EVERYTHING IS GOING TO KILL EVERYBODY: THE TERRIFYINGLY REAL WAYS THE WORLD WANTS YOU DEAD
Robert Brockway, a columnist and blogger for Cracked.com and webmaster of iFightRobots.com. has produced one of the most fascinating and downright terrifying books it has ever been my (mis)fortune to run across. Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead, a collection of his well-researched essays on Cracked.com, presents the thousand-and-one ways in which the modern world not only can render us and, perhaps, every other form of complex life on the planet extinct, but has come this close to actually doing so a number of times in the very recent past. While we can't actually change the past (however much most of us would love to do so), we can take timely lessons from it and apply them to the present and future -- and desperately need to do so RIGHT NOW, as Brockway proves in essay after essay in this collection, the subjects of which include everything from frankencrops to green goo, supervolcanoes, biotech threats, Verneshots, robot threats, nuclear war, asteroids and extinction-level events, rapidly dwindling fertility and increasing sterility and serious birth and developmental defects among humans and a great many other creatures, and more. These are serious-to-screaming-horrible-lethal-and-immediate threats, folks, and very, very real. Some of them, such as the Cold War, have already come very, very close to putting paid to us and the Cenozoic Era in general, while others, such as the frankenfood, frankencrops, and biotech threats are actually assiduously working away at it right now. As horrible as the current political situation in this country is right now, in the long run it is very likely to pale into total insignificance as these vastly greater threats to our lives, fortunes, sacred honor, environment, biosphere, and everything else about planet Earth act to make it all moot. Or, rather, nonexistent. And us with all the rest.
I do disagree with Brockway on a few points. For example, he describes the process by which thermonuclear fusion reactions are artificially induced by means of lasers as a possibly deadly threat, apparently not realizing that if we ever begin producing power by such means on a commercial basis, there is no danger of the process somehow getting loose in the world or from the lasers that initially induce it. First, the lasers that initiate the process, though incredibly powerful, do so within a containment more than adequate to prevent accidents that could allow them to do damage beyond the area in which the process takes place. Second, once the process is successfully initiated, it is maintained by the energy generated by the process itself, which provides more power than is necessary to keep itself going. So that portion of the energy so produced that is necessary to keep the process going is fed back into it to keep it going, while the rest is diverted to produce electricity that can be used to power residences and industries, and if so desired, charging up electrically-powered vehicles. If the process is interrupted, not only does it fail, but the power to keep it going fails, too -- at which point, it simply turns off, and there is no threat from it. This is a safe energy-source, folks, and if we ever get it under control and begin producing it in large quantities, not only can we give up carbon-based fuels forever, but we can do so with no additional cost in safety issues.
And some of those threats are rather more remote, such as large asteroid impacts. It's true that those could happen at any time -- and that, as we saw on July 16-20, 1994, when 23 chunks of comet debris from Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter, when (not "if," when; it's just a matter of time) it does, our world and its life will be in for it, big-time. The question, as noted, is in fact "when," and that could be a long time in the future from now. Or it could be tomorrow. You never know until it's right on top of you -- though we could know in time to divert the damned thing if we get enough advanced notice, and our space technology is advanced enough to do so, which is Brockway's point in this as in his other essays.
But by and large the man has done his homework as thoroughly as possible. If you value your life and well-being -- if you value those of your children's, and their children's -- then it's time to sit down, listen up to the man, and get educated about these threats to us all and to our future and posterity. And it's a great read. Cracked.com's signature humor is present in every one of the essays included in this book, and while it is often more on the order of whistling past the graveyard, a.k.a. "Intern's Humor" and "Coroner's Yuks," it gives just enough comic relief to enable one to keep reading and learning, rather than throwing the book down and racing out of the room and into the street, screaming, "Everything is falling! Everything is falling!" before they lead you away, sobbing wildly and beating your breast, to the nice place where they give you extended vacations in places with plenty of padding on the walls and a pretty jacket with long sleeves that tie in the back. You want to know the reallyscary part? It checks out, folks. He really has done his homework, and done it well.
Not recommended for readers under the age of 16.
I do disagree with Brockway on a few points. For example, he describes the process by which thermonuclear fusion reactions are artificially induced by means of lasers as a possibly deadly threat, apparently not realizing that if we ever begin producing power by such means on a commercial basis, there is no danger of the process somehow getting loose in the world or from the lasers that initially induce it. First, the lasers that initiate the process, though incredibly powerful, do so within a containment more than adequate to prevent accidents that could allow them to do damage beyond the area in which the process takes place. Second, once the process is successfully initiated, it is maintained by the energy generated by the process itself, which provides more power than is necessary to keep itself going. So that portion of the energy so produced that is necessary to keep the process going is fed back into it to keep it going, while the rest is diverted to produce electricity that can be used to power residences and industries, and if so desired, charging up electrically-powered vehicles. If the process is interrupted, not only does it fail, but the power to keep it going fails, too -- at which point, it simply turns off, and there is no threat from it. This is a safe energy-source, folks, and if we ever get it under control and begin producing it in large quantities, not only can we give up carbon-based fuels forever, but we can do so with no additional cost in safety issues.
And some of those threats are rather more remote, such as large asteroid impacts. It's true that those could happen at any time -- and that, as we saw on July 16-20, 1994, when 23 chunks of comet debris from Comet P/Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacted Jupiter, when (not "if," when; it's just a matter of time) it does, our world and its life will be in for it, big-time. The question, as noted, is in fact "when," and that could be a long time in the future from now. Or it could be tomorrow. You never know until it's right on top of you -- though we could know in time to divert the damned thing if we get enough advanced notice, and our space technology is advanced enough to do so, which is Brockway's point in this as in his other essays.
But by and large the man has done his homework as thoroughly as possible. If you value your life and well-being -- if you value those of your children's, and their children's -- then it's time to sit down, listen up to the man, and get educated about these threats to us all and to our future and posterity. And it's a great read. Cracked.com's signature humor is present in every one of the essays included in this book, and while it is often more on the order of whistling past the graveyard, a.k.a. "Intern's Humor" and "Coroner's Yuks," it gives just enough comic relief to enable one to keep reading and learning, rather than throwing the book down and racing out of the room and into the street, screaming, "Everything is falling! Everything is falling!" before they lead you away, sobbing wildly and beating your breast, to the nice place where they give you extended vacations in places with plenty of padding on the walls and a pretty jacket with long sleeves that tie in the back. You want to know the reallyscary part? It checks out, folks. He really has done his homework, and done it well.
Not recommended for readers under the age of 16.