You just never know when inspiration will strike. If you’re looking at the title of this entry, you’d be forgiven for thinking to yourself, “Hmmm….Kyle must have just finished an interesting apocalyptic story.” But no, I was vacation planning for a Fall getaway to Montana.
More on that later.
As you’ll read in example #5, my mind turned to ways that you could, in fiction, credibly end civilization as we know it. “Credibly” is a sticky word, so I kept this list to events that I felt could happen without major deus ex machina acting to bring them about (I’m think here of S.M. Stirling’s interesting set up for his Emberverse series wherein technology just winks out).
But hey, I’m not perfect, so if I’ve forgotten someway that you could do this, toss it down in the comments. So, here are five “it could happen” ways to end the world, or at least civilization as we know it:
1. Asteroid(s)
Or are they meteors? I get confused by the terminology. Oh well, it won’t really matter much once this one is put into play. Did you know that the earth (well, all the planets really) are hit relatively frequently. It’s true. A lot of the stuff doesn’t actually end up “hitting” anything and evaporating into thin air, but we’re clearly sitting on a big enough rock as to be in the way of other objects.
As you may have read, NASA attempts to track potential “world-enders,” but has recently run into budgetary problems in doing so. Anyway, I’m not sure what we’d do if we knew we were about to be ended, but I suspect it would be a little different than what’s depicted in Deep Impact.
Asteroids are great world and/or civilizations-enders for stories where you’d rather your characters had, to borrow from Motown, “no where to run to, baby, no where to hide.” Unless you’re dealing with futuristic societies who have advanced forms of space travel. Then they could run. Though probably not everyone could run away. And how would they decide who goes and who doesn’t? But I digress.
Leaving in their wake a world that’s probably vastly different than the one your characters knew before the event (small population, new and exciting geography, and the potential for a different climate due to debris in the stratosphere), the asteroid route is perhaps your quickest way to “world-build” without having to start completely from scratch.
2. Super Virus
There can be no discussion of “End of the World (or Civilization as We Know It)” without mentioning Stephen King’s The Stand. And that means Captain Tripps, the King-imagined super virus. Have you read The Stand? King has a chapter that chronicles how the virus spreads and branches, moving quickly from small deadly virus to Game Over epidemic over the span of a couple of pages. It’s taunt, disheartening, and frightening all at the same time.
We’re not that far removed from the H1N1 (swine flu) scare and the avian flu remains a concern to many. Airborn viruses are frightening because they can spread so easily and they can mutate to stay potent. Great.
Super viruses are also interesting in that you can have some pretty funky side effects in the survivors, the dead, and if your story is going in this direction, those who are in-between. You know what I mean.
3. Robots Pwn Us
We built them tough to do the jobs we didn’t want to do. We build them smart so they could think on their own. That was dumb.
Quick note: Of all the things on my list, I’m stretching a bit here and I know it. Robotic technology isn’t ready to overtake us yet (and let’s keep it that way, shall we?). The wash is, I like robots and we’re getting awfully good at making them. So anyway, on with creating robot overlords.
I’ve always wondered why, if programmers come up with all the code that would be necessary to program robots like those that inhabit our fiction (like those that would be capable of taking over), why didn’t they program a “Boy-howdy, I sure do love me some humans” line, huh?* But don’t let that get in your way. In fact, you could probably write your way around or through that one.
Robots are an excellent way to put an end to our business-as-usual world because they use cold, hard logic a lot. Does it serve their ends to put an end to humans indiscriminately? If so, bend over and kiss your (knees) goodbye. Robots would conceivably have access to all kinds of information on a split second basis, and I bet if they started developing emotions, they might start going bonkers. And humans are so soft and malleable. Survivors and/or escapees would have to be really careful in their efforts and would probably be pretty paranoid about things like communications.
4. Act of War
Here’s another one that’s scary because it could actually happen. We already do have big bombs, so all you need to do is shoot them off. It worked for Robert McCammon in Swan Song and it could work for you.
Now, I’m thinking specifically of large bombs here, but acts of war could combine be your kick-off point for the super virus and/or killer robotics angle too. This one is tricky in that it’s going to create a really hazardous new environment for your characters. At the very least, there’s going to be an area that’s really best left as “off-limits.” Unless you’re prepared for them to die horribly or grow a second set of eyes. In the palms of their hands.
5. Natural Mega-Disaster(s)
I find this one to be among the most intriguing. Why? Because it can wipe out huge numbers of population in one fell swoop, irrevocably alter the landscape, weather, heck even climate and atmosphere, and leave your characters in a world where all the tables have been turned WITHOUT the mess of the fallout of other scenarios (robot overlords, nuclear mutations, etc). Know why it’s also the most frightening of the scenarios?
Because these things have already happened in Earth’s past. And because, depending on who you ask, we may be due for another at any time.
Have you read Tim Cahill’s Lost in My Own Backyard? Well I have. In the opening chapter, Cahill describes an eruption so powerful that it blasts away some 30 miles of mountain range, throwing much of it, along with ash, into the stratosphere, while the rest collapses into a giant indentation in the ground. Ash covers everything, dumping as much as eight feet in other states. Magma oozes from the ground, the sky darkens as the first minutes of a multi-year volcanic winter are born and a cloud of hot gas and ash races across the land at over one-hundred miles per hour, vaporizing whatever plant or animal is in its way. It reads like terrifying science fiction or horror.
Except it’s not science fiction, or fantasy, or horror. It’s a visualization of the Lava Creek eruption that spewed forth from the world’s largest supervolcano in what is now Yellowstone National Park. And if you really want to stay up at night, then you’ll be interested to hear that Cahill looked at the eruption patters and concluded that we’re a little overdue for another volcanic-winter-inducing-blast-a-mountain-range-into-the-atmosphere belch-fest**.
Thanks Tim! Nothing gets your vacation planning off on the right foot than making sure you remember to have a Last Will and Testament in place just in case you happen to be vaporized while hiking or burried in several feet of ash as you take in a weekend farmers’ market.
On second thought, I’d rather not think about this one too much. Why don’t you select from numbers one through four. Oh, and do have a nice day.
*Readers of Sheriff of Yrnameer will remember that Michael Rubens had an interesting spin on this very idea.
**Of course, this seems to be incorrect. Which means my vacation plans are still on! So don’t go too crazy on me here.
