WIRED attended a biohacking conference filled with unorthodox and often unproven anti-aging treatments. Adherents revealed how the Make America Healthy Again movement has given them a renewed fervor.

“The best way to predict the future is to invent it,” the famed computer scientist Alan Kay once said. Uttered more out of exasperation than as inspiration, his remark has nevertheless attained gospel-like status among Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, in particular a handful of tech billionaires who fancy themselves the chief architects of humanity’s future.  Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others may have slightly different goals and ambitions in the near term, but their grand visions for the next decade and beyond are remarkably similar. Framed less as technological objectives and more as existential imperatives, they include aligning AI with the interests of humanity; creating an artificial superintelligence that will solve all the world’s most pressing problems; merging with that superintelligence to achieve immortality (or something close to it); establishing a permanent, self-­sustaining colony on Mars; and, ultimately, spreading out across the cosmos. While there’s a sprawling patchwork of ideas and philosophies powering these visions, three features play a central role, says Adam Becker, a science writer and astrophysicist: an unshakable certainty that technology can solve any problem, a belief in the necessity of perpetual growth, and a quasi-religious obsession with transcending our physical and biological limits. In his timely new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, Becker calls this triumvirate of beliefs the “ideology of technological salvation” and warns that tech titans are using it to steer humanity in a dangerous direction.  “In most of these isms you’ll find the idea of escape and transcendence, as well as the promise of an amazing future, full of unimaginable wonders—so long as we don’t get in the way of technological progress.” “The credence that tech billionaires give to these specific science-fictional futures validates their pursuit of more—to portray the growth of their businesses as a moral imperative, to reduce the complex problems of the world to simple questions of technology, [and] to justify nearly any action they might want to take,” he writes. Becker argues that the only way to break free of these visions is to see them for what they are: a convenient excuse to continue destroying the environment, skirt regulations, amass more power and control, and dismiss the very real problems of today to focus on the imagined ones of tomorrow.  A lot of critics, academics, and journalists have tried to define or distill the Silicon Valley ethos over the years. There was the “Californian Ideology” in the mid-’90s, the “Move fast and break things” era of the early 2000s, and more recently the “Libertarianism for me, feudalism for thee”  or “techno-­authoritarian” views. How do you see the “ideology of technological salvation” fitting in?  I’d say it’s very much of a piece with those earlier attempts to describe the Silicon Valley mindset. I mean, you can draw a pretty straight line from Max More’s principles of transhumanism in the ’90s to the Californian Ideology [a mashup of countercultural, libertarian, and neoliberal values] and through to what I call the ideology of technological salvation. The fact is, many of the ideas that define or animate Silicon Valley thinking have never been much of a ­mystery—libertarianism, an antipathy toward the government and regulation, the boundless faith in technology, the obsession with optimization.  What can be difficult is to parse where all these ideas come from and how they fit together—or if they fit together at all. I came up with the ideology of technological salvation as a way to name and give shape to a group of interrelated concepts and philosophies that can seem sprawling and ill-defined at first, but that actually sit at the center of a worldview shared by venture capitalists, executives, and other thought leaders in the tech industry.  Readers will likely be familiar with the tech billionaires featured in your book and at least some of their ambitions. I’m guessing they’ll be less familiar with the various “isms” that you argue have influenced or guided their thinking. Effective altruism, rationalism, long­termism, extropianism, effective accelerationism, futurism, singularitarianism, ­transhumanism—there are a lot of them. Is there something that they all share?  They’re definitely connected. In a sense, you could say they’re all versions or instantiations of the ideology of technological salvation, but there are also some very deep historical connections between the people in these groups and their aims and beliefs. The Extropians in the late ’80s believed in self-­transformation through technology and freedom from limitations of any kind—ideas that Ray Kurzweil eventually helped popularize and legitimize for a larger audience with the Singularity.  In most of these isms you’ll find the idea of escape and transcendence, as well as the promise of an amazing future, full of unimaginable wonders—so long as we don’t get in the way of technological progress. I should say that AI researcher Timnit Gebru and philosopher Émile Torres have also done a lot of great work linking these ideologies to one another and showing how they all have ties to racism, misogyny, and eugenics. You argue that the Singularity is the purest expression of the ideology of technological salvation. How so? Well, for one thing, it’s just this very simple, straightforward idea—the Singularity is coming and will occur when we merge our brains with the cloud and expand our intelligence a millionfold. This will then deepen our awareness and consciousness and everything will be amazing. In many ways, it’s a fantastical vision of a perfect technological utopia. We’re all going to live as long as we want in an eternal paradise, watched over by machines of loving grace, and everything will just get exponentially better forever. The end. The other isms I talk about in the book have a little more … heft isn’t the right word—they just have more stuff going on. There’s more to them, right? The rationalists and the effective altruists and the longtermists—they think that something like a singularity will happen, or could happen, but that there’s this really big danger between where we are now and that potential event. We have to address the fact that an all-powerful AI might destroy humanity—the so-called alignment problem—before any singularity can happen.  Then you’ve got the effective accelerationists, who are more like Kurzweil, but they’ve got more of a tech-bro spin on things. They’ve taken some of the older transhumanist ideas from the Singularity and updated them for startup culture. Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” [from 2023] is a good example. You could argue that all of these other philosophies that have gained purchase in Silicon Valley are just twists on Kurzweil’s Singularity, each one building on top of the core ideas of transcendence, techno­-optimism, and exponential growth.  Early on in the book you take aim at that idea of exponential growth—specifically, Kurzweil’s “Law of Accelerating Returns.” Could you explain what that is and why you think it’s flawed? Kurzweil thinks there’s this immutable “Law of Accelerating Returns” at work in the affairs of the universe, especially when it comes to technology. It’s the idea that technological progress isn’t linear but exponential. Advancements in one technology fuel even more rapid advancements in the future, which in turn lead to greater complexity and greater technological power, and on and on. This is just a mistake. Kurzweil uses the Law of Accelerating Returns to explain why the Singularity is inevitable, but to be clear, he’s far from the only one who believes in this so-called law. “I really believe that when you get as rich as some of these guys are, you can just do things that seem like thinking and no one is really going to correct you or tell you things you don’t want to hear.” My sense is that it’s an idea that comes from staring at Moore’s Law for too long. Moore’s Law is of course the famous prediction that the number of transistors on a chip will double roughly every two years, with a minimal increase in cost. Now, that has in fact happened for the last 50 years or so, but not because of some fundamental law in the universe. It’s because the tech industry made a choice and some very sizable investments to make it happen. Moore’s Law was ultimately this really interesting observation or projection of a historical trend, but even Gordon Moore [who first articulated it] knew that it wouldn’t and couldn’t last forever. In fact, some think it’s already over.  These ideologies take inspiration from some pretty unsavory characters. Transhumanism, you say, was first popularized by the eugenicist Julian Huxley in a speech in 1951. Marc Andreessen’s “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” name-checks the noted fascist Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and his futurist manifesto. Did you get the sense while researching the book that the tech titans who champion these ideas understand their dangerous origins? You’re assuming in the framing of that question that there’s any rigorous thought going on here at all. As I say in the book, Andreessen’s manifesto runs almost entirely on vibes, not logic. I think someone may have told him about the futurist manifesto at some point, and he just sort of liked the general vibe, which is why he paraphrases a part of it. Maybe he learned something about Marinetti and forgot it. Maybe he didn’t care.  I really believe that when you get as rich as some of these guys are, you can just do things that seem like thinking and no one is really going to correct you or tell you things you don’t want to hear. For many of these billionaires, the vibes of fascism, authoritarianism, and colonialism are attractive because they’re fundamentally about creating a fantasy of control.  You argue that these visions of the future are being used to hasten environmental destruction, increase authoritarianism, and exacerbate inequalities. You also admit that they appeal to lots of people who aren’t billionaires. Why do you think that is?  I think a lot of us are also attracted to these ideas for the same reasons the tech billionaires are—they offer this fantasy of knowing what the future holds, of transcending death, and a sense that someone or something out there is in control. It’s hard to overstate how comforting a simple, coherent narrative can be in an increasingly complex and fast-moving world. This is of course what religion offers for many of us, and I don’t think it’s an accident that a sizable number of people in the rationalist and effective altruist communities are actually ex-evangelicals. More than any one specific technology, it seems like the most consequential thing these billionaires have invented is a sense of inevitability—that their visions for the future are somehow predestined. How does one fight against that? It’s a difficult question. For me, the answer was to write this book. I guess I’d also say this: Silicon Valley enjoyed well over a decade with little to no pushback on anything. That’s definitely a big part of how we ended up in this mess. There was no regulation, very little critical coverage in the press, and a lot of self-mythologizing going on. Things have started to change, especially as the social and environmental damage that tech companies and industry leaders have helped facilitate has become more clear. That understanding is an essential part of deflating the power of these tech billionaires and breaking free of their visions. When we understand that these dreams of the future are actually nightmares for the rest of us, I think you’ll see that senseof inevitability vanish pretty fast.  This interview was edited for length and clarity. Bryan Gardiner is a writer based in Oakland, California. 

This is today’s edition of The Download, our weekday newsletter that provides a daily dose of what’s going on in the world of technology.Tech billionaires are making a risky bet with humanity’s future Sam Altman, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, and others may have slightly different goals, but their grand visions for the next decade and beyond are remarkably similar.They include aligning AI with the interests of humanity; creating an artificial superintelligence that will solve all the world’s most pressing problems; merging with that superintelligence to achieve immortality (or something close to it); establishing a permanent, self-­sustaining colony on Mars; and, ultimately, spreading out across the cosmos.Three features play a central role with powering these visions, says Adam Becker, a science writer and astrophysicist: an unshakable certainty that technology can solve any problem, a belief in the necessity of perpetual growth, and a quasi-religious obsession with transcending our physical and biological limits.In his timely new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley’s Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, Becker reveals how these fantastical visions conceal a darker agenda. Read the full story. —Bryan Gardiner This story is from the next print edition of MIT Technology Review, which explores power—who has it, and who wants it. It’s set to go live on Wednesday June 25, so subscribe & save 25% to read it and get a copy of the issue when it lands! Here’s what food and drug regulation might look like under the Trump administration Earlier this week, two new leaders of the US Food and Drug Administration published a list of priorities for the agency. Both Marty Makary and Vinay Prasad are controversial figures in the science community. They were generally highly respected academics until the covid pandemic, when their contrarian opinions on masking, vaccines, and lockdowns turned many of their colleagues off them. Given all this, along with recent mass firings of FDA employees, lots of people were pretty anxious to see what this list might include—and what we might expect the future of food and drug regulation in the US to look like. So let’s dive into the pair’s plans for new investigations, speedy approvals, and the “unleashing” of AI. —Jessica Hamzelou This article first appeared in The Checkup, MIT Technology Review’s weekly biotech newsletter. To receive it in your inbox every Thursday, and read articles like this first, sign up here. The must-reads I’ve combed the internet to find you today’s most fun/important/scary/fascinating stories about technology. 1 NASA is investigating leaks on the ISSIt’s postponed launching private astronauts to the station while it evaluates. (WP $)+ Its core component has been springing small air leaks for months. (Reuters)+ Meanwhile, this Chinese probe is en route to a near-Earth asteroid. (Wired $) 2 Undocumented migrants are using social media to warn of ICE raidsThe DIY networks are anonymously reporting police presences across LA. (Wired $)+ Platforms’ relationships with protest activism has changed drastically. (NY Mag $)  3 Google’s AI Overviews is hallucinating about the fatal Air India crashIt incorrectly stated that it involved an Airbus plane, not a Boeing 787. (Ars Technica)+ Why Google’s AI Overviews gets things wrong. (MIT Technology Review) 4 Chinese engineers are sneaking suitcases of hard drives into the countryTo covertly train advanced AI models. (WSJ $)+ The US is cracking down on Huawei’s ability to produce chips. (Bloomberg $)+ What the US-China AI race overlooks. (Rest of World) 5 The National Hurricane Center is joining forces with DeepMindIt’s the first time the center has used AI to predict nature’s worst storms. (NYT $)+ Here’s what we know about hurricanes and climate change. (MIT Technology Review) 6 OpenAI is working on a product with toymaker MattelAI-powered Barbies?! (FT $)+ Nothing is safe from the creep of AI, not even playtime. (LA Times $)+ OpenAI has ambitions to reach billions of users. (Bloomberg $) 7 Chatbots posing as licensed therapists may be breaking the lawDigital rights organizations have filed a complaint to the FTC. (404 Media)+ How do you teach an AI model to give therapy? (MIT Technology Review) 8 Major companies are abandoning their climate commitmentsBut some experts argue this may not be entirely bad. (Bloomberg $)+ Google, Amazon and the problem with Big Tech’s climate claims. (MIT Technology Review) 9 Vibe coding is shaking up software engineeringEven though AI-generated code is inherently unreliable. (Wired $)+ What is vibe coding, exactly? (MIT Technology Review) 10 TikTok really loves hotdogs And who can blame it? (Insider $) Quote of the day “It kind of jams two years of work into two months.” —Andrew Butcher, president of the Maine Connectivity Authority, tells Ars Technica why it’s so difficult to meet the Trump administration’s new plans to increase broadband access in certain states. One more thing The surprising barrier that keeps us from building the housing we needIt’s a tough time to try and buy a home in America. From the beginning of the pandemic to early 2024, US home prices rose by 47%. In large swaths of the country, buying a home is no longer a possibility even for those with middle-class incomes. For many, that marks the end of an American dream built around owning a house. Over the same time, rents have gone up 26%.The reason for the current rise in the cost of housing is clear to most economists: a lack of supply. Simply put, we don’t build enough houses and apartments, and we haven’t for years. But the reality is that even if we ease the endless permitting delays and begin cutting red tape, we will still be faced with a distressing fact: The construction industry is not very efficient when it comes to building stuff. Read the full story. —David Rotman We can still have nice things A place for comfort, fun and distraction to brighten up your day. (Got any ideas? Drop me a line or skeet ’em at me.) + If you’re one of the unlucky people who has triskaidekaphobia, look away now.+ 15-year old Nicholas is preparing to head from his home in the UK to Japan to become a professional sumo wrestler.+ Earlier this week, London played host to 20,000 women in bald caps. But why? ($)+ Why do dads watch TV standing up? I need to know.

June 3, 20255 min readAre We Ready for Death in Space?NASA has quietly taken steps to prepare for a death in space. We need to ask how nations will deal with this inevitability now, as more people start traveling off the planetBy Peter Cummings edited by Lee Billings SciePro/Science Photo Library/Getty ImagesIn 2012 NASA stealthily slipped a morgue into orbit.No press release. No fanfare. Just a sealed, soft-sided pouch tucked in a cargo shipment to the International Space Station (ISS) alongside freeze-dried meals and scientific gear. Officially, it was called the Human Remains Containment Unit (HRCU). To the untrained eye it looked like a shipping bag for frozen cargo. But to NASA it marked something far more sobering: a major advance in preparing for death beyond Earth.As a kid, I obsessed over how astronauts went to the bathroom in zero gravity. Now, decades later, as a forensic pathologist and a perennial applicant to NASA’s astronaut corps, I find myself fixated on a darker, more haunting question:On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.What would happen if an astronaut died out there? Would they be brought home, or would they be left behind? If they expired on some other world, would that be their final resting place? If they passed away on a spacecraft or space station, would their remains be cast off into orbit—or sent on an escape-velocity voyage to the interstellar void?NASA, it turns out, has begun working out most of these answers. And none too soon. Because the question itself is no longer if someone will die in space—but when.A Graying CorpsNo astronaut has ever died of natural causes off-world. In 1971 the three-man crew of the Soviet Soyuz 11 mission asphyxiated in space when their spacecraft depressurized shortly before its automated atmospheric reentry—but their deaths were only discovered once the spacecraft landed on Earth. Similarly, every U.S. spaceflight fatality to date has occurred within Earth’s atmosphere—under gravity, oxygen and a clear national jurisdiction. That matters, because it means every spaceflight mortality has played out in familiar territory.But planned missions are getting longer, with destinations beyond low-Earth orbit. And NASA’s astronaut corps is getting older. The average age now hovers around 50—an age bracket where natural death becomes statistically relevant, even for clean-living fitness buffs. Death in space is no longer a thought experiment. It’s a probability curve—and NASA knows it.In response, the agency is making subtle but decisive moves. The most recent astronaut selection cycle was extended—not only to boost intake but also to attract younger crew members capable of handling future long-duration missions.NASA’s Space MorgueIf someone were to die aboard the ISS today, their body would be placed in the HRCU, which would then be sealed and secured in a nonpressurized area to await eventual return to Earth.The HRCU itself is a modified version of a military-grade body bag designed to store human remains in hazardous environments. It integrates with refrigeration systems already aboard the ISS to slow decomposition and includes odor-control filters and moisture-absorbent linings, as well as reversed zippers for respectful access at the head. There are straps to secure the body in a seat for return, and patches for name tags and national flags.Cadaver tests conducted in 2019 at Sam Houston State University have proved the system durable. Some versions held for over 40 days before decomposition breached the barrier. NASA even drop-tested the bag from 19 feet to simulate a hard landing.But it’s never been used in space. And since no one yet knows how a body decomposes in true microgravity (or, for that matter, on the moon), no one can really say whether the HRCU would preserve tissue well enough for a forensic autopsy.This is a troubling knowledge gap, because in space, a death isn’t just a tragic loss—it’s also a vital data point. Was an astronaut’s demise from a fluke of their physiology, or an unavoidable stroke of cosmic bad luck—or was it instead a consequence of flaws in a space habitat’s myriad systems that might be found and fixed? Future lives may depend on understanding what went wrong, via a proper postmortem investigation.But there’s no medical examiner in orbit. So NASA trains its crews in something called the In-Mission Forensic Sample Collection protocol. The space agency’s astronauts may avoid talking about it, but they all have it memorized: Document everything, ideally with real-time guidance from NASA flight surgeons. Photograph the body. Collect blood and vitreous fluid, as well as hair and tissue samples. Only then can the remains be stowed in the HRCU.NASA has also prepared for death outside the station—on spacewalks, the moon or deep space missions. If a crew member perishes in vacuum but their remains are retrieved, the body is wrapped in a specially designed space shroud.The goal isn’t just a technical matter of preventing contamination. It’s psychological, too, as a way of preserving dignity. Of all the “firsts” any space agency hopes to achieve, the first-ever human corpse drifting into frame on a satellite feed is not among them.If a burial must occur—in lunar regolith or by jettisoning into solar orbit—the body will be dutifully tracked and cataloged, treated forevermore as a hallowed artifact of space history.Such gestures are also of relevance to NASA’s plans for off-world mourning; grief and memorial protocols are now part of official crew training. If a death occurs, surviving astronauts are tasked with holding a simple ceremony to honor the fallen—then to move on with their mission.Uncharted RealmsSo far we’ve only covered the “easy” questions. NASA and others are still grappling with harder ones.Consider the issue of authority over a death and mortal remains. On the ISS, it’s simple: the deceased astronaut’s home country retains jurisdiction. But that clarity fades as destinations grow more distant and the voyages more diverse: What really happens on space-agency missions to the moon, or to Mars? How might rules change for commercial or multinational spaceflights—or, for that matter, the private space stations and interplanetary settlements that are envisioned by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and other tech multibillionaires?NASA and its partners have started drafting frameworks, like the Artemis Accords—agreements signed by more than 50 nations to govern behavior in space. But even those don’t address many intimate details of death.What happens, for instance, if foul play is suspected?The Outer Space Treaty, a legal document drafted in 1967 under the United Nations that is humanity’s foundational set of rules for orbit and beyond, doesn’t say.Of course, not everything can be planned for in advance. And NASA has done an extraordinary job of keeping astronauts in orbit alive. But as more people venture into space, and as the frontier stretches to longer voyages and farther destinations, it becomes a statistical certainty that sooner or later someone won’t come home.When that happens, it won’t just be a tragedy. It will be a test. A test of our systems, our ethics and our ability to adapt to a new dimension of mortality. To some, NASA’s preparations for astronautical death may seem merely morbid, even silly—but that couldn’t be further from the truth.Space won’t care of course, whenever it claims more lives. But we will. And rising to that grim occasion with reverence, rigor and grace will define not just policy out in the great beyond—but what it means to be human there, too.

Version 1.0.0 By Robert Jan van Pelt (Park Books, 2025) The largest artifact in the touring exhibition Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away., currently on display at the ROM in Toronto, is a wooden barracks building. It’s from the Auschwitz-Monowitz camp, a satellite to Auschwitz created to provide slave labour to the IG Farben corporation for the construction of a synthetic rubber factory.  The discovery of a sister building, back in 2012, led exhibition chief curator and architectural historian Robert Jan van Pelt, University Professor at the Waterloo School of Architecture, on a research journey to write a comprehensive history of the barracks—temporary buildings that have not only housed prisoners, but also provided shelter for military servicemen and women, refugees, and natural disaster survivors. “Many people have experienced, for shorter or longer time periods, life in a barrack, and for all of them it represented life on the edge, for better or worse,” writes Van Pelt. Worm’s eye axonometric of Renkioi Hospital Barrack, a prefabricated hospital designed by Ismabard Kingdom Brunel for a site in Turkey, 1857. Van Pelt’s book criss-crosses with ease through architectural history, military history, and the history of medicine—all of which played crucial roles in the evolving development of this seemingly simple building type. The book is arranged in a dozen episodes, with the barrack at the centre of each, serving as an anchor point for unfolding the rich intellectual and historical context shaping the way these structures were developed and deployed. The book is richly illustrated with archival materials—a feat in itself, given that the documentation for temporary buildings, particularly before 1900, is scarce. These drawings, photos, and paintings are supplemented with 20 worm’s eye views of key buildings, carefully composed by a team of Waterloo architecture school students and alumni.  Thomas Thomaszoon, View of the headquarters of the Spanish in the Huis tea Kleef during the siege of Haarlem, 1572-73. Collection of Noord-Hollands Archief, Haarlem; courtesy Robert Jan van Pelt Like many vernacular buildings, temporary structures larger than a tent, designed to house soldiers in the field, have existed at least since Ancient Rome. One of the first visual accounts of barracks came centuries later, in the winter of 1572, when the Spanish laid siege to the Dutch city of Haarlem, and cartographer Thomas Thomaszoon sketched the position of dozens of Spain’s wood-and-straw structures outside the city. The siege was successful, but only a few years later, the Dutch Republic gained the upper hand. As part of the creation of a standing army, they began to develop more precise instructions for the layout of camps, including the construction of temporary barracks. Antoine-François Omet des Foucaux, Barrack constructed in Hendaye, France, 1793. From Jean-Charles Krafft, Plans, coupes et élévations de diverses productions de l’art de la charpente, 1805. Collection of Bilbliothèque Nationale de France, Paris. Courtesy Robert Jan van Pelt The Napoleonic army made use of barracks in both military camps and training camps; by the mid-1800s, the construction of various barrack types was detailed in field construction manuals issued to officers in many European armies. During the Crimean War (1853-56), over 3,500 prefabricated barracks were manufactured in a Gloucester factory, as a solution to the appalling conditions at the front. But when the structures arrived at port, British forces were not able to unload and erect them—the materials for a single building weighed more than two tons, and each would require 60 horses (or 150 men) to transport to camp on the muddy roads.  The US (Union) Army’s Lincoln Hospital, Washington, DC, 1865. Collection of Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Courtesy Robert Jan van Pelt Prefabrication was also used, with somewhat more success, towards the end of the conflict to erect field hospitals designed by British engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel with a priority on cross-ventilation to limit the spread of disease. Low mortality rates from similar structures led to a continued preference for “barrack hospitals” based on groupings of low-slung, well-ventilated pavilions, rather than conceived as single grand structures. The model was further refined with the addition of primitive underfloor heating and ridge ventilation by former surgeon William A. Hammond for the Union Army during the American Civil War (1861-65).  Barrack hospitals were constructed for civilian use, as well. Following the conclusion of the Franco-Prussian war (1870-71), such designs were built to house patients with infectious diseases in Berlin and proposed as a means to bring professional medical care to Germany’s rural areas. A barracks-inspired hospital was built in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in 1889, and continues to be operational.  If the barrack as an accommodation for the sick is a progressive tale, the 19th-century history of the barrack is equally checkered by the building type’s use for prisoner accommodation, including in the penal colonies of Australia and French Guiana. In North America, barracks were used in an internment camp for Native American Dakotas, and Civil War-era Union barracks at Camp Douglas were used to house Confederate prisoners. The oldest preserved barrack in the world may be in Canada, at Grosse Isle national park. Here, barrack-style quarantine sheds were used to detain thousands of Irish immigrant families during the typhoid fever epidemic of 1846-47, and their damp, fetid conditions contributed to many deaths—an episode Van Pelt describes as a “blot on the national consciousness of Canada.” A single Doecker Hut contains an operation room, pharmacy and hospital management office. The prefabricated, portable hospitals were developed in 1885, and used around the world, including in the First World War. In America, they were marketed for managing epidemics in the wake of the 1892 typhus fever outbreak in New York. Courtesy Berlin State Library and Robert Jan van Pelt   At the turn of the 19th century, the prefabricated portable barrack came to the fore with the manufacturing of the Doecker barracks, by Christoph & Unmack, a firm based in Copenhagen and Germany. Developed by a former military officer-turned-tentmaker, the technically sophisticated model used large rectangular frames that could be clipped together, and covered with “felt-cardboard”—dense felt pressed onto canvas and impregnated with linseed oil. The self-supporting structures proved easy to set up, dismount, and transport, making them suitable for both military applications—and, with little modification, for humanitarian aid. The Red Cross deployed Doecker barracks for use as field hospitals in Manchuria and Yokohama during the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05).  The Barrack, 1572-1914 wraps up in in the early 20th century, but with the note that in the ensuing decades until 1945, millions of barracks were produced by many of the world’s major nations—and that most of these were erected in barbed-wire-ringed compounds. “This is the period in which tens if not hundreds of millions of people, many of whom were civilians, were forced to live in barracks, as refugees, as expellees, as civilian internees, as forced laborers, as prisoners or war, as concentration camp prisoners, and as people made homeless by the destruction wrought by war,” writes Van Pelt. Up until 1914, he notes, this building type largely carried a sense of achievement—an image that would change sharply with the Age of the Camps. But although a WWII barrack was responsible for instigating Van Pelt’s initial investigation, that time period will need to await a second volume on this simple building type with a rich, complex, and complicated history.   As appeared in the June 2025 issue of Canadian Architect magazine  The post Book Review: The Barrack, 1572-1914—Chapters in the History of Emergency Architecture appeared first on Canadian Architect.

Given their abundance in American backyards, gardens and highway corridors these days, it may be surprising to learn that white-tailed deer were nearly extinct about a century ago. While they currently number somewhere in the range of 30 million to 35 million, at the turn of the 20th century, there were as few as 300,000 whitetails across the entire continent: just 1% of the current population. This near-disappearance of deer was much discussed at the time. In 1854, Henry David Thoreau had written that no deer had been hunted near Concord, Massachusetts, for a generation. In his famous “Walden,” he reported: “One man still preserves the horns of the last deer that was killed in this vicinity, and another has told me the particulars of the hunt in which his uncle was engaged. The hunters were formerly a numerous and merry crew here.” But what happened to white-tailed deer? What drove them nearly to extinction, and then what brought them back from the brink? As a historical ecologist and environmental archaeologist, I have made it my job to answer these questions. Over the past decade, I’ve studied white-tailed deer bones from archaeological sites across the eastern United States, as well as historical records and ecological data, to help piece together the story of this species. Precolonial rise of deer populations White-tailed deer have been hunted from the earliest migrations of people into North America, more than 15,000 years ago. The species was far from the most important food resource at that time, though. Archaeological evidence suggests that white-tailed deer abundance only began to increase after the extinction of megafauna species like mammoths and mastodons opened up ecological niches for deer to fill. Deer bones become very common in archaeological sites from about 6,000 years ago onward, reflecting the economic and cultural importance of the species for Indigenous peoples. Despite being so frequently hunted, deer populations do not seem to have appreciably declined due to Indigenous hunting prior to AD 1600. Unlike elk or sturgeon, whose numbers were reduced by Indigenous hunters and fishers, white-tailed deer seem to have been resilient to human predation. While archaeologists have found some evidence for human-caused declines in certain parts of North America, other cases are more ambiguous, and deer certainly remained abundant throughout the past several millennia. Human use of fire could partly explain why white-tailed deer may have been resilient to hunting. Indigenous peoples across North America have long used controlled burning to promote ecosystem health, disturbing old vegetation to promote new growth. Deer love this sort of successional vegetation for food and cover, and thus thrive in previously burned habitats. Indigenous people may have therefore facilitated deer population growth, counteracting any harmful hunting pressure. More research is needed, but even though some hunting pressure is evident, the general picture from the precolonial era is that deer seem to have been doing just fine for thousands of years. Ecologists estimate that there were roughly 30 million white-tailed deer in North America on the eve of European colonization—about the same number as today. A 16th-century engraving depicts Indigenous Floridians hunting deer while disguised in deerskins. [Photo: Theodor de Bry/DEA Picture Library/De Agostini/Getty Images] Colonial-era fall of deer numbers To better understand how deer populations changed in the colonial era, I recently analyzed deer bones from two archaeological sites in what is now Connecticut. My analysis suggests that hunting pressure on white-tailed deer increased almost as soon as European colonists arrived. At one site dated to the 11th to 14th centuries (before European colonization) I found that only about 7% to 10% of the deer killed were juveniles. Hunters generally don’t take juvenile deer if they’re frequently encountering adults, since adult deer tend to be larger, offering more meat and bigger hides. Additionally, hunting increases mortality on a deer herd but doesn’t directly affect fertility, so deer populations experiencing hunting pressure end up with juvenile-skewed age structures. For these reasons, this low percentage of juvenile deer prior to European colonization indicates minimal hunting pressure on local herds. However, at a nearby site occupied during the 17th century—just after European colonization—between 22% and 31% of the deer hunted were juveniles, suggesting a substantial increase in hunting pressure. This elevated hunting pressure likely resulted from the transformation of deer into a commodity for the first time. Venison, antlers and deerskins may have long been exchanged within Indigenous trade networks, but things changed drastically in the 17th century. European colonists integrated North America into a trans-Atlantic mercantile capitalist economic system with no precedent in Indigenous society. This applied new pressures to the continent’s natural resources. Deer—particularly their skins—were commodified and sold in markets in the colonies initially and, by the 18th century, in Europe as well. Deer were now being exploited by traders, merchants and manufacturers desiring profit, not simply hunters desiring meat or leather. It was the resulting hunting pressure that drove the species toward its extinction. 20th-century rebound of white-tailed deer Thanks to the rise of the conservation movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, white-tailed deer survived their brush with extinction. Concerned citizens and outdoorsmen feared for the fate of deer and other wildlife, and pushed for new legislative protections. The Lacey Act of 1900, for example, banned interstate transport of poached game and—in combination with state-level protections—helped end commercial deer hunting by effectively de-commodifying the species. Aided by conservation-oriented hunting practices and reintroductions of deer from surviving populations to areas where they had been extirpated, white-tailed deer rebounded. The story of white-tailed deer underscores an important fact: Humans are not inherently damaging to the environment. Hunting from the 17th through 19th centuries threatened the existence of white-tailed deer, but precolonial Indigenous hunting and environmental management appear to have been relatively sustainable, and modern regulatory governance in the 20th century forestalled and reversed their looming extinction. Elic Weitzel, Peter Buck Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Smithsonian Institution This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A Fungal Disease Ravaged North American Bats. Now, Researchers Found a Second Species That Suggests It Could Happen Again White-nose syndrome caused millions of bat deaths, and scientists are sounding the alarm that a second fungus could be disastrous if it reaches American wildlife Lillian Ali - Staff Contributor May 30, 2025 A little brown bat (Myotis lucifugus) is seen with white fuzz on its nose, a characteristic of the deadly white-nose syndrome. Ryan von Linden / New York Department of Environmental Conservation In February 2006, a cave explorer near Albany, New York, took the first photograph of bats with a mysterious white growth on their faces. Later, biologists studying the mammals in caves and mines discovered piles of dead bats in the state—also with the fuzzy white mold. The scientists were floored. For years, no one knew what was causing the mass die-offs from this “white-nose syndrome.” In early 2007, Albany residents called local authorities with reports of typically nocturnal bats flying in broad daylight. “They were just dying on the landscape,” wildlife biologist Alan Hicks told the Associated Press’ Michael Hill in 2008. “They were crashing into snowbanks, crawling into woodpiles and dying.” At last, scientists identified a culprit: The bats had succumbed to an infection caused by the fungus Pseudogymnoascus destructans. Since its initial discovery, white-nose syndrome has killed millions of bats across 40 U.S. states and nine Canadian provinces, making it “the most dramatic wildlife mortality event that’s ever been documented from a pathogen,” DeeAnn Reeder, a disease ecologist at Bucknell University, tells the New York Times’ Carl Zimmer. Now, nearly two decades later, scientists have developed some promising ways to fend off the disease, including an experimental vaccine. But a new study published this week in the journal Nature warns of a newly discovered second species of fungus that, if it reaches North America, could set all that progress back. “We thought we knew our enemy, but we have now discovered it is twice the size and potentially more complex than we had imagined,” lead author Nicola Fischer, a biologist at the University of Greifswald in Germany, says in a statement. Little brown bats are susceptible to white-nose syndrome in North America. Krynak Tim, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service The team analyzed 5,479 fungus samples collected by hundreds of citizen science volunteers across North America, Asia and Europe. They found that white-nose syndrome is caused by two distinct fungal species native to Europe and Asia, with only one species having reached North America so far. If the second species hits the continent, it could look like a “reboot” of the epidemic, Reeder tells the New York Times. Study co-author Sébastien Puechmaille, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Montpellier in France, knew bats in Europe had also been seen with white fuzz on their noses, as he tells the New York Times. But those populations didn’t die off like American bats. Charting the disease across Europe and Asia, he noticed that the fungus was able to live alongside those bats, while it ravaged American ones. In its native range, the fungus grows in the bodies of hibernating bats as their internal temperature drops, then it’s shed in the spring when they awaken. But in American bats, the fungus causes their immune systems to activate and burn fat reserves as they hibernate. The bats then wake up periodically, causing irregular activity and eventual starvation. The researchers suggest the damaging fungal spores were first brought to North America by cavers that traveled from Europe—potentially western Ukraine—to the United States without completely disinfecting their boots or rope. White-nose syndrome poses a threat not just to bats, but to whole ecosystems. Bats are vital parts of many food chains, eating insects and pollinating plants. However, they reproduce fairly slowly, only having one or two pups at a time. Rebuilding a bat population, then, could take decades. And since cave ecosystems are similarly delicate, biologists are wary of trying to kill off the fungus preemptively. “Cave ecosystems are so fragile that if you start pulling on this thread, what else are you going to unravel that may create bigger problems in the cave system?” said University of Wisconsin–Madison wildlife specialist David Drake to the Badger Herald’s Kiran Mistry in December. The discovery also occurs as the original wave of white-nose syndrome continues to spread across North America, having just crossed the Continental Divide in Colorado. Just one spore of the new species could be devastating to American bat colonies. Puechmaille tells the New York Times that policies should be put in place to make sure the second fungus does not spread to more continents, and that cavers should not move equipment between countries and should disinfect it regularly. “This work … powerfully illustrates the profound impact a single translocation event can have on wildlife,” he adds in the statement. Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.

With so many interesting and varied projects being shared with us at any given moment, whether via direct tags or the #MadeWithUnity and #UnityTips hashtags, it can be hard to keep up with all that’s happening within our community. Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. Sit back, relax, and enjoy this roundup of highlights that showcase everything you need to know about what the community got up to last month.Each Monday, we celebrate a milestone hit by one of our creators. From new game launches to awards won, we are constantly in awe at your achievements!Throughout August we celebrated the launch of Lost in Play by Happy Juice Games, the launch of As Dusk Falls by INTERIOR/NIGHT, and Dot's Home by Rise-Home Stories Project for winning big at the Games for Change Awards!Tuesdays are dedicated to #UnityTips on Twitter, and last month Massive Monster, makers of Cult of the Lamb, took over @UnityGames to share tips on how to make your 2D Sprites work harder (1,2,3,4,5).Some other great tips that were shared include Ehsan Ehrari’s quick and easy way to neaten up your workflow if your layers end up getting messy and Sunny Valley Studio’s tip on how to fix holes in your shadows.We share tips on our Twitter channels every Tuesday, so keep tagging us and using the #UnityTips hashtag!We love seeing your works in progress, and each Friday we share the projects that have us searching for a playable demo.August was no exception! Rollerdrome by Roll 7 had us mesmerized with a peek under the hood at the prototype to final game transition, Grimm Tales made a pool of water look so refreshing that all we could think about was going for a swim, and François Martineau sent our imagination racing about what other great foes we’d encounter on our hero’s journey.Each time we browse through the #MadeWithUnity hashtag across social media, we’re always amazed at the creativity and love you bring to your projects. Keep sharing!Last month, the Unity YouTube saw a flurry of activity with two new entries into our Meet the Creator series and a sizzle reel for gamescom 2022.Want more? We have you covered with two amazing YouTube playlists you need to keep your eye on.We love #MadeWithUnityMade with Unity Game TrailersLast month on Twitch we:Sat down with INTERIOR/NIGHT, the team behind As Dusk Falls, to gain insights into their development: unique character pipelines that blend 2D and 3D, the use of Unity Timeline, their companion app, and more.Skated into the Rollerdrome with Roll_7 to look at level design, shaders, physics, and more.Spoke to Thomas Brush, creator of Father, who shared his approach to pitching to publishers, crowdfunding, and demoing.Don’t forget to follow us on Twitch and hit the notification bell so you never miss a stream. If you miss us live no sweat, we upload full streams to our YouTube playlist.We kicked off August with 40% off select Asset Store tools and packages to spark your imagination. Then, Daniel Zeller took over the @AssetStore Twitter to share tips on the Fluffy Grooming Tool, and so did Renaud Forestié from More Mountains, who offered insights on how you can use FEEL to level up your game.For even more on assets, see how the smaller teams behind popular game Sable and indie mobile business Tinytouchtales have used Asset Store resources to speed up game development and save time.Each Friday, we also feature beautiful assets made by our publisher community. Whether it’s something new, or a popular tool that has been around for a while, we love to see the assets in action. Check out some of what was shared in August below!InfiniGRASS by ArtnGameGPU Grass by Dan PhilipsScreen Ripple by Steven GerrardElemental Animations by Kevin IglesiasDo you want to show off your work? Make sure to use the #AssetStore hashtag!And finally, here’s a non-exhaustive list of Made with Unity games released in August. See any on the list that have already become new favorites?Big Ambitions, Hovgaard Games (August 1)The Mortuary Assistant, DarkStone Digital (August 2)Two Point Campus, Two Point Studios (August 9)Stereo Boy, Main Gauche Games (August 9)Farthest Frontier, Crate Entertainment (August 9)Lost in Play, Happy Juice Games (August 10)Arcade Paradise, Nosebleed Interactive (August 11)Cult of the Lamb, Massive Monster (August 11)Rollerdrome, Roll7 (August 16)Cursed to Golf, Chuhai Labs (August 18)Midnight Fight Express, Jacob Dzwinel (August 23)I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, Northway Games (August 25)ORX, johnbell (August 30)Immortality, Sam BarlowHalf Mermaid (August 30)Tinykin, Splashteam (August 30)That’s a wrap for August! Want more as it happens? Don’t forget to follow us on social media.