Hi Don:

Just maybe having the entire crew of the space station being made up of women of child-bearing age 'ain't a bad idea'.... They could re-populate if "push came to shove"...provided they survived a major earth calamity as well...and DNA/cells survive in space (gamma rays) without much damage...

The Art Bell radio show had a caller who read a book about the "end of the earth"...where the people became aware of an inescapable event which would kill everybody. The solution ? They placed basic DNA / cells in capsules down near the deep water trenches where volcanically heated water would create "new life"...so we (humans) would "come back" ...eventually...(if you believe evolution, etc.)

Anyway, a lunar base or Mars mission may be a good idea (if the aliens will let us :-) in view of the new close earth orbit asteroids that they are finding every day. Did you hear about that "near miss" the other day (though it was a "small" asteroid)....

Anyway, biological weapons can be just as devastating. Art Bell had Hal Lindsey on the other night or maybe it was a PBS show... anyway, they conjectured that in Genesis, God wished to keep man away from the "tree of knowledge" because it would eventually lead to nuclear / bio weapons which would lead to (self-)extermination / annihilation....

Yes...a sobering thought.