Robert Brockway - Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody

Brandon, John. “Robots That Hunt in Packs: The Department of Defense Wants Your Designs for a Collaborative Robotic Team.” Popular Science , November 5, 2008.

SITIS Archives. “Multi-Robot Pursuit System.” Topic Number A08–204 (Army). www.dodsbir.net/Sitis/archives_display_topic.asp?Bookmark=34565.

Personal Robots Group. “Project Overview, MDS.” MIT Media Lab. robotic.media.mit.edu/projects/robots/mds/overview/overview.html.

Cho, Joohee. “Robo-Soldier to Patrol South Korean Border.” ABC News , September 29, 2006. abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2504508&page=1.

Kumagai, Jean. “A Robotic Sentry for Korea’s Demilitarized Zone.” IEEE Spectrum , March 2007.

This book would not have been possible without the help and patience of many people. I would like to thank my girlfriend, Meagan Kennedy, for reminding me, when I was caught in the depth of a screaming existential panic, that I “liked the apocalypse” and should write about that. It is not her fault that I “like” the end of humanity; that is a personal issue. I would like to thank my agent, Byrd Leavell, for always being my ardent supporter, at times to the point of psychosis. I would like to also thank Lucinda Bartley, for plucking me from the choking miasma of the internet and dropping me into the esteemed realm of literary publication. She also deserves a great deal of gratitude for all her hard work editing this book, and for holding my hand through the entire process even though I frequently became distracted chasing after shiny things. I would like to thank Tom Bordonaro, for sending me roughly one-third of the disturbing material in this book, even after several court orders asking him politely to stop. I’d like to thank Jason Pedegana, whose amazing illustrations grace the pages of this book and who, when faced with depicting these foul words of mine, not only avoided visibly shuddering, but even feigned some very convincing enthusiasm. I would also like to thank my dad, Robert Brockway III, and my grandpa Robert Brockway II, who have always been endlessly supportive even if they kind of suck at naming things. I would like to thank my dogs, Detectives Martin Riggs and Roger Murtaugh, for being totally ridiculous and stupid, and also for keeping my legs warm while I wrote this. Finally, I would like to thank Cracked.com, whose open-door policy for writers has given me and countless other aspiring comedians the opportunity to shine. Anybody can sign up to write for them, and everybody should do so now. If I have forgotten anybody who has helped in the making of this book, please believe that it was not intentional. I realize there are many others not named here whom I owe dearly, and I have omitted you only because I am doubtlessly a terrible person, and will certainly one day answer for my many misdeeds.

“The book is proof that the ridiculous and the horrible are joined at the hip and will never be separated; in a universe that seems to continually be thinking up new ways to kill us, Brockway knows there is but one rational response: to point at it and laugh.”

“There has never been a hipper Prophet of Doom. Irreverently entertaining and terrifyingly accurate, the probability of our future death has never been more fun.”

“This book is hilarious. As if I wasn’t already afraid to leave the house. What’s that? Brockway suggests the apocalypse doesn’t knock? What if I cower under a desk? Well, damn. I might as well have another nacho.”

Copyright © 2010 by Robert Brockway

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States by Three Rivers Press, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

www.crownpublishing.com

Three Rivers Press and the Tugboat design are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brockway, Robert, 1980–

Everything is going to kill everybody : the terrifyingly real ways the world wants you dead / Robert Brockway.

p. cm.

1. Hazardous substances. 2. Natural disasters. 3. System failures (Engineering). I. Title.

T55.3.H3B76 2010

303.48′5—dc22

20090393312

eISBN: 978-0-307-46435-4

Illustrations by Jason Pedegana

v3.0

Observers are hungry lions.

Put your hands down, aspiring serial killers and rapists. Your vote does not count here.