|
Make a video game so good everyone just plugs in and plays it until they die.
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2015 10:28
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 14:43 |
|
|
OK so if you have a wealthy megalomaniac who's playing the REALLY long game... ... back 30-40 years ago he quietly gained a controlling interest in several large multi-national beef corporations, and then deliberately saw as much of the herd as possible infected with mad cow, possibly a genetically-modified mad cow that doesn't show up on the current test or onsets much slower in bovines or something so it isn't detected. You could sci-fi this by having it be a made-up disease that uses some other food vector but honestly mad cow is one of the scariest loving things on Earth. Decades later, the disease begins to manifest hardcore as everyone who ate any of the infected beef sees their brain begins to slowly disintegrate and society collapses in a few months due to massive numbers of critical workers barking at the moon and talking to their dead ancestors. You can even make the villain an apocalyptic religious vegan or something. "THE COWS SHALL NO LONGER FACE YOUR HOLOCAUST. YOU SHALL NOT CRUCIFY MANKIND ON A CROSS OF STEAK." Now you have your large population percentage dead (and it will hit harder in the more affluent meatasaurus nations, causing things to go to poo poo faster) and your villain can gloat about how he gave the people of the world a choice. There's also no way anyone can do a loving thing about it once it's done. There's no vaccine, no cure, no hand-wavey Star Trek bullshit to save the day. The damage was and has been done, so unless you can invent a time machine the human race is going down hard. You could even have him say, "I'm not a comic book villain, Rorschach. I did it thirty years ago."
|
|
#
?
Dec 31, 2015 15:57
|
|
|
Harrower posted:Make a video game so good everyone just plugs in and plays it until they die. 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. And for obvious reasons, most sane individuals avoid them like the plague. Let's assume a crazy libertarian world where smoking crack and shooting up heroin suddenly became legally acceptable. How eager are you to pick up a crack pipe or shoot up?
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2016 09:59
|
|
|
Invest in coal, gas and oil companies. Increase production as much as possible, pay off Political parites from profits to allow you to do more. The earth self corrects the problem within a century,
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2016 11:55
|
|
|
Funky See Funky Do posted:...nobody wants to release a virus that'll kill them too. I dunno - I think the people wearing suicide vests would consider this collateral damage and acceptable losses, especially given their advance knowledge for making themselves and their loved ones right with entering the kingdoms of Allah, Jehovah, Jesus, whomever. Perhaps something highly contagious and airborne that's quickly-mutating and genetically similar to MRSA is the best route for something along these lines. The coastal cities would fall first as surviving residents improvise woefully unprepared routes of egress towards rural destinations, only to be met with snarled, impassable roadways and government forces ordering their sheltering in place. When the water and electrical systems begin failing because workers have abandoned their posts because of fear for their own safety, rioting ensues until statewide travel restrictions are enacted and populated regions implode like falling dominoes. Sounds eerily similar to most of the zombie apocalypse movies, but seems completely realistic with the right genetic engineering of a super pathogen/virus.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2016 20:04
|
|
|
Destroying everything is ineffecient. A global one child policy would allow for a gradual controlled population decline with retention of industrial capacity. The problem is then getting a big enough stick to compell the world to go along. But you wpuldn't have to use it so that means you could go crazy on that end.
|
|
#
?
Jan 1, 2016 23:54
|
|
|
Reznor posted:Destroying everything is ineffecient. A global one child policy would allow for a gradual controlled population decline with retention of industrial capacity. The problem is then getting a big enough stick to compell the world to go along. But you wpuldn't have to use it so that means you could go crazy on that end. Unless you wanted to use the Logan's Run retirement plan.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2016 01:56
|
|
|
Reznor posted:Destroying everything is ineffecient. A global one child policy would allow for a gradual controlled population decline with retention of industrial capacity. The problem is then getting a big enough stick to compell the world to go along. But you wpuldn't have to use it so that means you could go crazy on that end. Yeah, the one child policy worked out real well for China.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2016 11:24
|
|
|
Geniasis posted:Yeah, the one child policy worked out real well for China. Real talk. Didn't it? They were all third world and now they are one of the global superpowers. Thanatosian posted:You would have to completely revamp the global financial system. It's reliant on having more young people working than old people not working. Is't that the point of the story anyways?
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2016 12:47
|
|
|
Reznor posted:Real talk. Didn't it? They were all third world and now they are one of the global superpowers. They're also going to have about 30 million more men than women by 2020, which is seen as somewhat less than ideal.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2016 20:49
|
|
|
Geniasis posted:They're also going to have about 30 million more men than women by 2020, which is seen as somewhat less than ideal. The pragmatic solution is to subsidise gay sex.
|
|
#
?
Jan 2, 2016 20:59
|
|
|
blowfish posted:The pragmatic solution is to subsidise gay sex. This really is the best direction to take your story. It could be the next fifty shades of grey.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 04:37
|
|
|
I'm gonna have to agree with turning everyone gay. The old CIA experiments never stopped, gay bomb completed successfully, and you get to make fun of poo poo heel politicians at the same time.
|
|
#
?
Jan 4, 2016 21:26
|
|
|
You should read the Apocalypse Triptych. It's a set of three volumes of short stories about the end of the world, and each author has their own take on what causes it/happens. The first volume is stories about right before what happens, the second is stories that take place during, and the final volume is stories about living in the post-apocalypse society. Some of the authors continue their storyline through each volume, while others are one-offs. It will give you a wide-ranging look at all kinds of ways that human civilisation might end. You could do a pharmaceutical angle. Antibiotic resistance is growing at an alarming rate, and we're now finding resistance to some of the "last line of defence" antibiotics we have. We're not really funding the development and research of new ones and haven't for the past 30 odd years since all the money is in psych drugs, obesity, and cancer. Also seconding the mad cow type idea - prions are loving terrifying. We used to think that they were not easily transmitted (eating infected brain tissue), but recent research in the last few years has shown they can be transmitted through aerosol particles, and there's preliminary research on their transmission through water reservoirs and crops (due to prions being found in manure) and infertility treatments.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 13:07
|
|
|
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.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 17:25
|
|
|
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..
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 17:36
|
|
|
bad day posted: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. What's the point of preventing global warming, when you have to kill 2/3 of the world population to do it? It's not like earth will become uninhabitable at +2 degrees. Life on earth will adapt without problem, it's just that a lot of people in poorer countries and all of the world economies will suffer in the process and we want to avoid that. But if you are willing to kill a couple billions and annihilate the world economy anyway ...
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 17:44
|
|
|
bad day posted: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. The dust would be a big deal in the sense that it would drastically change the planet to which the survivors would someday return. You'd essentially be freezing and choking everything, killing off a large portion of plant and animal life, etc. The survivors wouldn't just walk back out into a lush, happy world. Plus, given that it's not really been tested before on a large scale to see what kind of problems pop up, the chance of those survivor communities not dying off for various reasons is pretty low, especially since there is no safe place to go if something happens to their self-sustaining capsules. Then once it's safe for people to go back outside, the world is going to be very different.
|
|
#
?
Jan 5, 2016 17:49
|
|
|
Reverse any kind of gun control and legalize all drugs and let a large chunk of the population take care of themselves. Alternatively, I've felt for a while that we need to stop reversing Darwinism and start helping it. We coddle, cure, and protect people who degrade our gene pool. If we stopped putting time and effort into curing and treating genetic disorders, or only offered treatment to people who had no children and agreed to sterilization, we could do a small bit of population control and strengthen our genetics as a species going forward.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2016 05:45
|
|
|
Just do The Purge, but worldwide.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2016 11:25
|
|
|
bad day posted:My best idea involves dropping giant rocks from low earth orbit onto major population centers. Your best idea has already been taken.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2016 11:59
|
|
|
JonathonSpectre posted:OK so if you have a wealthy megalomaniac who's playing the REALLY long game... Okay, wow, I like this one. Also, devout Hindus will inherit the earth, which is pretty funny.
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2016 14:00
|
|
|
McFunkerson posted:Reverse any kind of gun control and legalize all drugs and let a large chunk of the population take care of themselves. Finally, a big gross fly lands dead center in the honeypot
|
|
#
?
Feb 4, 2016 21:13
|
|
|
McFunkerson posted:Reverse any kind of gun control and legalize all drugs and let a large chunk of the population take care of themselves. So nice of you to volunteer.
|
|
#
?
Feb 5, 2016 21:24
|
|
|
McFunkerson posted:Alternatively, I've felt for a while that we need to stop reversing Darwinism and start helping it. Evolution doesn't work the way you think it does.
|
|
#
?
Feb 6, 2016 21:19
|
|
i like nice words
|
Anne Whateley posted:Diabetes has been identified since at least 1500 BC. Up until the 1920s we had zero effective treatments for it. But type 1 diabetes didn't die out over those 3,500 years. To add to this, evolution doesn't lead to organisms becoming "fitter" in some objective sense. It just leads to them being able to survive in their respective environments. If humans are able to live and reproduce, they are "fit." While I guess you could, in theory, try to promote certain traits through selective breeding, that wouldn't have anything to do with evolution or the "fitness" of our species.
|
|
#
?
Feb 9, 2016 18:26
|
|
|
Evolution is "a change in a population over time." There is no such thing as "de-evolution," or "reverse evolution." It's all a change in a population over time. That diabetes talk is mainly mutation, not evolution.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 02:54
|
|
|
His argument is that if we would just be a little edgier and stop treating genetic disorders, they'd be so heavily selected against that soon we as a population would stop having genetic disorders. That's dumb as poo poo. Diabetes is just an example of why it's dumb.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 04:17
|
|
|
I wasn't actually trying to say anything so one sided. I guess my argument was that as a society we've reversed "survival of the fittest" by providing measures for those that nature would most likely deem unfit to continue surviving. Whether it's providing a protected environment or treating those with genetic disorders, providing aid for those that are unable or unwilling to provide for themselves, putting safety warnings labels on everything, etc we actively put effort into allowing those genetics proliferate. I didn't think, or claim, that we could force/accelerate evolution in anyway or that we were reversing evolution. Nor did I say that by stopping the treatment of genetic disorders or sterilizing those with them that we'd magically get rid of them. But if you want to rid the earth of a percentage of the population start with those that most likely would have been taken care of by nature anyway. Then move on to the prisons and members of hate groups. Or maybe I'm just an rear end in a top hat.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 05:26
|
|
|
McFunkerson posted:I wasn't actually trying to say anything so one sided. I guess my argument was that as a society we've reversed "survival of the fittest" by providing measures for those that nature would most likely deem unfit to continue surviving. You're basically advocating eugenics. And that makes you an rear end in a top hat. While it was a popular theory in the first half of the 20th century, that line of thinking leads to Auschwitz. So most people, sane people really want nothing to do with that policy. So yeah, you're an rear end in a top hat. I'll give you credit for being ignorant, and not knowing that you're basically giving the same arguments as Hitler for cleaning up the human race. I hate to Godwin, but the comparison is appropriate here. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 11:29 on Mar 1, 2016 |
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 11:37
|
|
|
Woah, so this is starting to go down a dangerous path here. I no longer intent to argue or support my own statements above. I get what you're saying above in that if my comments are taken seriously and at face value it's a slippery slope... But for the record, I wasn't trying to imply people should be targeted based or race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Nor am I supporting slaughtering any number of innocent people.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 14:35
|
|
|
"I'm not saying we should slaughter people, we should just refuse to treat them so they die horribly, or maybe sterilize them" e-e-e-edgy
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 15:43
|
|
|
McFunkerson posted:I wasn't actually trying to say anything so one sided. I guess my argument was that as a society we've reversed "survival of the fittest" by providing measures for those that nature would most likely deem unfit to continue surviving. We haven't reversed anything. Humans helping other humans to survive occurs in nature just as much as anything else that occurs in nature. We are just as much a part of nature as any plant or animal or rock. If someone with a disease or condition survives because their fellow humans helped them to survive, then nature deemed them fit to continue surviving, by definition.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 16:34
|
|
|
If you want to accelerate evolution, just shoot people into space and wait. Sooner or later we're due for another geomagnetic storm. Anyone in LEO will get hit with all kinds of fun particles and mutations are sure to follow. We narrowly missed another one a few times ago. If it had hit, all that stuff about society collapsing and mass die offs would have happened. Your scenario doesn't really need a supervillian.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 17:08
|
|
|
McFunkerson posted:Woah, so this is starting to go down a dangerous path here. I no longer intent to argue or support my own statements above. I get what you're saying above in that if my comments are taken seriously and at face value it's a slippery slope... But for the record, I wasn't trying to imply people should be targeted based or race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. Nor am I supporting slaughtering any number of innocent people. But like, hasn't that been the end result of every eugenics program? I mean yeah, I guess you could make a case that it could be beneficial is done objectively and without bias towards any ethnic or religious group, but good loving luck with that.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 17:46
|
|
|
Geniasis posted:But like, hasn't that been the end result of every eugenics program? I mean yeah, I guess you could make a case that it could be beneficial is done objectively and without bias towards any ethnic or religious group, but good loving luck with that. What eugenics program ever gets press though? You've only heard about THOSE ones because they end up murdering a bunch of people. But anyway maybe you could just enact a law where anyone gets paid to commit murder. Each body you bring is like $500 or something. Sure that's a terrible idea and just makes huge conglomerates of roving murder gangs but it would reduce the population.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 18:09
|
|
|
To be fair, it's not like there's only ever been one definition. And even things like pre-natal care were considered eugenics at one point. So it isn't like the field is completely tainted, but when you start to get into the territory of deciding which people should and should not get to reproduce, that gets real dicey real quick.
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 18:38
|
|
|
itt let's take a step back and reassess whether Hitler did, in fact, do anything wrong
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 20:19
|
|
|
A Wizard of Goatse posted:itt let's take a step back and reassess whether Hitler did, in fact, do anything wrong If the nazis had been against eugenics, would you still have a problem with it ~~~
|
|
#
?
Feb 10, 2016 22:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 20, 2024 14:43 |
|
|
does it still mean I get to make like pugs but with human babies
|
|
#
?
Feb 11, 2016 00:29
|
|