Choose Your Apocalypse

[ginnyfizz]

But if you banned alcohol marharth....I would not be able to use my Christmas cake as my means of apocalypse as it has multiple servings of alcohol in it!

Baaawwwww....NOT FAIR!

[grannywils]

LP, I got your cake or death thing. Was just off the site most of the day yesterday. And today is my birthday so am planning to drown myself in CAKE!!!! Cake, cake, beautiful cake..... :biggrin:

 

Gary made me the most beautiful cake I have ever seen, and he actually wants me to share :confused:

 

PS. Oh yeah, and Ginny, think I may imbide in a bit of alcohol as well....

 

Who knows, this my prove to be my Apocalypse.... But what a way to go......:whistling:

[ffa1mf]

While natural disaster, nuclear war and disease - even one that changes people into zombies - all sound pretty good, the only one that ever scared me was one I had read in a short story some years ago. Maybe it'll scare you too.

 

A scientist researches and discovers that a community in Texas has mostly a zero crime rate and particularly no violent crime of any type ever committed. People in the town don't even argue with each other, thats how calm the population is. He goes and finds that there is something in the water (from a deep underground well) that makes the people calm and relaxed, so he synthasizes the water and makes a few hundred thousand gallons of it. He places the water into a volcano that is due to erupt and when it does erupt the water is vapourized into the atmosphere and begins to fall as rain all over the world. He figures he has found the cure for violence and all the "diseases" of violence (ie: war, crime, prejudice, etc.).

 

A year goes by and war and violence drop off as expected as this rain has been falling all over the world, but the scientist also notes an increase in the number of people who have developed cognitive issues. He re-examines the community where he found the water and realizes that the town - while it has no violence - had a significant number of citizens who had limited mental abilities and actually low intelligence. He looks at the water and finds that not only is the water a calmative, it also has a detrimental effect on intelligence to those who drink it or bath in it.

 

The scientist realizes that not only did he release this water onto the world, he made it stronger by modifying it. The story ends with him reporting that the world is doomed as people do not have the mental ability to look after themselves and are dying off in droves, and rather than fall into that fate he commits suicide.

 

I consider the number of things that are being made "better" by the scientific world today and wonder. Is some guy about to release the end of the world on us, not with a huge bang, but with a relatively quiet and subtle degree of deadliness?

 

Wish I could remember the author and title of the short story.

 

Took me a while, its "The End of the Whole Mess" by Steven King.

Edited October 24, 2011 by ffa1mf

[grannywils]

Please don't try to remember it, ffa. One of my birthday balloons just popped :(

[draconix]

Biologically, zombies would have to die out within at least a month or two. Even if a virus has infected the brain, blood still has to flow and your organs have to work to a certain extend to survive. I think the best way to deal with such a thing is to stock up on supplies and wait it out.

 

Alright, so this is where I'll make a special pleading -- because the Apocalypse that I chose was the Max Brooks style zombie (I bet you'd like World War Z,) it turns out that the virus that causes zombification is so toxic that it actually inhibits the enzymes in our bodies that speed up the decay process. That's right, the virus is so nasty it acts as an embalming fluid of sorts. So the only thing that actually decays these zombies are the elements. Things like blood flow are impossible because the blood is coagulated. The virus solanum makes the brain capable of functioning independently of oxygen to a very diminished capacity, making all of the extra organs unnecessary, and making the destruction of the brain the only true means of putting one down permanently.

 

Even then, your idea of sitting and waiting assumes that everyone will be infected on the first day, which is not how it would work... It would start in one spot, and take off exponentially in a worst-case scenario. It would travel outward radially from patient zero until it eventually enveloped the world. We're talking maybe months until it's fully wide-spread. And some survivors will eventually be taken down by a hoard, creating fresh new zombies to go about. And then take into consideration the seasonal freezings that will preserve a zombie until the next thaw and you have a threat that can never be entirely ruled out.

 

You are totally right, the appeal to this apocalypse is that it would effectively send us back in time a few hundred years. Suddenly things melee weapons become relevant to survival again, (since they don't need reloading, or bullet resupply,) and self reliance can make you the ruler of your own domain. http://www.thenexusforums.com/public/style_emoticons/dark/thumbsup.gif

Edited October 24, 2011 by draconix

[bben46]

For those who are too young and do not get Grannys 30,000 pounds of bananas reference -

[grannywils]

Thanks bben. I knew that I probably should have explained or added a link, but I was in sort of a rush at the time. I appreciate you for doing that for me.:thumbsup:

[Vindekarr]

Anybody heard of the Great Beer Explosion of 1919?

 

In titular year a brewery in London, England, suffured a collapse of it's beer vats, sending one-point-eight million litres of beer roaring down the street in a delicious three metre high frothing golden tsunami. 9 people died, and while it's not quite an apocalypse. beer-pocalypse sounds like my kinda apocalypse.

Edited October 25, 2011 by Vindekarr

[Flintlockecole]

Fire, lots of fire. I couldn't care if it's atomic fire or something natural, I just wanna sit back with my glass of tea and say "Look at that, someone decided to burn the whole place down".

[Vagrant0]

Best kind of Apocalypse?

 

Galactic collision. Its where some other galaxy moves close enough to our own to start pulling into eachother in fiery spectacle as stars and planets are smashes together, pulled apart, or merely flung into space. It's something with a survival rate of about nil. Nothing anyone could do about it, nowhere to avoid it, no way to even preserve the accomplishments of humanity.

 

It comes it roughly 4 flavors...

 

Our planet being enveloped by either our sun or that of another solar system as it passes along our orbital path.

 

Our planet being torn to pieces from gravity from some large body from another solar system or one of our own neighbors as they're pulled from their orbit.

 

Our planet being pulverized by comets or other debris.

 

Our planet being pulled off its orbit and flung either into our own sun, another planet, or open space where we slowly freeze to death.

 

On the plus side, it might take several generations for our fate to finally reach us, meanwhile we get a spectacular showing as our night sky becomes filled with activity.