Review by scientist and engineer: Anatoli Unitsky on smash hit “Don’t Look Up”
Hard hit. That, of course, is not about the plot, big-name acting or overall production.
Hard hit. That, of course, is not about the plot, big-name acting or overall production. Heated debate around the movie “Don’t Look Up” and its topic could not have gone unnoticed by even those who doesn’t really care about cinematography preferring spend more time working out the solutions that have to save humanity. The movie gathered a lot of rather negative and positive reviews. I won’t play critic as I’m an engineer and scientist. My mission is to be a creator and build a better world. However, I couldn’t help but notice how tellingly, although hyperbolized, this satirical comedy underscores people’s shallowness, absurdity, and conceit. And the main character’s story seemed horribly familiar to me…
No one bothers to save the planet
Two astronomers (by the way, the movie stars famous Hollywood eco-activist Leonardo DiCaprio) discover a gigantic 9-kilometer-wide comet heading straight for Earth. The collision will kill the human civilization. The US government sees the solution in striking the space body with nuclear explosives to redirect it. Scientists beat the alarm trying to warn people about upcoming planetary disaster and get through to politicians. But they face the reality that people are more interested in absolutely common and momentary things while the death of humanity, including children, does not bother them at all – no time, no reason and simply no interest. Moreover, dealing with this global problem irritates them. Everybody wants just to stay positive.
Of course, in the real world, the society, officials, and industries would have responded in a slightly different way. But “Don’t Look Up” depicts the threat of the killer comet hitting the Earth as the representation of the global concerns of humanity that have never been so urgent than today. They are air, water, and soil pollution from industrial waste, destruction of the ozone layer, including degradation of the environment and the whole biosphere… The characters’ reaction represents allegoric attitude of people in real life to the above concerns. People act the same way – everybody is busy with immediate affairs and interests. Nobody cares that our planet, or rather the biosphere, is degrading and fading away along with our industrial civilization, to which every character of the movie and the audience belong. Let other people deal with it and he or she would better do some more “important” staff: watching a talk show on another juicy celebrity scandal or the presentation of a new smartphone.
The reaction of politicians, industries and media that are able to fuel the society is also real-life, although exaggerated. The US President is busy with pre-election campaign – salvation of mankind can wait. Journalists are mad about the rating of their TV program – first of all, they cover a conflict between show business stars, and just in the end they devote very little time to discuss the threat hanging over all people without exception. In turn, the industries decide to capitalize on this problem – unlikely but probable “astronomical” profit makes more sense to them rather than saving life on the planet. What it all led to is colorfully shown near the end of the movie. Man could have saved all the defenseless inhabitants of Earth, including himself, from the fatal collision with the comet. But he missed the chance, just not being able to agree with other people, because he was busy with petty, momentary affairs and solving personal problems.
Deja vu in big cinema
I'm not talking about all this as a film critic, but as someone who is living through the same story as the character played by Leonardo DiCaprio. While watching it, I periodically had a feeling of deja vu. String transport is supposed to be the first step in solving the global challenges described above. But those in power are not ready for this. Like the main character in the movie "Don't Look Up", I was convinced of this from personal experience. For decades, I have been convincing officials and the press that the time has come for serious transformations, which are crucial not only for the fate of their children and grandchildren, but for entire humanity. And every time I was told that nobody needed my ideas. There were thousands of reasons for refusal and sometimes no less ridiculous than those given by the director of the film.
For example, back in 1997, I managed to present the project on the development of string transport to President of the Republic of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko and he instructed the Prime Minister to support the developers. However, that man shuffled off the responsibility for presidential instruction to four Belarusian ministers. After a year-long wandering about various institutions, one official told me “Unitsky, we’re seek of you, we’re so sick of you that you cannot even imagine! Listen, if there’s a man, there’s a problem, but no man, no problem…”. I left to Moscow and was living in Belarussian railway station for six months unless I won a grant from the UN for the development of settlements through transport and infrastructure string technology.
Here’s another story. Russia, the year of 2000. The authorities of Sochi are ready to allocate land for a test center. One of the UN structural organizations intends to allocate a grant of 30 million dollars for research in string transport and construction of a high-speed test track. Gosstroy (actually, it was the Ministry of Construction at the time) officially applied to the UN through the Russian Foreign Ministry. Instead of support from Russian diplomats, requests went to the Ministry of Economic Development and the Ministry of Science. The Ministry of Economic Development supported it, but the Ministry of Science replied that all transport problems in Russia had long been solved, the existing roads were not congested, so it was inexpedient to raise funds from the UN for the development of some obscure string technology, most likely anti-scientific. It is noteworthy that the person who prepared this judgment worked on alternative transport back in the days of the Soviet Union – it was he who led the creation of the Soviet maglev train. The project had 20 years and 5 billion dollars but failed. Face to face, this official told me: "You will steal at least 10 percent, which is $3 million, so there will be no grant." Of course, the fact that it was the respected Ministry of Science that gave the all-negative opinion on the breakthrough innovation, was just a “coincidence”.
Let’s look at another example. 2009, Ulyanovsk, State Council on Transport Innovations. Unitsky’s string transport received the support of the President of Russia, who instructed the Minister of Transport to find a billion rubles to build a high-speed test track in Ulyanovsk. Instead of arranging state funding, just a week later, the test track in Ozery near Moscow, which, among other things, was constructed with the funds of the governor of the Krasnoyarsk region, Alexander Lebed, was destroyed – and very quickly, within a day. Hundreds of tons of pre-stressed reinforced concrete steel structures of the 150-meter long string overpass vanished without a trace – only the foundations of the supports remained in the ground. Totally "accidentally", apparently the stars happened that way, a large team of professionals armed with the most modern equipment was engaged in destroying the site. These were heavy cranes and dump trucks, gas cutters and saws, capable of sawing a one-meter-wide steel pipe filled with concrete - such was the load-bearing structure of the 15-meter high anchor support, designed for a horizontal force of about a thousand tons.
Road to nowhere
We don’t need to wait for a comet. Even today, when you’re reading these lines, humanity commits suicide. The outlines of the global problems caused by profit-oriented industry are becoming clearer year by year. Raw materials are recycled, fuels are burned, toxic waste is released into the air we breathe, into the water we drink, into the soil that feeds us. The environment is destroyed, and people "help" it by paving more and more roads, rolling into asphalt fertile fields and forests that no longer produce vital oxygen (today the area occupied by roads is the size of five Great Britains). At the same time, humanity kills more than a million people and maim more than 10 million with a billion cars, which have proven to be more effective killers than the Kalashnikov assault rifle and the atomic bomb. This is the annual statistics. And what will happen in 100 years? The ozone layer is also being destroyed. For example, each heavy rocket burns up about 10 million tons of ozone during launch. Not to mention the damage caused by aviation. But that's fine with everyone.
You see, our world is going nowhere. Stalemate industrial technologies, including those newfangled green and carbonless ones, will ultimately destroy the biosphere which mothered its killer – industrial human civilization. The simplest forms of life, including viruses and, of course, coronavirus, will survive, but humanity is likely to extinct. Another threat have been revealed recently that went unnoticed earlier, and a much more significant one. It was uncovered by the pandemic. It is digitalization, which will turn socially oriented people into soulless humanoid digitized beings – obedient cyborg serfs. It is desocialization, which will establish the supremacy of the minority, with their perverted "non-traditional values" over the majority, destroying traditional values, including the family institution. It is depopulation, which will reduce the world's population to a level sufficient to serve all the needs of the elites. It is de-industrialization and decarbonization, which will monetize the care of nature and make us pay even for air, reducing our standard of living and our needs to a subsistence level under the "wise guidance" of artificial intelligence, which actually has no intelligence at all. After all, any modern computer, including a quantum computer, is just a calculator we all know very well, only superfast.
It is up to us
If we continue following this path, our civilization has very little time left. How can we save the planet? Some people suggest exploring Mars. Another people even promote the golden billion concept… There’s also an alternative solution, which is achievable and humane. We should not close down industry and energy – we need to modify them, make them biospheric. It is necessary to implement non-rocket near space industrialization and transfer there all hazardous parts of the Earth's industry. Rockets cannot be used for this purpose, because they are extremely expensive to operate and harm the environment. The only effective solution would be the use of the General Planetary vehicle (GPV). During one flight, the GPV can take to the near space up to 10 million tons of cargoes and up to 10 million passengers, while reducing the cost of geocosmic transportation by thousands of times.
Another biosphere technology is a new way of life in pedestrian clusters of linear cities, built in eco-friendly places and providing people with everything they need. This is a decent job in walking distance, organic food, spring water, and fresh air saturated with healthy phytoncides from medicinal herbs and flowers. The starting point here should the widespread use of string transport. After all, by the end of the century it can save about 100 million human lives from death on conventional roads and about one billion from mutilation, injuries and disabilities. It will also make it possible to give back to the original land user, which is the planet's biosphere, vast territories currently occupied by conventional roads laid on the ground surface.
Over 40 years of struggle polished my arguments help to work out every aspect of the abovementioned technologies in detail. And now, when everyone can see for himself the efficiency of transport and infrastructure solutions proposed by me. Both states and industry have to take changes as a given of life and struggle for being among the first to be supported. Eventually, many are beginning to understand that our civilization is on the edge of the abyss and the transport and infrastructure technologies I propose can become the lifesaving solution to global challenges that confront modern mankind. But there’s colossal work ahead of us. As pictured in “Don’t Look Up”, the indifferent and unbelieving will be more than enough even when the “comet” is seen with the naked eye.
And what if you do nothing and go with the flow? Billions will die. Maybe, the so-called world elites will find a way to escape the “Titanic”. But what kind of a life that will be? The finale will be tragic, empty and senseless, which, by the way, is eloquently shown at the end of the movie – they get eaten by “pretty birds”.
The positive thing about this whole story is that we have much more time than the characters in the movie. So let’s use the remaining time for mankind in a right way.
Anatoli Unitsky, The New World’s Engineer