I'd like to take a quick break from the serious existential crap to talk very briefly about the end of the world.
So it's 2012 and the world is totally going to end.
Now one the one hand, that's totally awesome for me. I've recently decided (and managed to actually tell my parents) that I'm going to take some time off after graduation to "find myself." If the world ends at the end of this calendar year, I'll be smack dab in the middle of "finding myself" and will have only had to stand precariously on the edge of legitimate responsibility and adulthood. In fact, I'll be about seven months out of college, probably working a decent to crappy job, but be totally in a place where I have the time to go out with friends and read/write philosophy and do all the stuff I wish I had more time to do.
So really, the world ending in 2012 will be kind of awesome for me.
What's most terrifying though is that I think people are legitimately going to freak out this time. Not in a Harold Camping kind of way but I think it's been so hyped that we might legitimately see some terror on the streets. Anywhere from London riot style to people actually killing and stealing and martial law kind of stuff. It's just human nature, really. The world's going to end so why don't we just go to town?
"That awkward moment when you killed the 711 owner and stole all the Mountain Dew and Twinkies you could carry and then the world didn't end."
Say just for kicks that the world does end. We know that it's going to at some point so why not just suppose that it's going to be this December. What kind of apocalypse can we expect?
Zombie Apocalypse:
I love zombies. Not because they're fun to write about (yes, I am writing a zombie apocalypse novel) but because it would be easily the most interesting apocalypse to live through. Imagine being on the run from hundreds of assailants who want nothing more than to eat your flesh at any personal cost to them. It's a threat that can only be stopped by trauma to the brain and a threat that spread so quickly that you suddenly find yourself one among millions who are still capable to think. Now of course in the fictional literature there's always a hero who manages to stay afloat among a storm of the undead but I think in reality it would be less entertaining. Sure, you'd have the few psychopaths who would have no trouble pulling a trigger against an undead girlfriend or neighbor or whoever but then you'd have every other normal, level-headed person who would try to hold desperately onto the idea that their loved ones could be cured and probably get eaten in the process. They would hesitate at the crucial moment of self defense and die an ugly and violent death. These people are the reason that zombie literature is so interesting--why there's always the hero standing against the odds: because 9 times out of 10, someone hesitates and gets bitten. This results in massive hordes of flesh eating zombies and sudden halt to production and social structure. It not only destroys our social environment as we know it but makes for one of the most Hobbesian kind of environments we can imagine. What would you do? Head to the gun store? Look for loved ones? Kill yourself? You just can't know until you're there. I like to think that the human instinct for self-preservation always kicks in but you never know... with everyone around you dying I'm sure it's easy for the despair to take a toll for the worst.
And a zombie apocalypse is TOTALLY possible because of the way biowarfare is going and all of us zombie fiction writers have found a plausible way for this reality to exist.
Religious Rapture:
Ever picked up the New Testament? Ever read the book of Revelations? It's fascinating stuff. I mean really. It's easily the most interesting book in the Bible since it's really the only one that predicts what's to come when the world ends. Among other things it involves a select few being taken up into the loving arms of God and the rest of us being subjected to burning as four angry dudes ride across the sky giving us the old what-for. Assuming you/I/we chose the wrong religion or are just unlucky enough to not be one of the predestined (see: Calvinism), we're probably going to end up burning a horrible, firey death while collecting groceries and then spending the rest of eternity in hell. Sounds pretty awful doesn't it? I mean, think about it. Zombies you can kill if you've got a blunt object and the will power. The four horsement of the apocalypse? Hah! Angels wielding spears and crap? Hah! Demons? Hah! (Though they seem to the only ones allergic to holy water and crosses.) You're not only struggling internally with the existential realization that there is in fact a God who has been watching you sin for your entire life, but you're up against an immortal and unearthly being who is raining a merciless fire on your heretical behind. It's not a good feeling, I can imagine.
This of course means that there's a heaven and those of us who are chosen are going to be watching the chaos from whatever vantage point they are granted thinking either A) "Thank God (lol) I went to church every Sunday or B) "Oh no those poor people... but thank God I went to Church every Sunday. I mean seriously how bad are they going to feel? It's going to be a lot of "I told you so's" and a plague of smugness. Either way, it's going to confirm a lot of things people have staked their entire lives believing either right or wrong and honestly, make philosophy complete irrelevant because all moral and metaphysical questions will be answerable by the now very accessible creator.
Natural Disasters:
Here I'm thinking about disasters a la the movie "2012" or "The Day After Tomorrow." Think earthquakes and tsunamis and a second Ice Age. For whatever reason science cares to come up with, the Earth is going insane and things are just falling apart. Blame it on the core or the poles or some garbage like global warming, the earth is fighting back against all of our abuse and it's not taking any prisoners. Sure we can build arks and maybe find refuge in a now-hospitable African continent, but a whole lot of people are going to die. I'm talking billions of people. I'm thinking like 6 billion people are going to die because much like "2012," only the rich will be able to afford the technology that will keep them safe. On the one hand I find this understandable but on the other I don't like it because money doesn't guarantee genetic integrity and I don't think the rich are necessarily those we want repopulating the world.
Regardless, you're going to find yourself chilling one day doing whatever it is that you're doing, whether it's driving to work or sleeping or using the toilet and the earth is suddenly going to open up and swallow you. Seriously. That's it. No need for elaboration. You'll just be doing stuff and then the next moment you're dead. Sucks, right? Hopefully this is part of the previous scenario (religious rapture) and you'll be quickly taken up into the arms of a creator. At the very least you'll be hoping (rather loudly and erratically) that he exists and that being swallowed up by the earth or sea isn't too terribly painful. Hopefully if you're anything like John Cusack you'll be able to survive and see a new society built in the wake of whatever survivors exist after the clouds part.
Cosmic Explosion:
In a similar yet not unrelated vein we have something slightly more simplistic: the sun blowing up. Now astronomers are well aware that stars are just big balls of gas that are likely to give at some point and our star (the Sun) is no different. Apparently at some point our Sun, in similar fashion to other stars, is going to just... blow up. Basically, it's going to swallow everything up until Jupiter or whatever and that means we're all screwed. There's not a lot to it other than the fact that we're all done for. I can imagine people are going to flip and start killing each other or hugging their loved ones and praying to God but we are basically all screwed. And there won't be anything left because the explosion will vaporize Earth. Hopefully we will figure out how to travel to another galaxy or some crap like that before then because if not, we're all done for.
Nuclear Winter:
Anyone who reads the news (for the record, I don't) knows that we're constantly on the brink of global conflict. Anyone who plays Call of Duty knows we're just a terrorist away from nuclear winter which only YOU can stop. In reality though, I can see international politics getting out of hand to the point where those with nuclear weapons are going to have their sweaty hands trembling over blinking red buttons Skyping with each other yelling "I'll do it! I swear to God I'll do it!"
And then someone will. Some idiot is going to say screw it and push the button and then everyone will start launching their stuff because what else do we have to lose? Might as well take them to Hell with us. The aftermath is going to be a mostly scorched earth with minimal surivors yet not complete decimation. I'm thinking something like Fallout. There's going to be a lot of people left fighting for supplies and their lives while some semblance of government tries to take a hold, yet the one thing everyone is going to have to worry about is food and water which will all be completely irradiated. Speaking of irradiated, things are going to get nutty. I'm talking mutations people: the next level in evolution. People, animals, plants... things are going to start changing and adapting Darwin-style to the deadly environment in which we now have to live in. Look at Chernobyl--that place won't be inhabitable for another five hundred years at the very earliest. It probably won't be devoid of radiation for at least another thousand or more. Some people on the internet are talking about 50,000 years. Either way, those of us who are left after the idiot politicians start launching nukes are going to have to get used to the whole radiation thing. Those who don't die will start to change and those who don't change will die. Living in this world will be a lot like the zombie apocalypse--fighting for resources in a world where production has halted and little to no government to speak of--only now instead of the more killable zombies you have the unkillable radiation to deal with.
Social Meltdown:
Okay so say for whatever reason we're able to restrain ourselves and we don't launch a crap-ton of nuclear missiles into to each other. Awesome. That's for the best. But racism, xenophobia, and class tensions are only going to increase and worsen as time goes on. Discomfort and discontent with governemnts and people's opinions about how life should be lived are only going to make things worse. We're going to have a fanatic or some like that stir up his people into taking action against their government. This will cause copycat movements which will cause mass anarchy and the proliferation of whatever kind of ideals they're pushing. Or... one particular group will just take control like the Nazis and form a society like in 1984--a massive Big Brother society in which freedom is a forbidden word and we just do as we're told.
Either that or somehow we will just devolve into a Hobbesian existence once one of the aforementioned situations has occurred. Social meltdown will likely somehow be a facet of the end of the world no matter how you slice it.
Aliens:
Okay so say the Earth doesn't blow up or we don't blow ourselves up or whatever... there are billions of stars, many just like ours. So... there must be stars with planets around them who have had similar abilities to develop life. Let's not get religious or whatever and I know that statistically speaking the conditions for developing life happening on another planet are astronomically (lol) small but say it happens. Say for example this society evolves thirty times as rapidly as we do (because their conditions for evolution were better) and they develop long-distance space travel. Say they also hate foreigners. They're probably going to come over here and mess us up. If they don't just have an innate hatred for anything that thinks themselves as advanced as the alien race, they'll certainly see our corruption and sinful ways and think that we're better off dead anyway. Maybe they'll be gracious enough to enslave us or keep an elect few of us alive. Sounds a little like many people's conception of the Rapture. Anyway, aliens invading and killing us all is totally possible. Look at a crappy movie like "Skyline." They come, they conquer with little interference, and we are just plain screwed. You never know.
So now you know. Whatever happens at the end of this year, you'll hopefully be slightly more prepared or at the very least aware. Live this year the best that you can and enjoy it like it's your last.
