Communications bunker with 8,800 sq. ft. of nuclear hardened underground floor-space. 13.1 acres m/l. 177 ft. tower with income potential. Structure is clean and ready for immediate use with some new paint and tile work

Tough economic times, I know. But what do you say about investing in a Cold War-era bunker? Yeah. Me too.

via Tyler Cowen

Soviet Russia had one too. It’s since been abandoned. Here’s some pictures of that.

Phillips put together a video explanation. A very convenient video explanation. . .

Here’s a video of the actual event that was uploaded by a Norwegian newspaper.

Last night, some bizarre swirls appeared in the sky over Norway.

Granted, it was only a low-power calibration run—pure bush league stuff. Stay tuned for the real, reality-ending stuff.

On a semi-related note, here’s your required viewing for the weekend: The Quiet Earth.

Yes, there will be an exam.

I know.

The end is (probably) near.

Also, Bill Bryson visited the LHC and wrote an article about it for The Times .

Last: In the Event That You Have Accidentally Swallowed the Higgs Boson.

While your mind is reeling, read this article. And then watch this video of a crow solving a puzzle that would leave a chimp scratching its head.

Thanks, Sam

Here’s a newscast with some amateur footage of the resulting dust trail—which, admittedly, doesn’t look half as hellish as I’ve been led to expect that it should.

The gist: a network of hidden nuclear silos, daisy-chained to a subterranean control center. In the event of a nuclear attack, fully automated retaliation is a big red button push away.

Oh yeah. And it’s still active.

“Thousands of Americans—hardworking ordinary Americans like you and me—already have H1N1,” Republican National Committee chairman Michael Steele said during a press conference. “Now Obama wants to take that away from us.”

That, according to a seriously shaky Wolfram|Alpha calculation, is how much land that each person would get were the Earth (minus Antarctica and the Sahara Desert) split 6.67 billion equal ways.¹

Here’s the equation:

For comparison, 4.659 acres is about the size of 2.6 FIFA-sanctioned international match soccer fields.

If you’re thinking, Gee, that actually kind of sounds like a lot, bear this in mind: the actual Earth is not a flat grid of equally habitable cells—inevitably, many millions of people would get stuck with parcels on mountainsides or in toxic waste dumps, swamps, deserts and Siberia. The above figure is clearly on the generous side.²

That said, I’m on the borderline of horror with this one. It either makes the world seem very small or makes mankind seem very stifling.

Either way, this much is certain: the fact that Wolfram|Alpha can help be indulge in such childish things is undeniably cool.

1. A side note: one of mankind’s greatest inventions is the technique of building vertically. But, for the sake of this hypothetical, I’m talking straight-up land ownership.
2. And no, there’s no easy way to further refine the equation, short of making an exhaustive (and totally subjective!) List of All Terrestrial Hellholes Known to Man and plugging each item in one after another.

Essentially, the theory is that the Higgs is so destructive that no possible future universe of ours contains one. Thus, any effort to find the Higgs in the present is doomed to failure.

Now that’s the sort of concision I was looking for the first time.

The plan, unveiled last month, calls for shooting liquid nitrogen, silver or cement particles into oncoming storm clouds to dump the snow before it gets to the city.

Hm. Sounds just crazy enough to work destroy the Earth.

The unreasonable paranoid in me is a little disappointed that it maxes out at 14m.

Sleep tight. Via Buffering.