2006-08-31 - 8:28 a.m.
Death, doom, destruction... it's popular physics time!
Last night, Elizabeth Vargas hosted a special edition of "20/20" that told us about seven ways life on Earth could end "as we know it". (Which is a weasel way of saying "not all of these things will neccessarily wipe out civilization (as we know it, natch) completely", but, hey.) I got a bit confused at the beginning as Elizabeth said "for centuries, the world's religions have been warning us about the end times", because I fully expected her to continue "...and tonight, we can tell you that it's going to happen in the next few months. I'll be doing a series of segments on what to do when the Four Horsemen come riding, and later, "House Doctor" Ron Hazelton will be giving us some practical tips for getting those blood-stained hoofprints out of the carpet." Then Diane Sawyer will come on and introduce the Antichrist, who will be talking about his new book "Seven Plagues of Highly Endangered Nations". I miss "Good Morning America" - I never get to watch it these days as I'm at work by the time it starts. But even without Ron Hazelton, it was an informative and entertaining show clearly aimed at morons who have never thought anything deeper about things like asteroids thumping into the Earth than "I'm not paying $12.95 to see 'Armageddon', even if it does have Steve Buscemi in it". There were the requisite people-who-know-more-than-you, including someone who appeared to be from the Department of Theatrical Physics, but it turned out just to be the crappy fonts they used, and he was just a theoretical physicist, despite his florid turn of phrase and strategic arm-waving. They said they had seven Things That Will Doom Humanity, but when I look at my notes, I see eight: Gamma Radiation Burst from a dying star, Black Hole (a perennial favourite of the Sci-Fi Channel), Asteroid smacking into the Earth, Super Volcano, Intelligent Machines, the ever-popular Noocleer Annyhylashun, Plague, and (no surprise here) Global Warming in the number one spot. As I said, that makes eight; maybe the Intelligent Machines one was a throwaway to satisfy Andy Rooney, who's been claiming that machines have been plotting to take over for years. He may be right; I have conclusive proof that Paris Hilton's phone is at least three times smarter than her. But killer machines aside (and, as Bob points out, if you make a smart machine, don't give it guns), most of the show was devoted to lovingly depicting the planet getting offed in a number (seven, in fact) of entertaining ways. The first four were easy ones, just set to warm you up for the sanctimonious scolding about human frailty in the second half of the show that 20/20 does so well. After all, there's not really much anyone can do if a Gamma Burst, a Black Hole, an Asteroid with a serious yen for destruction, or a Supervolcano knocks on your door. The answer to "what now?" is pretty much "kiss your ass goodbye". 20/20 decided to leaven the dire predictions of doom from noted scientists with some random people (probably interns and underpaid 20/20 staff) saying what they would do if they were told the world was going to end. Most people said "spend time with family", but Bob and I agreed "shoot everyone who needs shooting" was a better use of our time. After all, if we wanted to spend more time with the family, then we'd be doing it, right? People who say things like that are hoping you'll think they're a nicer person than they actually are. The second hour went to the meat of the matter - things we can do to fuck ourselves over, namely Nuclear weapons, Plague, and Global warming. I have to admit, I'm tired of the "nuclear weapons are the most awful thing ever!" cant. There are plenty of terrible, terrible things one can do with conventional weaponry, and there's a lot more of that. For instance, people talk (eternally) about the Hiroshima damage, which was partly as bad as it was because the city was made of wood and paper. How much more terrifying was the fire-bombing of Dresden and Berlin , where the firestorm created by the incendiary bombs (no nukes needed) sucked people out of stone and brick buildings and up into the air and left a steel, stone, and brick city razed to the ground? How much dynamite do we have stockpiled, anyway? And what (as Bob points out) about fertilizer? The Oklahoma bombing was done with a few pounds of fertilizer. Other terrible things that have killed many, many people have been done without the help of nuclear weapons - look what Himmler did with twenty gas ovens. As for Plague, well, Andy Rooney probably had a hand in this segment, too, since there was much hand-wringing over the fact that the recipes for global-annihilating plagues are now freely available on the Internet, so it's easy for people with the desire to cook up nasty things and let them loose. No-one pointed out that most amateurs aren't terribly good at building superviruses without killing themselves - the danger really lies in medication-resistant natural strains of viruses and bacterias. Besides, if a plague kills off a third of the world (and surprisingly, no-one mentioned AIDS - I guess it's not as exciting as Ebola), then our number-one problem becomes less of a problem - Global Warming. Now, I'm still undecided about the underlying cause for the world climate change, but I am not in any kind of denial that it's happening, and that it is most certainly being exacerbated by human pollution. Mind you, I still get completely pissed off by the kind of word chicanery performed by 20/20 when they *said* "it's being accellerated by humans", but the *words on the screen read* "Humans are behind it". It annoys me - the two statements are *very* different ideas. But anyway - pollution is bad, we get that. It's going to change the climate a *lot* - we get that. The thing we aren't getting is what we can do about it - it was presented as a thing we can correct, but the actual meat and potatoes of the correction process was sadly lacking. I could write a whole (very boring, probably) article about how expecting "big business" to fix things while refusing to make any personal changes is what gets us in trouble, but I'll forbear (you can send thank-you flowers to my house). Instead, I've already, in *this* post, offered an easy, one-size-fits-all solution to the whole global warming problem. Plague. We kill off the people, there'll be less people to pollute. Sure, like any real solution, there'll be some hardships, like piles of dead bodies, and the real probability that you'll no longer be able to get avocados at the grocery store, but the payoff will be great - for the people that survive. Of course, for those of you that get in on the ground floor of this scheme, I can make certain arrangements for carefully rationed vaccines. I plan to vaccinate all the people I think are worth saving before I release my plague, and I'll be keeping a few extra doses for friends and people that suck up to me and buy me jewelry of sufficient value and size. If you don't make the cut, don't worry, it won't hurt, and the time from infection to death is three days, all three of which you'll be feeling great. Right up until your nose falls off and your head explodes, but that bit's really, really quick (er, and messy). It shouldn't take long, and the leftover food stores should hold us until I build the semi-intelligent harvesting machines to take care of our food needs. Anyone interested? You'll have until Friday 13, 2027, when the asteriod hits.
Dorsal - Ventral
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