In the comment section of yesterday’s “Have BP Execs Committed Manslaughter?,” a spirited little side-debate started about the ultimate fate of the earth.
“How sad to think that we seem to be witnessing the rapid approach of the death of this beautiful planet,” said “Appalachiana.”
“Earth can and will take the worst we can offer it,” said “venice1.”
“You’re a moron who wouldn’t know an oil spill from a glass of lemonade,” I imagined Appalachiana saying (she didn’t).
“Love your screen name,” venice1 also did not respond. “Was RockyMountainsiananana already taken?
“Mutant alligators will attack!” I hope no one ever says.
But the point is: people are genuinely worried about the state of our planet right now.
And I think we all know what concern for the demise of life as we know it means.
That’s right: Contest time!
In the comments section below, please submit your answer to the following question:
How do you think the ultimate fate of planet Earth and mankind will play out? Do you think the human race will survive? Do you think earth will? Do you think either or both will, but in forms we wouldn’t recognize today? Do you think human will survive, but only after moving to another planet? Do you think mutant alligators will attack?
Make your answer to (in short) “How Will It All End?” as long or brief as you like, with as much detail and/or explanation as you see fit.
The winning entry will receive a signed and inscribed copy of my book, Penguins, Pain and the Whole Shebang. I know it’s stupid to pick a “winner” when it’s all just opinions. But I don’t care. I feel like giving away a book. So I’ll probably just pick an entry at random. We’ll see. But somebody’s gettin’ a book. In fact, I’ll probably pick two winners. Cuz I roll just like that.
The contest will be closed at midnight, or sometime after lunch, or whatever. But pretty soon.
Thank you. Good luck. And I really am looking forward to reading your answers.
![John Shore on The Huffington Post](http://johnshore.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/huffpost.jpg?w=120 "John Shore on The Huffington Post\")
{ 146 comments… read them below or add one }
« 1 2
@Joe, you've got the right idea. @Matthew T. I am NOT a "tropical critter!" anything above 77 and I start to melt.
A small percentage step up their vibration and reincarnate to a Utopian paradise planet or realm. They grow wings and float around with zithers and harps.
The rest are here on earth happily polluting and making wars.
Jesus returns and say's to the 144 thousand…."Come on, folks, let's get the hell outta here….before it blowsssss!!!" (dramatic horror sting from "There Might be Blood" with Daniel Day-Lewis)
Krishna returns and says (along with his chariot companion, Moses) "OY VEY!"
The earth (which is living) goes "What the hell?" When it realizes that the human/bacteria are poking holes in Terra Firma/Gaia. The earth is a bit slow in that huge time scale.
Then the earth turns the temp up 3 degrees and all the humans disappear. The remaining animals and plants go "whew…."
The purged human population reincarnates on a planet OK with trailer parks, ghettos, landfills, and oil spills. (for now that is…..until THAT planet wakes up and says "what the hell?")
(Ripping off Tolle a bit here…..but it's funny.)
mw
I like this one too!
I'm not sure how mankind and the planet will play out … but I think the penultimate moment looks a little like this:
In this fateful hour I place all Heaven with its power
The sun with its brightness
And the snow with its whiteness
And the fire with all the strength it hath
And the lightning with its rapid wrath
And the winds with their swiftness
And the sea with its deepness
And the rocks with their steepness
And the earth with its starkness
All these I place
Between myself and the powers of darkness.
Okay, what are you quoting? It sounds really familiar.
I wanted to add the attribution, but I’m trying to break my habit of verbosity. Like most things in my life, it’s a little complicated.
I first read it on the front page of Madeleine L’Engle’s “A Swiftly Tilting Planet” when I was 9 or 10. It’s the third book in her Time Quartet, written for young adults. Her books describe a world where religion, science, mathematics and magic are intertwined. They had a huge impact on me. I memorized passages from them; I had a jump rope game where I chanted her definitions of the dimensions up to the tesseract. She died recently and I was struck by the strange little memorials that dribbled out on train station walls and syndicated comic strips.
From Wikipedia: “L’Engle was Episcopalian and believed in universal salvation, writing that ‘All will be redeemed in God’s fullness of time, all, not just the small portion of the population who have been given the grace to know and accept Christ. All the strayed and stolen sheep. All the little lost ones.’” She was the librarian and, later, the artist-in-residence at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Because her beliefs were inclusive, she was shunned by traditional Christian outlets. Because she was religious, she was overlooked by secular critics and considered unfit for public schools.
She wrote poetry herself, so I always assumed the poem was original. When I looked for it during a difficult period a few years ago, I found that it is a slightly altered version of St. Patrick’s Rune. It is related to the Lorica of Patrick, also known as The Deer’s Cry, which is supposed to have turned St. Patrick and his followers into deer when in danger. It is a prayer of protection.
That is seriously cool. I thought I recognized it from "A Swiftly Tilting Planet." And thanks for the further details regarding from whence she got it. Again, seriously cool!
Thanks for letting me go on. I just love that quote about "All will be redeemed." I grew up in a tiny town in the Midwest, so no cultural sensitivity kept a teacher from loaning it to me.
As a representative of the Mutant Alligator Defense League I take serious exception to many of the comments here.
Tee, hee, hee!
But I wrote about mutant alligators in a somewhat positive light..They held their own against the mutant sharks for 50 years!
John, while considering this subject I am troubled by this vision. I see Christ (ref: second coming) rising out of the Gulf of Mexico, his white robes and flowing locks of hair coated with black sludge. I am sad.
Just sortta like it was the first time! No problen, I think!
I don't understand all those big words.
Wake up, John! Award the prize. This was fun!
For a REALLY good metaphor for our current society read (http://www.amazon.com/Last-Hours-Ancient-Sunlight-Revised/dp/1400051576/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpt_2) which relates human civilisation to our ability to harness energy. For most of human history (about 93,000 years) we’ve been restricted to the annual energy embodied in the environment around us.
With the advent of the agrarian revolution humanity learnt to harness more energy, but this became exponentially more so after the industrial revolution as we’ve learnt to tap into the stored energy of dead animals. Unfortunately, we are tapping into every more difficult forms of stored energy – and its gonna take another 300 million to be replenished.
This ‘extra energy’ is what has enabled our population explosion. So clearly, as the accessible energy is used up, the massive human population is likely to result in zombies.
Its the only solution.
Good question! I doubt any of us!
I think the real question is not how the world will end, but who will feature in the montage sequence…
Ya gotta wonder about the second part of that name, Homo sapiens. I mean really now, put yourself in the shoes of an extraterrestrial (if they wear shoes). “Sapient” wouldn’t likely be the first word you’d pick to describe us. We don’t necessarily set out to do the stupid and harmful things we do, but our history (which is not even a slightly noticeable blip on the time line of Earth) is rife with some really crazy stuff that doesn’t make me exactly proud of being a human all the time. Sometimes I’d rather be a mushroom or a bird mite or anything else. I’m not alone in this shame. Kurt Vonnegut came up with a whole list of things he’d rather be.
Is the magnificent biodiversity of this glorious planet doomed? Well, it is so troublesome watching and knowing that the demand for the Earth’s resources continue to rise as our numbers grow and grow and grow. I cannot help but worry. Worry as I do, however, I do not know when it will end. But even if the future can be proven to hold nothing but darkness and doom, how would we improve that situation by giving up? O.k., I think I heard someone think, “how would it help if we did try?” Well, wouldn’t we at least feel better for trying? We might as well do something besides hastening the demise? This planet is the only home we have. In fact, when the richest of the rich shut the door to the spaceship to head light years out, I’ll say good riddance and snuggle down into a valley of the Earth, for I do not see any hope for life outside of this sphere.
Oh, and by the way, please let Venice know that Rockymountainsiana is a good friend of mine. In fact, I think she has her eye on you, John.
I’ll just buy the book. John does all the work, then I consider his input.
Everyone dies. The saved live forever. Earth and the universe recovers. I think GOD likes beautiful scenary based on what I’ve seen.
Thanks, Denver. I cannot proof-read. I swear. I can look at an error and think, "yep, that's right", because I read it back to myself the exact same way I said it in my head to myself when i wrote it. Duh. "nest Tuesday". I'm an idiot.
Nope. Not an idiot. Just a member of the human race. Welcome to the club, buddy!
Sorry you are not a chipmunk or a firemouth cichlid or birdwing pearlymussel (these latter two would get you out of the terrestrial and into the bubbly aquatic realm). Your stuck with being human just like Diana says. When we dance or go hiking, however, it's not so bad.
Several million years ago, creatures from a distant galaxy flew low over the newly formed, steamy, burgeoning earth and opened their spaceship's garbage hatch. Out spilled alien leftovers, sewage and shredded remnants of bureaucracy. Their alien garbage cascaded into the warm, moist oceans. And lo, the debris did swirl in the newly formed seas with phosphites and nitrites, pulp and poop and it all mingled with the rest of those sorts of thingys. Soon a semblance of life began to form in the waters of earth. It wasn't long before protozoa, mitochondria and chloroplasts hot-tubbed it around the world and life began to expand across our planet.
Fast forward a million years and earth is populated by billions of creatures. all spawned due to a procedural error on behave of an alien race. And lo, that race returned one day – nest Tuesday, actually – to discover the results of the galactic mistake they had made millions of years ago. And so they applied their "flush" correctional procedure, resulting in 100 years of constant rain on the earth, wiping out all life on the planet but the simplest protozoa, mitochondria and chloroplast type thingys which continued to swirl about and enjoy their simple lifestyles, though they missed the hot-tubbing.
I meant "fast forward several million years". I don't want to be mistaken for a creationist with really bad math skills…
And "behalf" not "behave". I need a proof reader…I can tell I've lost the contest already. Damn. High hopes dashed.
Hey, my proofreading skills fell flat in my rendition as well. Hate it when I discover something AFTER I post.
Actually, I think you lose the contest if your spelling/proofreading skills are too perfect. Of course, I could be wrong. BTW: Love your theory!
LOL too funny… both the story and the creationist with really bad math skills.
He can't be a Creationist because it's going to be Fire next time.
Okay, I’m going to take another somewhat more serious crack at this. I’m seriously disappointed this doesn’t appear that it will happen within my lifetime, but I remain convinced that relatively soon a significant portion of us will leave this planet and its resource and climatological problems behind and move to space… first low earth orbit, then the moon, then Mars then who knows from there. I do like to think, although I’m not dogmatic about it, that we will seed other places and continue to exist as the result of evolution for many aeons in this galaxy and perhaps beyond.
Quite plausible. Very funny. Thanks for the laugh. Those Zombies won't be noticed down south of the border on those long chicken bus rides. They'll fit right in playing marimbas, slurping down black beans, and tossing cold tortillas to skinny dogs.
While mining for minerals that are not ours in Afghanistan, Blackwater employees will find Osama bin Laden hiding in the mineshaft. They will bring him to the US to be a contestant in Political Celebrity Death Match. Given his need for dialysis, the rules say that he has to fight an equally sickly American political celebrity, so they choose Dick Cheney. Cheney accidentally misfires his gun and shoots Kim Jung Ill in the face. North Korea sets off a bunch of nukes that fall into the ocean instead of reaching the US. Achmadinejiad takes that as his cue and shoots off a bunch of rockets with unfinished nukes in them just because he wants to. The US, seeing this as an opportunity to not have to play fair anymore and be able to shoot off its own nukes without coming off like a bad guy, shoots off a bunch of nukes all over the place. Radioactive zombies will then be the only survivors near the blast radiuses, and pissed off at the United States, they will all attack our borders ala Zombieland, coming in around both sides of the fence on the Arizona border. And then Chuck Norris will have to save us all. Oh, and dolphins with frikkin' lasers on their foreheads will clean up the oil spill in the gulf.
Yes, I am that disturbed.
Whoa.
I totally picture you saying that like Bill and Ted… LOL
Yes, you are quite disturbed. This does not mean however that you are wrong.
I secretly asked Miss Cleo for an answer. *nod*
Where do people come up with these sorts of things? If only I had such imagination!! Good job, Ms. Denver Disturbedalot!
*bows* Thank you. I try to use my powers for good instead of evil.
I'm glad of that!
Quite plausible. Outlandishly funny.
I think we’ll eventually go the way of Venus/Mars. Eventually, the atmosphere will go and life will no longer be sustainable. The more people there are, the faster natural resources will be used up and the sooner the Earth will die.
Just the way it goes…
We will continue to damage our trucks by carelessly running over mutant alligators while they lie sunning themselves in our streets and then the End will come. Fire!
All caused by a silly contest over a $15 book.
Hey!
We exterminate ourselves, and much of the life on this planet.
Only then, will the earth have a chance to recover, and eventually purge itself from what we have done to it.
You ask redundant questions. If I answer the ultimate fate of … mankind question I have answered whether the human race will survive … or not.
I do not think we are smart enough nor can come together enough to move any of us successfully to another planet, and furthermore, even if we could, to engage in the level of technology that it would require for us to do so would put the new “home” of ours exactly in the same wretched position of being treated to a toxic stew created by us.
Do you think for one moment even if we could muster such resources and collaborate enough to do so, to put any of us on another planet, that we would then, once there, relinquish all of our cherished technology that got us there, for a life of “roughing it” on a foreign planet? Of course not. We’re way too egotistical for that.
« 1 2