What If? You are granted these powers. What do you do?

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
I can't prove that we've survivred either but the Y chromosome and MtDNA we have came from just one man and one woman from so long ago that Adam and Eve weren't alive at the same time and may have been pre-human apes.
That's not actually how that works, Y-Chromosomal Adam (Y-MRCA) was not the only man on earth at the time of his life. Each time a basal haplogroup ends a generation without any sons, the person we reference as Y-MRCA ratchets forward a bit because a new person is now the most recent common ancestor of all current surviving humans (the previous oldest ancestor no longer counting as there's a new youngest common ancestor. However, Y-MRCA was not living at a point where there was only one surviving human male, merely that's the one who still has an unbroken genetic heritage of son of- son of- son of- throughout history with no generation of only daughters in between.

Mitochondrial Eve is exactly the same, each time a haplogroup has no daughters the estimated age of mt-MRCA ratchets forward, but mt-MRCA was not the only woman alive, nor the oldest woman, nor the beginning of a new species, she's merely the most recent human who we can trace daughter of- daughter of- daughter of- through with no generation having only sons along the way.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
That's not actually how that works, Y-Chromosomal Adam (Y-MRCA) was not the only man on earth at the time of his life. Each time a basal haplogroup ends a generation without any sons, the person we reference as Y-MRCA ratchets forward a bit because a new person is now the most recent common ancestor of all current surviving humans (the previous oldest ancestor no longer counting as there's a new youngest common ancestor. However, Y-MRCA was not living at a point where there was only one surviving human male, merely that's the one who still has an unbroken genetic heritage of son of- son of- son of- throughout history with no generation of only daughters in between.

Mitochondrial Eve is exactly the same, each time a haplogroup has no daughters the estimated age of mt-MRCA ratchets forward, but mt-MRCA was not the only woman alive, nor the oldest woman, nor the beginning of a new species, she's merely the most recent human who we can trace daughter of- daughter of- daughter of- through with no generation having only sons along the way.
Thanks for the elaboration on ancestry. You and I and everyone else alive are cousins so many times over that it's not funny anymore and we are all cousins in uncountable ways.
 

Atarlost

Well-known member
Hydrazine and Nitric Acid are hypergolic with each other and ignite on contact. They were used as reliable and somewhat safe rocket fuels for missiles way back when we didn't have anything better.
This doesn't address my aim at all. Killing Communists is secondary to making people afraid to promote or practice Communism or anything that the mysterious statue conjurer might lump together with Communism. For that they need to know exactly why Communists are dying. People are really bad at recognizing statistical trends especially when they don't like the implications of those trends.

Also, any unburned hydrazine is toxic and I'm not sure about all the combustion products. It's not easy to ensure complete combustion. And the only way I know to get anything like complete combustion is to aerosolize both fuel and oxidizer. And doing this in open air complicates the chemistry with excess oxygen and airborne dust particles and the furniture. I know just enough chemistry to know that this is too many potential reactants to be sure I'm not creating a Superfund site. The point of this plan is to get rid of the leaders not poison the civilian janitors and maintenance workers.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
This doesn't address my aim at all. Killing Communists is secondary to making people afraid to promote or practice Communism or anything that the mysterious statue conjurer might lump together with Communism. For that they need to know exactly why Communists are dying. People are really bad at recognizing statistical trends especially when they don't like the implications of those trends.

Also, any unburned hydrazine is toxic and I'm not sure about all the combustion products. It's not easy to ensure complete combustion. And the only way I know to get anything like complete combustion is to aerosolize both fuel and oxidizer. And doing this in open air complicates the chemistry with excess oxygen and airborne dust particles and the furniture. I know just enough chemistry to know that this is too many potential reactants to be sure I'm not creating a Superfund site. The point of this plan is to get rid of the leaders not poison the civilian janitors and maintenance workers.
You could graffiti up all of China with "Communism is bad" messages written in flaming Hanzi using stuff so reactive that when looking up the NFPA 704 fire diamond the search result is "data unavailable" if you wanted to with a mere thought using these powers.
 

Atarlost

Well-known member
You could graffiti up all of China with "Communism is bad" messages written in flaming Hanzi using stuff so reactive that when looking up the NFPA 704 fire diamond the search result is "data unavailable" if you wanted to with a mere thought using these powers.
I'm not sure why you're so set on me using fire instead of blunt impact. Fire is chemistry and chemistry is messy. We're not talking about nice simple chemical reactors where we can know all the reactants and can calculate what the reaction produces. We're talking burning things "in the wild" where there are other flammable things with unknown chemical makeups.

Blunt impact in contrast is chemically simple and there are not as many things that can go wrong. You were going off about side effects on other plans, but you're ignoring side effects here. Fire spreads. Fire turns chemicals into other chemicals, which may be toxic. Fire, especially high temperature fires of the sort you're suggesting, can change the mechanical properties of some structural materials, which may cause a building I wasn't planning on having imitate the WTC to imitate the WTC.

Blunt trauma doesn't do any of those things.
 

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