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I have been toying around with a story that involves a character wiping out a large part of the human population to save the environment. This isn't a new idea - it's spawned a James Bond movie and a Batman villain - some people think it's a real thing, even. But I'm at a loss as to how someone would realistically accomplish the goal. Most of the ideas conspiracy theorists have (chemtrails, vaccines, mass sterilization, etc) are kind of unexciting. You wouldn't want to irradiate the earth or harm its long-term ecology, but you'd want to get rid of approximately a third of the earth's population. Somehow. My best idea involves dropping giant rocks from low earth orbit onto major population centers. How would you destroy civilization, given such a mandate? What are the pluses and minuses of different scenarios? bad day fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 06:20
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canis minor posted:Seconding Utopia - while the eradication of humanity has been played along many times, I liked (and could understand and get behind) the reasons for it. I loved it for the sensibility of plot, the amount of colour and well defined characters. Yeah I had thought of this scenario before I saw the series and it kind of felt like they were reading my mind (actually it's just an obvious combination of conspiracy tropes) but my story involved elites hiding themselves in bunkers and I was trying to think of how they would realistically go about doing this, if Alex Jones et al were actually right. In the scenario presented in Utopia there's no reason for elites to sequester themselves so that would not work. I think the general motivation would be that wiping out 2/3 of humanity would forestall climate change, especially if you decimated most industrial and population centers. You wouldn't want to use nuclear weapons but kicking up dust would be no big deal as the preselected survivors are sealed away in self sustaining capsule communities for a decade or more.
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Jan 5, 2016 17:25
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The problem with a virus (as anyone who has played Plague Inc. knows) is that it's really hard to infect the whole world. It can't be too virulent or too symptomatic and fatal or it won't properly spread. Something like releasing a virus into key airport passenger hubs once the preselected survivors are sealed away might kill a lot of people, but it'd be unlikely to do the job in and of itself. In combination with something else, maybe? thrakkorzog posted:There are a few cyberpunk stories where people develop video games so addictive that people die from playing them. They're usually treated as sci-fi crackheads. I just got a steam controller and wax pen  that charges via usb. As I sit here playing minecraft on my laptop I feel pretty cyberpunk crackhead myself..
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Jan 5, 2016 17:36
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