Maybe form a polar jet and get the whole solar system (Oort cloud excepted, sorry!) boosted out of the plane of the galaxy.

It is dangerous here! You never know when a supernova or magnetar quake might sterilize the entire solar system. By the time you know it is coming, it is too late to do anything but flee without baggage.

If you boost into empty space (and not say the Magelanic Clouds or something similar) you are loosing access to a lot of usable mass. Maybe better to do a lot of backups and stay in the galaxy ?

Magellanic clouds are even more hazardous than where we are.

If you bring the solar system along, you have that; I assume you accelerate slowly enough to bring along the Kuiper Belt. It will take a long time before you need to start thinking about dismantling Jupiter.

If you solve the p-11B fusion problem (maybe you invent a mirror for x-rays?), you don't need the sun anymore, and may pick up and move operations to another solar system that is already moving off-disc at a good clip. You can bring along rotating cans of bio-stuff if you still use it (or anyway keep it as pets).

The new solar system can have a dead-ish star so the planets are frozen and convenient to mine for volatiles.

Why would the jet and the radiation emitted by such objects be limited to the plane of the galaxy? AFAIK their axis, and thus the direction of emission are randomly distributed.

Doesn't matter in which direction you are positioned, except for distance. Which would mean the really deep space between galaxies. But then you'd have to watch out for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seyfert_galaxy ies, too!

Whose jet's could fry us even more easily, because 'out there', we wouldn't be protected by the pressure of solar/stellar/galactic wind, dust clouds, nebula, which could protect us (if we are lucky).

There is no possibility of ever getting close to a different galaxy. The best you can do is get away from the thick part of the galaxy we are in, and its hazards.

The jet I wrote about is one you induce to emit from a pole of the sun, for thrust. I have no idea what this other jet you mention is.

That was in response to

> ...boosted out of the plane of the galaxy.

Which made no sense to me, because to escape the other, naturally occurring cones of radiation, emitting from different sources, only distance would matter.

Just rising above the thick part of our galaxy wouldn't be enough IMO. Because it doesn't really matter if you are cought in such a cone, from some side, or from above or below.

Because they are oriented randomly, according to the rotational axis of the object in question, which isn't aligned to some 'plane' (AFAIK).

So the only way to be sure would be a much larger distance from the galactic mess, out into real emptiness. Which would open it's own can of worms.

In the plane, there are myriad hazards that, at effectively random times, are right nearby, close enough to sterilize your whole system if they go off then. Most of them -- supernovas and magnetar outbursts -- are not jets. Off-plane, nothing gets close enough to be a hazard except, if you are extra-unlucky, a jet pointed straight at you, which could as well happen were we are now.

Above the plane of the disc, only jet sources near the "top surface" (if there were one) have less dust between them and us than when we were in it. Generally, being farther away is better.

Before you can get far away from your galaxy, you spend a very great deal of time near or in it. Being someplace farther from hazards during that time is better than being nearer to them. The alternative would be to blast toward the rim, staying in the thick part, and spend the whole time getting to the rim at about as much risk as when you started.

> ...if you are extra-unlucky, a jet pointed straight at you, which could as well happen were we are now.

Yes! That's the point :-)

Edit: No matter if jet or not, if something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraluminous_X-ray_source#/me... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma-ray_burst#/media/File:Ga... or https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blazar is pointed at us, we are toast, no matter where we are. Except for distance to origin.

OTOH I don't see the danger from anything 'near' to us, going boom, when one of the poles of the rotational axis, no matter the emission mechanism, is not pointed at us.

The omnidirectional stuff is just too weak. If not, we'd be toast anyways, here, or whereever else.

So I'm still unconvinced by your reasoning, but thanks for trying to explain.

You neglect that supernovas and magnetar events are orders of magnitude more common than these focused jet events. When one of the former occurs nearby, there is no possibility of protection. Objects that threaten it drift in and out of range at random. We have been in range of such an object many times, and just got lucky that they did not go off at those times.

Dust clouds shield you from some kinds of radiation, but make others radically more harmful.

Jet phenomena are commonly long-lived, and avoided by steering away from where they point. You can steer only when you are moving. AGN jets come only from supermassive black holes, and we have only one of those.

The only protection is distance, and distance is achieved by going. Gamma-ray bursts we detect have all been pointed at us, but all from distant galaxies.

Yes, Yes. I'll shut up now.

But not without asking whether that going would be achievable by any handwavy Sci-Fi means in the necessary time frames. And knowing in advance, before any wavefront is hitting us.

/waving hands... ;-)

Moving the solar system would take millions of years, but that is a useful timeframe if you are dodging random threats.

For specific threats, you need to put your valuables in cans and boost those to someplace safer, choosing somewhere with resources to replace what you leave behind.

For that to be doable you probably need to solve p-11B fusion, or something better we don't know anything about yet.