Apocalypse Lame?

Dan over at A Blog Named Sue complains about his disappointment over the current economic crisis.

You know, in every movie I’ve seen about the end of the world, civilization collapses because of something wicked cool happening – an asteroid hits, nuclear war, a supervirus, an ape revolution, whatever. If civilization collapses over credit default swaps I an going to be pissed.

I agree that that would indeed be lame. But given the general irrational nature of humans, I think that Dan should buck up. After all, if we see Great Depression II lead into World War III, it’s likely that the trend towards robotic militaries and counter-robot warfare will likely continue in earnest as governments divert money from the general economy into robots. Given the acceleration of military technology during times of great wars, it’s inevitable that the robots will turn on their human masters. Boom! Instant roboacalypse!

Plus, let’s consider that third world countries will probably be at war, too. Obviously, they’re not going to have the resources to develop robots, so they’ll have to do the next best thing. Train monkeys to fight. They’re already capable of overrunning human cities, so it’s a logical next step. Obviously, once they’re trained, they will inevitably revolt against humans. Once that happens, I see one of two things: (1) The apes join forces with the robots to enslave humanity or (2) The apes and robots begin to go to war with each other, with humans trapped in the middle.

Either way, that’s a good apocalypse. And we owe it all to 30:1 leveraging and credit default swaps.

FILED UNDER: Humor, Military Affairs, National Security, Science & Technology, , ,
Alex Knapp
About Alex Knapp
Alex Knapp is Associate Editor at Forbes for science and games. He was a longtime blogger elsewhere before joining the OTB team in June 2005 and contributed some 700 posts through January 2013. Follow him on Twitter @TheAlexKnapp.

Comments

  1. KVC says:

    As for me I follow the Revelation theory that after the credit collapse, and someone (to named at a later) moves everyone into the new “World Order” with a global economy and one religion (or in other words suppression of all religion), then we will have our world in perfect harmony; until the masses realize it was human nature all the time and we have over looked the only answer. You can find this story in the Bible in it’s entirety.

  2. Mattyoung says:

    You are mean to robots, they are nice hard working creatures.

  3. William d'Inger says:

    In case it does end over a credit default, the Democrats are laying the ground work to credit Rush for the default.

  4. sam says:

    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    This is the way the world ends
    Not with a bang but a whimper.

  5. DL says:

    I can just see the end as a robot on a bike delivers the last newspaper to the last living creature and the headline will read –

    Bush did it!

    The camera will roll back to an eriee scene with trillions of like-minded robots all bowing down to a man on a throne leading them as he looks into huge teleprompter saying over and over; hope and change -I am the one we’ve been waiting for -hope and change -I am the one we’ve been waiting for -hope and change -I am….

  6. sam says:

    If Bush did it, the robots would be effed-up beyond any hope of recovery.

  7. davod says:

    Nothing is new:


    Make Mine Freedom:
    A new release from the Moving Picture Institute: A 1948 cartoon extolling the virtues of freedom and capitalism over statism. Somehow, the film seems eerily appropriate today. (Although it condemns “isms” of all stripes — such as fascism, socialism, and communism — clearly libertarianism is an label that was later formulated to describe the pro-freedom view of this film.)*

    PS: Progressivism is missing as well.

    Change you can believe in.

    *http://volokh.com/ (Randy Barnett, March 6, 2009 at 1:22pm]

  8. These little popup windows that show up when you move your mouse over the article are really obnoxious. They get in the way of reading the message and keep me from seeing the link I am trying to get to.

  9. G.A.Phillips says:

    If Bush did it, the robots would be effed-up beyond any hope of recovery.

    lol, have you been watching your boy Zero work? he got skills!

    Oh and the world will end in purifying clouds of hell fire!