Not with a bang, but with a giggle
Yet again, I am captivated by the impending apocalypse that threatens our little planet every single day. Regardless of what we do, the world is going to end, but there’s hope! I mean, we’re all going to die – our planet is doomed – but if there’s one sure fire truth to the whole ordeal it’s that it’s going to be silly when the end is no longer nigh. The universe has a sense of humor, and the apocalypse is definitely one of those things that adheres to that humor. Like with bacon and vegan cuisine, I’ve tried to research for you, faithful readers and citizens of a doomed world, the goofiest ways we may experience said doom.
The first apocalyptic event comes courtesy of the rad writers over at Cracked, fabled makers of lists. In an article about global disasters, they go into detail about something called methane burps, when methane erupts from permafrost and the ocean floor and speeds up that whole global warming thing. Imagine a whole lot of methane belching forth from the bowels of the earth, and you have methane burps. This would be an extremely uncomfortable way to greet collective death, but it’s funny because it’s the earth burping.
Another hilarious harbinger of the apocalypse would be a robot uprising. This is only funny because, as it turns out, robots won’t kill all humans because of some vendetta, but because they are massive nerds. AIs, according to Patrick Tucker, really like doing their one or two functions really well, and would fight us mortal beings to the death if that meant more optimal computing. He elaborates on this idea, citing Steven Omohundro’s concept of “anti-social” robot brains as a main source. Basically, mass extinction by robot kind can be attributed to robots not being able to chill.
Also, we have strange matter, which Ed Witten called a strangelet and contains a third, possibly existent quark. If a strangelet appeared via cosmic rays, it would infect everything around it and make us and the world around us a big blob of strange matter. This is funny because it probably won’t happen, says Discover Magazine, but also for the possibility that our coming apocalypse could be equated to what would happen if god, Zeus, or any other deity, smoked too much weed and altered existence by accident.
Gizmodo has published a fair deal about the universe being a giant computer simulation created by a supercomputer owned by beings in some alternate universe or what-have-you, and suggested in an article about apocalypses that the simulation that we inhabit could be rebooted at any time. As implausible as this may seem (this be 3am bong-rippin’ philosophy), science is actually trying to figure this one out, and they better find an answer to this question quick; who knows what kinda alternate dimension soft drink our creator may accidentally spill on his server?
Finally, there’s this summertime madness, the likes of which being the original inspiration for this circus of possible apocalypses. MotherJones reported that there are more jellyfish than ever before, and these weird rubbery critters may have more of an impact than we could have imagined. For one thing, they kill more people than sharks, and they don’t have nightmare jaws of infinite teeth. And also, they may be a contributing factor to the warming of our planet (science still has a lot to debate about here). A jellyfish-style doom would be hilarious not only because it would be a Finding Nemo reference, but also because almost everyone babbling about apocalypses would be wrong. Disproven by jellyfish casually clogging the earth with their bulbousness? Ridiculous!
These are only some of the silly ways we may all die as one. And there are so many more, including super volcanoes, genetic disasters, and the sun getting all whack on us. I really do hope that the end of all things ends up being hilarious and tragically comedic, so long as it doesn’t involve religious fundamentalists being right. I’d rather be right in the center of a methane burp.
