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Trivia For April 21, 2026
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It's themed Tuesday! Today's questions will all be about...
Global Catastrophes
Question 1:
Two blockbusters from 1998 shared the same premise: that an asteroid or comet was about to hit the Earth. One of the movies was Armageddon. What was the other one?
Deep Impact received better reviews, but despite its flaws Armageddon did better at the box office, earning over $550 million worldwide compared to Deep Impact's $350 million.
Question 2:
Fill in the blank: ___ Assured Destruction (MAD) is a military doctrine that relies on rational deterrence to prevent nuclear annihilation.
MAD holds that the threat of using nuclear weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons, thus preserving the peace. The term was coined by Donald Brennan in 1962.
Question 3:
1816 is called the "Year Without a Summer" because of severe climate abnormalities in the northern hemisphere. The freak conditions were due to the eruption of Mount Tambora, located in this modern-day nation.
The volcano erupted the previous year in what was then the Dutch East Indies. The atmospheric dust that was kicked up caused an agricultural disaster across Europe, the NE United States and Atlantic Canada, leading to famine and unrest.
Question 4:
If a GRB occurs within 8,000 light years and directly hits the Earth, it could likely cause mass extinctions. What does GRB stand for?
Gamma-ray bursts are immensely energetic explosions that have been observed in distant galaxies, being the brightest and most extreme explosive events in the entire universe. None have yet been observed in the Milky Way, but there is some evidence that the Ordovician mass extinction 450 million years ago may have been caused by a GRB.
Question 5:
Fill in the blank: In 1986, nanotechnology pioneer K. Eric Drexler coined the phrase "gray ______" to describe to a hypothetical scenario in which out-of-control, self-replicating machines consume all the biomass on Earth.
Drexler more recently conceded that there will never be a need to build anything resembling a potential runaway replicator which would avoid the problem entirely. As a matter of ethics, it is a useful thought experiment for technologists contemplating possible risks from advanced technology.
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