Operation Impending Doom I
“But you only made the fires worse!”
“Worse? Or better?”
Yesterday I went to Doom 2012: When Will YOU Flee? If you haven’t gone, you really, really should. (Pumphouse Theatre until the 23rd.) Going into it I thought it was going to be a fictional thing where a scatterbrained professor whips out all these abstract doomsday theories that we can’t possibly do anything about and it would be hilarious. Well I soon realized to my slight pleasure but more utter horror that the doomsday theories really weren’t made up or impossible. We’re pretty much at the point where people don’t have to make up these things to scare us anymore. The cold hard facts suffice.
It was divided into five parts… Bacteria/virus pandemic (avian flu), religious war and terrorism, climate change, collapse and crime due to no more oil, and astronomy disaster (magnetic shield failing, or asteroid hitting Earth.) Really, nothing we haven’t heard about before, but it was pretty unsettling to get updated on all the facts within 75 minutes.
The very first chill I got was right at the beginning when he mentioned those commercials. Have you seen them? “Have an emergency kit that can sustain you and your family for 72 hours.” I hadn’t given them any thought until he brought them up. But it’s true. What the hell? I don’t remember there being commercials like that before. Something wicked this way comes. And we’re on our own for at least three days.
Anyways, it’s hard to know exactly what to do with all the doomsday facts. This particular presentation was all based around Calgary, and that getting out before mass hysteria sets in is the key to survival. Throughout, he took audience polls on when we’d flee Calgary for, say, a virus pandemic. And I’ll be honest, there are some things that I just refuse to worry about. Anything having to do with extra-terrestrial goings on (not aliens, I mean like a solar flare frying us or an asteroid smashing into us) I just am not going to think about. If it happens, and it might, there is jack all I can do about it. At one point, I think you can argue that if an asteroid half the size of the moon hits your house, you were meant to die today.
War and terrorism is another one that I just can’t lose sleep over. If things really do go nuclear then everyone’s pretty much in the same sinking boat and I doubt running away will help a whole lot.
I did definitely agree with something this guy said about collapse due to no more oil. Right now our world runs on gas and if it were to disappear tomorrow, people would be in very poor form. Well, it won’t disappear tomorrow, but ‘within the next 30 years’ is the current educated guess. Guys, that’s not very long. Our grandchildren are going to think we’re quite stupid when they look back on our behaviour regarding this.
“So, you’re telling me that cars, planes, boats and many other daily things ran on gas?”
“Yes.”
“And, you knew, 30 years before it ran out, that it was a limited resource and nearly depleted?”
“Yes.”
“And… you still used it liberally as if it’d be around forever and no one thought to control it in any way?”
“That’s right!”
Just saying. And, incidentally, it kind of makes me steaming mad when government officials say things like, “use public transportation, people!” It’s bloody hypocritical is what it is. Thousands of Calgarians suffer through the crap that is public transportation every day. Do the government people? No, they have drivers of their own. I really maintain that if they were forced to take it all the time, the transit system would soon see a blessed change. Until they make it at least a bit reliable, and a bit less likely to fail and come to a grinding halt as soon as the temperature falls below -20 (we’re in Canada, don’t pretend you didn’t see it coming…), I think it’s unfair for any government idiot to say “take public transit”.
Then, climate change, the artist formerly known as global warming. I was born in 1986 and I can’t remember a time when global warming wasn’t a term used in the media. And I have to wonder, am I just becoming more aware of it, or are we really as a society starting to wake up? When I was in elementary school, I had the impression that global warming was this abstract alarmist concept that would never affect me in the least. When they said the water would rise by inches (back then they said inches), I laughed and figured that would just put me a few steps closer to the waterline on every beach. When they said the temperature on the surface of the Earth everywhere could rise, I thought that would be an excellent idea. Sucks for Africa, but hey, they can head north, right? It’s impossible for me to tell if it was just me growing up and realizing the true consequences of all this, or if it really has emerged as a real concern. Because right now, I think some people know about the issue but are still too ignorant to understand that if we continue the way we’re going, it’s game over for everyone within our lifetime.
I think part of our complacency is that there’s no urgency to be found in our everyday life. We just can’t imagine life as we know it coming to an end because days seem so normal to us. I mean, turn on your TV. Don’t watch the news, but watch the other stuff. Surely we wouldn’t be wasting air time on VolumeMAX mascara ads and re-runs of Gilligan’s Island if the end was nigh. Would we?
By far the one that freaks me out the most is the bacteria/virus pandemic. You remember SARS, that scare we had a while back. SARS had a kill rate of 8%. This new avian flu strain… from what they can tell, it has a kill rate closer to 80%. Things like that seem to tend to spread like wildfire, killing everything in their path, and then disappear. I really hope that I won’t be affected but I suppose that’s a pretty selfish thing to say.
I have to say I’m quite torn over the whole thing. More than not, I’m an optimist. It’s easy for me to think, ‘the world will change gradually as it has for all time, maybe there will be a few big flare-ups that will cause some fear but all in all my life will be mainly as I imagine it will be.’ That is, the electricity will stay on, cars will run on something other than gas, the terrorism and wars will remain far away from me, and doctors will come up with cures to whatever ails us. And there’s something to be said for not letting fear control your life. Before going to Europe last May, I was soberly warned by one of my co-workers not to go because avian flu was more common there. Well, look, if I would have stayed back here while my friends went on the trip of their lives, I’d feel very lame when they returned in perfect health and with all their great pictures and experiences. Plus, I wouldn’t have met André! So there’s that. It’s all balance. Calculated risk.
I want so much to have faith in humanity. After looking at the facts though, it’s hard to be so trusting. It’s thinking about stuff like this that makes me happy that we have something bigger than humanity to trust in. It’s true… we live in interesting and kind of scary times. The thing is, I’m really at a loss for anything I as one person can really do about it. For now I think spreading awareness and learning all I can is what’s on the agenda.
