Using the Programme Guide of the 2021 World Science Fiction Convention, DisCON III, which I WOULD have been attending in person if I felt safe enough to do so in person AND it hadn’t been changed to the week before the Christmas Holidays…I will jump off, jump on, rail against, and shamelessly agree with the BRIEF DESCRIPTION given in the Program Guide. I will be using the events to drive me to distraction or revelation – as the case may be. The link is provided below where this appeared!
“Complex logistics are required to respond to mundane natural disasters. How could we handle a natural disaster occurring on another planet or in space? What additional political and diplomatic complications arise when working on an interplanetary scale?”
Jennifer Rohrer: Moderator (that’s all I could find)
Sandy Manning: math teacher from Alaska (she DID mention Diomede, AK in her introduction…)
Katherine Crichton: writer of SF/F, reviewer, SFWA
Malka Older: author of novels and short SF, futurist, savior of the world (or “…one of the reasons why we still have a planet at all, even if we still don’t always know what to do with it.” – Fran Wilder
The groups assumes that Humanity will move off of Earth – and may (or may not) need to help each other in the event of a disaster.
Most people have seen the movie “Apollo 13”. If I may be so bold, I would classify this as the first off-Earth disaster flick. I would consider it a disaster for two reasons. First is that three astronauts would die if the combined forces of NASA and the astronauts themselves couldn’t figure out a way to overcome the obstacles presented by “something” that happened in space, completely out of reach of every kind of expert Humanity had at that time.
Secondly, however, is that the event prompted the epithet, a “successful failure in space”. IF the astronauts had died instead of overcoming incredible odds to survive, Humanity would have suffered a greater disaster than the Challenger on January 28, 1986 and Columbia on February 1, 2003 – not because of the loss of space explorers, but because Apollo 13 was, I think, a cusp event. As depicted in the movie, going to the Moon was about as “exciting as going to Pittsburgh.”
Had they died, either there would have been a cover up…or the space program would have ground to a halt. Apollo 1, while it happened because of the space program, didn’t have that effect. It WAS accidental, but it happened because really, Humans didn’t know what the heck they were doing.
So, the panelists looked at what WOULD we do if there was a disaster in space or worse, on a distant colony world.
They generated a series of questions initially: whose responsibility was it to respond? Was it someone’s fault? What could the decision-makers DO? Certainly they begin by interpreting what happened by gathering as much information as possible. The information is then passed on to “the Deciders”, the ones with enough information to actually figure out what can be DONE.
Once they did that – both in space and by going over what happened on the ground (which, in the case of Challenger, looked like it was someone’s actual FAULT, which caused endless litigation and the shifting of the space industry – they could move on to the Executers. They would take the plan that the Deciders came up with and put it into practice.
With that, the next most important thing was COMMUNICATION. They had to be in touch in order to first comfort, and second, gather as much information as possible.
So let’s say the Lunar Colony has an outbreak of influenza – which seems like it would probably happen. There would be lots of questions. I would think the first would be, “Is this JUST the flu, or is it, say, The Andromeda Strain? Or WORSE, COVID-19 Double Iota!!!!!” Then what? [Hey, Gray Rinehart, how about a second book in the WALKING ON THE SEA OF CLOUDS (http://graymanwrites.com/index.html) universe?]
How can we help? My guess: we would NOT send a rescue mission. There would be too many unknowns. So then what? We COULD send help – a portable infectious disease lab and vaccine synthesis pod? Certainly volunteers could be solicited…By the way, this could just as easily happen on the ISS. What if we went to call them and no one answered and the video feed showed no one there?
Hmmm, seems that might make an interesting story. Anyone know of someone has already done it?
One of the participants noted that in Alaska, where she lives and works, ALL school have back-up generators. Plus, people COULD be cross-trained. Elementary children could be certified in Basic First Aid. High school seniors could all be certified in Advanced First Aid. All biology teachers could be certified Emergency Room Technicians. School nurses could have preliminary training in Emergency Surgical Technique or could BE licensed EMTs (our school had did; he moonlighted as a Fire Fighter, too!) Doctors couldn’t be “specialists” any more. They’d have to general practitioners. In his SECTOR GENERAL books, James White allowed his Human surgeons to assume the skills of non-Human surgeons. One even kept the “minds” of six surgeons all tucked away. We wouldn’t QUITE need that yet…
What if it’s WORSE than that? What if it’s an international disaster? We need to assume that Russia and China will be players if Americans put a real base on the Moon – just as we would go if one of THEM landed a base there first, simply because such a base would present an unprecedented ability to strike other countries AND their satellites stealthily and silently. So, the settling of space, besides creating new medical challenges, will also require DIPLOMACY.
What if an American child, with her mother, who is working with Chinese and Russian radio telescope astronomers is orphaned when her mother is killed in an accident that maroons her and he rest of the kids and a few adults, underground? The Far Side is protected from colonization because Humans continue to search for Someone Out There…so communication is difficult. Who helps the child? Who does she “belong to” in the interval until her legal guardians can be contacted? We will have SOME need of Diplomatic Trees…
Do people off Earth have only their respective militaries to rely on? What if an international crew on a mission to Titan discovers what might be an abandoned facility clearly left by an intelligence not from Earth – and the Nigerian leader claims it all for Nigeria, then dies of something horrible when he opens the door to the control room?
One of the participants mentioned something called a Cajun Navy, an “informal ad hoc volunteer groups comprising private boat owners who assist in search and rescue efforts” . Is that how search and rescue, ambulance, hospital, disaster relief will work – at least until someone creates and staffs a REAL “sector general”? Will all colonies, of necessity, need to be totally self-sufficient?
What about Doctors Without Borders? Missionary doctors? Training programs? And as long as we’re talking about the future, I’m re-reading Joan Slonczewski’s THE CHILDREN STAR. There are medical programs; artificial intelligence doctors; artificial humanoid doctors; and hologram doctors (“Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”—USS Voyager, Emergency Medical Hologram, “Dr. Zimmerman”).
Last of all, “People will always be there for each other. This is supported by the literature as well as the news that reports this kind of “being there” incidents. There is little evidence for looters in the community after disaster. It’s just how people ‘are’. Most people are self-sufficient as well – where I live, there was a woman who had a TANK in order to get to tough-to-reach places. The same neighborhood had ‘the knife guy’…such a society creates a self-sufficiency; what might be called “isolated-interconnectedness with skills to make what is needed.”
Program Schedule: https://discon3.org/schedule/
Image: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQY860vAI2izm2g2mUgxzT14fGVmoGh66B51g&usqp=CAU
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