Robert Brockway - Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody

But medicinal advancement works both ways: That simple boost in immunity can start screwing over plants exactly the same way that it does us. We start overusing antibiotics and as a consequence we start to see the evolution of superviruses that cannot be stopped. Similarly, we boost plant immunity, and new superbugs start ravaging crops and we have no defense against them. We’re basically teaching plants how to use biowarfare against themselves… and it’s about goddamn time! Why should corn live in peace when we must live in terror? Fuck you, corn. We’ll genetically engineer you to feel fear if we have to.

We’ve genetically modified millions of plants that are currently crosspollinating totally at random and completely out of our control; who knows what monstrosities will emerge from that? When you think about it, it’s really only fair for us to screw over the plant world. Even if we did start this disturbing battle, unleashing biblical plagues on plant life is practically self-defense now. It’s not a matter of if, but when the chicken potatoes come for you, and may God have mercy on your soul should they find you with your fryer cool.

THERE’S A DISTURBING trend already under way: The total sperm count of all males on the planet has dropped by half in just under fifty years. If it keeps up at this pace, another fifty years’ time may very well see the last human beings born on Earth. It’s certainly not the worst apocalypse imaginable; in fact, it’s one of the betterones. Sure, there will be the inevitable last-minute, panicked attempt at self-correction as we try to save the species—just like with any other apocalyptic scenario, except that in this case, instead of erecting bunkers to shield us from a nuclear tornado or collecting shotgun shells before the zombie invasion, we’ll just try to bone one another hard, fast, and as many times as possible. But it’s still the end.

Most evidence of this reduced sperm count comes from citizens of industrialized Western nations, leading many to believe that technology—while inarguably awesome—is nevertheless out to neuter you. Conversely, shitting in a ditch is apparently excellent for fertility. We were first made fully aware of this worrying trend by a Dutch scientist named Niels Skakkebaek, when he conducted a worldwide poll of sperm levels in 1992. Ol’ Dirty Skakkeback, as his friends probably called him, went on a veritable world tour of semen, and when he was done—sticky, exhausted, and no doubt walking funny—he found that sperm counts had not only dropped significantly (by the aforementioned half at some estimates), but that even semen with average sperm counts contained a much higher number of deformed sperm than in the past.

This conclusion was soon echoed by other scientists all across the world; scientists like Jarkko Pajarinen, a professor from Helsinki, who conducted a study comparing the testicular tissue of five hundred men from 1981 against men from 1991. He found that the normal sperm production in men from 1981 contained about 56 percent healthy sperm. But by 1991, it had dropped to a little over 26 percent.

Ten years!

Only ten years’ difference and the effectiveness of our Littlest Gentlemen had dropped by half! If our collective balls were a company, they’d be filing for bankruptcy. Oh, and one more slightly less frightening, but still embarrassing factoid: Professor Pajarinen also found that the overall weight of the testes had decreased as well. So, long story short, the average modern man has the smallest recorded balls in history. Your verbally abusive stepfather was right! You are half the man he is!

But if we’re all going infertile, as this data seems to indicate, why does it seem like the planet is becoming ever more crowded with assholes? It’s like all the stupidity in the universe collected on the surface of the Earth as retarded condensation. It’s true, overpopulation is a problem, but if this fertility trend persists at the current rate, we’re dangerously close to being completely sterile as a species. A sperm count of less than 20 million per milliliter is the technical definition of infertile, and at the current rate of progression, that’s going to be the average within our lifetimes.

• The “Coors Light Makes Your Mom Look Pretty” Hypothesis

• The “Only Faggots Listen to Rap” Theorem

• The “Your Real Dad Was a Pussy and That’s Why Your Momma Found Me, Son” Principle

A 2009 study released by scientists from Brunel, Exeter, and Reading universities in England, in conjunction with the Center for Ecology and Hydrology, states that they may have found at least part of the reason for all those blanks loaded into our collective man-clip: water pollution.

Their study found an unusually high amount of chemicals called anti-androgens in the water supplies tested. Much like holding a purse outside of a dressing room, anti-androgens inhibit your manhood by blocking testosterone receptors, thus lowering fertility rates in males. It’s unknown exactly why these chemicals are found in such high volumes in industrialized Western nations in particular, but the working theory is that chemicals from the massive consumer use of pharmaceuticals are starting to enter the water supply through our waste. In other words, prescription meds are being passed en masse into the water supply through urination.

You’re literally peeing infertility.

You can see some proof of this happening already by observing the fish living in the water in the most affected areas. They’re so severely impacted by the concentrated dosages in their environment that the drugs are actually feminizing the male fish, in some cases causing them to spontaneously change sex. Now, fish and men are entirely different animals, so in no way should this information be summed up like this:

The average person has anti-baby pee that turns dudes into ladies.

• “Yeah! Apparently, it seems they found this information when all the fish started crashing their cars!”

• “What do you call a Zebra Fish with two black eyes? Nothin’! You already told it twice.”

• “Have you heard about this? Male fish turning female? They call ’em TransvesTilapia.”

That’s just a staggering oversimplification based on a very limited set of data. So maybe you shouldn’t worry yourselves about it. Even if it is happening right now, as you read this! But for there to be some real danger of a humanity-erasing plague of sterility, it would probably have to strike both men and women drastically.

Which it is. Come on! Would it be in this book if it wasn’t terrifying?

The UCLA School of Public Health has found some early evidence that perfluorinated compounds, or PFCs, could be associated with increasing infertility in women. And, though they sound exotic and rare, PFCs are used in pretty much everything: Plastics, pesticides, clothing, makeup—odds are you’re wearing or touching something chock-full of perfluorinated chemicals as we speak. The study says that women with higher levels of PFCs in their blood take longer to become pregnant than women with lower levels, if they can become pregnant at all . Because more manufactured materials are used and discarded in those pesky industrialized Western nations again, of course they’re the ones getting hit the hardest. And right in the babymaker.