I won’t harp on this – but I’ve been trying not to get cynical in how I see COVID in the U.S. playing out. In an effort to make things more fun for my mind, rather than talk about an obvious inevitability of all of us contracting a disease we’ve had multiple chances to reign in, I want to talk about the U.S. vs. Doomsdays (with an “s”).
Ask yourself – honestly: What are the chances that the U.S. could survive various Doomsday Scenarios?
Not as a matter of resources (we have resources), but based on our social tendencies?
To give you a heads up, I’m just going to talk about a few “common” world-ending themes that you see play out in movies. And to keep it interesting, let’s get rid of things that we can’t really see coming of do anything about once it’s here (so something like a massive nuclear strike or huge meteor is out of the running).
Oh, and I put “Real” in the title in quotes because I don’t view our current pandemic situation along the lines of Doomsday-level. It isn’t GOOD by any means — but the world and my country will survive this so long as it doesn’t become anything like the actual movie Contagion (trigger warning on that link, btw).
But… for giggles… (let’s get it going)
Scenario #1: Instant Death Virus
VERDICT: We’re dead.
I’m not even going to waste much time on this one. If we got into a scenario along the lines of the movie Contagion, the United States doesn’t make it. We don’t. Our handling of the last, what? 2-years? Sure. Our collective handling of the last 2-years has shown me that we just aren’t ready for anything like that.
Too many different scripts would run rampant on what’s really happening. Agendas, politics, conspiracy theories, and ideas would get in the way of facts — and by the time the communication muck is all straightened out… we’d be gone.
I can’t speak for the rest of the world’s chances, but I can speak for here in the U.S. based on what this recent environment has shown.
We don’t make it.
Moving on.
Scenario #2: Zombies (Non-Airborne Infection)
VERDICT: We survive!
Believe it or not, although this one is very close to the first scenario because of the whole viral angle, I think there’s one key difference in this one: We can shoot it.
Haha – yeah, I know – that’s dumb, but I mean it. I really do feel like the United States has enough of a love affair and know-how with our deadly weaponry that I think we’d pull through this just fine in the end.
(And I’m talking about traditional/classic slow zombies here. Think Night of the Living Dead zombies — not World War Z or 28 Days Later zombies. Fast zombies or zombies with “superpowers” kill us.)
Would we lose some people? Oh… (laughs) Hell yeah. But I would really be willing to wager big money on us coordinating against any enemy that we can see, shoot, and kill (that has lower-grade tech than us) in time to survive. Especially against my favorite horror movie monster.
Scenario #3: Zombies (Airborne Infection)
VERDICT: We’re dead.
See Scenario #1 & again, think of RIGHT now.
Scenario #4: Famine
VERDICT: We survive!
While I know some people genuinely view U.S. Citizens as extremely selfish greedy narcissistic individualists (some of us are) — I don’t. I think that, for the most part, this country is still made up of pretty well-meaning people.
Well-meaning people with different value systems? Yes. But well-meaning people, nonetheless.
We may not treat our homeless here to the best social safety nets we could damn well provide, but we also don’t treat them like utter garbage either. And when something impacts ALL of us, we have an interesting tendency to band together. That is kind of our thing.
I am not saying that everyone would be super kumbaya about everything, but I do think neighbors would look out for each other. I think the government would step in and ration out food (in a non-evil way).
And if worse comes to worst, I think people — common people — would violently rise up, take food, and then come back to our senses and form something resembling community and commerce based on the resources available. I mean, people have rioted over less. And I think any poor schmuck defending anyone hoarding resources would eventually turn because of the needs of them and their loved ones.
It might not be a pretty period in our history, but I think we’d make it.
Scenario #5: Alien Invasion
VERDICT: It depends…
I honestly think whether or not the U.S. survives this hinges on the invading civilization’s level of technology. If they crossed the stars to take us out, that already doesn’t bode well for us – but let’s assume these are like Predator-level aliens. So, they showed up in smaller numbers with advanced space spears to take us out. We win that. As I said earlier, we can shoot it and their tech isn’t too far advanced besides their space ships.
However… If the aliens super out-pace us in tech? We don’t last long. If we try to nuke them and it fails, we’re done. And I genuinely doubt that we’ll have a stupid plot armor quirk like the one in Independence Day. One of the biggest movie sins of all time! You mean to tell me that the aliens outclassed us technologically, could read minds, all of that — but our puny little computer hacking powers could disable one of their key systems?! Ok. Sure.
Scenario #6: Huge Natural Disaster
VERDICT: We survive!
For this one, think of something like a supervolcanic explosion (Yellowstone comes to mind).
(I feel like I’ve shown this before on this blog, but it’s SUCH a good scene!)
Unless this wipes out all of us at once – I think the U.S. could pull through. It would be hard, but we’d figure a survivable way out of that situation, and I actually think foreign countries would help us out a bit (I never said that wasn’t allowed).
Scenario #7: Killer Robots
VERDICT: We’re dead.
For the record, this is the path that I think we’re currently heading down as a species if something else doesn’t happen first.
We are super reliant on machines and if something like Skynet from the Terminator franchise comes into our country with the intent to wipe us out — we’re done. People still have passwords to very important systems literally set as “password” and “12345” for crying out loud! So, getting into any systems might not be a problem for this super program out to kill us.
If it’s a humanoid super machine produced in I, Robot level numbers and spread around like our modern-day cell phones – we die.
And there just aren’t enough of us left who know how to meaningfully survive “off the grid” that I’d call whatever was left The United States of America. It would be more like… a colony of humans over here and over there.
There was no deep point to this post. Sometimes I just like to have fun and do stupid riffs like this – LOL! Plus this kept me from wallowing in COVID-related despair.
Agree with me or not, it doesn’t matter. Just have fun with it (especially if you got this far)! Let me know what common Doomsday scenarios I missed out on in the comment section below.
Peace, and thanks for reading.
The soundtrack for this post provided by…
Image Credits:
– Cover Image © PashkaRay (Shutterstock)
– Body Image 1 © Virrage Images (Shutterstock)
– Body Image 2 © breakermaximus (Shutterstock)
– Body Image 3 © 1000 Words (Shutterstock)
– Body Image 4 © Fer Gregory (Shutterstock)
– Body Image 5 © Pavel Chagochkin (Shutterstock)