. We should try and build underground here first. Or underwater, like a sea lab.

T: What about sky cities, like the Jetsons? Or a city right on the water?

H: Like Venice?

T: Uh ...

D: Yeah, too much can go wrong. You’re actually on the water, what happens if you get hit by a giant swell?

T: So I guess Ocean City’s not happening.

H: Imagine if you felt an earthquake on the water? I already wake up every morning thinking that this will be the day.

D: Yeah, we’re definitely due.

T: C’mon, everyone always says we’re due. The only day we’re ever “not due” is the day after a big earthquake.

D: We’ve had a couple of big quakes every decade, but not really anything significant in the past ten years.

H: Yeah, everyone in Tucson is waiting for California to sink into the ocean so they can own beachfront property.

D: Yeah, aside from heat there aren’t many natural disasters to worry about in Arizona. Monsoons can get nasty, but they rarely have earthquakes out there and their tornadoes aren’t really that dangerous.

T: Yeah, but they still have tornadoes.

H: Well, they’re weak like the Riverside one.

T: ...

D: I don’t think people die from anything but heat there.

H: Yeah, your car console can melt if it’s made of plastic.

T: Whoa.

D: Really though, none of us are immune. Didn’t they discover that Yellowstone was a super-volcano that would basically obliterate half our hemisphere?

H: Really?

T: Yeah, we’ve got a few on Earth. I think some are underwater though. [None of them are underwater - Ed.]

H: And they only just figured this out? Great.

T: Yeah, Brigham Young was so so wrong about America being some safe, holy land. We’ve got an active supervolocano. Maybe a few of them.

H: That’s why we shouldn’t even bother with global warming. Who cares?

T: Did you see An Inconvenient Truth when Al Gore shows Greenland melting, turning off some atmospheric engine and freezing over all of Europe?

D: Meh, that’s not going to happen to us!

T: Okay then, never mind.

H: Yeah, it’s about time for a civilization to be wiped out.

T: Think so?

D: Yeah man, geologists all seem to say something like “it only happens every several thousand years,” but we always seem to be overdue for something epic.

T: What, Revelations-style epic?

D: Yup. So why bother building anything? Let’s just sit back and wait it out.

T: So basically we’re playing “choose your doomsday scenario.” Would you rather get sucked up by a tornado or taken out by an earthquake.

D: Uh ... in a tornado, you have that split second before you die when you’re flying. That would be pretty cool.

H: But earthquakes can be fun! First you’re like “What’s that?” and then it’s a ride. Then you’re dead.

T: Hey, if you can survive the earthquake you’ve got a lot of work rebuilding everything that collapsed! It would be so lucrative!

D: We’ve got to hope that all of our clients survive the earthquake too. Especially the rich ones.

T: They should all install parachutes on the top floor of these megadevelopments.

D: Or hang gliders.

T: Like Batman?

D: Yeah!

H: My dad wanted to start a portable parachute business and sell them to hotels.

D: If I were a paranoid exec, I’d buy one.

H: All you have to do is convince people that something bad will happen to them, get the idea in a news story and people will buy it!

T: Scare tactics.

H: It works. My friend bought an anti-terrorism mask.

T: Whoa, does he have a hazmat suit also?

H: No, but he’d probably get one.

D: After 9/11, they set up those rooms where you could jump in quickly and put up plastic to seal yourself in from bioterroism.

T: What? That sounds too crazy for me.

H: It’s pretty cool actually.

T: Well, you can’t protect yourself either way. Really, what’s the point in even trying?

(pause)

H: Yeah, we should get back to the office.

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