End of the World Mumbojumbo
I’ve been noticing a lot of talk recently about the end of the world. Not the usual rigmarole of 2012 or of Nostradamus, but of the imminent collapse of the dollar, the reversing of the magnetic poles, the loss of our magnetic field, and some lady named Saba or something who died long ago but supposedly made all kinds of predictions, the most recent of which is the advent of World War Three.
Maybe it’s because I am into guns and watching a lot of channels on Youtube about guns and their attendant proponents, who all seem to be prepping in one way or another for the eventual (and they say inevitable) collapse of modern society.
As if these people would really be able to survive very long in such a scenario. I think it would be more luck than anything that decides who lives and who gets trampled, burned, blown-up or even eaten when the “shit hits the fan.”
I can understand being prepared for a Katrina-like situation, where society collapses for a short time before returning. You’d need food and water, shelter, and the means to defend it from those who would seek to loot. Sure. I get this. But if everything were to go teats up, I think it would be a whole lot more chaos than any individual or small group could be ready for. I’m betting the lone loser with nothing but craftiness and no morals will outlive the prepper holed up in one place, just waiting to be bombed or overrun.
And what about me? Would I even want to live in such an apocalyptic world? One the one hand, I am not really optimistic because I depend on asthma spray, allergy meds, and a couple of other medicines that really make life worth living. Without these, I might die or wish for death – and in pretty short order. On the other hand, I might go back to my old, angry, wheezing, miserable self, and become the perfect pissed-off loner, stalking through the broken world with nothing but hunger and vengeance on my mind. Or maybe, confronted with the end of civilization, I might just check out on my own, perhaps going out in a blaze of glory, perhaps going out quietly. Who knows!
But what really gets me is the fact that so many doomsday predictions have already been made – and all of them, EVERY SINGLE ONE, have been WRONG. Dead wrong. Not even close! So why believe anyone who says the end is nigh? Why do people fall for this over and over again like Charlie Brown going for the football? Lucy is always going to yank it away at the last second, leaving you wondering where the expected outcome went all of a sudden! And then you are left there on your back, penniless, your house full of MREs, your loved-ones all quivering in the corner, and you are all STUPID and duped yet again!
Eventually, someone might actually be right – if a huge asteroid takes us out, if the sun suddenly expands, if a gamma ray burst suddenly rips through us, or if a wandering black hole makes a trip through our solar system, and then, that idiot will be able to say, “See, I TOLD you so!” He can enjoy himself smugly as his atoms are ripped to shreds – and good riddance to him and his ilk, spewing endless and unoriginal predictions and promising that “no, THIS time I’m right!”
I have a prediction for you. We are all doomed. The earth is doomed in about 4.5 billion years, when the sun expands as its hydrogen supply runs out. Of course, we will be long gone by then. None of us will be there. Our species will have either gone extinct for myriad other reasons, or we will have evolved to such an extent that we will no longer even recognize where we came from. But even if we survive the sun’s demise, there are still a google, google years later, when all matter rips apart, and all that will be left is cold, listless subatomic particles, randomly flitting in virtually endless and empty nothingness. A big nothing. That’s where it all ends.
See, I told you so.
Maybe it’s because I am into guns and watching a lot of channels on Youtube about guns and their attendant proponents, who all seem to be prepping in one way or another for the eventual (and they say inevitable) collapse of modern society.
As if these people would really be able to survive very long in such a scenario. I think it would be more luck than anything that decides who lives and who gets trampled, burned, blown-up or even eaten when the “shit hits the fan.”
I can understand being prepared for a Katrina-like situation, where society collapses for a short time before returning. You’d need food and water, shelter, and the means to defend it from those who would seek to loot. Sure. I get this. But if everything were to go teats up, I think it would be a whole lot more chaos than any individual or small group could be ready for. I’m betting the lone loser with nothing but craftiness and no morals will outlive the prepper holed up in one place, just waiting to be bombed or overrun.
And what about me? Would I even want to live in such an apocalyptic world? One the one hand, I am not really optimistic because I depend on asthma spray, allergy meds, and a couple of other medicines that really make life worth living. Without these, I might die or wish for death – and in pretty short order. On the other hand, I might go back to my old, angry, wheezing, miserable self, and become the perfect pissed-off loner, stalking through the broken world with nothing but hunger and vengeance on my mind. Or maybe, confronted with the end of civilization, I might just check out on my own, perhaps going out in a blaze of glory, perhaps going out quietly. Who knows!
But what really gets me is the fact that so many doomsday predictions have already been made – and all of them, EVERY SINGLE ONE, have been WRONG. Dead wrong. Not even close! So why believe anyone who says the end is nigh? Why do people fall for this over and over again like Charlie Brown going for the football? Lucy is always going to yank it away at the last second, leaving you wondering where the expected outcome went all of a sudden! And then you are left there on your back, penniless, your house full of MREs, your loved-ones all quivering in the corner, and you are all STUPID and duped yet again!
Eventually, someone might actually be right – if a huge asteroid takes us out, if the sun suddenly expands, if a gamma ray burst suddenly rips through us, or if a wandering black hole makes a trip through our solar system, and then, that idiot will be able to say, “See, I TOLD you so!” He can enjoy himself smugly as his atoms are ripped to shreds – and good riddance to him and his ilk, spewing endless and unoriginal predictions and promising that “no, THIS time I’m right!”
I have a prediction for you. We are all doomed. The earth is doomed in about 4.5 billion years, when the sun expands as its hydrogen supply runs out. Of course, we will be long gone by then. None of us will be there. Our species will have either gone extinct for myriad other reasons, or we will have evolved to such an extent that we will no longer even recognize where we came from. But even if we survive the sun’s demise, there are still a google, google years later, when all matter rips apart, and all that will be left is cold, listless subatomic particles, randomly flitting in virtually endless and empty nothingness. A big nothing. That’s where it all ends.
See, I told you so.
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