The end of the world. A cheery thought, I know. Just think about what we will miss out on. No more Made In Chelsea. No more Lewis Hamilton, moodily plodding around his pit-lane in some Asian outpost with an impassive face, changing neither for victory nor for defeat against his fellow drivers. No more charity fundraisers on the streets, covering up what is essentially mugging with a wholly demeaning facade of friendliness and bonhomie. It is almost enough to make getting sucked in to a black hole or disappearing in a vacuum of empty nothingness seem worthwhile.
Scientists have discovered many more ways for the world to end than Hollywood. Alok Jha’s The Doomsday Handbook: 50 Ways to the End of the World, sums them up nicely. There’s your basic, run-of-the-mill bronze medal means of annihilation: a deadly pandemic which wipes out all of humanity, or perhaps an invasive species coming along and sorting us all out, both of which have been dealt with on a considerable scale by the film industry.
Natural disasters also enter the equation. Around every 100,000 years there is a volcanic eruption so strong it blocks out the sun. It may cause the decay of civilisation and extreme food shortages but more importantly, British tourists won’t be able to visit Spanish coastal resorts for sun, sea and walking around in Speedos.
“The next mass extinction-sized asteroid is overdue” states Jha emphatically. With regards to asteroids, many scientists say things like “An asteroid the size of Dundee would kill 200 million people”. What is unfortunate is that they do not say for certain whether the asteroid will actually hit Dundee, so it remains a concern.
More realistic, at least in the near future, is “mutually assured destruction”, which in lay terms meaning bombing the daylights out of each other. If some crazy third-world dictator (or, judging by their policy announcements thus far, any of the current crop of Republican nominees for the White House) gets their hands on the big red nuclear button, it could spell the end.
One scenario would be exceptionally embarrassing should it ever come to pass: the death of the bees. They are responsible for pollinating 90% of farmed plants, so if they go to the wall, we may not be far behind. This would be a rather understated means of destruction. In blockbuster, apocalyptic circumstances, we could be wiped out by a surging tsunami, or an asteroid, maybe a volcano, perhaps nuclear war.
Then again, the bees might finish us off. I can’t see many high-budget movies based on this version of events. What would the blurb of that film look like? “Keanu Reeves stars in an action thriller as Bob Malone, head apiarist of Michigan State University, as he and his trusty sidekick Dave Simmons (Michael Sheen) attempt in vain to stop the end of the world by forcing bees to mate with each other. They are halted in their tracks when The Honey Monster and Winnie the Pooh take half the world’s bees under hostage to satisfy their honey cravings”.
Another option is a nanotech disaster in which “self-replicating nanorobots run amok and turn the world into grey goo”. This must be stopped at any cost because we have seen this happen already on a slightly smaller scale with the music industry. Self-reproductive machines which produce endless plumes of gunge, you say? We already have The X Factor, so please spare us from this particular travesty.
There are a few things we can do little about, astronomically speaking, except meekly stand there, getting destroyed. We could be sucked into a black hole, although letting Richard Branson take over Northern Rock (hence the creation of Virgin Money, which sounds like some illegal Thai brothel) for less money than the government bailed it out for, at least gives us a comparable feeling.
Then again, we could become extinct in a cloud of billowing smoke with a greenish hue. Jha offers “extinction by euphoria” as a plausible ending to homo sapiens, citing drugs that might make us lose control, leading us to slide slowly away from sentience. A man wearing a Rasta headband was asked for his opinion on the matter but he just said “yes brother” and carried on holding a conversation with a doormat.
A geomagnetic reversal, which last occurred 800,000 years ago and occurs when the South and North poles switch inexplicably, could cause multiple issues for our planet’s electronic communications. On the upside, estate agents in the Highlands will be able to market their properties as being “near the south coast”.
I think I’ll go with death by euphoria.
Posted on February 10, 2012
0