I have an idea that hasn't been much discussed. How about the Rise of the Machines? Computer technology has increased rapidly. What if computers and robots become smarter faster than we expect? The machines try to take over the world and they fail leaving widespread devastation in their wake. Afterwards humans are left to pick up the pieces.
Wanted: New Ideas on the end of the world.
- Thread starter plop101
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Do you mean an American Hitler? Lets see, the whole thing starts off with a terrorist attack that dwarfs the 9/11 disaster. Lets say the Iranians or the North Koreans develop a crude atomic bomb and put it in the hands of Islamic terrorists. The atomic bomb is smuggled across the border in a truck and driven into Washington DC. The terrorist gives a brief prayer to Allah and then detonates the bomb, destroying the heart of Washington DC while Congress is in session and the President is in town. Someone survives and becomes the President of the United States by default. Having lost several friends and relatives in the terrorist attack, this new President vows revenge, the American public goes along with him and the Nations Muslims are rounded up and sent to camps. The President then launches nuclear strikes against all the nations on the map that are known or suspected to support terrorism, including North Korea. the Chinese respond to the attack on their allies by launching its limited arsenal of missiles at the US. The US in turn retaliates on China, and then all men and women of Chinese decent in the US are rounded up and sent to camps. Several US cities were destroyed. A rumor spreads that the French and the Germans have helped the Iranians or is it the North Koreans to develop nuclear weapons ostensibly as a peaceful nuclear power plant project. The US President is in no mood to follow this bullshit, so he orders an attack of France in Germany. France launches a nuclear attack on the US with its nuclear missiles and the US launches a counterstrike. Many cities are burning at this point. Curiously Great Britian stays out of the fray.
^ The UK seemingly stays out until it is discovered that a British assault group, with several cruise ships full of Royal Marines and Army, is quickly approaching the Chesapeake. They've waited 200 years for payback and now they're here to kick ass and chew bubblegum!
Do you mean an American Hitler? </font>[/QUOTE]You mean GB doesn't count?
The right is coming more and more into power. There will be a snap back eventually, assuming we all live long enough to see it.
I think this the most likely cause for a twilight war in the 20-teens.
Hitler started the last World War and he was a radical of the Right. If George Bush was an Adolph Hitler the 9/11 disaster would have made the perfect Reichstag, he would have passed his own version of the "enabling acts" which would have made him a dictator, then he would have rounded up Arabs and Arab Americans and sent them to Ghettos and Concentration Camps for eventual extermination. It seems to me, George Bush hasn't done this, quite the contrary in fact, he has stood up for them, defending even Saudi Arabia from radical rightwing televangelists who call them and their religion evil. Hitler certainly wouldn't have defended Jews.
The right is coming more and more into power because the left has been so anti-American and its hard to vote for someone who hates your guts because your an American. Try getting a Jew to vote Nazi, or a black man to join the Klu Klux Klan. The Radical Left around the world has been defined by its Anti-Americanism, and they wonder why we don't emulate them? Look at German, Mexico, France, and Russia, left leaning countries that contrive their policies to oppose American ones and for no other reason. Why was France so gung ho about supporting Iraq? Was it $4 billion in trade agreements, I don't think so? For Nations like France and Germany, that's just pocket change, they are putting at risk a greater sum of exports to the US than the chump change they were going to lose anyway in their dirty dealing with Iraq.
The right is coming more and more into power because the left has been so anti-American (various uniformed blather snipped) [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Have you ever bothered to read any leftist critiques or is it more fun to be a ditto head? I did 16 years in the US Army and only got out because my body couldn't take it anymore. I'm a card carrying, dues paying (despite being unemplyed due to Dubya) member of the Democratic Socialists of America. So this vet is unamerican inherently? Wish I'd known that 20 years ago when that fool Reagan was prez so I wouldn't have wasted my time as a soldier on the Fulda Gap willing and waiting to defend my country.
Ob T2k:
Dubya is a real good starting point for a far right take over. He's not freak enough for the freaky right and he doesn't have the racist credentials for the Klan/Christian Identity folks. But look back at how the Weimar Republic actually fell to Hitler and you'll see a large number of parallels to Dubya in the pre-Hitler government. He himself isn't the ultimate danger any more than Hindenburg was; it's the coattails like Ashcroft and the sinking economy...
(Also look at Iraq. As of today the US has decided they don't need the rights of our 1st, 2nd, and 3rd amendments for sure. The rest will be made clearly unnecessary shortly, I'm certain.)
William
Oh yes, I’ve read “The Nation”, it seems according to them the US never does anything right, they’ve criticized George Bush and they’ve criticized Bill Clinton’s foreign policy. It seems the main fault to them is their being Americans and conducting American foreign policy. “Why don’t the leave the Serbs alone?” they say, “they were only fighting Muslim Terrorists.” After 9/11 however and a brief pause to prevent irate Americans from tearing their office to pieces, they started up their criticism mill again and suddenly those muslims have become lovable and adorable and of course unfairly persecuted by the Americans
it seems that those socialists on the other side weren’t so friendly.
How about the terrorists? You think the 9/11 attack was a mere nuisance. You can bet that we’re Hitler around, he could only wish that the Jews would be so helpful in his rise to power in Germany by commiting acts as the Arab Terrorists have done. Hitler’s goons probably had to burn the Reichstag themselves as the Jew weren’t so helpful as to go on a rampage against German civilians. To fuel the fire even futher the Arabs have made Osama a hero on many an Arab street, giving a potential American Hitler plenty to rant about. George W. Bush didn’t cause 9/11, he hasn’t been as passive about it as many leftists would like, so in that sense a lack of passivity can be interpreted by them to be an aggressiveness.
I’ll have to look at the Constitution to see which amendments you mention.
I haven’t noticed George W. Bush doing any legislating recently, have you?
This Amendment deals with Congress.
As to the Iraqis, the US Constitution doesn't apply to them, according to their own laws, they never had those rights in the first place, their Parliment was just window dressing to justify Saddam's rule. Now that we took over their country, we decide what goes. Perhaps a democracy for them would be just another vehicle for a dictator to take power, as it was for Adolph Hitler. We have to make sure the Iraqis are ready for democracy before we allow them self rule. That is they won't write a constitution that grants all power to one man or to a cleric because he's "Holy". Arabs have a history of overthrowing democracies and installing strongmen. If the Iraqis are still in this mode, its better that we rule them, than to allow them to install a dictator who may yet cause us more trouble, that is what we failed to do with the Weimar Republic of Germany.
My take on the most likely modern T2k (Twilight:2020?) scenarios (without injecting aliens or meteors or whatnot):
o The US continues to become more vigorous in its pursuit of the "evil" countries of the world, and attempts to take on both other Arab countries and North Korea at the same time.
o The UN takes up a more actively anti-US stance as a result.
o Some things go wrong for the US.
Perhaps the leaders of all the local Arab countries (Iran, Jordan, Syria, etc) get together and decide that the US has to be stopped before it comes after all of them. I'd think if all the ME countries acted as one they could launch a coordinated air/missile strike that could wipe out all our local Navy in the area and most major air transport, essentially stranding lots of US forces in the area.
Perhaps the North Korea invasion goes horribly awry and they let loose a biological weapon, or a couple nukes. (Or we even reply with a nuke). This probably messes up the area pretty well, pissing off the Chinese, Japanese, and Russians real good, as they get most of the biological or nuclear fallout. They help support the Muslim countries in the region.
Muslim coup in former random ex-soviet country gives them some old nukes?
Due to the UN hating us no one comes to our aid except possibly some Eastern European countries. We have overfly rights from pretty much no one on that hemisphere except some of Africa maybe.
Terrorist nuke of DC throws the US into disarray?
Action would take place from Eastern Europe to Middle East to Far East.
Ernest
o The US continues to become more vigorous in its pursuit of the "evil" countries of the world, and attempts to take on both other Arab countries and North Korea at the same time.
o The UN takes up a more actively anti-US stance as a result.
o Some things go wrong for the US.
Perhaps the leaders of all the local Arab countries (Iran, Jordan, Syria, etc) get together and decide that the US has to be stopped before it comes after all of them. I'd think if all the ME countries acted as one they could launch a coordinated air/missile strike that could wipe out all our local Navy in the area and most major air transport, essentially stranding lots of US forces in the area.
Perhaps the North Korea invasion goes horribly awry and they let loose a biological weapon, or a couple nukes. (Or we even reply with a nuke). This probably messes up the area pretty well, pissing off the Chinese, Japanese, and Russians real good, as they get most of the biological or nuclear fallout. They help support the Muslim countries in the region.
Muslim coup in former random ex-soviet country gives them some old nukes?
Due to the UN hating us no one comes to our aid except possibly some Eastern European countries. We have overfly rights from pretty much no one on that hemisphere except some of Africa maybe.
Terrorist nuke of DC throws the US into disarray?
Action would take place from Eastern Europe to Middle East to Far East.
Ernest
This seems like the most likely way to go. On the other hand, of course, it is based on what is happening at the present moment, and that might change! Remember how the old timeline seemed relatively reasonable at the time?
But still, this general approach is plausible enough. In particular, it requires no great coincidences to work. Just a couple of posts ago, we had someone essentially talking about occupying Iraq until the Iraqis learn to behave like civilised human beings. In other words, Iraqis are children and barbarians who need to be governed by the Benevolent Empire for their own good.
All it would require for an apocalypse would be for this viewpoint to become dominant in US politics, and stay dominant. Gradually, the Benevolent Empire of Freedom would find itself being surrounded by enemies and ungrateful barbarians, with even its former allies becoming unreliable, or even siding with the Enemies of God and Freedom. Worse, more and more of its own citizens would start to side with Evil, necessitating an increasingly desperate defensive measures against the Satanic tide.
Sooner or later: *BOOM*
Alan
What have we found there? Mass Graves? What has Iraq done in the last 12 years? Invade Kuwait. Saddam Hussein has tortured people, and murdered them while building statues of himself and naming schools after himself. Hussein had extensive cooperation of the Iraqi people in their own oppression, those same Iraqis are still in Iraq. Friends and relatives have spyed on each other and betrayed each other. Iraq has been a problem for the middle east for quite a while, and they have paid suicide bombers to disrupt the peace process. And you say we are treating them like children? I am only saying that if there is to be democracy in Iraq, we give them time to get it right. If they are forced to govern themselves immediately, they will turn to those within their country who have experience in governing, in other words the Baath Party, or a Shiite Cleric imported from Iran to set up a cookie cutter Islamic Fundamentalist government in Iraq. Iraq needs some time to develop some alternatives to these two choices. An occupation government gives them this time. Ideally democracy should begin at the local level with the election of town mayors and town councils. Given time Iraqi politicians will have a chance to establish their reputations outside the influence of the Baath Party or Iran. The Iraqi people will get some idea on which politicians they can trust more than others, and some of these local politicians will be elected to higher office. This process will go on for some time, until finally Iraqis can be elected to the National government. That would be the reasoning behind US occupation in Iraq, and that's what we should have done in Afghanistan too.
Now in other parts of the Arab world their has been some anti-US propaganda to distract the locals against demanding more freedoms from their government. This blame-the-US movenment has been convienient to the autocrats, while they have tried to keep in low key, so they can continue to sell oil to us, it has gotten out of control and terrorist attacks have increased against American citizens. So far the US has turned the other cheek, but this can only go on for so long. After 9/11 the US has been less willing to turn the other cheek and overlook things, the war on Terrorism has begun. For the Europeans, this is just a metaphor, the usual blather that US politicians spout to get reelected, they assumed George Bush was just another hypocritical politician like one of their own, or Bill Clinton, in this they were wrong. George Bush did not back down, and the US army invaded Iraq. In order to prevent this invasion, France fanned some anti-US sentiment hoping to pusuade the US just to drop a few bombs, declare victory and go home, this didn't work and the anti-US sentiment remained and some more radical politicians began to exploit this in their campaigns. Now into the future.
These trends continue, Terrorism increases, the Europeans are increasingly uncoorperative in combating it, as they see it as an American problem, and some even begin to champion the causes of the terrorists. Finally one terrorist gets his hand on a crude atomic weapon from Iran and destroys Washington DC with a crude Atomic weapon. By eliminating the US government, they have left a power vacuum that is filled by something else. The US warfighting potential is mostly preserved, but those at the top are now nastier and no longer willing to turn the other cheek to these outrages, they are also more willing to blame a whole group of people rather than specific individuals, as they are blinded by hatred and revenge. The American Imperium has begun and the leftists throughout the world and the Muslim Fundamentalists finally get what they have wanted, just before millions of them begin to die. The Europeans find this new American Fascism very alarming and some of them sympahize with the poor oppressed Arabs who are now being killed by the Americans. Some of that symthathy goes to far from the point of view of the new American Government and the Europeans now find themselves in the crosshairs of Americans vengence. Blinded by hatred and revenge, their is little room left for reason and a limited nuclear exchange occurs between the US, Europe, Russia, and China with the Arab world getting fragged in the first volley. The Latin Americans were completely forgotten in all of this, and Mexico is tempted to retake territory it lost in the 19th century. In this new Twilight 2000 universe the action takes place in France instead of Poland, as France has raised the ire of too many Americans to escape this time. Poland can take its place in the new T-2000 timeline or perhaps Britian.
Funnily enough, after my posting I read "Semper Mars," by Ian Douglas, first novel in the "Heritage Trilogy," which posits a major UN-US conflict in ~2040... Concept is that the UN has gotten real pushy, while the US, Russia, and England are the only three countries not signed on. Then the UN does the good old embargo stuff that we make them do to others right now, but on us... Also the SW US states are threatening to break away to form a separate Hispanic country.
Ernest
Ernest
Semper Mars is pretty cool. I haven't read the rest of the trilogy. Unfortunately, not being from the US, I have to suppress my gag reflex at too much US flag waving. The US Marines aren't my heroes. And, irrelevantly, neither are the French Foreign Legion.
But despite all my various madnesses, Semper Mars is one of the few reasonably "hard science" SF books that I've read that wasn't incredibly dull. Of course we all know who "Ian Douglas" is, don't we? (If you don't just try a search engine.)
However: the UN isn't able to throw its weight around. The whole Security Council thing, vetoes and so on are designed to ensure that it can't do that. As the Cold War showed, it can coexist with rival power blocs in the Security Council, but it can't actually do very much. Now, you could postulate that the US walks out, and the rest of world reorganises the UN in a different shape, but it wouldn't be the UN as we know it.
More generally, we have seen lots of "reasonable" arguments in this thread that could lead to the "end of the world". As we have seen, there is a rational and entirely mainstream argument that could gradually set the US on a collision path with the rest of the world, and a significant part of its own population.
For T2K, this is exactly what we need. For the real world, umm, well...
Alan Bradley
Twilight 2000, or shall it be named Twilight 2020, can serve a double purpose, it can be an entertaining setting for a Role Playing Game, and it can also serve as a warning of what might happen if things go wrong, I think that's important. One thing to worry about is what happens if the US Government gets decapitated in a single terrorist attack? That is something for us to worry about, but hopefully it is also something for our potential adversaries to worry about as well, and perhaps deter them from striking at us. If democracy goes, then so too may restraint in dealing with our enemies. I think some of our Muslim Fundamentalist adversaries have no imagination of what we might do to them should a dictator rise to power and fill the vacuum created by a terrorist attack on our government. For our sake, I hope it does not happen, but for their sake, I hope they have alot of bad nightmares.
montanakennedy
SOC-8
Right at 100 years ago, we were cementing our position in the Philippines. We had just "freed" them from those meanies, the Spanish and told them we would give them self rule when we thought they were ready...
We held the Philippines as a protectorate until Dec. 8, 1941 (check the dateline before you holler at me
), considering them as "little brown children" and protecting them from themselves and the bad influence of the Moro Islamic insurgents. After WWII, we continued to hold the islands for a few years and eventually gave them control, as long as they kept the communists in check...I wonder who will take Iraq from us in 2041...
-Dave
Just found this today. My initial thought:
Gee, it takes a Scientist to figure out what the TW:2000 posters already theorized!
Really, most of the stuff mentioned in this article is already mentioned in this thread. Still, it does make interesting reading.
British Scientist Puts Odds for Apocalypse at 50-50 [Yahoo News]
Gee, it takes a Scientist to figure out what the TW:2000 posters already theorized!
British Scientist Puts Odds for Apocalypse at 50-50 [Yahoo News]
I'm kinda surprised that there's _only_ a fifty percent chance of apocalypse. I still say that part of it is the presence of far too many humans, and possibly the need to have a frontier (i.e. go into space young human), but I'll save the bulk of the politicizing for elsewhere.
