Preserving Humanity

= Preserving Humanity =

About This Wiki
The Preserving Humanity Wiki is a resource for those interested in identifying threats to humanity as well as potential strategies for avoiding or limiting those threats. By humanity, we refer both to the human species and to what are typically seen as the more positive attributes of the species: that is, the quality of being humane. By preserving, we refer to the long-term survival of what remains a still-young species.

The rationale for this wiki is that, although human beings are currently the dominant species on the planet in many respects, like other species we exist in a vulnerable state. The quickest way to extinction, of course, would be via a cataclysmic event. Natural species-threatening catastrophes include events such as the impact of large meteors, the eruption of so-called super volcanoes, and cosmic radiation events. Potential human-made catastrophes include events such as nuclear warfare, biological attacks, environmental degradation and - further into the future - the possible misapplication of technologies such as nanotechnology, particle physics, artificial intelligence and robotics, and new genetic and biotechnological advances.

But the focus of this wiki extends to A) major cataclysms that threaten large swaths of humanity even without threatening the actual extinction of the species, and B) extinction processes that are not the result of a single event. After all, not all species disappear as the result of sudden catastrophes. Indeed, such catastrophes might be the exception rather the rule when it comes to extinctions. Therefore, this wiki also examines other reasonable theories of extinction.

Unlike any other Earth species that has come before, as far as we know, humanity has the ability to foresee, plan for, and possibly even forestall threats to its future. We hope that this wiki will serve as a kind clearinghouse for rational ideas and accurate information about how to preserve the species. The focus is intended to be empirical, scientific or futuristic rather than mystical, religious or gratuitously apocalyptic.

It should be noted that, despite facing a number of serious challenges and dangers, the human species is thriving. This wiki is intended to function as just one tool for trying to ensure that this trend continues even as we find ways of intelligently coexisting with the other species on the planet. In short, the goal is to help make humanity more resilient in a sometimes hostile universe.

We must accept, however, that some suggested yet untried remedies, preparations, or ameliorations could seem naive or preposterous. Some, in fact, will be. Other ideas might simply be unfinished or ahead of their time. There's little doubt that our own ancesters would considered descriptions of the modern world proposterous. Therefore, we shouldn't be afraid to imagine potential remedies that are not yet possible. Humankind must envision innovations and strategies before it can implement them.

The Current State of Humanity
There are over 6.5 billion people on the face of the planet, according to the World Population Clock of the U.S. Census Bureau. This is quite a number considering the fact that our species is only thought to be about 150,000 years old. Not only there are more humans than ever before, but recent progress in terms of agriculture, sanitation, medicine and other sociotechnological systems allow many people to live longer, healthier lives than their forebears did. Over the last half a century, life expectancies have risen from 48 to 67 years for women and from 45 to 63 for men, according to data from the International Labour Organization. A recent article in the New York Times (Kolata, 2006) notes that humans in industrialized countries have physically changed quite dramatically over the last 100 years. They tend to be taller and sturdier than before, with certain chronic diseases such as heart problems and arthritis occurring a decade or more later than they did among relatively recent ancestors. Average I.Q.s have also been on the rise.

In many ways, of course, this is all excellent news. It means that human beings are an astonishing successful species, able to simultaneous increase both population and health. But an increasingly large global population of increasingly large individual mammals who are living in high concentrations in most of the habitable world can also be viewed as vulnerable, from an ecological point of view. That is, sudden global disasters can produce can produce terrible famines because of the extent of the population. Disease can be spread more easily from person to person due to high population densities and modern transportion technologies. Moreover, the powerful technologies that allow humans to thrive can be turned against the larger ecosystem or, indeed, against other human beings, creating proportionately greater risks to the species. Although people tend to have some vague awareness of these dangers, they also tend too busy with their day to day lives to pay much attention to the matter.

The Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans or the tsunamis that ravaged parts of Indonesia in 2004 are examples in microcosm of how people can exist in even the most vulnerable of circustances and yet somehow fail to prepare for an all-too-likely event. Unless we demand more from our leaders and ourselves, the whole of humanity could likewise fail to prepare for the predictable disasters that could deliver a terrible - and perhaps mortal - blow to humanity.

Theories About Human Extinction
"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice." -- Robert Frost

Despite the success of the human species, some observers believe there may well be an increased likelihood of some extinction event occurring in the relatively near future. There are at least two schools of thought that concern themselves with, in the words of author and philosopher John Leslie, "doom soon." The first school looks at the question though a probalistic lens. The idea seems to have sprung from the mind of astrophysicist Brandon Carter and was then picked up up by John Leslie, who discussed the idea in a book called The End of the World. The "doomsday argument" is that the very fact that we are alive at this moment increases the chances that the species will become extinct in the not-so-very-distant future.

Imagine, for example, that you're in a kind of lottery draw. The Powers That Be wind up choosing your ticket out of a bin in the second try. What are the chances that there are few or many tickets in the bin? It's more likely that there are few tickets, of course. By the same argument, it's more likely that we are not at the beginning of humanity's existence on Earth but that we're alive at the same time as a sizable portion of the rest of humanity - let's say 10%. This implies that humanity will not be around for millions or billion more years (McGuire, 2002). There are various explanations as well as refutations of the doomsday argument, but it remains a compelling idea in the literature.

A second school of thought is less concerned with abstract probabilities and more concerned with threatening tendlines. It might be called the "mounting risk" argument. The emergence of nuclear weaponry marked the first time humankind had invented a weapon that threatened its survival. Today, some believe other emerging technologies will as to the amount risk facing humanity. In 2000, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy published an influential article called "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" in Wired magazine. He wrote, that "we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology [GNR] - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before." He argues that such technologies will potentially be able to replicate and will be within the reach of individuals or groups who are bent on large-scale destruction or even global annihilation. Unlike would-be nuclear terrorists, such people would not require access to mined and refined nuclear materials. Joy describes these GNR technologies as potentially leading to "knowledge-enabled mass destruction" (KMD). This is not to say that Joy or those who share his views believe in the inevitability of human extinction, but Joy outlines just how difficult it might be to prevent future GNR-related disasters.

Neither the "doomsday" nor the "mounting risk" arguments lead to a case for the inevitable extinction of humanity in the short-term, but they do represent cautionary tales. Perhaps, through sufficient presence and prescience of thought, humanity can boost the probability of long-term survival. But there are no guarantees, and the chances might even be against us.

Natural Threats and Possible Solutions or Mitigations
There are many potential threats to humanity, some more likely to occur than others. The goal here is to describe the potential threat and then suggest possible solutions, preparations or mitigations. We've divided the threats into two basic categories: natural and human-caused. In truth, though, categories can blur. Global warming can be a natural phenomenon, but these days it may well be influenced by human activity. Ice ages have come and gone throughout Earth's history, but a nuclear winter might spark the next one.

(NOTE TO POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTORS: we've begun by putting in links to sources that might be helpful to writers in describing the phenomena outlined below. As the sections are filled in with research prose, the URLs will disappear, be incorporated into the prose, or be transferred to the reference section of the wiki.)

Description
Among the culprits that are deemed most likely to result in extinction events are asteroids and comets. Some research suggests that one of these was responsible for the biggest extinction event in the world's history. It occurred about 251 million years ago during the Permian-Triassic period, killing off 70% of land species and 90% of ocean species. One line of evidence is the discovery of an impact crater about the size of Ohio that's been found in Antartica. It's estimated that this crater, which is about 300 miles wide, was caused by a space rook that was up to 30 miles wide. Another line of evidence is research that analyzed deposits of deposits of "Buckyballs," which are a type of carbon that contain a cavity within. Researchers apparently found a helium isotope of extraterristrial origin inside the cavities of the Buckeyballs.

Even if there was a huge impact during the Permian-Triassic period, however, the impact of the object alone was probably not the sole cause of the extinctions. The impact likely triggered other major events such as massive volcanic eruptions, changes in sea levels and ocean oxygen, and climate changes (Stricherz, 2001).

Researchers also believe, of course, that a comet or asteroid was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred some 67 million years ago (Recer, 2001). It's believed that the crater for that impact is in the Yucatan peninsula. The evidence for this Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event impact is stronger than for the Permian-Triassic event. It's not known if the other three major extinction events were were caused by massive space rocks, but some circumstantial evidence exists that they were.

Thanks to various Hollywood movies, the idea that another asteroid or comet could drive humans into exinction is probably the most well-known danger of all those listed on this wiki. It may be also be - based on the historic record - among the most realistic of threats. To gain a clearer picture of the regional environmental impact that a space rock would have on Earth, readers can go to the interactive website known as the Earth Impact Effects Program.

Watch and Learn
The first step toward avoiding asteroids and comets is tracking and otherwise gathering knowledge about them. The experts are, in fact, already tracking what are commonly known as near earth asteroids, or NEA. The following text is adapted from a Wikipedia entry on the subject of minimizing the threats of NEAs.

In recent years, astronomers have been conducting surveys to locate NEAs. One of the best-known is the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project (LINEAR), which began in 1996. By 2004, LINEAR was discovering tens of thousands of objects each year and accounting for 70% of all asteroid detections. Spacewatch is another project that surveys the skies for intruders. Other near-earth asteroid tracking programs include Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT), Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS), Catalina Sky Survey, Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Objects Survey (CINEOS), Japanese Spaceguard Association, and Asiago-DLR Asteroid Survey.

"Spaceguard" is the name for these loosely affiliated programs, some of which receive NASA funding to meet a U.S. Congressional requirement to detect 90% of near-earth asteroids over 1 km diameter by 2008. A 2003 NASA study of a follow-on program suggests spending US$250-450 million to detect 90% of all near-earth asteroids 140 metres and larger by 2028. The fact that an impact of an NEA a kilometre or more in size would be a catastrophe unparalleled in human history has kept the idea of a defensive network alive.

The Near-Earth Object Program has the goal of coordinating NASA-sponsored efforts to detect, track and characterize potentially hazardous asteroids and comets. It's website notes, "The NEO Program will focus on the goal of locating at least 90 percent of the estimated 1,000 asteroids and comets that approach the Earth and are larger than 1 kilometer (about 2/3-mile) in diameter, by the end of the next decade. In addition to managing the detection and cataloging of Near-Earth objects, the NEO Program office will be responsible for facilitating communications between the astronomical community and the public should any potentially hazardous objects be discovered."

Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near Earth Object Program Office, noted in Earth & Sky, "The key is to find these things early...[I]f if we find one on an Earth-threatening trajectory, say that's going to occur within a year, there's not a whole lot that we can do about it, frankly, because it would require too much energy to deflect it in that short a time. But if we can find them 10, 20, 30, 40 years in advance, then it's relatively simple -- well not simple, but it can be done." (Wikipedia reports that almost any deflection effort would require years of warning. It has been estimated that 10 years or more of advance warning would be needed to deflect an asteroid larger than 200 meters across.)

Don Yeomans goes on to note that NASA is considering whther to extend the Near Earth Object Discovery program to work on locating some of the smaller space objects as well as the larger ones. He notes that some of these objects could be visited or even mined and so be a "boon to future space exploration."

Deflect or Destroy
Detecting NEAs is, however, only the first step. The next step is learning how we can deflect such objects away from the planet. Yeomans suggests that the easiest way to deflect a space object that has been identified in advance is "to simply run into it." He notes, "If the first impact didn't do it, then you'd do another one and monitor its motion. And so if you had plenty of time, then the kinetic impact, or impacters would probably be the easiest and the cheapest." Below are various strategies outlined in Wikipedia's Asteroid Deflection Strategies page:

Using Nuclear Weapons

One of the most often proposed solutions is firing nuclear missiles at the oncoming asteroid to vaporize all or most of it. While today's nuclear weapons are not powerful enough to destroy a 1 km asteroid, theoretically, thermonuclear weapons can be scaled up to any size so long as enough raw materials are available. If not completely vaporized, the resulting reduction of mass from the blast combined with the radiation blast could produce positive results. The largest problem with this solution is that if the asteroid breaks into fragments, any fragment larger than 35 m across would not burn up in the atmosphere and itself could impact Earth. Tracking of the thousands of fragments that could result would prove daunting.

Another proposed solution is to detonate a series of smaller nuclear devices alongside the asteroid, far enough away as to not fracture the object. Providing this was done far enough in advance, the relatively small forces from any number of nuclear blasts could be enough to alter the object's trajectory enough to avoid an impact.

Dan Durda has argued that if an asteroid was a "rubble pile," had a low enough density and was porous enough, it could absorb enough energy from a stand-off explosion to not be deflected. The idea of deflecting an asteroid through the use of a nuclear weapons would, however, require testing nuclear devices in space, which is illegal for any country that signed the Outer Space Treaty.

Detonating Internally

Another strategy is to plant powerful explosives inside the asteroid, detonate them and break the asteroid into pieces. This technique, as with launching nuclear weapons from Earth, might cause subsequent impact events of large fragments of the asteroid. A large asteroid could be blown apart by a nuclear device detonated in its core only to have gravity draw the asteroid back together, essentially nullifying the effect of the explosion. The explosion would have to be large enough to not only split the asteroid but set the fragments on an expanding trajectory such that most of the debris missed Earth.

Kinetic Impact

An alternative means of deflecting an asteroid is to attempt to directly alter its momentum by sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid. In the case of 99942 Apophis it has been demonstrated by ESA that deflection could be achieved by sending a simple spacecraft weighing less than one ton to impact against the asteroid. During a trade-off study (carried out by the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency), Dario Izzo argued that a strategy called 'kinetic impactor deflection' was more efficient than others.

Asteroid Gravitational Tractor

The major alternative to explosive deflection is to move the asteroid slowly over a period of time. Tiny constant thrust accumulates to deviate an object sufficiently from its predicted course. Edward T. Lu and Stanley Love have proposed using a large heavy unmanned spacecraft hovering over an asteroid to gravitationally pull the latter into a non-threatening orbit. The spacecraft and the asteroid mutually attract one another. If the spacecraft counters the force towards the asteroid by, the net effect is that the asteroid is accelerated toward the spacecraft and thus slightly deflected from its orbit.

While slow, this method has the advantage of working irrespective of the asteroid composition or spin rate — rubble pile asteroids would be difficult or impossible to deflect by means of nuclear detonations while a pushing device would be hard or inefficient to mount on a fast rotating asteroid. A gravity tractor would likely have to spend several years beside the asteroid to be effective.

Use of focused solar energy

H. Jay Melosh proposed to deflect an asteroid or comet by focusing solar energy onto its surface to create thrust from the resulting vaporization of material, or to amplify the Yarkovsky effect. Over a span of months or years, enough solar radiation can be directed onto the object to deflect it.

Other proposals
 * Setting up an automated mass driver machine on the asteroid to eject material into space, thereby giving the asteroid a slow steady push and decreasing its mass. Of course, some other types of spacecraft propulsion would have a similar effect of giving a steady push.
 * Wrapping the asteroid in a sheet of reflective plastic such as aluminized PET film (biaxially oriented) or dusting the object with titanium dioxide to alter its trajectory via radiation pressure
 * Dusting the object with soot to alter its trajectory via the Yarkovsky effect
 * Attaching a large enough solar sail directly to the object, thus using solar pressure to shift the object's orbit
 * Chapman, Durda & Gold's white paper calculates deflections using existing chemical rockets

Description
So-called super eruptions are another type of natural phenomenon that pose a major threat to human civilization and, perhaps, the species as a whole. This risks of such eruptions may well be higher than the risk of an asteroid or comet impact.

Associated with "super volcanoes," these eruptions have occurred periodically throughout Earth's history. Such eruptions are larger than anything humankind has witnessed in recorded history, being many hundreds of times more powerful than the eruption of Mount St. Helen's in the U.S. Although the odds of such an eruption occurring at any given time is low, the odds are still five to ten times higher for such an eruption than for an asteroid that would have a destuctive impact on a global level (Britt, 2005). One of the larger super eruptions could have about the same impact as an asteroid that is 1.5 kilometers in size. Super eruptions have historically occured more frequently than large-scale asteroid impacts: some say about once every 100,000 years compared to once every half a million years or so for large space objects (Rincon, 2005).

At this point, there are about 40 known potential supervolcano "hot spots." Unlike with potentially destructive space rocks, no one has arrived at a method of preventing such events. "The bottom line is that when one of these eruptions occurs, it's going to be a global disaster," noted Michael Rampino, a geologist and professor of earth sciences at New York University, as reported by ABCNews. "The only question is when and where."

Some theorize that humankind was nearly driven into extinction by a super erruption that occurred about 74,000 years ago in what is today known as Lake Toba. The Volcanic Explosivity Index reached the maximum of 8 for that explosion, erupting 2,800 cubic kilometers worth of material. Some experts believe this event killed off much if not most of humanity, causing a genetic "bottleneck" that would explain why the entire global population has such similar DNA. It may be that we are all descendants from a very small population of as few as 10,000 to 1,000 people who somehow survived the Toba Event.

So, what exactly happens during a super eruption? First, there'd be utter destruction within the local area of such a blast. It would create what enormous pyroclastic flows that cover thousands of square kilometers in thick, burning ash. Second, there'd be astonishing amounts of rock, dust and ash thrown into the atmosphere. It would cover the landscape for hundreds of miles in any direction. Some estimate that if the Yellowstone Caldera, a known super volcano, were to errupt, the fallout would cover half of the continental United States. In many areas, there could be up to a meter of volcanic ash. Just a single centimeter of such ash can badly hinder agricultural output. Some crops are completely destroyed by even a few milimeters of ash. Obviously, starvation on a large regional scale could occur. Third, though, are the global repercussions. The massive amounts of dust and gas in the stratophere would likely lead to a "volcanic winter." No one can be sure of what such a volcanic winter would look like or how long it would last, but some evidence from the Toba eruption indicates it lasted as long as six years, notes Super-Eruptions: Global Effects and Future Threats, a report from a Geological Society of London Working Group. Some computer models even suggest that a super eruption could lead to enough global cooling to kick the world into another Ice Age, although this remains far from certain.

At any rate, a volcanic winter would likely result in years of agricultural disaster on a global scale, leading to starvation on massive scale after initial stores of food supply are used up. This might well result in the collapse of modern civilization and, adding in other factors such as subsequent wars over desperately limited resources, perhaps even the extinction of the species.

Potential Preparations and Mitigations
For the moment, there are not known solutions to the super eruption problem. So what can be done? One idea is to properly fund research into this area. We need to better understand the dynamics and impacts of super eruptions, gain a clearer understanding of the geological record of these events, and perhaps get a clearer idea of just when and where such an event might occur. That is, where are the true hot spots? What might we do if one of them erupts?

Second, nations must start to collectively prepare for the inevitability of such an event. Individual national disaster plans won't be enough. When such an eruption occurs, it will be both a regional and global disaster. The Super-Eruptions report asks, "What might happen if several billion people needed evacuation from most of Asia, and, simultaneously, three or four years of severe volcanic winter threatened agriculture throughout North America and Europe? This is not fanciful, but the kind of acute problem and inevitable consequence of the next super-eruption" (p. 20).

One type of initiative that seems logical, given the potential nature of a volcanic winter, is a global food storage program. This might seem a daunting task, given the fact that hunger continues to reign in many regions of the world. But today's hunger is less an agricultural problem than a political one that has to do with allocations and economics. The ability to grow more food than humanity needs day-to-day would seem an achievable task, but determing how and where to store it would be massive logistical and political problem.

Other mitigation and survival strategies are more speculative for now. There's clearly a need for disaster preparedness experts, researchers, non-governmental organizations, and government officials to form task forces to examine an this issue, which has been most ignored. Below are some other preliminary mitigation proposals:


 * Fund research to develop a larger variety of edible plants that that can survive in soil conditions likely to exist in the event of a super eruption or other disaster (such as nuclear war or asteroid strike). Such plants would also need to be able to grow in significant colder conditions in which there is less light. More research could also be done on high-volume agriculture that uses artificial light and/or techniques such as hydroponics. The same or similar research might someday be useful in learning how to grow plants in other forbidding extraterrestrial environment such as Mars.


 * Carry out large-scale international rescue-and-evacuation exercises. Such exercises could forge closer international ties, improve the logistical performance of multinational operations, and harden communication infrastructures, which would be sorely tested in the event of a global disaster.


 * Ensure that both national and international initiatives - such as the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction - are contemplating and preparing for disasters that would ensue in a super eruption.

Gamma-Ray Bursts
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1998/17/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4433963.stm

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/gammaray_bursts_010522-1.html

http://www.physorg.com/news3625.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3900550/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst#Mass_extinction_on_Earth

Mega-Tsunamis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1279710,00.html

Nuclear Disasters
http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1985/physicians-lecture.html

http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/opinion/inevitability.html

http://www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/pubs/82jpr.html

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20060912115514AA29tpH

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picrender.fcgi?artid=1490797&blobtype=pdf

http://www.thebulletin.org/doomsday_clock/current_time.htm

Global Warming
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5544264.html

http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/114245/index.php

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14834318/

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/19/1055828440526.html

http://www.cgfi.org/materials/articles/2003/sept_14_03.htm

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/21/mass_extinction_theory_blames_global_warming/

Transhumanism
http://genetics-and-society.org/events/20030430_mckibben.html

Scenarios
The Global Business Network, a scenario consultancy, notes that "scenarios are tools for ordering one's perceptions about alternative future environments in which today's decisions might be played out." Scenarios are are a tool used by various businesses to gain insights into possible futures and potential responses to those futures. Shell, for example, is a corporation that has pioneered this techniques of futures thinking. Shell produces a set of global scenarios, making summaries and excerpts available to the public. Wired.com also provides information on scenarios and how to build them.

We invite authors to craft detailed scenarios that focus on the challenges that humanity may face in coming years and how it may deal with these challenges. Scenarios can focus on a specific problem or a group of related problems, and they can be set various time frames. But it should be noted that scenarios are not as much about "predicting" the future as they are about allowing us to make better, more-informed decisions in the present. After all, although a cliche, it's largely true that what we decide as a society today will help shape the world of tomorrow.

Relevant Links
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1112_overkill.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

http://www.snowballearth.org/index.html

http://www-eps.harvard.edu/people/faculty/hoffman/snowball_paper.html

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4136/is_200401/ai_n9355163

http://www.iavcei.org/

http://www.unisdr.org/

http://www-volcano.geog.cam.ac.uk/database/

http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/template.cfm?name=Super1

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/Science/story?id=2366987&page=1

http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050308_super_volcano.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4326987.stm

http://www.iee.org/OnComms/Circuit/benefits/Editorials/Features/super_eruptions.cfm

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/environmental-change/asl-2005/html-version/volcano/volcano-past.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040112/pf/040112-17_pf.html

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/supervolcano/supervolcano.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supervolcano

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/supervolcano/

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_10_21/ai_65368918/pg_1

http://www.answers.com/topic/human-extinction

http://www.well.com/~mb/scenario/

http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning

http://www.monitor.com/cgi-bin/iowa/ideas/index.html?article=207

http://www.monitor.com/binary-data/MONITOR_ARTICLES/object/207.PDF

http://www.gbn.com/GBNDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?aid=34550&url=%2FUploadDocumentDisplayServlet.srv%3Fid%3D35520

http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/cornwallis3.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Huebner