Robert Brockway - Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody

2. “Where my dick at?!”

3. “Japan is a concealed weapon.”

4. “They take your thoughts out like recycling!”

5. “The United States is ammunition.”

Answer key: 1—Verneshot, 2—hobo, 3—Verneshot, 4—hobo, 5—both.

And though the most definitive proof of a Verneshot would be, much like in normal forensic investigation, to find the actual bullet, I should remind you that oftentimes it’s enough simply to produce the gun in court. Considering that people are currently living on the murder weapon, it shouldn’t be too hard to find. And so the Verneshot theory is gaining ground in the scientific community—ground that it probably just loads up and fires into space—and it could happen anywhere, at any time, though according to Jason Phipps Morgan, that may be sooner rather than later: Northern Eurasia is just starting to rift, and with the immense pressure built up beneath the Siberian Craton ever increasing, the right preconditions exist for a catastrophic Verneshot event to occur. The Yellowstone Caldera, as well, could present some signs of a potential Verneshot… that is, if the impending supervolcanic eruption doesn’t vent the pressure first. And when a life-destroying volcanic eruption of unseen proportions is your best-case scenario, you’re pretty well fucked. Russia and the United States engaged in a race to see who gets to space first; this is like the Cold War all over again, except it’s not so “cold” this time and “getting to space” would be done in tiny gooey pieces.

But hey, look on the bright side: You could literally shoot an entire country in the face with 100 percent pure America. That’ll show all those pinko commie terrorists, assuming that they don’t fire themselves at you first.

SOMETIME IN THE very near future, the Earth’s magnetic field will reverse. North will literally become south, and the consequences of this shift are not yet fully known. Experts cite potential side effects that range from the lovely sounding “northern lights in Cuba” to the slightly less endearing“everybody gets cancer and the Earth spits you into space.”

But while nobody is really certain what will happen when it comes, what is sure is its imminent arrival: Earth’s poles reverse every quarter million years or so, and it’s been around 700,000 years since the last one. Like an unwed, pregnant, teenage library book, we are both long overdue and seriously fucked. The Earth’s magnetic field is caused by the rotation of the molten metal in the upper core, just below the Earth’s surface. That magnetic field diverts harmful particles and radiation from space (everything from dust to gamma rays) away from the bulk of the Earth. Most of us probably don’t have a solid idea of what the various fields and layers of atmosphere actually do for the Earth; to your average Joe, it’s all just so much invisible space magic. That could particularly describe the magnetosphere that surrounds the whole planet and reaches far out into space. The poles, being the strongest points of the field, work like giant magnets, dragging foreign particles toward them and depositing them at the extreme ends of Earth. You can even see this process happening: The light reflecting off of these particles is why we have the aurora borealis, or for those who you hate excessive vowel usage, “the northern lights.” Setting aside the somewhat disturbing realization that those pretty green ribbons in the sky are actually a perpetual rain of tiny space bullets, this means that the purpose of the pole is to protect the rest of the world from harm at the expense of the northern and southern extremes. Considering that the southern extreme is Antarctica, which is sparsely populated at best (save for adorable penguins, but do try to avoid thinking about radiated particles giving cancer to baby penguins; it’s just too sad to fully contemplate), and considering that—according to the stereotypes that make up my entire base of knowledge—the northern extremes are exclusively populated by Canadians, Eskimos, and Santa Claus, depositing all this space death at the poles isn’t really affecting anybody that matters (sorry, Santa).

Troposphere:Really warm, sandy sphere.

Stratosphere:Planes go here, also guitars.

Mesosphere:Me so sphere-y?

Thermosphere:Where nuclear power comes from.

Exosphere:A sphere with its bones on the outside like a bug.

But that magnetic field is long overdue for a flip, and that could mean some very bad things for us. While the shift is happening, the protection offered by the magnetic field will be drastically weakened—if not absent entirely—during a process known as a “fade.” And with that field gone, expect cancer and mutation rates to rise dramatically. If it helps, think of the magnetic field as a sort of space sunblock… except instead of shielding your pasty ass at the beach, it shields the entire planet, and instead of getting sunburned if it fails, you get supercancer and flipper children.

• Eskimos

• Canadians

• Children

• PETA (unrelated)

Thus far this has been a “wouldn’t that suck if that happened” scenario and, though the timing dictates that it should be happening soon, that “soon” could well be anytime over the span of the next thousand years. The odds of the shift happening within your, or your children’s, or your children’s children’s lifetimes has to be pretty low, right? Living through something as rare as this is so unlikely it would be like winning a particularly shitty cosmic lottery of death. But then, this is a book about the end of the world, so you probably see where I’m going with this….

That’s right! You’ve won the cosmic shit-death lotto!

The magnetic field has been fading at an ever-increasing pace for the last three hundred years or so, and right now it’s already down to about three-quarter strength. Just judging by the numbers so far, even if it continues at this rate, it shouldn’t really matter to you: We should all still have a few hundred years minimum before it’s low enough to affect life on Earth. But that mentality, in addition to being relatively dickish to your great-great-grandchildren, also isn’t entirely accurate. We can’t rely on the rate of change to be slow and steady. There’s an anomaly that exists right now in the south Atlantic called the South Atlantic Anomaly (because they’re scientists, not advertising executives; sexy names ain’t in their repertoire) that has already started the shift. It is a huge chunk of Earth beneath the ocean where the field is not just absent, but actively switching its magnetic polarity. Apart from fucking up all the mermaids’ computers, this particular anomaly isn’t going to really do anything, but it does confirm that the shift is going to happen in pieces, and in a nonlinear fashion.

So the rate the field is decreasing has been roughly mapped out. It will be completely gone—as in everywhere—in less than a thousand years, but vast swaths of the planet will also be losing their field in chunks well before that time. But even the areas with still-functioning magnetic fields will be operating at partial strength, and partial protection is just that: incomplete. Every percentage point that the field weakens makes it just a little more likely that you’ll be catching tiny molecular comets of radiation with your major organs. So instead of having full protection, like a Kevlar vest, right now you have a Kevlar tube top: spotty coverage at best. Soon, you’ll be down to a Kevlar bra as the field drops further in strength, and then before you know it all you’re left with is Kevlar pasties: It’s still protection, technically, but unless your nipples have some serious enemies, it may not be where you need it, when you need it. It’s a pan-global game of strip poker against space cancer, and the game is rigged against you.