Armageddon Science

WOO! APOCALYPSE! Everyone loves to talk about the apocalypse, right? As Eric mentioned in his group's presentation, the apocalypse is kind of ingrained in our culture. Like he said, there are numerous movies and video games about the subject, one of which--Fallout 3--is one of my favorite games ever, certainly in the top ten. It takes place in an alternate timeline to our own, where technology evolved much slower and nuclear fallout eventually did happen after an invasion by the Chinese in the 1950s, hence the name of the series. In the world you play in, some 200 years after the initial fallout, everything is dust and rubble. People live in homes made out of cobbled together pieces of metal. All of the water in the area is irradiated and dangerous to drink. The radiation from the nuclear blasts has permanently altered many of the species, including some humans.

SUPER MUTANT BEHEMOTH! RUNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN!!!! DUDE USES A LAMP POST AS A WEAPON!!!

If you find this to be another case of, "What the hell is Beth's point?" I'm getting there I swear. And this is of course not the only kind of apocalypse idea we've all been exposed to. How many people actually considered making a zombie survival plan after the bath salts face-eating incident in Miami, especially because it was in Miami, (a big city so close to home. Bad news, man)? I know I did; my husband has started going to a shooting range on a regular basis and tries to get me to go. When I say I'm not really interested in that, he hits me with, "But what about the zombies??" He's kidding, to be sure, but that's the kind of pop culture world we live in; our end seems to be perpetually near from so many different things. 2012. Bombs. Zombies. Whatever. For me as a teacher, I just feel this is something I need to be conscious of, because I know my kids are at home watching The Walking Dead or playing a Fallout game or reading about some conspiracy theory regarding Global Warming and the LHC. And because we're all so surrounded by this stuff, it may be an interesting, "What if?" type lesson. "What if the Cold War was a bit more hot?" Some may argue that hypothesis and "what if?"s have no place in history, but think about it. The students would have a chance to try to see what would need to happen; what it would be like if everything had to be started over. The would need to look at laws, government, even just stuff like food in a whole new way, and maybe with such a thought process going through their heads, they could gain a greater understanding and respect for the responsibilities of world leader, the police force, etc. and that would certainly = an informed citizenry, would it not?

NOW THAT I'VE BABBLED ENOUGH ABOUT THAT...
Discussion question: Chapter 8 talks about the continuing emergence and enhancement of the human race. Do you believe that this is a problem that has ended up fast-forwarding the clock towards the end of the world?
I find this question a little melodramatic. Since I babbled so much about being immersed in an non-apocalyptic world full of apocalypses, I'll be brief. It is true that technology is greatly improving at what seems to be an exponential rate. While I don't think Marty McFly's promise of flying cars by 2015 will be accurate, you can't help but feel a little overwhelmed by all the tech sometimes. But quite frankly, I don't think we're ever going to have a Skynet or GLaDOS come into our world. Why? Because for all this crazy, advanced tech, there is someone who built it and knows everything about it. Humans are at the same time utterly stupid and utterly brilliant, and I think in this case, the stupids would take a back seat. I don't honestly think we'd allow ourselves to be destroyed, certainly not by something of our own choosing. And even with things like climate change, we monitor that stuff too, and now that we've figured out we're kind of, you know, not helping the environment too much with all our junk, we're working to make it better.
As final point, keep in mind that an end to humans is not the end of the world. The dinosaurs were once the head honchos on the planet, and a natural disaster killed them all off. If we were to discover that there was a dinosaur conspiracy theorist running around in a tin-foil hat at that time saying "RARRR RAWR RAHH RAAA!!" (Translated: "THE WORLD IS ENDING"), we'd laugh at him because hey, the Earth's still here, and now we're here. It's not the end of the world. I think "end of the world" is a misnomer; we're really talking about the end of human civilization, not the Earth.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go pop in Fallout 3. I mean, Liam Neeson is your dad. That's just too cool to pass up, giant guns and bombs and things aside.