Focusing on the first future situation

Climate Change


Once that I had completed a some broad research into a large amount of different situations earth could face in the future and narrowed down my choices to just three of these situations to focus on and create designs for, it knew it was time for me to begin some deeper research into each of these three topics. Although I already have some basic knowledge of climate change, artificial Intelligence and natural pandemics I believe that it is important for me to look into each of these subjects so that I can make sure my understanding is a little more firm because this way I will be able to achieve far better design concepts than if just went off what I already know. I would like my designs not to be too far fetched so learning about each of this possible futures for mankind will make my ideas far more believable and less made up of guess work.

So the first subject I wanted to focus on is climate change. This is the area that I know the most about out of the three topics I have chosen to look at due to the fact that I learnt about it throughout my whole time at secondary school and it is something that is always being brought to the public attention. What I do know is that climate change, or 'Global Warming' as it is also referred to is a theory of how the worlds weather is slowly shifting and changing as time goes on either due to natural events or the effect of the rapid progression of mankind. It something that could effect the world in a large variety of ways in the future which makes the final result and even build up rather difficult to predict. This means there could be a large amount of different design routes I could go down for this particular topic which is wonderful and frustrating. There being a lot of different effects on the future means that I will get a lot of creative freedom but at the same time I was really trying to limit how much I give myself to do so that I don't go off on a tangent or get flooded with too much research. Hopefully with a little bit more research into the topic including what I learnt from the 'End of the world night' documentary I will be able to come up with a solid design route to follow down.




The beginning of my further research 


So to start off my further research I decided to do the very basic thing and look at what the Wikipedia result was for climate change so that I would be able to get a brief little summary of the topic and hopefully some interesting facts and figures thrown in as well. Below is their description of what climate change is and this really helps to just sum it up as a whole. 


Wikipedia description found from:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change

"Climate change is a change in the statistical distribution of weather patterns when that change lasts for an extended period of time (i.e., decades to millions of years). Climate change may refer to a change in average weather conditions, or in the time variation of weather around longer-term average conditions (i.e., more or fewer extreme weather events). Climate change is caused by factors such as biotic processes, variations in solar radiation received by Earth, plate tectonics, and volcanic eruptions. Certain human activities have also been identified as significant causes of recent climate change, often referred to as global warming. Scientists actively work to understand past and future climate by using observations and theoretical models. A climate record — extending deep into the Earth's past — has been assembled, and continues to be built up, based on geological evidence from borehole temperature profiles, cores removed from deep accumulations of ice, floral nd faunal records, glacial and periglacial processes, stable-isotope and other analyses of sediment layers, and records of past sea levels."


Although this is a little wordy it certainly helps to summarise what this effect is as a whole and what are a few of its many causes. This much I pretty much already knew but just reading it over helped to solidify the concept in my head, I proceeded to read through the Wikipedia page on this topic to see what other information it had to give. A large amount of it revolved around the many different causes for climate change and the physical effects it has had to the Earth's environment over the years. A easily summary of a large chunk the information that was in this article can be found in the visual image below that is one that I am pretty sure I have seen in a text book before and just simply shows the different effects climate change could have to earth.

From reading over the climate change wikipedia page and the global warming one as well (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warming) grouped with the knowledge I already possessed I notcied that  the rising of the sea levels seems to be the most focused on topic as it one of the effects of climate change that could seriously effect not just earth, but mankind as well. This instantly made me think of about a scientific theory which I had learnt previously in secondary school and had nearly completely forgotten. It is called the 'The Greenhouse Effect'. This is a theory that explains the reason for earth's constant temperature increase and why the polar ice caps are beginning to melt and causing the sea level to rise. I decided that this would be a good area of climate change to focus my attention on and create designs for due to the fact that it is one of the most well known outcomes as it will have one of the worst effects on earth and it's inhabitants so my work would be able to send a powerful message via this topic. Plus I have learnt about it previously so my knowledge is fat greater tuned to the information on The Greenhouse Effect over many other effects of global warming.





The Green House Effect 


I had to keep my research on this effect short and sweet due to the fact that it all gets a little too technical and scientific for me when I only really need to the basics in order to create a good and realistic design narrative. After having a skim through the Wikipedia page talking about this topic (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect) in order to refresh my memory of what it is made up of I remembered there were some very simple but useful diagrams of The Greenhouse effect that was able to sum it up in one image in some of my old geography textbooks so I had a little look at Google Images and found a few which were simple and easy to understand. Below are the couple that I picked out that help to explain the theory in very simple terms.

These images show the basic breakdown of how the solar radiation from the Sun is getting caught in the Earth's CO2 clogged atmosphere and ricocheting around inside which is what is causing Earth's temperature to rise so dramatically. But what is cause all of this Carbon Dioxide build up? Us. Humans beings. We over the course of our evolution and progression have managed produce and cause this unnatural amount of CO2 to become trapped in Earth's atmosphere. In this article about global warming (http://www.climatehotmap.org/about/global-warming-causes.html) it states that;
"As we burn fossil fuels like coal, oil and natural gas for energy or cut down and burn forests to create pastures and plantations, carbon accumulates and overloads our atmosphere. Certain waste management and agricultural practices aggravate the problem by releasing other potent global warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide." Below I have also posted a pie chart of the breakdown of how much Carbon Dioxide along with other gases that mankind have created in the atmosphere.

Unfortunately many different messages and campaigns have been sent out even since the 1950s to try and get people to under stand the danger of this situation that we are getting our selves in and we need to reduce our own personal carbon footprints as well as the worlds to reduce the risk that climate change could produce but a large amount of mankind still believe that global warming is some sort of myth and doesn't need to be taken seriously which is a huge mistake as it will get us into a hell of a lot of trouble later down the line.

So with a constantly growing increase of Carbon Dioxide in Earth's atmosphere due to people not listening to the risk and warnings, there has been a huge issue of more and more solar radiation getting caught and heating up the Earth's temperature. One of the main issues we are facing currently with the temperature of our planet constantly getting hotter is the fact that the growing heat is melting the polar ice caps of the North and South Pole, destroy large ammounts of lands that are home to a wide array of different creatures. With each piece of ice that is melting into the ocean it has increased the water level quite drastically causing the sea to slowly rise and this means that huge areas of land are going to become below sea level and will become essentially completed flooded and inhabitable. This is going to reek havoc due to the fact that Earth is already over populated and with us losing whole cities under water all the people are going to have to evacuate to other areas of the countries.

There was a brilliant piece of text in a article I was reading from this website (http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/) which talks about just how badly the world will become submerged under the water in the future if the sea levels do rise to far. It states that;

"When sea levels rise rapidly, as they have been doing, even a small increase can have devastating effects on coastal habitats. As seawater reaches farther inland, it can cause destructive erosion, flooding of wetlands, contamination of aquifers and agricultural soils, and lost habitat for fish, birds, and plants.When large storms hit land, higher sea levels mean bigger, more powerful storm surges that can strip away everything in their path. In addition, hundreds of millions of people live in areas that will become increasingly vulnerable to flooding. Higher sea levels would force them to abandon their homes and relocate. Low-lying islands could be submerged completely. Most predictions say the warming of the planet will continue and likely will accelerate. Oceans will likely continue to rise as well, but predicting the amount is an inexact science. A recent study says we can expect the oceans to rise between 2.5 and 6.5 feet (0.8 and 2 meters) by 2100, enough to swamp many of the cities along the U.S. East Coast. More dire estimates, including a complete meltdown of the Greenland ice sheet, push sea level rise to 23 feet (7 meters), enough to submerge London."

Also below there is a video that shows a simulation of exactly which parts of the Earth are going to become submerged if the water does rise dramatically which I found really interesting to watch.

I feel like after doing this large bit of research into the first of the three future situations I want to focus on for BA6 I know now exactly which effect of global warming I want to focus on which is Earth's rising sea levels. It think it is important that I only stick with one looking at one effect of climate change because if I delve into any more areas I will end up over whelming myself with work and I need to limit how much I actually do otherwise I might get a bit lost with it all. But now that I do know my area of focus and I feel like I have done plenty of research for it I am now able to move on and start thinking about what designs I want to produce from this theme. I will also have to move on and look at the two other further situations I am creating character concepts for to so that I can keep my work and ideas flowing. 

Focusing on my art style

Experimenting with photoshop 

For this project I will be creating a fair amount of design work for my character concept art pieces which means that I will have to use a lot of mixed media technique in order to produce good quality work. Usually I have a very specific art style with consist of cartoony unrealistic drawings which I first complete in pencil and then scan into my computer in order to outline and colour it using software called Manga Studio. Now although I am comfortable with using this programme I have recently become more aware that If I want to think about being in he industry I will have to drop using Manga Studio and focus my attention of a art programme which all the big and small games companies use with is Photoshop. Unfortunately I am not very experienced with this programme and haven't used it that much in the past so I knew that as a goal for this project I must use Photoshop to complete all my pieces of art so that I am able to get use to the software and hopefully continue to use and improve from it.  

So I knew that I wanted to use a more realistic art style for BA6 so I thought I'd better just quickly sketch down something similar to how I want my characters to look and then I could have a starting point to work from. The drawing below is my final pencil drawn result of a semi realistic female face which I completed in class and, as I liked how it looked, I decided to take it into Photoshop and colour it as a little big of a warm up practice. I am going to start by saying that digital painting is very bizarre and difficult for me as I am always so used to drawing with a thick outline to my designs so, after many attempts of trying to colour in the face with no lines what so ever I quickly went back to what I was comfortable with and ended up with the second image below. Although I am fairly pleased with how it turned out I know that I still have a very very long way to go when it comes to Photoshop and hopefully, as I am using it throughout this whole project, I will be able to improve by the end of it. 

A game that I have become addicted to

Love Live School Idol Project 

At the beginning of our return back to university after the Easter break I was quickly found myself with a lack of games to play due to the fact that I was now parted with my games console and only had my Nintendo 3Ds with a small selection of pre played games which was pretty disappointing as I usually like having a game on the go which I can play when taking breaks from work to help me unwind. This was my dilemma until one my friends introduced me to a new game which she had become addicted to over the course of a week, I was a little bit put off with to begin with as it was an App based game and usually I don't ever get very far with those type of games and have never seemed to be able to take them seriously but I quickly learnt this was a whole other case with this game. It really did not take my long to become completely enamoured and drawn in by this game and it's characters. Below is a video example of what the game is actually like. 

'Love Live School Idol Project' is an app based social rhythm game that is part of the ever expanding 'Love Live!' franchise that has just recently produced a new Anime series. It was created for a variety of mobile devices and tablets by the Japanese game producers 'KLabGames' and 'bushiroad' and was released on April 16th 2013 in Japan and then after popular demand an English version was released on May 11th 2014. This multimedia franchise has taken Japan by storm as is now slowly beginning to seep into the western anime fan base. 

Both the Anime series and the app based game both follow the same story line which is about how the high school student Honoka Kōsaka is faced with a dilemma when the school she attends and adores, Otonokizaka Academy, is planned to be closed down due. Wanting to prevent the closer from taking place Honoka is determined to find anyway possible to keep her beloved school up and running and. After accidentally discovering the soaring popularity of school idols in Japan Honoka manages to convince her groups of friends into starting up a idol group of her own called μ's (pronounced muse) in order to attract new students. 

So the essentially 'Love Live' as a game is split into two different sections which the player can take part in throughout the game. The first section is a story mode in which the player meet and follows the antics of the 9 members of μ's but in order to unlock new chapters in the story to progress through the game the player must collect enough experience points and the only way they can do that is by completing the second section of the game. The second section is the rhythm based part of the game in which the player must 'perform' live concerts using a selection of members μ's in order to help the team improve and gain more members. A example of the live show interface found within the game can be seen in the two images below. In order to perform a live show the player must hit each approaching circular note when it aligns with the icon of one of the characters in the semi circle. This will essentially have the player tapping to the beat of the song that is being played and using their sense of rhythm to try and tap each circle at the correct moment. If the player continues to tap at the perfect moment the combo boost will keep on climbing and will allow you to collect more points at the end of the level depending on how much of a combo you get. 

You will also receive more points if you get a high ranking on each performance which is indicated by the long bar at the top of the screen that continues to fill up the further you get through the song. Completing a performance will give you different prizes depending on what level or song you picked, easy, difficult or hard. This keep the player aiming to improve with the incentive of knowing there are better prizes to be one if they make their way to the hard levels. Each song that the player can use to perform too is sung by the members of the school idol group and you will be able to unlock more songs preformed by them as you move your way through the game, allowing their to be variety in you playing choices.

Although there are a large variety of songs to perform you wont be able to do more than a few in a row due to each time you complete a song your LP or life points (seen in the top right hand side of the image above) will be used up and you will have a wait a good hour and bit to get a full bar again. But luckily as you wait there are plenty of other things the player can do to keep themselves occupied in game. After you have completed each performance you will gain a collection of items depending on how well you progressed through the song. One of these items you will receive is something called 'friend points' which, when you have enough of, will allow you to go scouting for new brand new team members which come in the form of virtual cards and will help to expand your collection of idols. Although when you complete a song you will be given three basic members, if you go scouting with your points you may be able to pick up some rare sort after characters.  These virtual cards come in hundreds of varieties and can range from worth which begin at normal and end at ultra rare. You are also able to use some of the low ranking members you have collected which you no longer want to level up any rarer members to make them into a stronger idols and improve your team. 

One of the nice things about how so much variety when it comes to the characters and skill set is that you are able to chop and change your 9 set idol team to whichever character your prefer. All the members are coloured coded to either green, blue or pink which means that each of these categories has a particular skill set and will be better suited to perform to a certain type of song, so for example you would really want a team of green/pure characters to perform a green/pure labelled song as it will allow you to pick up more points and receive a better score. Example of the member layout and a super rare character card can be seen in the images below.

Due to this game being one that has new updates and events posted every single day there is always something for the player to discover and strive for which is a very clever way of keeping them interested and curious to keep playing. I know this has certainly been the case for me as I have found every hour or so I will be checking back on the app so that I am able to use my newly restored LP to perform μ's songs in order to collect enough points so that I can get more rare members for my team. It almost seems like a never ending cycle of gameplay which honestly does not bother me as this game has managed to worm it's way into my life and I have no become fairly addicted with it. 

Thinking about what i will be working on

Picking out 3 possible futures of mankind



After having a long discussion about what I planned to do for my BA6 project with my tutor Nigel I started to think about narrowing down my ideas of what I wanted to do for a final outcome. There one thing that he really pushed in our talk together and that was that I shouldn't do as much research as I had been planing to otherwise it would turn out like BA5 where I didn't have enough time to complete the design side of my work as I had been too busy doing my research earlier on in the project. I was orignally planning to look into each of the 10 future situations that were covered in the 'End of the world night' programme but I was warned by Nigel that that was far too much and I should limit myself to how much I do.

So baring this idea in mind I starting to think about my work load and what I was planning to produce at the end of the project. I came to the conclusion that the best thing for me to do was to pick 3 out of the 10 future situations to create character designs and a back story for. This way I  will have a variety of work which will be manageable to produce and will cut back and the amount of further research I would of been doing. Out of the ten different future situations that were spoken about in the televison programme I have chose to pick three that were nearer the top of the probability scale due to the fact that I will be able to produce some less far fetched ideas and each topic will have a lot more meaning as they are far more likely to happen to mankind in the future. The three I am choosing to do are:

 Climate change, Natural pandemics and Artificial Intelligence. 

There were a few situations that were further up and higher on the list of probability that I choose not to focus on which were 'Zombies' and 'Nuclear war'. I didn't want to pick Zombies as it is such a popular and predictable one to choose and I feel like a lot more designs would just become average and unimaginative. As for Nuclear war, even though it is the highest rated probability for the future, which the impact if created there is a high possibility that there would be no human life left at all so that doesn't leave me with a lot design options. Overall I think the three that I have chosen will give me lots of different character design ideas and will be able to write a good back story if I need to about each event and how the people of earth have been surviving through it.

The plan now is for me to do a few rough idea sketches along side bits of research so I am able to build each of them up bit by bit and to make sure that I start my design work early on instead if leaving it as the last thing to do.

Getting feedback on BA5

Meeting with Rosie and Fin from Chucklefish games 

Recently I was sent a email by our course tutor asking if I would be able to take part in a special session that the university was providing to a only a select few people on our course who completed the Chucklefish promo art project previously for BA5. It told us that we would be meeting two of the people who work at the games company and helped to produce the game 'Starbound', Rosie and Fin. This was session would allow us to meet them personally, ask them any questions we had about the industry and to receive both of their feedback on the work we had produced so it was a fantastic opportunity for everyone who was asked to attend. Although I didn't exactly have a very positive experience with my previous project and was particularly pleased with the work I had produced, I was really excited to have been asked to come to this meeting and be able to get some professional feedback from people who are actually in the industry currently.

The session was absolutely fantastic! It took place yesterday in the afternoon and there were a good bunch of us who were asked to join, all of nervous as each other having to professional game creators commenting on our art work but we were all worried for nothing, Rosie and Fin were both really lovely people, very relaxed and easy to talk to which instantly made me feel more relaxed about confident about presenting my work to them. The session started with them introducing themselves to class, explaining who they are and what role they played within their company as well as briefly discussing previous work they have completed in the past. They both had a lot of experience and obviously worked incredibly hard to be where they are right now which was very impressive to see. Rosie especially interested me as she had previously worked for Disney and she spoke about the difference between working at the corporation, what the work load was like and what was expected of you compared to what it is like working at a small indie company like Chucklefish. Obviously Disney is a company I would love to work at so finding out about what is was like for her working there was really interesting, a little daunting and scary, but that still hasn't put me off.

After their introductions they went round the room and spent a good 10-15 minutes each speaking to each student about the work they had produced for BA5 which was brilliant as we were all able to get a large amount of feedback from them and be able to talk to them on a more personal level which was lovely. When It came round to my turn admittedly I was still a little nervous about having to show them my work as I wasn't too pleased with how little I was able to produce but I really had nothing to worry about. The work I showed them pair of them is shown in the image below.

Both Rosie and Fin were very positive about the work I had produced for BA5 and didn't point out a single negative thing which was really nice to hear. They explained which parts of my final designs that they liked, things such as how neat my line art was and my use of colours. They mentioned that I had captured each of the races likeness to how they had envisioned them really well via their body language, expression and clothing which they seemed pretty pleased with. Rosie also mentioned that they way I did my characters, so that they were full bodied with a plain background, was the sort of thing that Disney asked their artists to do so that they can re use a design again and again in different pieces of production like putting it on a variety of different posters or packing of merchandise, ect. 

So overall I received some really good feedback about the work I had produced and learnt some important tips and facts about the industry so, when the session was over, I left feeling a new burst of confidence and pride in my artwork and it made me just want to just go home and keep on working on BA6. It gave me a huge motivation boost just speaking to Rosie and Fin so I really thank them for that. 

My work so far

Discussing my project with my tutor



Although I had a fairly solid idea of what I wanted to produce for BA6, I still hadn't had a opportunity to run my idea past any of my tutors which meant I could essentially be working on something that was completely wrong. So I decided to book a meeting with my Tutor Nigel so I would be able to discuss my project with him and make sure that I was on the right track.

The meeting I had with Nigel wasn't incredibly long but was packed full of really usual feedback and resources for me to take on board and look into. He seemed to be really pleased with the idea I was choosing to focus on and we were able to discuss a large amount of the concepts I was thinking about in a lot of detail due to our common interest in the topic. As well as discussing different inevitable situations that the human race find themselves in, Nigel also recommended two different pieces of media for me to look into if I wanted to do a little more relaxed research on futuristic interpretations of mankind. These were the 1995 sci-fi movie 'Species' and the 2004 Canadian series 'ReGenesis'. Each piece shows a different variation of what the future of mankind could become so these could help to give me a few situational ideas and more inspired designs later on in the process. Although he did warn me not to research too much otherwise I may make the mistake of BA5 and not leave myself enough time to complete the artwork.

Advertisement posters for 'Species' and 'ReGenesis'

Nigel was able to talk to me about how I could possibly go about producing my concept art for this project and gave me loads of useful tips on how I could keep my work and designs following as well as what different techniques I could use to help try and improve my particular style and drawing skills. One example he gave me which I thought was really useful was how I could go about different iterations on a characters face so for example if I was wanting to work on things such as facial expression or details such has hairstyles, I can draw a base head which is of fairly simplistic design and then copy and paste it a few times so I have a good selection of them and then just begin to paint on top of them, adding in different design features on each one. This is a great time saving technique and will allow a lot of different important design iterations in one big chunk. It will also help to stop me from going into too much detail and wasting valuable time when I am in the creative process. An example of this technique can be seen below.

Art by Loston Wallace 

Nigel also spoke to me about how much detail I actually needed to go into when I create my design work. He and I both know I have a bad tendency to spend far too long trying to perfect my work and drawings, making them incredibly neat and getting them to a stage where I am pleased with them. He told me that the way I have to look at is that dictionary definition for the  'concept' is 'idea', this means that concept art is actually meant to be fairly rough, not a big polished final piece. Many of the work produced by actual concepts artists is very quick sketches and ideas dotted down into on paper. All the 'concept art' you see in the art books for games or films are just all completed final piece of art that have had a large amount of time spent on them and are produced nearer the end of the production process. They aren't the original concepts that kick started the ideas or designs. Artist in the industry don't have time to make ever single one of their concepts polished to perfection, like the artwork you see in the art books, those types of piece are produced simply so that they can release them to the public and get them excited about the piece of media being released. Most potential buyers wouldn't be impressed or temped to buy the product if all that is released are the rough scrawls and sketches of the original concept art.

I think this is a really important thing that I will need to bare in mind when I get onto the design side of my project and hopefully it will motivate me to be a bit quicker and rougher with my sketch work instead of being extremely anal about my line art. All of the advice I was given by Nigel during this session was really helpful and now I feel a lot more confident about producing the concept art with the ideas I am going with and have more clearer mindset of what work I want to produce now that I know I am on the right track.

Starting with the basics

Videos focusing on the future of the human race 

After watching 'End of the world night' I felt like I had collected a large amount of information, details and facts on the topic I wanted to focus on for this project but I did feel like that wasn't enough research for me to be able to use to get some solid design ideas. So what I needed to do next was to start off at the beginning with my research on this topic so I can go over each area in enough detail so that I understand it a little better. 

I decided to begin my further research into the inevitable end of mankind by starting with a looking into brief generalisation of the subject, trying to find information that doesn't just focus on one subject like nuclear war or pandemics, I wanted to get some more facts about the subject in general. Seeing as last time I was able to get a learn a lot about the future mankind by watching a television programme and I usually find that I learn things easier if it is showed via a video instead of just reading off a screen, I decided to have a little browse on YouTube to see if their were any videos on this certain topic. Luckily as this is an ever developing and constantly current topic there were plenty of different videos for me to have a look at. 

Unfortunately not all of the videos I watched were as good as each other and obviously weren't all on a professional level. Some of the ones that I did find with a lot relevant information in I have posted below so that I am able to refer back to them in the future. The most interesting videos I found on the generalisation of the future of mankind featured The American futurist, theoretical physicist and popularizer of science, Michio Kaku. Kaku is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York and has been awared a 'Klopsteg Memorial Award' in 2008 for his studies into the future of humanity. He has also written three 'New York Times Best Sellers' based on this topic which are 'Physics of the Impossible' (2008), Physics of the Future' (2011) and The Future of the Mind' (2014).  He is a scientist who as dedicated a large amount of his life to studying this topic and that clearly came across in the videos I watched of him. He had some very interesting theories and points to make in each one which has helped me think about which 'future circumstances' do I want to make designs for? I can't pick all of them as that will take far to long. 

There are also a lot more talks and articles that Kaku has produced will I will be able to watch later on in this project if I still need inspiration. 

Looking into the future of mankind

Basic knowledge and learning the facts


The next stage of my research process is to begin looking at the more scientific side of my chosen project, which is focusing on the many different futures that could await man kind. Even though I have a pretty solid and clear idea of what I am focusing on and want to produce, there is a lot of information on my chosen topic that I don't actually know as a large amount of it is based on statistics and scientific fact which means I am going to have to do a large sum of research to make sure that I am getting all of the right information down about each threat that mankind could come up against. As my designs are going to be based off of the information about each of these future situations it is important for me to look into as much as possible so I have plenty of information and ideas to inspire my work.

Over the Easter break, which I was spent mainly relaxing, I noticed there was a programme being repeatedly advertised on tv which was a documentary doing a countdown of the most likely thing in the future that was going to wipe out a good deal of mankind from least likely to most likely. The programme was called 'End of the world night' and aired on Channel 4. This seemed to be a weird bit of fate as I had been hoping there would be a programme focusing on a topic similar to this which I could simply watch and take notes from instead of raiding the web for information in the first place. So I sat down with the programme that would usually last around an hour and a half but as I was pausing it constantly to write down notes, it lasted a tad longer for me, roughly around 3 hours but I did managed to get down a huge chunk of information that was given. I did hand write these notes originally but I thought it would be simpler for me to type them up and put them on my blog so I can have all of my references and research all in one place. The notes I made are typed up below.

My notes from the programme 'End of the world night'

Channel 4

• Humanity has been on earth for 2,000 years.
• ‘Deep Impact’ (1998) – FILM
• Different ends to humanity could possibly be global pandemic, nuclear accident, climate change and asteroids.
• Oxford’s the future of humanity institute
• Founder is Nick Bostrom 
•  Look into the term existential risk
• Dr Anders Sandberg – works at the institute at oxford martin school
• 90% chance of mankind being around at the end of centaury
• Cambridge studies the elements of an existential risk
• Martin Reese, ‘Astronomer Royal’, quotes that “I think we have a bumpy ride through this century, an important maxim is that the unfamiliar is not the same as the improbable”  

Alien invasion

• ‘War of the worlds’ (2005) – FILM
• The British ministry of defence had an UFO bureau which closed down due to a lack of evidence.
• The SETI Institute in California spend around 2 million dollars studying for intelligent life in space
• Alien invasion is very low on the probability scale
• Panspermia – Life brought on a comet
•  It is a possibility that mankind is actually an alien species that arrived on earth as bacteria on a comet.
•  Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe, director, Buckingham centre for astrobiology quotes that “there are around 1.4 billon habitable planets exist in our galaxy”
• Aliens are the least of our worries besides other events that could affect us

Asteroid strike

• ‘Armageddon’ (1998) - FILM
•  One Asteroid strike has already wiped out a group of creatures, leading to a mass extinction, the death of the dinosaurs. Could this sort of event happen again?
• It has been 65 million years since dinosaurs roamed the earth
•  Prof. Christopher Riley, University of Lincoln quoted that if we were to be hit by a asteroid “we would get an advanced wave of debris that tends to be surrounding a comet as I gets closer to the sun”
• A debris cloud would look like a meteor shower from earth
• Martin Reese quotes that “there are a million asteroids in our solar system that have a potential to  strike earth and destroy a city”
• Rosetta mission (2004) was a mission to land a craft on an asteroid which succeeded
• One in a million chance of an asteroid wiping out mankind

The sun dying out

• ‘Sunshine’ (2007) – FILM
• The plot of sunshine is that mankind sends a nuclear device into the sun to try and reignite it as it quickly starting to die.
•  The colour white helps to reflect the radiation and heat of the sun
• The sun is around 5 million years old
• The earths sun is very slowly burning through its hydrogen reserves
• There are roughly around 5 billion years left until the sun dies out so mankind being wiped out by this event is a long way into the future so mankind will actually end up ‘killing itself’ before the sun will be able to

Super Volcano

• ‘2012’ (2009) - FILM
• There is a super volcano under yellow stone national park in North America
• This volcano hasn’t blown for around 640 thousand years which means this volcano could be ground zero for a natural Armageddon
• Super eruptions happen every 5,000 years or so
• There is a hazard centre at university college London
• Pompeii is an example of a large scale and devastating eruption.
• The 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland managed to effect a large amount of people around the world, with flights having to be halted because of the ash it through up
• Prof. Clive Oppenhelmer, University of Cambridge, studies these type of events
• Sulphur gases spread globally when eruptions occur
• A super volcano is Toba, Indonesia, which erupted around 70 thousand years ago left a crater which is 62 miles long which has now become a large lake
• This eruption cooled the entire earth by 10 degrees
• It also plunged the earth into a volcanic winter that many have nearly wiped out mankind due to how deadly it was
• It is said that that this eruption and its side effects caused a dramatic reduction in the number of humans on earth at its time, it possibly reduced mankind to a few thousands individuals for a few centuries
• We would be powerless to stop a super volcano eruption if one happened in this century

Nuclear accidents

• ‘The china syndrome’ (1979) – FILM  
• 12 days after this film about the danger of nuclear power plants was released there was a real life nuclear accident at a spot called 3 mile island which was 11 miles away from Harrisburg Pennsylvania.
• In this event, the cooling systems failed at the nuclear power plant on 3 mile island and the staff were then accused that they acted irresponsibly and weren’t paying attention properly.
• All nuclear accident have been less apocalyptic than people have imagined.
• The world’s worst nuclear reactor accident was at Chernobyl and only killed 50 or so people even though the gravity of the event seemed pretty awful as the whole roof of the power plant blew off and released harmful gases into the building and area outside
• Now that time has passed and the area is now clean, people can go walk around the inside of the building to see the damage caused and go deep into the rooms were the radioactive materials were leaked as it is no longer a harmful room to be in.
• There were no strange mutations to be found that is an event which is normally portrayed is in pop culture when there has been a nuclear accident or radiation leak
• These type of accidents shouldn’t be taken likely though, they could still be a real hazard if they are on a larger more deadly scale
•  Nuclear fission is the earth whereas nuclear fusion – Sun

     Artificial intelligence and android uprising

• ‘Terminator 2: Judgement day’ (1991) – FILM
• Artificial intelligence could be very dangerous for mankind
• Stephen Hawking quotes that “I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”
• We need to make sure that ‘unfriendly’ AI does not happen
• Murray Shanaham, Professor of cognitive robotics, imperial college London quotes that “the concern is that AI could go wrong in an all manner of ways”
• Bristol’s robotics lab is at the for front of creating intelligent life
• A member of staff looking into and creating robotics in Bristol is Prof. Alan Winfield who works at the University of the West of England
•  First generation robots are kept away from humans and go jobs such as building cars, appliances like washing machines or do more flashy tasks like exploring different planets
• Second generation robots work alongside humans
• ‘Baxter’ is a robot designed to be a smarter and safer robot. It can learn by example rather than having to be programmed by code
• The robots we have now ‘aren’t very smart at all’ but it is said that we will have super intelligence in robots or other machines before the end of this century

      Zombies

• ’28 days later’ (2002) – FILM
• ‘Zombies’ are more possible than aliens
• Manmade viruses could cause a serious and deadly pandemic if released
• A manmade pandemic could be caused by accident and, hopefully, not on purpose
• In 2002 researched at stony brook university in New York made a synthetic form of the deadly ‘Polio’ virus. The scientist involved in the creating process said  it was almost ‘too easy’ to do as they simply order all the parts they needed to create the virus and have it sent straight to them
• This experiment was intended as a message, a warning, to show the world that this could be done
• The worrying thing now, with how quickly technology has improved and how much more accessible things have become, very small groups of people could be creating or experiment and create something deadly which could then be potentially released either by accident or on purpose and which could possibly kill hundreds of millions of people
• In 1995, there was a horrific case were 12 people were killed in Tokyo by the deadly Sarin nerve gas. This attack was the work of a small cult who’s leader was Shouko Ashara
• ‘Bioerror’ or ‘Bioterror’ could easily wipe out or badly infect the human race

Climate change

• ‘The day after tomorrow’ (2004) – FILM
• Climate change is a real and happening threat which is effecting earth
• It is an event that can’t easily be pin pointed which makes it rather unpredictable
• Climate change warning first surfaced in the 1950s as an initial pre warning to mankind and has only continued to grow and become far more serious as time went on, leading us up to present day where people still aren’t paying attention to the warnings given
• The weather has gotten pretty drastic and dramatic in recent years and the threat of global warming only continues to grow
• By the end of the 21^st century the best case scenario is that the planet will have warmed by an average of 2 degrees
•  In the case of global emissions we are just above the worst case scenario. We are dangerously close to several tipping points and we will be seeing huge shifts of weather patterns and temperatures in just a few decades
• Humanity can help to see off climate change if we take drastic action NOW but, unfortunately, there is still a large amount of people who believe this is an over dramatization and the earth really isn’t sinking into more and more trouble

      Natural Pandemics

• ‘Outbreak’ (1995) – FILM
• Natural pandemics are a real threat. These have been occurring over and over again throughout time and the growth of humanity
• Ebola is a natural virus that is happening right now
• Imperial college London has a department that studies these types of viruses and one of their top scientists is Prof. Wendy Barclay, chair of influenza virology.
• David L. Heymann, Professor of infectious disease epidemiology at London school of hygiene and tropical medicine is also one of the top in his field when it comes to natural pandemics
• Many pandemics originate from animals
• Hospitals mainly seem to amplify infections or pandemics even though, ironically, they are trying to cure the people who are infected
• Airborne diseases are the most deadly as they can travel anywhere they want and usually travel over large distances, infecting everyone in its path. They are the worst case scenario
• The Spanish Flu was a natural virus that surfaced at the end of the first world war and killed an estimated 50 million people, far more than the amount of people who died In the war itself
• The modern world is making the threat of natural viruses even worse  
• Overcrowding, which is what the earth is suffering from at the moment, is a key problem when it comes to pandemics. It allows the virus to spread faster from host to host is people are in a close proximity
• A natural pandemic is one of the events which is most likely to kill a large amount of the human race

      Nuclear war

• ‘Dr Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb’ (1964) – FILM
• This was a dated movie which focused on the frightening but completely possible idea of a nuclear war
• One of the closet threat mankind has had to do with nuclear war was the Cuban missile crisis in 1962
• Basically it was a war between America and Russia about the possibility of Russia hiding nuclear weapons on Cuba, which is extremely and dangerously close to Americas soil
• Nick Cook is a write and defence analyst who is the studying the different possibilities for nuclear war and how it could happen
• Nuclear conflict is a constantly growing threat and ranks the highest in a scale of what event will most likely wipe out mankind as more and more countries are constantly adapting and enhancing their nuclear arsenal for possible use against their enemies
•  Pure luck has kept this nuclear away so far and no one can predict when it could happen which is one of the things that makes it so terrifying  

Overall I found the programme really interesting to watch but, to be honest, also quite morbid as it went into a hell of a lot of detail about the many different ways in which man kind could possibly become extinct, either in a few centuries time or as a year. This was pretty frightening to hear and learn about but I found all the information that was relayed really helpful as I now have more detail on each situation I was thinking about creating designs for, such as a pandemic or nuclear war, instead of just a vague understanding. My next stage of the research process now is to look into each topic that was covered in this programme in more detail, making sure I learn as much as possible so that I have properly influenced and sensible designs later on in the project.