5 Kick-Ass Sci-Fi Apocalypses (That Could Actually Happen)
Almost all science-fiction writers agree, nothing kicks more ass than a good apocalypse. So which of these scenarios will actually happen (or rather, which will happen first)?
Let's find out.
#5.
Asteroid/Comet Impact
As seen in:
Armageddon, Deep Impact.
How it goes down:
A gigantic fucking rock is found heading toward Earth. The whole world has to band together with some kind of shot-in-the-dark, desperate space mission to intercept it and blow it up. Hollywood filmmakers say this would almost certainly involve some kind of band of misfits who have a problem with authority.
Why it kicks ass:
Because we'll know it's coming with quite a bit of warning, and thwarting it involves spaceships and explosions.
Chances of it happening:
100 percent. Eventually.
For instance, there's an asteroid that will pass really freaking close to Earth in 2029, and if it hit it could land around southern California. The rock is about 1,300 feet long and would create a 900- megaton explosion (the force of several hundred nuclear bombs). That would fuck things up on a level unlike anything we've seen (killing everyone in an area the size of New Jersey), but wouldn't do anything on a planet-wide scale. Also, while it's passing within a hair of us in cosmic terms, the chances of it actually hitting us are lottery-small.
But asteroids do hit. The last time a serious one impacted was in 1908, in Siberia. That one was one-seventh the size of the one we were just talking about, and it flattened 800 miles of forest and splattered countless elk. But we know what you're thinking: Screw the elk, what about the gigantic Deep Impact-sized planet killer?
According to experts you'd expect that one to hit every 100 million years or so. The last one was a 6 mile-wide bastard that crashed into us 65 million years ago and killed 70 percent of everything on the planet. It's the reason the dinosaurs don't run the planet any more.
How to survive it (according to movies on the topic):
Interestingly, Hollywood's films on the subject all involve thwarting an asteroid strike, rather than living in the aftermath of one. That makes us think that a guide on surviving an actual planet-killer impact would apparently be useless, unless it could be read by cockroaches. That's probably what the strangely-cheerful Japanese announcer is saying in this simulation.
As for how to actually stop the asteroid, scientists have laughed off the "land on it and plant a nuke" theory as ludicrous Hollywood fantasy, and have proposed building a swarm of asteroid-eating robots instead.
From Space.com
I kinda hate the idea of a computer revolution. I think it's just retarded, but that's my opinion. Beside, if machines are intelligent, why would they attack us? Can't we like live in peace with robots?
ReplyI ended up in this article from another one telling me exactly why the machine revolution would never happen. What the hell?
ReplyWe're not going to evolve again. Technology IS our next stage of evolution. We have nothing to evolve into, we've solved ALL of our problems with technology. Cybornetics is our next stage of evolution and that falls into discovery and design. It took 1 million years to make a tool better than a sharp rock and we did not change at all until the earth changed. The next change in global climate will be fought with technology, not with physical adaptations. If anything, we've evolved to become a much less intelligent society as a whole with only a few brilliant minds carrying the whole of humanity on their backs. Theres no need to be stronger when a robot can pick that up. No need to be faster when you can buy a car. No need to hunt better when you can go to the grocery store. We've literally out smarted evolution because we didn't have time to wait on that shit.
Reply Hide All See All 5 Repliesha! of course not! you think the only problems that evolution can change are basics like improved hunting or finding shelters? we are far from problemless, and evolution will continue to fix that. instead of evolving to decide which berries are poisonous or not, we will adapt to be able to predict what the idiot in the car next to us will be able to do, thus drastically depleating global car accidents (a HUGE ASS problem). technology isnt the stop of evolution. its just the next step in it. and frankly, regardless of what everybody says, modern technology has a lot to be desired.
Right, of course. Our DNA will totally go, "Oh, man. No need to mutate now, when we've got these f*****g iPads."
your talking like evolution happens all at once, in one big event, no it happens over centuries, millenia, millions of years, and no matter how small or insignificant it may seem its still a part of evolution.
we are already evolving by producing 'brown fat' to overcome our own fat asses, since before the time of jesus our brains have been getting larger and we have been becoming taller. Evolution is something for a species to adapt, no matter what happens we will always have something to adapt to, theres always two sides to a coin and there never will be one side, dont be so ignorant of the facts
Actually, you know, they say that we've already started evolving to keep from being overweight. Tons of people have started developing a completely different kind of fat, that's easier to burn and harder to gain. Which is extremely helpful to stave off the rising obesity epidemic. I don't know how technology could stop that kind of thing in a fashion that wouldn't be utterly horrifying.
So... you mean brown fat?
As a matter of fact, robots can swim. In Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Cromartie falls into the water and being that he is very heavy merely walks on the surface of the ocean, as in the ground underneath the water. He wouldn't be able to get the boat while submerged unless he could jump high enough to punch a hole in it, so he would actually have to follow the boat to the coast (it has to hit the coast at some point so that the passengers can resupply their food and water) and when it docks simply walk up onto the beach and kill everyone.
ReplyYeah, but, The Sarah Connor Chronicles don't count.
Terminator salvation: Hydrabots. They were even among the second wave of only slightly more advanced terminators. If you're going to whittle down the terminator franchise to that which does and does not count, we've only got terminator 2 left. So then it's the teach the machine to love scenario only. Also blow up the factory that makes the things in the second time line but not the one in the first time line causing a nexus point convergence resulting in a new tangent.
The evolution one's pretty ridiculous.
ReplyAs for deadly pandemic, Totally Drug Resistant Tuberculosis has been spotted in India, something in the order of fifteen victims and they don't have the facilities to properly diagnose it so it's probably a lot more.
Luckily TB doesn't have an environmental reservoir so if we do a hard vaccination program we can probably kill it eventually.
hahaha thing is if a comet/asteroid does align with earth, we know it will be coming, but f**k all we can do about it :P
ReplyWith the robots, if they ever gained true conciousness, within a week we'd all be dead, probably less time...but we're basing this on movie logic.
lol am i the only one who noticed that in one article they talked about how the world most likely won't end in a 1000 years by a asteroid or comets?
ReplyThe idea that the planet killing asteroid will be stopped by a "band of misfits" is one that I've only seen in Armageddon. In Deep Impact, the team sent to destroy the comet are extensively trained astronaut specialists who, in addition to their previous expertise, have been training for this one mission nonstop for close to a year. The only team member that might qualify as a misfit is the Robert Duvall character, and even he is there because he's a seasoned veteran astronaut with experience landing spacecraft. In other words, he's a misfit only in that he has significantly more practical experience than the rest of the team.
Replyenjoyed reading until i hit a roadblock in the evolution portion. something seemed to contradict what i had read years ago. a few seconds of research and ... "The study showed Neanderthal and modern human brains were the same size at birth, but by adulthood, the Neandertal brain was larger than the modern human brain.[11] They were much stronger than h**o sapiens, having particularly strong arms and hands.[12] " enjoy...
Replymodern humans evolved to have smaller brains that neanderthals because the brain takes up an assload of calories. but it doesnt mean we not as smart, which is where i assume were going with this, but we are in fact, regardless of what wikipedia says, smarter. muscles take up less energy, but when we became a very social animal and solved every problem together, extra muscle became unnessessary. the reason we conqured the neandrethals is because the were hilariously inefficient beings, having to have ten times the amount of caloies in their diet. which, in a world where you have to work for hours for every squirrl and your on your own, is a pretty big problem. and i did enjoy.
Whales have larger brains than us, but I've never seen one on an internet dating site.
WHAT THE f**k COULD BE WORSE THAN CTHULHU!!!!!!!
Replybut the robot thing can be beat easy, nukes give off EMP's, EMP's shut down robots for good, we nuke where the robots are comeing from and we win
The Problem with that is the radioactive fallout will render the nuked places(and where ever the wind blows it to) uninhabitable for thousands of years.
There's other ways of getting an EMP. Watch Small Soldiers XD
I'm pretty sure robots that take over the world will have internet access. And you just published your plans to defeat the robots on the internet. And this is a website with relatively high traffic. They will read this. Congratulations you fuck, you just doomed the entire human civilisation. Trollollollollolloll.
ReplyMaybe the robots will use the internet to learn and will become slaves to Kitty masters!
I can haz free will, Kitty Overlord Scruffles?
From what I've seen lately it's going to be economic and socio-political problems that will bring about our downfall. I was hoping for movie-maker nightmares come true myself, but as it stands right now, we can't afford them. And I have to comment on the part about Henry Ford and the aerosol guys; there is no definitive evidence cars contibute to global warming. For every scientist that presents indisputable proof they do, there is one with indisputable evidence they don't. Ever notice from March to August it's global warming and from September to February it's climate change? How about this; what caused the ice age? climate change. what caused the ice to melt? global warming. There were no cars to facilitate those changes back then. Second, the hole in the ozone layer has been there long before humanity came to be, much less industrialize. Any pictures you see showing the depletion are taken between October and March. A chemistry class can explain why.
ReplyThere are four groups who benefit from climate change lies: environmentalists; the media; scientists; those wankers on the climate change panel. Now indusrtialised countries will have to pay $100 BILLION dollars a year to third world countries to help climate change causes. So now the socialists have a stake too.
i think that the video in #5 is exaggerate.i mean, a asteroid big enough to make waves so big that will escape to outer space, then opening a hole from which presumably all the planet's lava will come out, drying all the planet's water in one minute, and then turning the earth into venus, finally leaving a huge sea of lava? no human-made structure would survive that.and yet, the Big Ben survived on the video.
ReplyWho the hell said that was happening?
dude i would love the plague one so i can finally drive cars :D
ReplySorry to scare people but underwater robots have been developed.
ReplyAlso, if the robots are so smart, can't they just use....... A BOAT?
Or bomb us at sea?
Personally I don't care if a more evolved version of humanity replaces humanity, unless they try to kill off all the old humans. So what if the people who come after me are more evolved than me? Doesn't hurt me none.
Replydont worry if anything like that does happen wont be for at least a few hundred thousand years :) youll be dead your kids will be dead your kids kids, your kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids kids will probably be dead..
So we've got an article listing Sci-Fi scenarios that could never happen with "Sentient Robot Uprising" on the list, but we have "sci-fi apocalypses that could totally happen" with "Sentient Robot Uprising" on the list? Um, okay.
Replythey had fish-bots in the most recent Terminator. But that one doesn't count
ReplyI don't follow the terminator movies, but why doesn't the new one count?
Because it wasn't made in the 80's, so you can't watch it with the rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia.
Where's grey goo?
ReplyThat would be a combination of machine revolution, pandemic and scientific experiment gone wrong.
actually, grey goo was specifically mentioned in
#1.A Scientific Experiment Unleashes Horrors
right under the video about nano bots
so this article is just, what, a list of movie plots?
Reply