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How would you deal with a deadly crisis? This exhibit aims to test your limits

You’ll lose friends, ostracise your family and learn a lot about yourself at the Science Gallery’s latest installment.

A VIRUS HAS broken out in Ireland. It’s a deadly virus, with a 98.6% fatality rate.

You are one of six people on Ireland’s Catastrophe Citizens’ Assembly. You’re in the situation room and you have to decide: What group of people do you give the vaccine to?

A – Give it to 10,000 randomly selected citizens
B – Give it to 10,000 of the top doctors and vaccine researchers

DSC_0838 The Situation Room in Dublin's Science Gallery. Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie

You vote, the results are read out and you debate (this is the part where you lose all faith in the future of humanity).

The 10,000 randomly selected people should get the vaccine because if the virus spreads, we’ll need to recreate society with an even mix of people. Doctors and researchers should be saved to try to invent more vaccines (we’re assuming that the 10,000 vaccine doses aren’t replicable).

But there aren’t 10,000 top researchers and doctors in Ireland, someone argues. Another says that you’re assuming there’s no international help to invent a vaccine solution.

The Catastrophe Citizen’s Assembly votes for Option A. Next scenario.

DSC_0839 Question 2. Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie

Of the randomly selected 10,000, 250 were citizens in prison, 250 were terminally ill and 2,000 were elderly. We should:
A – Still give it to these people
B – Give it to 2,500 people instead

The idea that the vaccine would be administered randomly was the whole point of option A in the first question – so based on that, you should stick to the logic in the second scenario.

But there are lots of shades of grey in this one – could you offer the vaccine to those who are terminally ill, and if they refuse, give them to some of the children? But if you give it to 2,500 children, how do you select which children get to live?

If we went with Option A, here’s where it would lead:

We fairly distributed the vaccine, but the pandemic is spreading. Masses of people are dying all over Ireland and just a small population has been vaccinated in time. We should:
A – Institute mandatory reproduction programmes, freeze eggs, sperm and embryos of all living capable people – it doesn’t matter if they are incarcerated, ill, young or old.
B – Migrate to mainland Europe.

DSC_0837 The Situation Room in Dublin's Science Gallery. Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie

Again you debate, and you decide. It’s all part of an apocalyptic exhibition to get people thinking about what they would do in an end-of-world scenario.

Science Gallery

The Situation Room is the Science Gallery’s own creation, and asks its visitors to take part in Black-Mirror-like riddles around the survival of mankind.

It’s about weighing up risk, ethics, probability and the likelihood of survival. Sometimes it’s about valuing some lives above others (depending on how you voted above).

The Situation Room also sports a “Cards for Humanity” game, where players are dealt cards with different reactions on them, and have to use the best option for the situation they’re dealt.

One such situation included:

“A large earthquake has cracked the sewer pipes under Dublin. Before thousands of citizens contract cholera from contaminated drinking water, the city needs to _____.”

“Use as few resources as possible”, “invest in cyborg research” and “just don’t stare at the sun” are among the options you can choose.

DSC_0844 Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie Gráinne Ní Aodha via TheJournal.ie

Apart from the Situation Room, there’s an exhibition that looks at different survival kits, another that examines how quickly a virus can spread based on interconnected flights between the major world cities, and another that examines the extinction of creatures and how deeply we care about it (not that much, unsurprisingly).

There’s also a series of portraits in the style of copybook scribbles of how to survive, which includes “How to make a boat out of the remains of a gas station” and “Constructing a mobile border wall” (see also how to filter your water and what insects are safe to eat).

In a darker corner of the room in the upstairs part of the Science Gallery, a wall of paintings examines how humans might communicate danger to one another if languages were erased. It includes a poisonous blue forest, boxes of radioactive waste and spikes jutting out of the ground as possible threats – leaving the viewer to decide how best to warn people in generations to come.

Ahead of the exhibition’s launch last night, director at Science Gallery Lynn Scarff said  that in general, humans are “bad at preparing for dangerous, low-probability events” despite those types of events being featured in programmes and films all the time (The Walking Dead, and The Day After Tomorrow, for example).

Scientists working in fields as disparate as immunology and astronomy are researching topics that could have a very real effect on our ability to prevent, prepare for, or survive a catastrophe.

“We should think carefully about our plentiful cultural conversations about catastrophe, where science and culture are colliding before our eyes, before it’s too late.”

You can visit more on the Science Gallery’s website.

Read: Doomsday in Dublin: The impending apocalypse and what we can do to stop it

Read: ‘What is the thing that will wipe us out?’ The Dublin Science Gallery is addressing some big questions

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13 Comments
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    Mute Paula T Nolan
    Favourite Paula T Nolan
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    May 17th 2021, 3:12 PM

    Lingering resentment due to lingering cost – still paying the Universal Social Charge. Also, it gave employers a new license to shrimp on salaries. I now take home the same after tax pay as in 2008. Resentment? Bloody furious. Especially as most of the boyos who facilitated crash are lining the hulls of their yachts with a greasy coat of paint for summer.

    258
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    Mute Chris Long
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    May 17th 2021, 2:45 PM

    Well if the banks employees says so…. its not like they’re on the payroll or anything!

    148
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    Mute Eoin Jackson
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    May 17th 2021, 3:24 PM

    @Chris Long: you should hear what a lot of people who work in the finance sector have to say about their employers – they are also on the payroll… Being on the payroll doesn’t make anyone give praise to their employers. Not saying the banks are great or anything but the point you are implying is heavily flawed.

    48
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    Mute Adrian™
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    May 17th 2021, 3:03 PM

    Why would anyone say you have trust in a bank? Unless the mean they trust the bank to treat you like dirt and charge you handsomely for the pleasure…

    181
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    Mute Michael Healy
    Favourite Michael Healy
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    May 17th 2021, 3:20 PM

    Banks had to be forced to put in a payment break for loans and mortgages in the first lockdown and wouldn’t even entertain it cone the second one, and yet wonder why people have low trust in banks. Some people think we have the bank debt paid off when in reality we are just adding the covid borrowing to the bank debt and we can forget things like the USC ever going away, meanwhile banks can put out these false mortgage and loan ads where they look great and friendly without realising when u fall on hard times, they turn into pack wolves and can cause people serious health issues trying to repay things back

    133
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    Mute Jack Cass
    Favourite Jack Cass
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    May 17th 2021, 2:31 PM

    Ah! the innocence of youth.

    124
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    Mute Karen Delaney
    Favourite Karen Delaney
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    May 17th 2021, 3:47 PM

    They’ve given us no reason to trust them. While the rest of the population scrimped out a living on much reduced pay, bankers continued with high salaries and bonuses.

    118
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    Mute Quiet Goer
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    May 17th 2021, 2:30 PM

    Pheic the cashless society

    42
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    Mute Corkonian In Dublin
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    May 17th 2021, 7:28 PM

    Asking bank staff about bank culture is like asking Landlords to vote for rent increases. If you want to know the true state of the Irish banking sector look at Ulster Bank and KBC. They are both pulling out. Leaving the country with AIB, BOI and PTSB. All of whom took state bailouts (your and mine pension money) and have yet to repay all of it (nor will they). I would like the EU to insist on the government to all Irish Citizens to open bank accounts in any bank on mainland Europe away from the so called “Pillar Banks”

    32
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    Mute Niall Donnelly
    Favourite Niall Donnelly
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    May 17th 2021, 5:17 PM

    Shower of Bankers!!!

    31
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    Mute Deirdre O'Byrne
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    May 17th 2021, 7:06 PM

    @Niall Donnelly: wunch of bankers.

    22
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    Mute whitewater
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    May 17th 2021, 6:35 PM

    You can always trust the banks to screw you over. The future of banking is the likes of Revolut and N26. Revolut did what the major banks have resisted for years.

    31
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    Mute Mark
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    May 17th 2021, 7:37 PM

    @whitewater: Revolut is not a Bank and your money is NOT covered under the deposit guarantee scheme

    13
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    Mute thesaltyurchin
    Favourite thesaltyurchin
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    May 17th 2021, 6:48 PM

    If they could just do their job properly. These days anyone who can make a decision is surrounded by a jungle of in_ept monkeys, making them nearly impossible to contact, 4 years waiting for BOI to let us draw down the last of our mortgage! Don’t build a house people, not with a bank at least.

    18
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    Mute Bill Spill
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    May 17th 2021, 9:19 PM

    @thesaltyurchin: 4 years waiting on the last drawdown?!?!? There HAS to be more to that story! Genuinely interested if you want to share

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    Mute Dsds
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    May 17th 2021, 7:14 PM

    I would have more trust in a politician than I would in a banker…..

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    Mute Rory J Leonard
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    May 17th 2021, 7:36 PM

    Irish Banking Culture Board!

    Was tried and tested First-World Corporate Governance procedures set down for Plc’s, including for Banks, not sufficient to establish an acceptable culture here, Boss?

    Is Ireland the only country on the planet with such a quaintly named organisation that’s established to assure the public that adherence to procedures manuals, first written hundreds of years ago on proper behaviour in day-to-day banking, is no longer optional for the senior management?

    5
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