A fascinating piece over at the Hoover Institution site lays out the possible robotic future of violence. Not just the violence of nation states against each other, or terrorists against nations, the author, Gabriella Blum, postulates that much of violence and crime — you know, what passes for basic human interaction, will be via robot and drone. Sure, there’ll still be good old-fashioned back-alley bludgeonings and fisticuffs at church, but the advent of amazingly capable and widespread drone technology will make it easier for folks to go all U.S. Air Force Predator drone on each other.

It boils down to this: that spider in your shower might not be a spider — your business partner might be about to wipe you out with a micro death bot.

The Jet Propulsion Lab and NASA pulled it off last night. They successfully landed the MSL Curiosity rover in Gale Crater on Mars. This may seem like no big deal, just another landing. After all, NASA has already put two rovers on Mars previously. If you watched the “Seven Minutes of Terror” video (see embed below if you haven’t watched it yet) that went viral on the net in July, however, you have a sense of what an impressive technical feat this touchdown was. MSL Curiosity is far heavier than any other lander to Mars or anywhere. The skycrane unit that lowered the lander to the surface is something out of Rube Goldberg. Yet it worked flawlessly. In fact, the skycrane worked so well it is being offered a part in the next Michael Bay Transformers movie (okay, not really, but the plucky little hovering robot is a star and wouldn’t be out of place hobnobbing with Holly wood A-listers).

For me one interesting aspect to watching the landing events was that I never turned on the TV. I watched the JPL video feed and watched the UniverseToday event chat and followed the #MSL tweets. It was an all-Internet affair. Wonder how many other folks skipped TV, broadcast and cable, and just went with the net and social media.

Which continent is the harshest, the most difficult on which to survive? Well, there’s one we can definitely strike off the list right away. Unless you’re allergic to whipped cream or cabernet sauvignon, Europe is probably not the roughest place on the planet.

The other continents, however, could all vie for the title: Africa has the Sahara, ‘nuf said. Asia sports the “roof of the world.” The Himalayas will kill you just as soon as spin a prayer wheel. Then there’s the Amazon River of South America. How about freshwater crocodiles, called caiman, 17 feet long? Maybe practice your backstroke another time. And then there’s North America with its tornados, hurricanes, blizzards and fast food heart attacks — all potentially deadly.

Finally Australia. It’s like a whirlpool: somewhat safe around the outside edge, but get sucked into the middle and you’re a goner. Except instead of drowning, you get every last molecule of water baked out of your body. (At least you’d lose weight.)

So, all these continents can make a claim. But ultimately, only one continent can wear the crown: Antarctica — the highest, coldest, windiest badass in continentville. Higher on average than Asia, even with its “roof of the world” gig. Windier than fabled Chicago by the lake or Patagonia with its katabatic winds plunging into steep fjords. And cold, well, Anarctica is a freakin’ 5.8 million-square-mile slab of solid water — the ice is almost three miles thick in places. And even the expanses of the Sahara have some foliage. Not in Anty. A continent twice the size of Australia with not one leafy plant (lichen tries hard, but c’mon). Worst of all, when the sun sets in March, the cold continent staggers through in six months of darkness (alright, glaciers don’t really stagger). With the dark comes the UFC version of Jack Frost. The coldest temp ever recorded on Earth was -128° F at Vostok Station by some shivering Russians who spent the winter longing for balmy Siberia.

This deadly land is the setting for my next thriller, The Atlas Fracture. My protagonist (hell, that sounds vaguely medical and invasive, let’s just say the hero) Perry Helion must deal with not only the cold and the wind, but some twisted bad guys (I know, the best kind) eager to radically change the Earth’s climate with a single insane act.

In Antarctica no one can hear you scream — because only a handful of dedicated scientists would ever consider living there and they’re not venturing out of their huts to investigate a scream or two. “It was probably just the wind,” they say as they relight their pipes.

How about you, would you live in Antarctica for the six-month Antarctic summer? How about the Antarctic winter?

World map by Strebe, Antarctica image by NSF