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Home > Science > 5 Kick-Ass Sci-Fi Apocalypses (That Could Actually Happen)

5 Kick-Ass Sci-Fi Apocalypses (That Could Actually Happen)

By Gavin Fyhrie, with David Wong January 15, 2008 590,778 views
article image
#3.
Deadly Pandemic

As seen in:
12 Monkeys, The Stand, 28 Days Later, Omega Man, Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, Outbreak.

How it goes down:
It might be a single, momentous "oops" in the sterile silence of a laboratory. Or, it might be a deliberate attack by a vicious and extremely short-sighted terrorist group. But when patient zero finally leans against you on the bus and sneezes down your neck, humanity will be six Kleenex "Ultra Aloe" boxes from extinction.

Society breaks apart as policemen get the sniffles, and the army is stretched thin. Cities burn as diseased rioters rage through the streets. Miracle cures pop up on every corner, and only stop when everyone in the neighborhood is too sick to get out of a bed filled with vomit and their own intestines. With not enough able-bodied people to manufacture goods or run the farms, the infrastructure breaks down and the survivors are left to battle it out in a post-apocalyptic battle royale.

Why it kicks ass:
Everyone assumes they'll be among the 1 percent who are immune to the plague. They'll be left in a quiet world where all the annoying people are gone, but all of their cars and stereos have been left behind. You and your friends can go play softball at a deserted Yankee Stadium, then take to the streets and fight it out with one of the roving gangs of thugs.

Chances of it happening:
Pandemics, defined by their high-contagion rate and ridiculous body count, have been rare. Famous alumni include cholera, influenza and the Bubonic plague (that last one killed 100 million fucking people, up to 20 percent of the world's population at the time). Yes, we beat those bastards, but that doesn't make us invincible.

You see, we aren't the only ones who are evolving. Some types of Tuberculosis have kicked our current batch of antibiotics in the crotch, and since many pharmaceutical companies are more interested in filling our cabinets with lifestyle-enhancing drugs than new types of antibiotics, we may not have the meds to fight off the next pandemic that comes along.

We've got more people, living closer together, and routinely traveling across oceans. One business traveler gets infected and it could spread like wildfire.

How to survive it (according to movies on the topic):
Many believe that, right before things reach the point of no return, some misfit scientists will discover the cure and will have to race to get the vial to the lab and maybe wind up hanging off a helicopter in the process.

However, most sources found at our local video store simply depict the pandemic as already having happened, leaving only a select few survivors behind. So, either there is no hope of stopping one once it starts, or else we won't try very hard in hopes a peopleless world will finally give us the chance to ride a motorcycle through the Louvre.

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150 Comments

middlenamefrank thinks that by reading cracked it makes him a competent source of judgment on humanity.

5/24/2009 6:45:42 PM
Kiebland

The comments down there are weird.

5/23/2009 8:28:21 PM
lol2muchflames

Atlatl thinks that by reading cracked that makes him funny.

5/15/2009 1:21:28 PM
Zathura

Middlenamefrank

5 & 2. By your reasoning, I can safely assume that both the impact of a GIANT f*****g METEOR and EVOLUTION are connected. Therefore, I thank you, I can sleep easy knowing when a meteor hits me square in the face, it will change me into some sort of 'super' being (maybe with a dick that shoots clothes melting acid).

4 & 3. Robots taking over, hmmm, I'm not overly worried about this one alone, but as we become more dependent on computers and machines, it will also slowly degenerate us into incompetent, blithering assholes (read: weaken our immune system due to lack of effort put forth into... anything). With that being said, a virus or disease could conceivably wipe out humanity, and this is something I would be worried about. If machines become sentient and decide to fight humans, well, I'm pretty sure biological f*****g warfare is high on their list. (read: We're fucked already!)

1: I've covered everything else, which leads me to conclude that you are a dick. Has anyone one (other then f*****g hippies and PETA members) actually want to see 'An Inconvenient Truth'?

When humanity is on the precipice of destruction thanks to my laser shooting dick, and sentient robots hell bent on giving you aids (that's right, AIDS) then I'm sure you and Al Gore will find a way to engineer yourselves into an even earlier grave. You've been warned.

1/23/2009 6:54:39 PM
Atlatl

5. Already happened. Didn't actually kill the dinosaurs but turned them into birds. I'm not sure how but it did.

4. Starting to happen? Surveys show the 'computer literate' among us have a distinct advantage. Tila Tequila turned minor MySpace celebrity into actual dollars and a pseudo-career. Make friends with the machines now.

3. Already happened, several times. I'm not too worried about it, a resistant few always survive and evolve. Gotta love nature!

2. Business as usual, happening on a daily basis. Don't be afraid of the sunrise, people.

1. Did you even see "An Inconvenient Truth"?? We've already designed/built ourselves into an incredibly deep hole. But I'm an engineer, I believe we can design/build ourselves out of it. If we bother.

9/6/2008 8:58:43 PM
middlenamefrank

Derek from Bad Taste will save us all. Dereks don't take s**t from anyone. ANYONE.

8/2/2008 6:37:36 PM
Sanjuro

Unfortunately for us Daleks can swim. Or at least, go along the bottom of the Thames

7/12/2008 2:31:25 AM
user

I just realized, we humans tend to worry about how we're all going to die a lot.

6/25/2008 1:41:03 PM
Uzernaem

http://bux.to/?r=Requin join and earn money

5/29/2008 1:43:47 PM
bux-to

murphy's law. sorry

5/27/2008 7:21:13 AM
mithlodiel

robots don't have human instincts and notions like brotherhood, country. besides when humans make a complex plan about something it usually blows up in our faces. also take into account merfy's law

5/27/2008 7:20:22 AM
mithlodiel

The robot problem would be easy, just have magnetic weapons, it'd f**k their circuits up reeeal good

5/12/2008 5:37:52 PM
M-tel

If the purpose of the robots is to protect their country how would eliminating humanity be a solution..

4/17/2008 11:39:24 AM
Sunk

The robot problem is easy. Just make sure everyone lives nearby factories which have random pits of incredibly hot robot-killing lava placed inside.

4/7/2008 4:47:29 AM
BigEasterCake

great article. Whenever I think of world ending catastrophes nowadays all I can think of is the movie Idiocrisy where stupid people breed intelligence out of existence. The world doesn't end with a bang but a loud farting noise.

3/31/2008 7:14:56 PM
Justintoxicated

Draykir you silly little man, have you even followed the success rate of missile defense? it doesn't work. They needed to cheat the system in order to get positive results (and they explain this part in any article on the topic) they tagged the missiles with locators and in some tests they didn't even bother using missiles, just hot air balloons. And the gap between a "fix" and a catastrophic problem, as the dead people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki will tell you, is a little too long for it to matter, since in the meanwhile millions can still die that way. Also- in the medical context- each layer of complexity we add not only makes the next solution harder and more time consuming to find- it makes it far more expensive and further out of the reach of the financial means of many who would need it. I mean, we all understand you have a hard-on for technology. Hooray for you. But that doesn't make your half-assed defense of it any more coherent or plausible.

1/29/2008 6:08:10 AM
Babar the Elephant King

Lord Drayakir - Dude, seriously... It's not supposed to be serious, it's supposed to be freaking FUNNY!!! And it was, btw... I laughed a lot, as I always do...

1/28/2008 9:12:46 PM
Dave

This last one is f*****g stupid.

America has the Frankenstein complex, a term created by Asimov to explain humanity's fear of robots, but in general, it extends to all scientific progress.

Nanobots, or evolution, or unrestrained scientific research is a good thing, you asswipes. Just because it has the potential to create something horrible, chances are, it will also be able to undo it. DUH. Just like we have nuclear bombs now, well, now we have anti-missile defense.

Honestly, grow the f**k up. People that are afraid of this are probably afraid of fire, and think we should go live in caves.

1/27/2008 10:07:54 PM
Lord Drayakir

On reflection, that sounded like spam. No really, the scary bug thread drew me here, then I invested most of an hour in enjoying the rest. I actually had other things to do, but it was worth postponing them.

1/26/2008 11:31:35 AM
Don

Just stumbled on this site. Thanks for taking the time to add to gaity of nations. Wonderful stuff.

1/26/2008 11:22:35 AM
Don

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