Benjamin Dancer's Blog, page 4

Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?

A friend of mine, ethicist Travis Rieder at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics, has recently come into a lot of attention. He was profiled on NPR in his college classroom while he was trying to convince his students to have smaller families. The radio story then evolved into a philosophical conversation about the size of our families.The premise of that conversation was that the size of the human population is the most powerful variable in Earth's changing climate. Meaning the mo...

Zero Days

The bad guy in my thriller Patriarch Run wants to use a sophisticated cyberattack to take down America's power grid. I've written about that here.Now there's a new documentary that explores the real-world implications of such an attack.

Alex Gibney’s Zero Daysis a documentary thriller about the world of cyberwar.For the first time, the film tells the complete story of Stuxnet, a piece of self-replicating computer malware that the U.S. and Israel unleashed to destroy a key part of an Iranian nu...

A Favor Please

Dear friends, may I ask a favor? If you are planning on reading the new edition of Patriarch Run when it comes out on Oct 4, would you mind indicating as much here on Goodreads.

An action like that would go a long way in getting people excited about the story.

By the way, the book is available for pre-order now! Pre-ordering the book at your favorite online retailer is one of the most effective ways you could support me and this launch. Thank you!

https://www.amazon.com/Patriarch-Run-...

National Intelligence Council: Could Threats to the Power Grid End Civilization?

The societal catastrophe that would result if the grid went down was once dismissed by many as a concern of conspiracy theorists. Those days are ending as a growing number of authoritative sources have acknowledged the threat in an official capacity.(I've also written about this topic in my Discussion Guide.)

For example, the U.S. government recently recognized several threats to the grid. The National Intelligence Council (NIC) discussed these threats in a 2012 report. The NIC is a little rec...

What Was The Carrington Event?

The Carrington Event is often referenced as a harbinger when the threat of space weather is being addressed. So I thought it'd be helpful to write a post explaining just what it was. I've also written about the threat of space weather here.

A filiment eruption from the sun. Courtesy of NASA.

The Carrington Event is named after the English astronomer Richard Carrington who was first person to witness a coronal mass ejection (CME). A CME is a large release of plasma during strong, long-duration s...

What Would a Superflare Do To Civilization?

One of the scary things I learned in writing my thriller Patriarch Run is that our civilization has unwittingly evolved to become absolutely dependent on the power gird. It's not an exaggeration to say that if the grid went down today and didn't come back up again, most of us would die. If you're curious about how that can be,you can read what I've written about it here.

What's frightening about our dependence on widely-available, reliable electrical power is that there are several mechanisms...

Books and Benches Review of Patriarch Run

I wanted to take a moment to thank BooksandBenches.com for their kind review of Patriarch Run! You can read the review and a whole bunch of others here.

A Reader's Opinion

Benjamin Dancer has written a thriller with depth. It not only has shoot-outs and other high risk situations, but it explores the complexities of relationships the characters have with others and themselves. I felt like I was in a high speed car chase, only slowing down long enough to witness a crash on the side of the road...

Can Math Save The World?

If we could educate everybody to understand a very simple mathematical concept,we might be able to save the world. Seriously, whatever your global concern is, it would likely be made better if everybody understood this formula.

The global understanding of this mathematical concept would fix most problems related to sustainability, including climate change. It would address concerns about the loss of liberty and excessive regulations. It'd fix just about everything.

Here's a great video we can...

Can We Talk About Gender in America?

A paper published by Shannon Elizabeth Bell and Yvonne A. Braun titled Coal, Identity, and the Gendering of Environmental Justice Activism in Central Appalachiasuggests that women are motivated by their identity as mothers to leave a better world for their children. For example, the mothers interviewed by the paper's authors viewed their own activism as a defense of their homes.

The paper also attempts to shed light on general gender differences evident in the environmental justice movement,...

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman is a non-fiction book about what would happen to Earth if humans suddenly disappeared. Weisman is a journalist who also wrote Countdown: Our Last, Best Hope for a Future on Earth?I should also disclose that Weisman endorsed my eco-thriller Patriarch Run. You can read that endorsement here.

The World Without Us is written as a thought experiment. It considers, among other things, what would happen to our houses and cities if humans were to suddenly disappea...