Disaster

The European Space Agency may team up with NASA to launch a 2020 mission against a dangerous asteroid headed for earth. Planetary scientists and experts have released an open letter urging support for the mission. The space agencies plan to crash a probe into a 160m wide asteroid and deflect it from its course. Actors Billy Bob Thornton and Bruce Willis similarly tried stopping an asteroid that was threatening to collide with earth, in the 1998 disaster movie Armageddon. Daily Star reports: It comes after the Chelyabinsk meteor, which was just 20m wide, exploded over Russia in 2013.

Colum Lynch has more details on how the Saudis pressured the U.N. into removing its Yemen war coalition from the blacklist of violators of children’s rights:

Saudi Arabia threatened this week to break relations with the United Nations and cut hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to its humanitarian relief and counterterrorism programs to strong-arm the U.N. into removing Riyadh and its allies from a blacklist of groups that are accused of harming children in armed conflict.

The governor of Florida has declared a state of emergency in 34 of the state’s 67 counties, as Tropical Storm Colin made landfall in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Governor Rick Scott said the state’s National Guard is ready to deploy up to 6,000 personnel to areas affected by the hurricane. The storm hit land near the Big Bend area about 2 a.m. Tuesday with 50 mph winds, flooding roads and knocking out power to thousands. Press TV reports: Colin approached Florida from the southeast, knocking down power lines and trees in the Tampa Bay area and dumping up to 16 centimeters of rain.

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

After the crisis, there could be nothing left of human populations.

There is no doubt that a disaster big enough to wipe out humanity exists – the threat of an EMP, a plague-level outbreak event, a total nuclear war, it doesn’t really matter what it is. Even if there were survivors, the larger forces at work will undo the artificial forms that now dot the landscape and define our culture.

A train towing cars full of oil derailed on Friday in Oregon's scenic Columbia River Gorge, sparking a fire that sent a plume of black smoke high into the sky. According to witnesses, multiple cars derailed and smoke and flames can be seen in downtown Mosier near the Rock Creek overpass. The train is operated by Union Pacific, who had not returned calls at the time.

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From KSL