The End is Nigh; Bees to Quasars

Bush's speechifying last night got my inner cynic all juiced up. I came up with some great plots for disaster novels. The Top Ten best ways for the extinction of humanity.

10. Imported Australian virus and genetically modified crops contribute to colony collapse disorder of US honeybees, which brings crop failures and hemispheric shortages of food with half a billion people starving to death, leading to worldwide economic collapse.

9. The Pope makes a special mission of reducing elective abortions and contraceptive use in predominantly Catholic countries in Mexico and Central and South America (which currently have the highest abortion rates in the world), thus causing a massive increase in the birth rate, which stresses their medical systems and food supplies, leading to increase attempts to migrate to the developed world, stimulating military action by the US and Canada as well as Brazil and Argentina, leading to hemispheric economic collapse.

8. The subprime mortgage defaults in the US and Great Britain cause deterioration of the US dollar and British Pound, massive unemployment and loss of capital liquidity which triggers interest rate decreases, currency devaluation, episodic hyperinflation, and worldwide economic collapse. (This could be marketed as a non-fiction investment book which recommends burying silver dimes in a vault in your backyard next to your guns, MRE's and ammo.)

7. The Chinese are unable to improve the quality of their exported food and consumer products, which leads to a western embargo of Chinese goods, triggering gunboat diplomacy by the Maoist oligarchs, massive unrest, spiking gold and oil prices, nuclear threats and worldwide economic collapse. (Foreword would be written by Lou Dobbs.)

6. Dirty bombs in NYC, London, Berlin and Paris set off an allied military assault on the Muslim world, killing half a billion people total, leading to asymmetric terrorist retaliation and global urban guerrilla warfare, destabilizing the oil supply, leading to worldwide economic collapse. (“You can't fight in here, this is the war room.”)

5. Global warming causes the temperature of the earth to rise 4.5 degrees in the next three years, causing melting of the polar icecaps and Greenland and inundation of coastal areas, displacing half a billion people, leading to worldwide economic collapse. (Foreword by Al Gore.)

4. God decides that humans are too imperfect as beings and He is tired of us showing so little respect for each other, other living organism and the planet. He sends His Son down on a cloud in Judgment as, the earth ends as we know it, gnashing of teeth, Rapture occurs leading to the 1000 year Reign. (Already fictionalized by John of Patmos 1900 years ago in his tome Revelation.)

3. Vladimir Putin calls for dissolution of his cabinet and the Politburo, imprisons political enemies and declares martial law before invading Ukraine and Belarus under cover of the night. This leads to a shooting war among former Soviet republics, a nuclear showdown with the West, possible miscalculation of the threat levels and a significant risk of nuclear war, nuclear winter, destruction of higher life forms on the planet and 10 million years of a rising Reptilian Era. (Would need Tom Clancy as co-author for technical advice.)

2. A meteorite crashes into Southern Asia or the Indian Ocean causing the immediate death of two billion people, an ashen sky for 50 years allowing no sunlight leading to death of nearly all terrestrial plant life along with higher life forms, and the advent of 10 millions years of the Insect Era.

And my favorite:

1. A supernova remnant collides with the Sun causing a split-second solar flare, a huge tongue of 4000 degree Kelvin hydrogen scorches the earth's atmosphere which leads to the immediate vaporization of every living thing on the planet as well as the top 50 miles of the earth's crust, rendering the planet a permanently barren molten rock. (This would be just a short story.)