title: Origins of the Crash: The Great Bubble and Its Undoing
author:  Roger Lowenstein 
description: "The perfect epitaph to an era of monumental avarice and folly on Wall Street. This is financial history at its best."&#160;&mdash;<b>Ron Chernow</b>
zlib_text: Destroyer 105: Scorched Earth ����������������������
  
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  Destroyer 105: Scorched Earth
  
  By Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir
  
  Chapter 1
  
  In the beginning, no one expected the BioBubble to burst.
  
  Certainly not the national press, which hailed it as being in the vanguard of
  man's exploration of space-even though it wasn't part of the space program.
  
  When the space program angle became old news, the press hailed it as the
  perfect tool for solving the global eco-crisis of the moment.
  
  The eco-crisis of the moment changed from moment to moment, of course.
  Sometimes it changed from newspaper to news outlet.
  
  On the same day, at opposite ends of the continental United States, the
  BioBubble-a three-acre honeycomb terrarium of thermopane glass supported by
  white-painted steel trusswork-was simultaneously hailed as the solution to the
  global-warming crisis and the jumping-off point for man's eventual relocation
  to a less polluted planet.
  
  Thus claimed the New York Times and t