Bizarro Roller coaster is named as the best roller coaster in the world situated in Six Flags New England in Agawam, Massachusetts. Previously Bizarro named as “Medusa”. Bizarro continuously placed rank 1 or 2 in the Golden Ticket Awards for Top Steel Roller Coasters. This starts its operations in May 5th, 2000 as the world first floor-less roller coaster and again it re-theme by May 22nd 2009. Some main features of this Roller coaster are, Height: 63m Length: 1600m Drop: 67m Speed: 124km/h Total ride duration: 2.35min This roller coaster is very famous for its smoothness and the airtime, also featured with Magnetic Braking, Two Tunnels, Fire and Fog Effects. Riders should be in between 72inch – 54inch as the height requirement. I think this is an amazing life time experience. There are few accidents also take place in Bizarro. In August 6th 2001, one train fails to stop and hit in the other train at the loading station. Other one is in May 1st 2004, 53 year old 230lb man fell out from the roller coaster.

As a hobbyist investor, my first foray into cryptocurrency was with Coinbase. I was buying a few coins here and there, and everything was simple enough to manage in a spreadsheet. I would record the date, time, and amount bought and sold for every transaction. This worked well enough for the first 10 transactions. Soon, however, like many others in the space, I found myself deep down the cryptocurrency rabbit hole. I had exchange accounts on GDAX, Poloniex, Binance and a bunch of others. I was buying privacy coins on decentralized exchanges. I had read about the large-scale exchange hacks which burned many folks in the past, so I set up cold storage hardware wallets and ended up with over 15 different wallets for different types of altcoins. Still, I was a hobbyist; I was new to the space and just tinkering with small amounts of these coins, learning, curious to see how this digital, decentralized economy operated and how the underlying technologies all worked. It was fascinating, but also confusing as hell. The moment I moved a single coin out of Coinbase, the exchange no longer had an accurate reporting of my holdings and transactions so its tax report was incorrect. My own spreadsheet was getting unwieldy, as I started to integrate Google Apps scripts to look up exchange prices from the different exchange accounts I had, plus match-up cost bases for wallet-to-wallet transfers. The spreadsheet got more and more complicated, until one day it took two minutes to load. Money on the line That was the breaking point - there had to be a better way than running this hacky spreadsheet. Normally, for a side project I wouldn't have cared, but this was actual money on the line and I didn't have a clue how much fiat money (U.S. dollars) I had invested. How was I going to calculate my capital gains taxes on crypto if I didn't even know how much money I have invested in the first place? It was becoming financially irresponsible for me to not have a better grasp of this. I turned to my friend sitting next to me and asked him how he was solving the same problem for himself. He turned his laptop to me: a nearly identical complicated spreadsheet (in fairness, his was better than mine). There was no way that mainstream users were jumping through these hoops. We immediately started researching what other crypto-enthusiasts were using to solve the tracking problem. To our disappointment, there were no good tools. The most popular tool was a mobile app that operated like a stock ticker app: it would show you the prices of coins daily and, if you wanted, allowed you to manually add these coins into a portfolio, one at a time. This was even worse than the spreadsheet we already had and wasn't at all personalized to our particular portfolios, let alone calculating our cost basis, capital gains, or providing any useful information for taxes. Then and there, my friend and I decided to stop doing what we were doing and productionize our spreadsheets (OK, his spreadsheet) into a simple website. It was the first incarnation of what has now become CoinTracker. Takeaways The moral of the story: make sure you keep good records of your transactions, or use exchanges which provide these records for you. If you are using multiple exchanges and wallets, trading multiple coins, or using secure cold or local storage for your coins (which everyone should do) then there are several tools out there which can help you track your whole portfolio, your return on investment, the amount of fiat invested, and perhaps most importantly your cost basis and capital gains. In the future, ideally the IRS will help clarify the tax rules which apply to cryptocurrency, especially around grey-area issues such as like-kind exchange, which accounting methods are acceptable for capital gains (e.g. FIFO, HIFO, etc.), and airdropped coins. Until then I hope to see exchanges and brokers making easy reporting a priority so that their users are not left scrambling to figure out their tax situation. Meantime, I recommend educating yourself about how to secure your coins, and learning about how cryptocurrencies are regulated in your jurisdiction. If you haven't already nailed down your 2017 cryptocurrency taxes, file a free tax extension (but make sure to pay your estimated taxes due to avoid late fees). Even though cryptocurrency is still a nascent space with lots of uncertainty and some headaches - like the ones I've described above - I'm very hopeful about the future of the industry. Rarely does such a revolutionary tech come along and there are lots of great materials out there to learn more.

"If you or your engineer friend is bored at BigTechCo, get in touch." The tweet, sent out by Coinbase vice president and general manager Dan Romero, represented a rare request from the San Francisco-based exchange. Despite building on various cryptocurrency protocols for years, it was perhaps the first time the company had signaled it would offer financial support to someone working directly on open-source code. As such, the tweet drew its fair share of confusion among bitcoin and ethereum's largely volunteer developers. That's not to say that they aren't interested in taking sponsorships from companies in an effort to make money from their passions - they are. But the trouble is many developers see larger industry startups like Coinbase, which made more than $1 billion in revenue last year, as a prime example of the "big tech companies" that Romero positioned as antagonists. In fact, some would go so far as to say there's a quiet struggle being waged in the blockchain industry between the coders who develop these open-source protocols and those who mainly sell related products or services for commercial interest from their corner offices in Silicon Valley. This was on full display when Bitcoin Core developer Luke Dashjr tweeted a disgruntled reply to Romero after private conversations clarified that the role wouldn't focus exclusively bitcoin or ethereum, nor would it give developers autonomy to focus on projects they see as beneficial. Instead, Coinbase executives would be directing the work, potentially requiring the developers work on cryptocurrencies that might run afoul of their own personal tastes. (As an example, in the case of Dashjr, the long-time bitcoin coder, was loathe to devote time to rival bitcoin cash). Coinbase acknowledges a kind of disconnect, yet thinks the lines between industry and open-source will continue to blur. "At a high level, we want to invest in supporting open-source communities, because we believe that the future of this industry will be defined more by open source than by enterprises," Jori Lallo, a software engineer at Coinbase told CoinDesk. "That said, as a fast-growing company we've had a lot of things to split our time between, and admittedly we didn't spend a lot of time on supporting open source in the early days." That initial neglect left a lasting impression that has been hard for Coinbase to shrug off. According to Jeremy Rubin, a Bitcoin Core contributor, Silicon Valley's culture in general remains at odds with open-source philosophy, in that the former doesn't give enough credit and support to the broader ecosystem. Rubin told CoinDesk: "You see this at a couple different companies but I think they [Coinbase] are one of the most egregious. They're trying to do better, but they got a ways to go." Not enough? Still, Lallo detailed some of the exchange's work in reaching out to the open-source developer community that has attempted to shift that perception. For instance, in mid-March, Coinbase introduced the Coinbase Protocol Team, whose mission it is to contribute to community-led projects, naming payment channels, proof-of-stake blockchains and light clients as some areas of interest, and widely respected bitcoin programmer Jim Posen is a part of the team. Around the same time, Coinbase announced its Open Source Fund, which donates roughly $25,000 a month to public blockchain projects. Even Dashjr recognizes that Coinbase's efforts aren't "bad" and could even bring to the table some insights that open-source developers may miss, since they don't interface with the business community quite as much. "It just isn't the norm or ideal," Dashjr said. Others argue, though, that such programs, after years of inaction, aren't enough, though Rubin said he sees the problem as bigger than any one company. In Rubin's view, lucrative blockchain companies could easily donate a few million dollars each in grants and sponsorships for open-source developers. It's the same argument open-source developers have made regarding a whole slew of integral internet protocols that have allowed companies like Google, Facebook and Uber to grow into multi-billion-dollar companies. "Not only do they not do that [provide generous patronage], but they don't support a lot of conferences that are really critical to the space. They didn't support the MIT Bitcoin Expo this year, even though they sent a bunch of recruiters," Rubin said, adding: "I don't think Coinbase really gets open source." In addressing the criticisms, Lallo said, "As we grow, expect to see more investments - both in terms of time and money." Coinbase also announced in a blog post on Thursday that a new venture capital arm of the company will provide "financing to promising early-stage companies" that "move the space forward in a positive, meaningful way." Rethinking the culture But it might take more than time and money. According to Christopher Allen, the former principal architect at Blockstream, it's more about adapting to the culture of open source. For instance, Blockstream, which funds the work of several developers who solely work on the bitcoin protocol, goes a step further by offering employees individual patent rights for technologies they contribute to, in addition to roughly 20 percent paid leave to work on side projects. "These types of very progressive attitudes towards open source were a large part of my consideration [in joining Blockstream] because I've been working on my own projects for a number of years," Allen said. "I wanted to be able to continue to work on them without being constrained." Joe Lubin, founder of ethereum startup incubator ConsenSys, echoed the importance of this cultural shift toward independence. As such, ConsenSys strives to retain top talent by letting employees choose their own projects and work whenever and from wherever they want. Tough to retain Still, many leading blockchain companies struggle to retain talent. For example, bitcoin security startup BitGo lost Alex Bosworth, a renowned developer who now works on lightning network implementations, in December. According to Bosworth, the missions of large tech companies, and now large crypto companies, run counter to the ideals of the developers who started developing the protocols to begin with. "The tech companies are building empires based on locking users into walled gardens and generally not thinking about what is best to progress the needs of the user," he said. "That's something that open source software addresses which is pretty inspiring and fulfilling to work on." As such, the community has rallied around several initiatives that fund developer work without strings attached. For instance, several developers CoinDesk spoke to mentioned Chain Code Labs, which sponsors a handful of Bitcoin Core developers at a financial loss through the money the founders, Alex Morcos and Suhas Daftuar made from a previous Wall Street venture. And Allen recently launched the GitHub Blockchain Guild, which aims to create new opportunities to fund contributions to various blockchain projects. The collaborative, autonomous nature of these initiatives is what makes open-source cryptocurrency developers so drawn to them. Speaking to the need for the industry to adapt to the open-source culture, Lubin said: "Nobody works on projects that they don't care deeply about. An entrepreneur's freedom to develop their own projects and operational style doesn't need to change."

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COMMENTATORS echoed the thoughts of millions around the world when they screamed out for somebody to help distressed Scotland marathon runner Callum Hawkins. Their cries fell on deaf ears as Hawkins was left crumpled on the side of a bridge on the Gold Coast less than 2km short of the finish line in the men’s marathon on Sunday. The gold medal was his. He had been more than two minutes in front of Aussie Michael Shelley in second spot. Hawkins had just minutes earlier lost control of his legs as he ran along the road before eventually collapsing onto a grassy patch. He did not move for more than a minute. He eventually got back to his feet in an incredibly gutsy effort, but was soon wobbling all over the course again. Hawkins eventually crashed into the railing on the side of a Gold Coast bridge less than 2km out from what would have been a gold medal. As he lay crumpled on the ground a group of spectators were spotted talking to him. According to a report an official informed the spectators not to try and assist the distressed runner — believing medical support was on its way. The issue was further complicated by the rules of the race which would have seen Hawkins disqualified if he received any assistance. Help didn’t arrive. The 25-year-old was left lying on the ground unattended for several minutes. Even as Shelley ran past him with concern all over his face — there was still no medical attention forthcoming. Still the spectators were told to watch on. Eventually medical officials made it to Hawkins’ position on the bridge. It was too little too late for many commentators. Channel 7 commentator and Aussie athletics great Tamsyn Lewis said the rules of the sport should have been thrown out after witnessing Hawkins unable to move. She said the spectators should have helped him. “People should help him,” she said. “I think now is the time. An athlete works all their life to win gold medals. But there is one thing more important than that, his health. He should be assisted now. “He will have family at home who can see this. So they need to know the medical staff will help him.” McAvaney said officials should have tried to stop Hawkins from trying to run on after he collapsed the first time. “He is on autopilot. He was done three minutes ago,” McAvaney said. “He has gotten back into, not a rhythm, he is still wobbling everywhere, the mind is working so hard but the legs are just getting along. You would think he is clearheaded enough that if you can just keep going a bit longer he will get a gold medal. “He needs to think of himself and his health first. “This is distressing. Incredibly distressing. He needs some help. Somebody please come and help him.” ‘NOT IN THE SPIRIT’ OF THE GAMES Gold Coast 2018 chief executive Mark Peters said it was the understanding of officials that Hawkins had a conversation with marshals about whether he wanted medical assistance or not. After the conversation finished, no medical assistance was provided. “You can’t have medical people on every kilometre of the roads,” Peters said. “They are professionally positioned the same as we do with our Gold Coast marathon where we have 30,000 people. We are looking for more information. Obviously the health of the athlete is prime. “Sometimes the medical people arrive too and you have to make a decision whether they want to go on or not. And I understand that was part of a discussion at some point in time. Because incredibly athletes in whatever state they are in want to finish and we’ve seen that in other marathons.” Peters also said in a statement officials were only able to provide assistance when Hawkins eventually requested it. He also hit out at some of the spectators on the bridge for taking photos, saying their actions were “not in the spirit” of the Games. “I like many others was distressed to see a wonderful athlete like Callum collapse during the closing stages of today’s Marathon,” Peters said. “We are offering every assistance possible to Callum and Team Scotland. “GOLDOC has put in place a wide range of measures to ensure athlete welfare and the response of medical staff this morning was within agreed response guidelines and timeframes. “I was also concerned about the behaviour of a small number of bystanders who chose to take images. This is not in keeping with the spirit of GC2018.” He said medical staff had been placed strategically every 500m along the marathon route and had radios to respond to medical aid requests when they were made. A Scotland team official has told the BBC no medical support was forthcoming because Hawkins was desperate to avoid being disqualified. The report claims Hawkins “initially refused medical treatment after collapsing” — fearing it would cost him the gold medal. ‘HE CRAWLED ON THE GROUND FOR 2-3 MINUTES’ The Gold Coast Bulletin has reported spectators tried to help Hawkins, only for the struggling runner to wave them away in a desperate attempt to avoid being disqualified. Southport man Rodney and daughter Annalise West tried to help the 25-year-old but he wouldn’t let anyone touch him. “He crawled around on the ground for two or three minutes,” Mr West said. Mr West asked the volunteers to move their umbrella to shade the struggling athlete. “They had to clear it with officials to move it off the bridge and over the runner,” he said. He said he was surprised it took so long for officials to come to the aid of Hawkins considering he was leading the race. Callum’s older brother Derek Hawkins — who competed at the Rio Olympics — said his brother is doing “alright” in hospital. Team Scotland also issued a statement on Sunday afternoon confirming Hawkins is being monitored in hospital and has been talking with his family. “We are very pleased to report that Callum is sitting up and speaking with his dad and Team Scotland medical staff,” the statement read. “He is undergoing further tests as a precaution and we all wish him a speedy recovery.” HORRIBLE HEAT TOUGH FOR ALL Hawkins was not the only victim of the searing 30C morning heat on the Gold Coast with Uganda’s Munyo Solomon Mutai also suffering in the final 5km. Mutai had been in the bronze medal position before he suddenly pulled up. Channel 7’s Bruce McAvaney had said he looked “disorientated” just a few seconds before the runner stopped and bent over with his hands on his knees. Mutai was allowed to run on despite his condition and continued on to win silver more than two minutes behind Shelley. Just 17 of the 25 competitors in the men’s event were able to finish the race. It comes after criticism that the men’s race was scheduled too late in the day. The men’s marathon began at 8.15am — more than two hours after the men’s and women’s T54 marathon runners had started their races. The later finish saw Shelley cross the finish after 10.30am — many runners didn’t cross the finish line until 11am. Earlier, when Hawkins first collapsed, McAvaney labelled his condition “completely and utterly distressed”. “Can you believe this? Callum Hawkins who has demolished this field is completely and utterly distressed,” McAvaney said. “What we’re seeing is hard to watch. Very difficult to watch.” Lewis said: “Oh no! He is in trouble. He needs help.” Shelley told Channel 7 after the race he had to try and block out the moment he ran past Hawkins to try and focus on his own condition. “I was not sure what was going on,” he said. “A couple of mates told me that Callum Hawkins was in trouble. They might have just been trying to encourage me but then I saw him on the bridge and I was aware he was in trouble but I just tried to hang on. On the home straight, as you can see, I tried to accelerate but I was gone as well. I’m glad to finish, to be honest. “I was getting cramps earlier than I expected. I tried to run my race. I got the sponges every 2km, 2.5km, made sure I got as much drink as I could and just try to push on.”

SOME of US President Donald Trump’s most outspoken supporters have turned on him over his decision to launch air strikes against Syria. The most explosive outburst came from Infowars founder Alex Jones, a former libertarian Ron Paul supporter, who broke down in tears during a profanity-ridden rant about the strikes. The incident was livestreamed prior to Jones’ live show on YouTube. Jones’ voice started to break as he read headlines about Syria from the Drudge Report. “I just feel like I just had my best girlfriend break up with me,” Jones said. “The left will make jokes but this ain’t funny, man. “He was doing good and that’s what makes it so bad. If he’d been a piece of crap from the beginning it wouldn’t be so bad.” At this point, Jones appears to be openly crying. “Damn it man. Is no one pure in this God damn world?” Jones said. “We had an emergency f***ing 36 hour broadcast trying to stop this s*** that could lead to WWIII and you liberal pieces of f s**t ... you support this. “You f***ing god damn degenerate f**ks. “I shouldn't be on air right now. When ... are we going live? F*** Trump.” Among the others who once sang Mr Trump’s praises but appear to have now hung up their pompoms were Fox News hosts Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham. “I guess it feels good because there are horrible things happening there,” Ms Ingraham said on the program. “But what do we really accomplish here tonight in Syria? This is not why Donald Trump got elected.” Michael Savage, a popular conservative radio talk show personality, livestreamed himself at dinner blasting the president, saying that America had become “a nation of idiots” in the wake of the attack, according to the Daily Beast. “My opinion is that this is the greatest disaster of the Trump presidency,” Savage said while pointing the camera at a plate of beans. The avalanche of condemnation from former Trump advocates came after the US, Britain and France opted to strike Syria for its apparent use of chemical weapons without waiting for a report from UN inspectors because they were convinced that the Assad government had used chlorine and sarin nerve gas against a rebel-held Damascus suburb, American officials said Saturday. The allies also acted because of concerns that Russian and Syrian forces may already have tried to clean up important evidence in Douma, where more than 40 people died in last weekend’s attack, the officials said. The three countries launched their missiles even as the fact-finding team from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons was in the Syrian capital and had been expected to head on Saturday to Douma. Russia and Syria have denied that chemical weapons were used at all and said their own investigators had been to the area and found no trace of them. Those assertions have been denounced as lies by Western officials. The West’s assessments of what happened April 7 in Douma rely mainly on open source information. That includes witness testimony, as well as video and photos shot by aid workers, victims of the attacks and unspecified additional intelligence about barrel bombs and chlorine canisters found in the aftermath. Barrel bombs are large containers packed with fuel, explosives and scraps of metal, and British Prime Minister Theresa May said reports indicated the Syrian government had used one to deliver the chemicals. The White House said doctors and aid organisations on the ground in Douma reported “the strong smell of chlorine and described symptoms consistent with exposure to sarin.” A senior administration official told reporters Saturday that while there was more publicly available evidence pointing to the use of chlorine, the US has “significant information that also points to sarin use.” The official did not elaborate on what that information entailed. Chlorine use has been a recurring footnote in the course of Syria’s civil war, but rarely has it generated the same outrage as reports of sarin use. Chlorine has legitimate industrial and other civilian uses, so it is not banned by the Chemical Weapons Convention. The treaty does, however, prohibit the use of chlorine as a weapon. One senior US official familiar with the decision to act on Friday said the U.S., British and French intelligence services were unanimous in their assessments of the attack and were “eager” to move when they did because of concerns about contamination of the site. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to publicly discuss specifics beyond those contained in the formal statements. Despite the strikes, the chemical weapons watchdog agency said its experts would go ahead with their mission. The Russian foreign ministry, however, accused the allies of acting when they did “to hamper the work of the OPCW inspectors.” The US has denied that assertion and called the group’s mission “essential” to a complete understanding of what chemical agents were used. A second US official said Britain, France and the U.S. are confident that the inspectors’ eventual report will confirm their findings that chlorine was used, likely in conjunction with sarin. The three governments noted dozens previous, smaller-scale chlorine and other chemical weapons attacks over the course of the past year, since President Donald Trump first ordered air strikes against Syria last April. Reports of major chlorine attacks began emerging in 2014, soon after Syria’s declaration of complete chemical disarmament, which was the result of an Obama administration agreement between the U.S. and Russia. The agreement only covered declared chemical weapons. Syria is widely suspected of hiding some stocks, manufacturing more as well as holding on to chlorine. “The pictures of dead children were not fake news. They were the result of the Syrian regime’s barbaric inhumanity,” Trump’s U.N. ambassador, Nikki Haley, said Saturday. “And they were the result of the regimen and Russia’s failure to live up to their international commitments to remove all chemical weapons from Syria. The US, France, and the UK acted after careful evaluation. ” In August 2015, the U.N. Security Council first authorised the OPCW and UN investigators to probe reports of chemical weapons use in Syria, as witnesses began to circulate increasing accounts of chlorine attacks by government forces against civilians in opposition-held areas. A year later, the joint OPCW-U.N. panel determined the Syrian government had twice used helicopters to deploy chlorine against its opponents in civilian areas in northern Idlib province. A later report held the government responsible for a third attack. There have been dozens of attacks with chlorine gas since then, including an attack in Aleppo in 2016 that reportedly killed a woman and two children, and at least two attacks on the town of Saraqeb in northern Syria that injured dozens.

The United States, the United Kingdom and France are pushing for an "irreversible" end to Syria's chemical weapons program, amid furious recriminations from Russia over the effectiveness and legality of a wave of US-led missile strikes on Syrian targets. UN diplomats shared with CNN a new resolution, led by France and backed by the US and the UK, calling for an independent investigation into the suspected chemical weapons attack inside Syria that precipitated the cruise missile strikes unleashed by the Western allies Friday. France's ambassador to the United Nations, Francois Delattre, said Syria's chemical weapons program must be dismantled in a "verifiable and irreversible way." The renewed push for a UN-backed diplomatic solution follows a volatile emergency meeting of the UN Security Council, called by Moscow Saturday, with Russia's UN ambassador, Vassily Nebenzia, condemning the joint US-British-French strikes as a violation of international law. Nebenzia said Friday's missile strikes, targeted at facilities associated with the Syrian regime's chemical weapons program, had been a "blow to the political settlement" in the divided Middle Eastern nation. The Russian-led response to the strikes, though limited to words, comes amid days of building pressure and talk among UN diplomats of a potential new Cold War. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has urged all Security Council members to show restraint, as US Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley told the meeting that Washington remains "locked and loaded" to respond to any future Syrian chemical attacks. Outside of the UN, protests against the strikes were held around the world Saturday, including in major cities in the US, Mexico, Greece and the UK. While some of the protestors came out in support of Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad's regime, many others were opposed to the use of military action by Western powers against Syria. New chemical weapons resolution Investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) arrived in Syria on Saturday to begin their investigation into the alleged chemical attack in the Syrian city of Douma. The team met with Syrian authorities in Damascus at 7 p.m. local time on Saturday, according to Syrian Ambassador to the UN Bashar Jaafari. It was the suspected chemical attack which led the Western allies to order the missile strikes, which they lay squarely at the feet of the Syrian regime. Senior US officials said on Saturday they were confident both chlorine and sarin gas were used in the attack. Both the Syrian and Russian governments have denied Damascus' involvement in the attack. The new French-led resolution presented to the Security Council would have investigators from the OPCW report their findings to the UN within a new timetable. A Security Council diplomat told CNN there was no rush to vote on the draft resolution, but an attempt will be made to engage in serious negotiations. The resolution would also allow a third-party review of humanitarian evacuations from Douma and medical evacuations with no conditions. On Saturday the Syrian military announced on state television it had retaken Eastern Ghouta, including the city of Douma, from rebels. A military official said "all the terrorists have left Douma." Earlier on Saturday, a Russian resolution at the UN Security Council condemning the US-led strikes was voted down, gaining support from just two other members, China and Bolivia. Ambassador Nebenzia decribed the resolution's failure to pass as "sad day for the world." 'Mission Accomplished'? The battle inside the Security Council came as US President Donald Trump struck a triumphant tone in the wake of the strikes, Saturday. In a tweet he said: "A perfectly executed strike last night. Thank you to France and the United Kingdom for their wisdom and the power of their fine military. Could not have had a better result. Mission accomplished!" US Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said at a press briefing Saturday the strikes would set back Syria's chemicals weapons capability for years. He described the attack as "precise, overwhelming and effective," saying they had targeted a scientific research center and two chemical weapons storage facilities on Friday. Satellite photos obtained by CNN of the areas targeted by the US, UK and French strikes showed extensive damage from the 105 missiles fired at the facilities. But Russia and Syrian authorities have disputed the assessment of the Pentagon, saying instead the vast majority of the incoming missiles were shot down by the country's military forces. The Russian Defense Ministry said only seven missiles had reached two Syrian military airfields and that "no serious damage to infrastructure was inflicted." Syrian state television said three civilians were wounded in Homs as a result of the strikes. Pressure builds In the UK, Prime Minister Theresa May sought to shore up international support for the strikes, calling on the leaders of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Cyprus, Italy Germany, Australia and Canada, according to a statement from Downing Street. "All of the leaders agreed with the Prime Minister on the importance of restoring the international norm that the use of chemical weapons is never acceptable," the Downing Street statement said. British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said Sunday there was "no proposal on the table at the moment for further attacks," in an interview on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show. "This is not about regime change, or trying to turn the tide of conflict in Syria," Johnson added. "It's about sending a message on the use of chemical weapons." Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to face questions in the British Parliament on Monday over the strike, which was launched without permission from the country's legislature. "The UK Prime Minster is accountable to Parliament, not to the whims of a US President. I believe the action was legally questionable and this morning the UN Secretary General has said as much," UK opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn said in a letter to May Saturday. Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recep Erdogan spoke on the the phone Saturday about the strikes, according to Turkish state media. Turkey, a Nato member, has embarked on increased defense cooperation with Moscow, following the signing of a accord that will see Russia supply Ankara with state-of-the-art S-400 surface-to-air missile batteries. While Erdogan emphasized the need to deescalate tensions, Putin reiterated that the Western nations had "grossly" breached the UN charter and international law, according to Russian state media TASS.

WISCONSIN police in the United States have released grisly crime scene photos from the so-called “Slender Man” stabbing case, showing the 12-year-old victim’s blood-soaked clothes — and the steak knife used in the attack. Sixth-grader Payton Leutner was wearing yellow jeans and a white shirt printed with a heart and the words “Love, Hope, Smile, Beautiful, Dream,” when her deranged classmates Morgan Geyser and Anissa Weier attacked her in the woods to please a fictional demon called “Slender Man.” Holes in the victim’s clothing, from some of the 19 stab wounds are visible in the photos, released by the Waukesha Police Department. The images were unsealed because the teens are now serving a combined 65 years in a mental hospital for the 2014 stabbing. One photo showed the backpack the attackers brought into the woods, including the knife from Geyser’s home — alongside Kudos cereal bars and notebooks. Geyser, who authorities said stabbed Leutner, and Weier, who egged her on, were photographed at the police station with blood on their clothes. Blood-splattered trees are also pictured at the scene of the attack. The knife missed Leutner’s heart by about a centimetre. She is now in high school and is still healing. The 25 scars across her body, are “still red and angry more than three years later,” her mother told ABC 12 in Wisconsin. “Payton has a lifetime of healing ahead of her.”

THE Brisbane woman who fell overboard from the Pacific Dawn and disappeared in a tragedy at sea has been identified as Natasha Schofield, 47, but police say it “wasn’t an accident”. The cruiseliner docked in Brisbane this morning as police waited to board the ship and investigate after Ms Schofield fell from an upper level deck into the ocean around 150 nautical miles west of New Caledonia on Thursday afternoon. Queensland Police will take statements from crew and passengers. A search for Ms Schofield was called off on Friday morning and shell-shocked passengers were returned to Brisbane early on Sunday. Her body has not been found. Ms Schofield was travelling with her husband and three children — aged from 12 to 16. Queensland Police Inspector Rob Graham said Ms Schofield’s death was intentional. “This wasn’t an accident,” he said. “Let’s be open and honest about mental health. “It’s a tragic end to what should’ve been a lifetime holiday experience for a loving family. “Her husband was standing right next to her when she went over.” Earlier reports she had been sick or fell due to a freak wave were incorrect, according to police. “The missing person did make intentional actions and deliberately propelled herself overboard the ship,” Insp Graham said. The entire incident was captured on security cameras. Insp Graham told reporters he had viewed the footage. “What I saw was a couple of loving people on the top deck of a cruise ship,” he said. “I saw them leaning on the rails and I saw the intentional actions of the missing person take two steps back and then propel herself over the railing. “Her husband tried in vain to grab her when she went over ... grabbing onto her legs ... she was too far gone and subsequently she fell. “You’ve got three kids who are never going to see their mum again.” After the woman fell her “distraught” husband immediately raised the alarm and the ship turned around as a search began. Insp Graham said there were no nearby ships to help in the search because of “the remoteness of the location”. “The loving husband and three kids of the missing person are still on-board the cruise ship,” Insp Graham told reporters this morning. The cruise operator, Carnival Australia, said it was co-operating fully with the police investigation. “We will be able to give police CCTV footage providing an unobstructed view of what happened and portraying an obviously devoted and loving couple,” Carnival said in a statement. “We extend our deepest condolences to the family and hope that they will find comfort in their grief.” Counselling has been made available for passengers. One traveller said passengers had been updated with developments from the outset. “The captain and crew have been put in an unimaginable position yet have handled themselves professionally and with the respect to the victim and her family,” Teg An told AAP on Friday. The first photos from inside the cruise ship during the frantic search for Ms Schofield emerged overnight. One photo showed cruise ship staff on the deck of the ship. Another shows people using torches to try and spot the woman. The images came as an eyewitness, who asked not to be named, said she saw the tragic incident unfold. She said the woman walked over to a deck and began to vomit while leaning over a railing of the Pacific Dawn. “(She was) vomiting outside, near the table tennis area” the guest on-board recalled, the Courier Mail reported. “Leaning over, not far over, then she fell. When she went over he collapsed.” The guest claimed that there was no freak wave that hit the ship before the victim lost her footing and fell overboard. If you or someone you know needs help, please contact Lifeline on 13 11 14

CONFLICT between nations is nothing new. Mankind have fought and lost wars for as long as history has been recorded and recent advances in science and technology make the threat of an attack, anywhere in the world, a real and terrifying prospect. Whether it’s nuclear, chemical or any other form of military response, history shows no one is safe from the devastation of war. With ongoing conflict in Syria and US President, Donald Trump’s response to the latest chemical attacks, the likelihood of an attack on a highly populated city is a plausible nightmare. Scientists from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University have created simulations of a potential outcome if an attack did occur, and found the best course of action for people was to take shelter first and then take steps to escape afterwards. Those who tried to seek out family members and “aid and assist” others were more likely to die. In the study, it showed some people would look out for family, while others wold panic and run blindly away. When humans carried out “shelter-seeking, evacuation, healthcare-seeking, and worry combined,” they were more likely to survive. The simulation, which was first revealed by Science Magazine, shows that venturing away from a safe place leaves civilians subjected to a higher dose of radiation, which would likely prove fatal. With President Trump’s consistent tweets threatening action against Russia and North Korea in a game of who has the bigger artillery, a dystopian future seems more and more possible. Last month researchers created an interactive map that revealed the terrifying scope of a nuclear blast for any given area. The map shows the extent of the fireball, radiation, shockwave, and heat spawned by different weapons, from the 15 KT ‘Little Boy’ dropped on Hiroshima to the largest weapon in the USSR’s arsenal, the 50,000 KT Tsar Bomba. For example, if North Korea dropped the Hwasong-14, a 150 KT yield nuclear weapon on Sydney’s CBD, there would be more than 77,000 fatalities and 156,000 injured. The radiation from the blast would exceed 12 square kilometres and go further depending on wind patterns. If Vladimir Putin dropped a 50,000 KT Tsar Bomba (Reportedly the biggest in his arsenal) on Sydney, there would be 1,513,303 fatalities, 1,111,725 injuries and radiation exceeding 80 square kilometres. If the Aussies pissed off the US and Trump attacked us, it would most likely be with the 300KT W-87, which would kill an estimated 114,374 Sydneysiders, injure more than 227,000 and cause radiation exceeding 15 square kilometres on initial impact. While scary to think about, it’s an important thing to get your head around in Trump’s 2018. Without coming off as alarmist we should understand the exact magnitude of a nuclear blast and how damaging it can potentially be.

HUNDREDS of children suffer from “Resignation Syndrome.” They don’t eat, speak or even open their eyes. With drip-tubes the only thing keeping them alive, two sisters suffering the condition have been bed-bound for more than two years. Lying there motionless, you’d think their bodies had shut down after an accident or an illness. But, physically, there’s nothing wrong with them: these two girls have lost the will to live. Djeneta and her sister Ibadeta suffer from the condition, referred to locally as “uppgivenhetssyndrom”thought only to exist among refugees and only in Sweden. The remarkable image was captured by photographer Magnus Wennman and was short-listed in this year’s World Press Photo Contest. Children affected by the condition start showing symptoms by withdrawing from social activities and speaking less, before finally closing off completely from the world around them. Experts suggest the conscious part of their brain simply shuts down, forcing their parents to feed them through tubes and put them in nappies — although no children are believed to have ever died as a result of the condition. Elizabeth Hultcrantz, a doctor who has treated those with the illness, told The New Yorker: “I think it is a form of protection, this coma they are in. They are like Snow White. They just fall away from the world.” Kids with this condition, referred to by Swedes as “apathetic” children, started arriving in hospitals in the early 2000s and by 2005, more than 400 children, largely aged between eight and 15, had been diagnosed. Just last year, there were 60 more tragic cases. Most of the children were immigrants from former Soviet and Yugoslav states whose families hoped to forge a better life in Sweden. The Scandinavian country had become home to many refugees since the 1970s and still accepts more asylum seekers per capita than any other European country — but as regulations tightened, those that weren’t fleeing war-torn zones often had their applications rejected. These rejections would often take years to come, and the limbo-like status of waiting for their family’s future to be decided meant many children ended up pouring all their hopes and dreams into being granted asylum. So when the long wait comes to an end, and it’s bad news, some children shut down completely, plunging into a deep coma-like state where they flit on the border of life and death. Doctors studying the rare condition note that it tends to only affect refugees from eastern Europe, fleeing “holistic” societies where the family unit, and wider society, is always championed over the needs of the individual. A report by the Swedish government suggested that the stricken children may be acting in line with their society’s unspoken rules, subconsciously giving up the will to live without any direct encouragement in the hope that it will save their family. Because of this, with no obvious medical cure, many psychologists believe that only the security of permanent residency can bring the children back. Children making the journey to a new life have developed resignation syndrome when their families are denied applications to remain. When the photo was taken, the girls in Wennman’s picture lived in central Sweden, in a dormitory for refugees. Djenata had been unresponsive for two-and-a-half years, ever since she was 12 and Ibadeta, 15, had been bedridden for six months — ever since the day the family’s asylum residency request was denied. A similar case was reported last year when Georgi, a Russian refugee who came to Sweden when he was five, was told his family’s reapplication to stay in the country had been denied — more than seven years after they first settled there. After hearing the news, in December 2015, the 13-year-old sunk into a deep depression, stopped speaking, refused to get out of bed and lost 13lb in a week. He stayed in a deep, apathetic state, limp, lifeless and silent, for five months until, in May 2016, the Swedish government granted the family permanent residency, at the insistence of the doctors treating him. It took over a fortnight for him to open his eyes, and months after that for Georgi to get back on his feet and start speaking in coherent sentences again but he eventually recovered — with his family’s security acting as a dose of life-changing medicine. He later described those long, bed-bound months as feeling as if he was lying in a fragile glass box, deep beneath the ocean. Georgi believed that if he spoke or moved, the glass would shatter and water would flood in and drown him. The condition is still not fully understood — and some doctors are pushing back against the belief that apathetic children should be left in their comas until the family is granted residency. Karl Sallin, a paediatrician at Karolinska University Hospital, told the New Yorker: “Another way to give the children hope would be to treat them properly and not leave them lying on a bed with a nasal tube for nine months.” In response to national outrage at the plight of these children, Sweden changed the rules to make sure no apathetic children are deported — securing the status of hundreds of refugee families in the process. But while children like Georgi have got their lives back, many more remain as they are — lying prone somewhere in limbo, trapped by a condition nobody really understands.

System information invitations hello to all members of the Elite community I inform you that we are full in membership so registrations are closed. And from this fact we have suspended the invitations also so no need to try to invite someone that will be normal that you can not. STAFF System information invitations bonjour a tout les membres de la communauté Elite je vous informe que nous sommes complet en membres de ce fait les inscriptions sont fermé. Et de ce faite nous avons suspendu les invitations aussi alors pas la peine d'essayer d'invité quelqu un ce sera normal que vous ne puissiez pas. Le STAFF

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Since its inception in 2010, Amazon Studios had touted a technocratic approach to entertainment development — with an open submission process promising to let anyone break into showbiz, and potentially have their idea turned into a movie or TV show if it was upvoted to the top of the pile. Now, Amazon Studios’ crowdsourced-script program is dead, a tacit acknowledgement by the ecommerce giant’s entertainment division that it will only produced stuff greenlit the traditional, Hollywood way. As of April 13, 2018, Amazon Studios is no longer accepting unsolicited submissions. It will continue review and evaluate submissions it’s already received through June 30, according to a notice on its website. Here’s how Amazon Studios explained the move: “As we have grown and evolved over the last several years, we are making changes to our website and closing our open call for script and concept submissions… Thank you all for your contributions.” The division’s FAQ now includes info about the shutdown, telling visitors, “At Amazon we are always reinventing ourselves and looking for ways to become even more efficient.” The shutdown of the program was reported previously by Engadget. The open-submission program had been championed by Amazon Studios founder Roy Price, who was ousted last fall after sexual-harassment allegations against him surfaced. In February, Amazon named Jennifer Salke, formerly president of NBC Entertainment, as the head of Amazon Studios. Even before Price’s exit, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos was pushing the studio division to strive for higher-profile, buzzy dramas with global appear (a la “Game of Thrones”). That directive led to Amazon Studios’ most ambitious — and by all accounts most expensive — project ever: It won the rights to a multi-season adaption of “Lord of the Rings,” which also covers potential spinoffs. For all the hype of its over-the-transom submission program, Amazon Studios appears to have greenlit only one screenplay to a full series via the over-the-transom process: children’s series “Gortimer Gibbon’s Life on Normal Street,” from first-time writer and preschool teacher David Anaxagoras. The studio produced two seasons. Currently, Amazon Studios lists 20,694 movie and 6,973 TV series projects on its website. In its FAQ, the division points creators to other options for pitching and distributing their work. The suggestions include: submitting videos and scripts to film festivals via Amazon’s Withoutabox.com; signing up for IMDb Pro (also owned by Amazon) to “connect and share your work with other professionals”; and publishing videos via Amazon’s Prime Video Direct program, which offers royalties based on user viewing. Amazon said its Storybuilder “virtual corkboard” tool for screenwriters is still available, while the Storywriter script-writing tool is still available via web browser but will no longer accept script submissions.

"I had to hit the timeout button." Snoop Dogg appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live” Monday to promote his new gospel album, but the conversation inevitably got around to his weed worship. The rapper and “Joker’s Wild” host said only one person has ever had a greater tolerance than him for smoking marijuana in one sitting. “Willie Nelson is the only person who’s ever out-smoked Snoop Dogg,” Dogg said. “I had to hit the timeout button.” It was a button he said he’d never had to push before. Snoop, whose botanical bromance with Nelson is well known, has praised the “On the Road Again” singer’s greater grass appetite before. But Nelson no doubt will appreciate Snoop’s reefer-al, just the same.

What a ratty thing to do ― blaming mice for 1,000 pounds of missing marijuana. That’s the dubious excuse eight police officers in Pilar, Argentina, gave after a half-ton of pot disappeared from a police warehouse. About 13,000 pounds of bud were supposed to be in storage, but a recent police inspection revealed 1,000 pounds were missing, according to The Guardian. Javer Specia, the city’s former police commissioner, was ordered to explain the shortfall to a judge. He and three subordinates told the skeptical jurist the missing marijuana must have been eaten by mice. Experts, however, sent that theory up in smoke, saying rodents wouldn’t confuse marijuana with food. In the off-chance they did, the mice likely would have died from the dope, and investigators would have found the cannabis-laden corpses, according to USA Today. “Buenos Aires University experts have explained that mice wouldn’t mistake the drug for food, and that if a large group of mice had eaten it, a lot of corpses would have been found in the warehouse,” a spokesperson for the judge said. All eight officers were dismissed from their jobs, and will testify in front of the judge on May 4. The judge will then decide if the drugs are missing due to “expedience or negligence,” according to the BBC.

GALACTIC QUARTET The way invisible dark matter warped the light from distant galaxies, shown here as the swirl of material surrounding four giant galaxies in cluster Abell 3827 (seen in this Hubble Space Telescope photograph), suggested that dark matter can separate from stars when galaxies collide. But new data refute that idea. Dark matter is still the shyest particle in physics. New observations show that dark matter in galaxy cluster Abell 3827 stubbornly ignores all other kinds of matter — including itself, astronomers reported April 6 at the European Week of Astronomy and Space Science in Liverpool, England. The research, also posted online at arXiv.org, negates an earlier finding that stars were separated from their dark matter in Abell 3827, a cluster including four colliding galaxies about 1.3 billion light-years from Earth (SN: 5/16/15, p. 10). At the time, cosmologist Richard Massey and colleagues suggested the dark matter may have lagged behind its galaxy because it was interacting with another clump of dark matter — something dark matter is not supposed to do, according to standard theory. Dark matter, which makes up most of the mass of the universe, is only known to interact with ordinary, visible matter via gravity. But more recent observations made with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array in Chile show that the dark matter was actually behaving exactly as expected. “We looked for longer and found the dark matter was hiding just where it ought to be,” says Massey, of Durham University in England. “It’s a sort of eating humble pie on some level.” It’s still possible that other galaxy clusters will reveal lagging clouds of dark matter, Massey says. His team has designed a balloon-borne telescope called SuperBIT, which they hope to use to check hundreds of galaxy clusters for misbehaving dark matter. “We just know embarrassingly little about it,” says Massey. “We keep trying to take a step forward, and find ourselves going back to the beginning.” LOOK AGAIN Observing the same galaxies in longer infrared and millimeter wavelengths with the Atacama Large Millimeter Array observatory revealed that dark matter (highlighted in red contour lines) sticks with stars in a galactic smashup.

Keep your eyes peeled. On Monday, GOG will discount the most wishlisted games on its site, making them "super cheap" for a limited time. It hasn't said just how big the discounts will be, but it's still worth keeping an eye on, and if you want to influence the outcome then start cramming your wishlist full of the games you want. The sales site also said it will give some free games away. It's not clear whether it will simply be giving some of the most wishlisted games away, as it did in February, or gifting some users games that they have on their wishlists. But it's another reason to start clicking on that orange heart. As a perennial wishlister—I import my GOG and Steam lists into IsThereAnyDeal to keep track of prices—I might well jump in to see if there's any games that I've missed. I could be wrong, but I'd imagine the most wishlisted games will echo the best-selling games on the platform, which you can browse here. Expect The Witcher games for cheap.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Turkish counterpart, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, spoke on the phone following the strikes launched by the US, the UK and France against targets in Syria. Putin reiterated his statement that attacking Syria without a UN Security Council mandate was a violation of international law on the part of the Western powers, a statement on the Russian presidency website says. "The Russian and Turkish sides are assuming that in light of what happened, it is required to boost two-way cooperation, aiming for real advancement of political settlement in Syria," the Kremlin said. Earlier, however, Erdogan praised the Western attack as an "appropriate" message to the Syrian government.

Nobody knows when "The Big One" is going to hit California, but here's how experts think it will play out when it does... California is the land of beaches, mountains, and all the legal marijuana you can stomach. It’s also, inconveniently, a dangerous minefield riddled with nasty fault lines that rupture without much warning, generating massive earthquakes that can level buildings, pulverize roads, and kill lots of people in the span of seconds. The San Andreas is the most notorious of these faults. It runs roughly 800 miles long and produces quakes so catastrophic that there’s a 2015 action movie about it starring The Rock. The southern section of the fault generates earthquakes every 150 years on average, and considering some parts of it haven’t ruptured in more than 200 years, Southern California is overdue for a major shaking, otherwise known as “the Big One.” “There is no fault that is more likely to break [in California] than the San Andreas Fault,” says Jonathan P. Stewart, professor and chair of UCLA’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department and an expert in earthquakes. “Small local earthquakes—the Northridge earthquake, the San Fernando earthquake—they can kill people in the dozens, they can have freeways coming down, they can affect dams, and all of that is bad,” he says. “But it doesn’t really pose an existential threat to our economy, our ability to live here.” A large earthquake on the San Andreas Fault, on the other hand, he says, could create a devastating threat to humanity, infrastructure, and the economy, with implications that extend nationally and even globally. Scientists don’t know exactly where the Big One will hit or how large it will be when it does, but they do have some ideas: One of the most likely scenarios, according to a 2008 federal study, is a 7.8 magnitude earthquake starting at the Salton Sea and running up through Lake Hughes, on a 200 mile long section of the fault that, in parts, hasn’t ruptured since 1680—almost two centuries before California became part of the United States and long before it had any major infrastructure. The largest possible earthquake that can strike throughout most of the San Andreas is an 8.4 magnitude, according to Southern California Earthquake Center spokesperson Mark Benthien, who says the bigger the earthquake, the lower the probability of it striking. While the impact depends on a range of unknowable factors, here’s what experts say might happen in the moments, hours, and days immediately after the big one rattles California. During the Quake Buildings Crumble and People Die All earthquakes produce high frequency motions that have the potential to badly damage nearby structures, but “earthquakes of different magnitudes produce motions that are damaging to different types of structures,” says Stewart. “When we design tall buildings in downtown LA, we’re definitely thinking about the San Andreas fault. But for more typical structures, say a two-story apartment building, a house, the critical earthquake […] is going to be the smaller faults that are nearby.” Unreinforced structures—typically made of bricks, cinderblocks, or adobe—unsurprisingly fare the worst. California banned construction of these buildings in 1933, but plenty of them still exist and would not fare well in a major earthquake. Buildings with wooden frames are a lot better off because the wood can withstand shaking, but not all of them are created equal: Apartments and condos with parking tucked underneath tend to collapse because they don’t have enough structural support. Steel towers, although they’re typically pretty sturdy, aren’t immune to destruction: the federal report predicts that five steel high-rises will collapse and 10 others will be red-tagged, or unsafe to enter, after the big one hits. “Residential structures tend to be better than our business structures,” says Benthien. “A lot of our office buildings were built in the late ‘60s, early ‘70s, and are quite vulnerable, much more so than our wood frame residential structures.” For that reason, he says, earthquakes that strike at night tend to have fewer fatalities than those that hit during the day. The death toll probably won’t be as bad as movies like San Andreas—which Benthien calls “Hollywood fantasy”—make it out to be. Scientists predict that a magnitude 7.8 earthquake along the southern San Andreas would likely kill about 2,000 people—or less than .1 percent of Southern California’s population of more than 22 million. Luckily, the San Andreas fault is far enough inland that its rupture wouldn’t disrupt the ocean floor and cause a tsunami, according to Benthien. He says the biggest threat of a tsunami comes from smaller faults off the coast, particularly in far northern California, where the Cascadia subduction zone begins in Cape Mendocino and stretches about 500 miles north to Vancouver. Power Lines Collapse “The first thing [to fail] is usually electricity. It’s usually almost instantaneous,” says Brad Aagaard, a research geophysicist at the United States Geological Survey’s Earthquake Science Center. It doesn’t take an enormous earthquake for that to happen: A magnitude 6 would do the trick, Aagaard says. The degree of damage depends on how many electric power transmission lines intersect with the part of the fault that ruptures. The southernmost section of the San Andreas fault, for example, crosses more than 140 different transmission lines, according to the 2008 analysis. “There’s a lot of electricity lines crossing. If it’s crossing from one tower to the next tower and the towers don’t collapse, you can have the fault moving underneath and it’s probably alright,” says Stewart. “Of course, if the towers do collapse, then you’re going to have some issues.” Those issues might include wildfires, which could erupt as a result of damage to the power lines. (Because most major transmission towers are in remote areas, they wouldn’t pose a huge risk of harm to people if they fell down, says Stewart.) A suggestion: Stock up on flashlights, keep your phone and laptop charged, and hoard some extra batteries, because you may be forced to reenact pioneer days if the power lines are downed. Stuffing a wad of cash under your mattress could be a good idea, too, since banks, ATMs, and credit cards might not work for a couple of days. Oil and Gas Pipelines Rupture If you think dealing with a dead iPhone and navigating your apartment—which may or may not still be standing—by candlelight is rough, wait until high-pressure gas lines rupture. When they break, they leak gas into the air, which can potentially ignite and cause explosions. The myriad natural gas and petroleum pipelines running through the Cajon Pass, a mountain pass between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, are particularly vulnerable to damage, says Benthien. The area not only lies on top of the San Andreas Fault, but it was actually formed by previous fractures in it. Similar to power lines, the extent of the damage would depend on how many major gas and oil lines cross the fault when it moves. For some perspective: The southernmost section of the San Andreas fault alone intersects with 39 pipelines. One thing you can do to prepare, says Stewart, is to make sure you have access to an automatic shut off valve on the gas line running through your home. If you live in an apartment, ask your landlord if you have access to it. Water and Sewer Pipes Fail The Los Angeles Aqueduct, the Colorado Aqueduct, and the California Aqueduct are just some of the major networks that pump water into Southern California from the northern and eastern parts of the state. They also all cross the San Andreas Fault and could be catastrophically ruptured in a large-scale earthquake. “We would have to make do without all that imported water,” says Stewart. “It would be a race against the clock. Can we get these aqueducts repaired in time before we run out of our local water supply?” Even if the aqueducts don’t break, a major earthquake would probably damage the water pipes, which presents a whole other set of problems: “How do you actually get the water from where it’s stored once it comes out of these aqueducts to people’s houses and businesses?” says Stewart. “This is going to be one of the biggest impacts actually. You’re going to turn on your tap, you’re not going to be able to use it.” Even if the water does come out of the tap, Stewart warns, it could potentially be contaminated from broken sewer lines, so the utility companies would have to issue warnings not to use it. Part of the problem is that “many of the pipelines of Southern California have been in the ground for [up to] 100 years, and so they’re vulnerable, they’re breaking,” says Benthien. “You hear about water main breaks, you see it on the news. Those happen even when there’s not rumbling and shaking.” One piece of expert advice: Keep at least a two-week supply of water in your house so you won’t have to fight your neighbors over bottled water when the shit hits the fan. Immediate Aftermath of the Quake Communication Breaks Down Living without Internet, phone service, and social media sounds anxiety-inducing enough as it is, but it could be a scary reality after the big one hits. “For many people, if they can’t go on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram, it may be more troublesome than if they don’t have water,” says Benthien. He’s thinking about instances where people might get trapped under rubble or separated from their friends and family and don’t have phone service or Internet to call for help or ask for resources. It may sound counterintuitive, but if you do have cell service immediately after an earthquake, Benthien warns, don’t use it to make a phone call. He recommends sending a text instead, which uses up a fraction of the bandwidth on the cell network. “The phone system is not designed for everybody to be able to pick up their phone and make calls at the same time,” he says. That can lead to outages. If you really have to make a call, dial someone out of state and let them know you’re okay (or not) so you’re not jamming up the local phone lines. Longterm Effects Businesses Shut Down and the Economy Tanks California boasts one of the largest economies in the world—but that may not be the case after the big one hits. Major transportation networks like railroads and highways could be shut down for days, weeks, or even months. Maybe the most detrimental shutdown would be the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, which handle about a quarter of all cargo entering the US. “The whole country is going to be impacted,” says Benthien, who adds that a lot of major retailers stock their stores around the country with inventory that arrives on ships docked at these major West Coast ports. Because most of the inventory is based on demand, if these ports closed, even for a couple of days, plenty of big box stores like Target and Walmart could have empty shelves for a while, even in areas that weren’t hit by an earthquake. (Consider that further motivation to stock up on water and other essentials now.) “If you can’t unload the ships and get the stuff off the ships, then it won’t go through the stores,” says Benthien. Not only that, but plenty of people could be out of work because their companies are forced to shut down, at least temporarily, due to power and water outages or building damage. “All these places that need water to do their business, they can no longer operate, they can no longer pay their employees,” Benthien says. Even someone whose employer isn’t impacted might not be able to get to work anyway: The highway they use to get to work might be fractured, their home could be uninhabitable or need major repairs, or worse, they might need time to search for family members. The estimated total financial cost of the big one in California? About $200 billion. That’s according to researchers who compiled the 2008 federal analysis, so the number is likely even higher now. They took into account potential devastation in four major categories: damage to buildings, non-structural damages, destruction of lifelines and infrastructure, and losses due to fires. The estimated total impact of just building damage is $33 billion, not counting the costs following a potential quake-induced fire. It’s a hefty price tag, especially considering that most Californians don’t have earthquake insurance, which is rarely included in homeowners or renters’ insurance. Just over 14 percent of homeowners and 5 percent of renters with residential insurance have an earthquake policy, which typically covers damage to belongings and personal property like furniture and the cost of relocating to either new or temporary housing, according to 2016 data from the California Earthquake Authority. (The state agency, which supplies most of the state’s earthquake insurance, doesn’t keep statistics on how many Californians don’t have residential insurance.) A California law passed in 1971, a year after the San Fernando Earthquake destroyed thousands of homes and businesses, requires the state to establish earthquake fault zones and distribute maps of all active faults to the cities, counties, and state agencies that control construction projects around them. Those agencies are then required to conduct a geological investigation before approving any new construction; if they find an active fault line, they have to require that developers set buildings at least 50 feet away from it. These rules are obviously intended to prevent construction on active fault lines, but they’re not always enforced: a 2013 LA Timesinvestigation that found that officials in LA approved more than a dozen construction projects on or near fault lines because they said the state hadn’t yet designated the areas as earthquake fault zones. A law passed in Los Angeles in 2015 attempts to remedy some of these oversights by requiring the owners of particularly vulnerable buildings to either prove their properties have been retrofitted or get permits to do so. The city allows property owners to take years, and depending on the building type, decades to complete the retrofitting process, however. The best thing you can do in the meantime is prepare for the worst: Buy a first aid kit, get trained in emergency medical response—FEMA offers a program—and keep tabs on less-able-bodied friends and neighbors who may need your help after the ground stops shaking. “It’s what you do before the earthquake that will determine your quality of life afterwards,” says Benthien. “That’s really what it comes down to.”