Although each of these factors sucks big-time, if they were to all occur simultaneously we would very well be looking at an economic apocalypse. Remember, just because the stock market may be going up, it doesn’t mean that the economy is healthy and things are going good. A market propped up by artificial cash injections in the form of bailouts or drastic increases in the money supply is merely an illusion. Many times in history a country has had a strong stock market while the real foundations of its economy were rotting.
NOT JUST A TERRIBLE MOVIE PLOT:
THE ASTEROID APOCALYPSE
Asteroids are the shit left over from the creation of the universe—the afterbirth, if you will. But instead of being a nice, runny, warm flow of human mucus and soupy-goodness, these fuckers are made of solid rock. Some are even composed of pure, dense iron. If an asteroid measuring more than two kilometers in diameter is spotted heading toward Earth, it is fancily nicknamed a “Planet Killer.” I’m going to repeat that for clarity—PLANET KILLER, meaning no more planet. End of world.
Having trouble wrapping your head around this? Grab your bongs and I’ll break it down for you. A collision would be nothing like the ones in the old Asteroid arcade game. Real asteroids are not a bunch of Lucky Charm–colored digital blobs, and when one hits you, most likely you will be dead, soon to be dead, or, if you are lucky, living in a world that makes Dante’s third ring of hell look like a slip-’n’-slide party with the UFC Ring Girls. Who the fuck is Dante, how many rings of hell are there, and who is the third ring reserved for? Don’t worry about any of that. Just trust me when I say that none of it is good news for you.
Now you’re probably saying, “Forrest, won’t we see an asteroid coming?” First of all, fuck off, it’s “Mr. Griffin” to you. But yes, in many cases, we will. Scientists have built really big telescopes, but with most scientists being slightly perverted, there is a good chance the scopes will be pointed at some chick undressing in Iceland rather than at the night sky. Knowing this is a very real probability, they have come up with the term “backdoor asteroid” (see what I mean about scientists being perverted). A backdoor asteroid is one that sneaks past our radar, and if it should be larger than a kilometer in diameter, things will get way out of hand. Here is what you have to look forward to upon impact.
First off, this thing will hit our stratosphere at a shit-ton of degrees, which scientists say is hot enough to burn the pubes off a groundhog six feet below the crust of the earth. (There’s another fantastic turn of phrase: “crust of the earth.” Sounds like what was in the jockstrap I put in Bigger John’s pillow case right after the first Tito fight!) With 70 percent of the earth’s surface being covered by water, this flaming ball of molten death will most likely land in the ocean somewhere. It won’t hit the surface and cool off—like a fat-fingered proctologist, that thing is going to hit the bottom of the ocean and keep on going, burrowing its way deep down into the earth. In addition to displacing all that water, it will also displace rock, gravel, and Davy Jones’s locker itself. All this matter and water will shoot up into the atmosphere, where it will be scorched by the now-incendiary skies. Eventually, though, it has to come down, and when it does, it won’t do any good. The shit will “literally” be going down.
Let me illustrate this for you using a more practical, real-world scenario. Let’s say you have to squeeze out one of those double-fist-size, rock-hard balls of Indian clay from your nervous butt hole. You know what I mean, the kind of turd that actually makes you hesitate for a moment when you realize what is coming. The one where you have to mentally prep for the inevitable pain and perhaps even the humiliating Groan-Out-Loud. Well, imagine letting one of those go in a public restroom equipped with those taller toilets. You know the kind, where your butt is like two feet from the surface of the water. When that petrified shit ball hits the surface, it will displace the water below with such force that you will receive a dose of toilet water straight up your chocolate starfish.
In the case of a real asteroid, the toilet is earth, the toilet water is the ocean, the compressed mass of fecal ore is the asteroid, and your colon is so far in outer space it might as well be Uranus (drumroll, please). However, instead of cool, soothing shit water (which can actually feel quite good if your sphincter is burning from last night’s chimichanga), a hailstorm of molten earth and boiling water will fall back to the earth’s surface in a radius of a fuck-ton of miles (yes, a fuck-ton is bigger than a shit-ton). Quite literally, a rain of fire.
If you think that being up in the mountains, far away from the point of impact, will help keep you safe, think again. Next comes a scorching, five-hundred-mile-per-hour wind, burning everything in its path. These winds, created by the overheated atmosphere, would carry the falling debris and spread this fiery cheer over hundreds of miles, instantly igniting trees and man-made structures. Then tsunamis created by the impact would rise up to a hundred and fifty feet and sweep outward from ground zero and extinguish some of the flames once they reach land. Yes, I know you are thinking the same thing as me—good ol’ Mother Nature has the same sense of humor as a small boy watching a snail drag its bubbling, dying corpse of slime across a pile of rock salt.
The impact will also give us fantastic earthquakes. These things will shake the earth much like a frustrated babysitter shakes a crying baby.7 Millions of people living in densely populated urban centers such as New York City, Beijing, Mexico City, and São Paulo will be crushed under mountains of cement-and-steel infrastructure. But none of that really matters because the world will already have caught on fire, and not in the way Lance Bass hoped. No Project Runway here, buddy! Just a massive wildfire that will make Smokey the Bear put a bullet in his furry head.
Am I just telling you horror stories to keep you up at night? Am I blowing this whole asteroid thing out of proportion? Let me give you this bit of news. It is estimated that the likelihood of an asteroid hitting Earth is six thousand to one. And that number is not in our favor—I’m talking six thousand to one that such an event will occur. It’s simply a matter of when and how big it will be. But don’t give up all hope. After all, the odds were much worse when Han Solo went into that asteroid field, and he somehow pulled out alive. However, I strongly suggest taking my advice below, as it will dramatically increase your odds of surviving an asteroid attack.
Hints for surviving an asteroid attack:
1. Stay away from asteroids.
2. Dig a hole deep into the bowels of the earth and then never come out.
3. Build a spaceship and then fly away just prior to impact.
4. Develop a machine that can turn you into a cockroach. Those nasty little fuckers can live through anything, including the heel of my boot.
5. Sorry, just kidding. There ain’t shit you can do about this one. It’s a fucking asteroid.
THE REASON EVERYONE IN THE 1950S WAS SCARED SHITLESS:
THE NUCLEAR APOCALYPSE
This is not nuclear proliferation.
Have you ever seen a country really, really, insanely pissed off? France totally doesn’t count, by the way. I’m talking about a country that’s actually a threat. If a country got totally fucked over, say, as a result of an economic collapse, there is no telling how far they would go. Don’t believe me? Just look at that crackhead prostitute who hangs out on the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard and Flamingo. She will do some pretty crazy shit for five bucks, or so I’ve heard, and she can get all the clean water and food she wants down at the shelter. (Note: Do not look at her too hard or you won’t be able to eat your lunch. However, it is great if you are trying to cut weight. As a matter of fact, if you are way overweight, you might want to consider bedding her, as it will permanently reduce your appetite.)
People will do just about anything when desperate, and that includes scorching the tits off Mother Earth. But how will these types of countries get their dirty hands on an atom bomb? It’s called “Nuclear Proliferation,” son. Now I am sure you’ve heard that term bandied back and forth durin
g your lifetime, but it isn’t what happens when a fart follows you back to the dinner table while on a date, and it’s not what happens when a stripper’s HHH breast implant explodes during an oil wrestling match at a dingy, riverside bar on the outskirts of Meth Town USA.
Nuclear proliferation is a term used to describe the spread of nuclear weapons or nuclear technology to countries that are not on the “cool” list. For example, if the USA and Russia, both of which are recognized nuclear states, were playing a game of football, and a little Guatemalan kid suddenly ran out on the field, snatched up the ball, and then went skittering into the locker room, nuclear proliferation would have occurred. Of course, the football would have to be a nuclear weapon and the Russians would actually have to learn how to play football, but you catch my drift.8
This is a very real scenario. When the Soviet Union fell in 1991, not only did the world lose the sense of fear that came from watching Red Dawn, but many of the Soviets’ weapons that had been stockpiled over the course of the cold war simply disappeared, as did some of their key scientists and the materials necessary to develop a nuclear weapon system. Much of this junk has never been accounted for, and it could have found its way anywhere. If one of these nukes ended up in the hands of a pissed-off dictator whose country has been leveled by a global economic collapse, what would stop him from kicking off a massive fireworks display that will end civilization as we know it?
In addition to a nuke possibly sitting in the basement of a dilapidated shack in some third-world country that hates the Western world, cyber-terrorism is another threat we face. Cyber-terrorism could arise when a fanatical group wishing to cause harm to a specific nation (America, it always has to be America—I guess it’s because we’re the poster child for Fat and Happy) ends up procuring a really smart computer nerd, convinces him to hack into a country’s nuclear weapons launching system, and then drops a payload on an unsuspecting nation. This is a very real scenario, which is why security is so tight at Comic-Con. Think about it: it wouldn’t be that hard for a terrorist cell to stake out a Star Trek convention or sign up for Avatar language lessons. After the meeting in the parking lot, they jack the smartest geek in the group. The terrorists know he won’t put up much of a fight, as years of playing Halo in a windowless room and emerging once a year for his annual nerd fest have made him exceedingly doughy.
While nerd-kind is highly intelligent and keen with problem solving, they have a nagging inferiority complex. By repeatedly telling the geek how smart he is, combined with the conversion speech the Emperor used on Luke Skywalker and providing him with seventy-two virgins while he is actually alive, the terrorists could win the geek’s loyalty and have him hack into any computer system on the planet.
Apocalyptic Movies You Must See
1. The Stand: Best apocalyptic movie of all time. And I don’t want to get a bunch of letters telling me that I am wrong because it was a miniseries. A miniseries is a movie, shithead, it’s just a really long one broken up into parts.
2. Carriers: This movie was recommended to me by Stephen King in Entertainment Weekly. My big problem with this flick is that the main characters wear these flimsy surgical masks in an attempt to avoid a virus that has wiped out a large majority of the population. Obviously, such masks would do absolutely nothing to save them. The reason I recommend this movie is that (spoiler alert, asshole) nearly all the characters die before the end. Other than their deaths, everything in the movie is totally unrealistic.
3. 28 Days Later: As I mentioned in my last book, this movie reinvented the zombie genre simply by making the walking dead capable of running super fast. Although much of this movie was unrealistic, it accurately portrayed how quickly viruses can spread and how dangerous they can be. I know this because of all the advanced medical training I’ve received during my frequent trips to the ER.
4. 28 Weeks Later: Same as the first movie, only bloodier and starring the guy who picks fights with everyone in Trainspotting.
5. Escape from New York: This movie gives us very little information about the apocalypse itself, but New York does become a prison, which I am pretty sure is what it is presently becoming. Other than perhaps a little foreshadowing, the best part of this movie is Kurt Russell’s mullet.
6. Mad Max: I think this movie is very realistic about how homoeroticism will manifest when the shit hits the fan. Seemingly overnight, people will transform from businessmen into gay, leather-clad barbarians. Personally, I know for a fact that I will be wearing a leather leotard and tights minutes after the first bomb lands.
7. The Road: Not sure if this movie was very realistic, but it was depressing as shit. It made me question whether or not I even want to survive the apocalypse.
8. Planet of the Apes: I don’t know if it is actually an apocalyptic movie because we haven’t outlined the parameters of what can be classified as apocalyptic, but monkeys overtaking everything sounds pretty fucking apocalyptic to me. In any case, while the original is good, the remake is fucking unwatchable, except for that female ape/Mark Wahlberg love-story side plot . . . Did I say that out loud? I meant the movie is just terrible; forget I ever said anything about that side plot. Would you excuse me? I’m just gonna go throw on that DVD for a few minutes . . .
9. Star Wars: Not actually an apocalyptic movie, but it is awesome.
Back when I was a kid, they used to show a movie called The Day After, and it scared the living shit out of everyone. It wasn’t filled with the special effects they have now, but you got the point. A nuclear blast would seriously fuck some shit up. However, today, people seem to be so blasé about the possibility of a nuclear war. To snap you back to reality, here is a likely scenario of what you can expect:
One afternoon, you are sitting on your front stoop, sipping on your gin ’n’ juice, trying to recall where you stashed your blunt. Your hoes are upstairs in your tiny studio apartment, drinking cheap champagne and gettin’ it on, and you’re contemplating going up there and joining them in the mix . . . If only you could find your damn blunt! (Sound familiar? Yes, I stole it from a Snoop Dogg horror movie.) Suddenly a really old, creepy man who happens to work at the cemetery wanders by, looks at you, and says in his grave, old-man voice, “A storm is a-brewin’.” Then he hobbles off.
As you watch the geezer zigzag down the street, you hear what sounds like a siren wailing in the distance. Seconds later, there comes a terrible roar from above, and you look up to see what appears to be a trail of fire streaking across the darkening sky. Your eyes track it until it disappears over the horizon, and just as you are lulling yourself back into relaxed contemplation, a deafening BOOM rocks your eardrums and a bright white flash blinds you. As you regain your vision, you see a ball of flame gather up into a familiar amalgam of orange and black. Within seconds it is there, the classic calling card of the end of the world—the Mushroom Cloud.
You immediately forget about your blunt and go sprinting upstairs hoping to get one last romp with Laticia and Uganda, but it is too late. Immediately after the nuke hit, the air around the detonation rose to twenty thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The blast proceeded to suck up all the air underneath and around the detonation, and then a split second later it pushed it all back out in a shock wave. You see, a nuclear explosion contains so much energy that it actually creates an electromagnetic pulse that radiates in all directions, flattening everything in its path.
Just as you are removing your pants, you see your blunt lying on the floor and pick it up. You take a hit, but it is not the type of hit you were hoping for. That’s right, you take a nuclear blast straight to your face. I would go into gory detail about what the shock wave does to your body, but there might be kids reading this book, simply because I have warned them not to (which was my ploy all along), so I will skip right to the end, which is where you, your house, your bitches, and of course your blunt all get vaporized. That’s absolutely correct, vaporized. Remember that episode of the original Star Trek where they turned people into little cubes of du
st. That’s you.
Nuclear bombs are fucking terrifying. And it’s not just the big fancy explosion and the super-awesome shock wave. When the atomic bomb exploded over Nagasaki in 1945, it shot radioactive fallout sixty thousand feet into the atmosphere. That shit didn’t just come straight back down—it got sucked up in prevailing wind currents and traveled long distances before eventually finding its way back to earth. That’s why if you are anywhere near a blast zone and survive, they tell you to “shelter in.” In idiot terms, that means stay the fuck inside. Do not go outside to look at the pretty sky. Get into your fallout shelter as quickly as possible and then wait for the radiation to subside. If you ignored my advice and did not build a fallout shelter, you’re most likely screwed. But you should at least give survival a shot by sealing up all the door frames and window ledges with duct tape, shutting off any outside source of ventilation, and then going down into the basement. If you do not have a basement or fallout shelter, crawl under your desk like they used to tell kids to do during the Cuban missile crisis in the early sixties. This will in no way save you—I just think it is an amazing way for you to die. On the upside, the desk will most likely fall on you and serve as your coffin.
Be Ready When the Sh*t Goes Down( A Survival Guide to the Apocalypse) Page 11
