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Apocalypse Again!
14 years ago
General
I've spoken with my friends at length about this topic, though I don't think I've ever mentioned it here. I imagine that for every person who believes that the world is supposed to end... yesterday, there are about 10 or 15 who think that the idea is ridiculous. Even so, the obsession with the end times ebbs and flows and has likely toyed with humanity since the beginning.
I'm not going to argue about the validity of certain apocalypse theories, as there seem to be 3 types of people when it comes to these discussions: People who believe the theories to be true, people who believe the theories to be fake (and GAY! lolololol), and the devil's advocates who enable the believers without actually believing the theory themselves.
No, I'm not one to fall in lockstep with the current apocalypse theories. Why should I, when I can make up perfectly good apocalypse theories on my own! Well, folks, as if you didn't have enough to worry about... here goes nothing!
1: NINJA APOCALYPSE
We all know about the zombie apocalypse. Some space virus or military research project or supernatural energy goes horribly wrong, killing folks and resurrecting them as nearly mindless brain-eating shades. You could say that there have even been popular representations of a vampire apocalypse and at least one clown apocalypse in film alone. Yet one of the most venerated pop culture symbols of mystery and death hasn't gotten its fair share at this whole apocalypse thing: the Ninja.
So here's how it works. In the year (arbitrarily chosen), as an unexpected result of nuclear contamination, a retrovirus tailored at a Japanese research facility to create the perfect super soldiers mutates into a highly contagious airborne pathogen. The JSDF and the facility staff try desperately to contain the outbreak, but since the contaminated transform into ninjas in a matter of minutes the soldiers and scientists don't stand a chance. Those unfortunate to survive ninja attacks wind up becoming ninjas themselves.
Before long, Japan is quarantined. Shipping and air traffic are prohibited. It doesn't take long for the country to slide into darkness as the entire population is left to its fate, but in the mad rush to escape the country ninjas manage to infiltrate the exodus of refugees, hiding in peoples' purses and wallets, crouching in the shadows, or disguising as inanimate objects, etc. Before long, the ninja apocalypse ends up all over the world, and just 2 weeks after the first reports only scant pockets of human survivors remain, desperately clinging to life amidst a sea of ninjas. The best hope for the survivors will be to wait for the ninjas to turn on each other and wait for them to die off.
2: PLAGUE OF INFOMERCIALS
Plagues of locusts, rats, crows, frogs, lice, and even pimples have long conjured up apocalyptic sentiments. Unlike many theories, the reasoning behind the despair is understandable- if locusts eat all of the crops in your country, it's gonna feel a helluva lot like the end times in a week or two. However, in these modern times we are an interconnected global community, neighbors. No plague of vermin has thus far proven capable of wiping out the world's food supply, and so when famine strikes a part of the world it is at least curbed by the efforts of philanthropic neighbors.
Yet this has made us complacent to the danger of plagues. Plagues can take many forms far beyond famine, and this will be made none too clear by the long drought called the Plague of Informercials.
In 2013, only two gigantic media corporations exist, and both are owned in secret by the same guy, who is more engrossed with buying politicians with his absurd fortune than running the company. Somehow someone misreads a memo about advertisements and paid programming. Instead of the normal ratio of about 20 minutes of programming to 10 minutes of commercials, it is read as 10 minutes of programming for every 20 minutes of commercials. This creates a sudden problem- there simply aren't enough advertisers to fill 20 minutes of commercials with 15-60 second advertisements. This forces them to resort to longer advertisements: the dreaded infomercials.
It starts off as a simple annoyance. Ratings dip somewhat, but the sudden increase in ad revenue encourages the mass media to not just adopt the new format, but actually expand it. Programming shrinks to 5 minutes per half hour, then at some point it disappears altogether as Billy Mays (rebuilt as an A.I. construct) and Vince struggle for dominance over the airwaves. A similar thing happens to both newspapers and internet mass media sites as the news is wiped out by huge advertisement placards promising huge penises, perfect bellies, credit score checks, mortgages, and free MMOs.
This quickly results in a state of panic, paranoia, and superstition. Without an awareness of current events and deprived of news as well as entertainment, the global community splinters into millions of inward-looking communities seeking self sufficiency and isolation. Those incapable of turning off the television gradually go insane or vegetative as the endless stream of insipid commercials saps away their will to live. Credible information becomes a valuable commodity as heresay and rumor abound, and before long wars break out over scraps of land and resources between the millions of city-states. Central government ceases to exist as a credible entity in the void of information as they have lost all contact with their citizens. Global corporations and banks collapse in droves, driving up an already bad unemployment rate. Crime correspondingly increases, and life for the average citizen becomes as violent as it was in the medieval period, if not more so.
After a while, the corporation realizes that it's not making as much revenue as it hoped since all of its advertisers are bankrupt and/or dead. They switch back to a more conventional programming format, but it's too late. Humanity's population has halved, the world's governments have collapsed, and the mass media is now just as irrelevant. It takes centuries and countless wars to restore true statehood to some areas of the world.
3: POLITENESS
In the early 21st century, society had come to terms with the idea that Politeness, and associated polite behavior, was a lost cause. Replaced by its opposite, Rudeness, people had more or less come to terms with the change and carried out their daily tasks with sarcasm, bile, and the occasional rant. Traffic accidents and fatalities gradually declined as people became accustomed to bad driving. Religious disputes became irrelevant because people realized that there are many ways to be faithful, but only one true way to be an asshole. Wars began to abate as people moved their paranoid, xenophobic behavior into online forums and games rather than battlefields. Famine became less of a problem as the world community decided to stop 'feeding those assholes in the Horn of Africa', forcing many Africans to migrate to greener pastures where they had a fighting chance. While some would argue that being rude, selfish, and vile was a bad thing, most agreed that it served humanity's interests so long as it was the status quo.
Yet apocalypse is the story of equilibrium and balance, and before long a disturbing trend arose among infants: Politeness. Scientists attempted to explain the appearance of politeness, thought to be extinct, as a genetic mutation incurred by 'some asshole messing with corn genes'. Disturbingly, it was later diagnosed that 40-50 percent of newborn infants exhibited polite behavior, refusing to cry in public places, making friends with babies of different skin color and nationality, and generally not vomiting on peoples' faces or chests. As the children grew, their polite inclinations became all too apparent, so much so that people began to panic.
Not wanting to hand the world over to a generation that might actually want to share it with their fellow man, the leaders of the Rude world took ever increasing measures to try and indoctrinate the Polite into a more acceptable format of social behavior, but these efforts actually seemed to inflame the reborn instincts of Politeness. Contrary to Rude men (Assholes) and Rude women (Bitches), the polite generation referred to their men as "Gentlemen" and their women as "Ladies". Politeness proved contagious, as even Assholes and Bitches could not allow themselves to murder their own children, thus forcing them to become more polite.
Eventually, the Rude had seen enough. In their eyes, Humanity was not instinctively a polite race, and that therefore made Polite people non-human, even sub-human. The resulting war carried all of the evils of a civil war, except that it took place all over the world. The war entered a deadly chapter when a stalemate forced the Rude to employ 'trolling', effective propaganda efforts intended to incite rage among the Polite. The Polite countered with 'gifts', free tokens of goodwill that demoralized and crippled entire Rude communities with guilt.
These two weapons programs eventually grew, and while there was peace for a time both sides worked busily to create and stockpile their ultimate weapons. For the Rude, it was The Ultimate Insult, an epithet so incredibly awful, tasteless, and inflammatory that it would cause a Polite man (or woman's) head to burst. For the Polite, it was The Ultimate Gift, a token of goodwill so powerful that its denial would make one look like such a douche and incur such extreme guilt that one's genitalia would implode in shame.
In the end, both sides deployed their weapons at once. The Rude succeeded, their weapon killing countless Polite people of all walks of life. However, they were unable to stop the deployment of The Ultimate Gift, which caused death by guilt and total infertility among the Rude, dooming what remained of mankind to extinction.
The end!
I'm not going to argue about the validity of certain apocalypse theories, as there seem to be 3 types of people when it comes to these discussions: People who believe the theories to be true, people who believe the theories to be fake (and GAY! lolololol), and the devil's advocates who enable the believers without actually believing the theory themselves.
No, I'm not one to fall in lockstep with the current apocalypse theories. Why should I, when I can make up perfectly good apocalypse theories on my own! Well, folks, as if you didn't have enough to worry about... here goes nothing!
1: NINJA APOCALYPSE
We all know about the zombie apocalypse. Some space virus or military research project or supernatural energy goes horribly wrong, killing folks and resurrecting them as nearly mindless brain-eating shades. You could say that there have even been popular representations of a vampire apocalypse and at least one clown apocalypse in film alone. Yet one of the most venerated pop culture symbols of mystery and death hasn't gotten its fair share at this whole apocalypse thing: the Ninja.
So here's how it works. In the year (arbitrarily chosen), as an unexpected result of nuclear contamination, a retrovirus tailored at a Japanese research facility to create the perfect super soldiers mutates into a highly contagious airborne pathogen. The JSDF and the facility staff try desperately to contain the outbreak, but since the contaminated transform into ninjas in a matter of minutes the soldiers and scientists don't stand a chance. Those unfortunate to survive ninja attacks wind up becoming ninjas themselves.
Before long, Japan is quarantined. Shipping and air traffic are prohibited. It doesn't take long for the country to slide into darkness as the entire population is left to its fate, but in the mad rush to escape the country ninjas manage to infiltrate the exodus of refugees, hiding in peoples' purses and wallets, crouching in the shadows, or disguising as inanimate objects, etc. Before long, the ninja apocalypse ends up all over the world, and just 2 weeks after the first reports only scant pockets of human survivors remain, desperately clinging to life amidst a sea of ninjas. The best hope for the survivors will be to wait for the ninjas to turn on each other and wait for them to die off.
2: PLAGUE OF INFOMERCIALS
Plagues of locusts, rats, crows, frogs, lice, and even pimples have long conjured up apocalyptic sentiments. Unlike many theories, the reasoning behind the despair is understandable- if locusts eat all of the crops in your country, it's gonna feel a helluva lot like the end times in a week or two. However, in these modern times we are an interconnected global community, neighbors. No plague of vermin has thus far proven capable of wiping out the world's food supply, and so when famine strikes a part of the world it is at least curbed by the efforts of philanthropic neighbors.
Yet this has made us complacent to the danger of plagues. Plagues can take many forms far beyond famine, and this will be made none too clear by the long drought called the Plague of Informercials.
In 2013, only two gigantic media corporations exist, and both are owned in secret by the same guy, who is more engrossed with buying politicians with his absurd fortune than running the company. Somehow someone misreads a memo about advertisements and paid programming. Instead of the normal ratio of about 20 minutes of programming to 10 minutes of commercials, it is read as 10 minutes of programming for every 20 minutes of commercials. This creates a sudden problem- there simply aren't enough advertisers to fill 20 minutes of commercials with 15-60 second advertisements. This forces them to resort to longer advertisements: the dreaded infomercials.
It starts off as a simple annoyance. Ratings dip somewhat, but the sudden increase in ad revenue encourages the mass media to not just adopt the new format, but actually expand it. Programming shrinks to 5 minutes per half hour, then at some point it disappears altogether as Billy Mays (rebuilt as an A.I. construct) and Vince struggle for dominance over the airwaves. A similar thing happens to both newspapers and internet mass media sites as the news is wiped out by huge advertisement placards promising huge penises, perfect bellies, credit score checks, mortgages, and free MMOs.
This quickly results in a state of panic, paranoia, and superstition. Without an awareness of current events and deprived of news as well as entertainment, the global community splinters into millions of inward-looking communities seeking self sufficiency and isolation. Those incapable of turning off the television gradually go insane or vegetative as the endless stream of insipid commercials saps away their will to live. Credible information becomes a valuable commodity as heresay and rumor abound, and before long wars break out over scraps of land and resources between the millions of city-states. Central government ceases to exist as a credible entity in the void of information as they have lost all contact with their citizens. Global corporations and banks collapse in droves, driving up an already bad unemployment rate. Crime correspondingly increases, and life for the average citizen becomes as violent as it was in the medieval period, if not more so.
After a while, the corporation realizes that it's not making as much revenue as it hoped since all of its advertisers are bankrupt and/or dead. They switch back to a more conventional programming format, but it's too late. Humanity's population has halved, the world's governments have collapsed, and the mass media is now just as irrelevant. It takes centuries and countless wars to restore true statehood to some areas of the world.
3: POLITENESS
In the early 21st century, society had come to terms with the idea that Politeness, and associated polite behavior, was a lost cause. Replaced by its opposite, Rudeness, people had more or less come to terms with the change and carried out their daily tasks with sarcasm, bile, and the occasional rant. Traffic accidents and fatalities gradually declined as people became accustomed to bad driving. Religious disputes became irrelevant because people realized that there are many ways to be faithful, but only one true way to be an asshole. Wars began to abate as people moved their paranoid, xenophobic behavior into online forums and games rather than battlefields. Famine became less of a problem as the world community decided to stop 'feeding those assholes in the Horn of Africa', forcing many Africans to migrate to greener pastures where they had a fighting chance. While some would argue that being rude, selfish, and vile was a bad thing, most agreed that it served humanity's interests so long as it was the status quo.
Yet apocalypse is the story of equilibrium and balance, and before long a disturbing trend arose among infants: Politeness. Scientists attempted to explain the appearance of politeness, thought to be extinct, as a genetic mutation incurred by 'some asshole messing with corn genes'. Disturbingly, it was later diagnosed that 40-50 percent of newborn infants exhibited polite behavior, refusing to cry in public places, making friends with babies of different skin color and nationality, and generally not vomiting on peoples' faces or chests. As the children grew, their polite inclinations became all too apparent, so much so that people began to panic.
Not wanting to hand the world over to a generation that might actually want to share it with their fellow man, the leaders of the Rude world took ever increasing measures to try and indoctrinate the Polite into a more acceptable format of social behavior, but these efforts actually seemed to inflame the reborn instincts of Politeness. Contrary to Rude men (Assholes) and Rude women (Bitches), the polite generation referred to their men as "Gentlemen" and their women as "Ladies". Politeness proved contagious, as even Assholes and Bitches could not allow themselves to murder their own children, thus forcing them to become more polite.
Eventually, the Rude had seen enough. In their eyes, Humanity was not instinctively a polite race, and that therefore made Polite people non-human, even sub-human. The resulting war carried all of the evils of a civil war, except that it took place all over the world. The war entered a deadly chapter when a stalemate forced the Rude to employ 'trolling', effective propaganda efforts intended to incite rage among the Polite. The Polite countered with 'gifts', free tokens of goodwill that demoralized and crippled entire Rude communities with guilt.
These two weapons programs eventually grew, and while there was peace for a time both sides worked busily to create and stockpile their ultimate weapons. For the Rude, it was The Ultimate Insult, an epithet so incredibly awful, tasteless, and inflammatory that it would cause a Polite man (or woman's) head to burst. For the Polite, it was The Ultimate Gift, a token of goodwill so powerful that its denial would make one look like such a douche and incur such extreme guilt that one's genitalia would implode in shame.
In the end, both sides deployed their weapons at once. The Rude succeeded, their weapon killing countless Polite people of all walks of life. However, they were unable to stop the deployment of The Ultimate Gift, which caused death by guilt and total infertility among the Rude, dooming what remained of mankind to extinction.
The end!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY2rD322UR4
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I want number three to happen though.