The Winner of the Brand New Apocalypse Competition

As promised, today we’re announcing the winner of our tickets to The London Dungeon! But before I tell you the winner, can I just add: You disgust me. All of you. Seriously.

This guy is also ashamed of you.

Still, nobody seemed to put quite as much thought into the obliteration of our entire species as one Alex Labram. I’ll let him explain our terrifying but inevitable downfall himself:

“So these days a lot of people get pacemakers. And a few people have even got proper wired-in cybernetic limbs. And scientists are getting better at understanding brain neural behaviour, so full-on implants are only a matter of time.


I don't think we've thought this through. After all, these things aren't exactly nuclear-hardened, are they...


You see where this is going. The cyberisation of society is pretty much inevitable at this point - look how fast smartphones took off. And once they're actually *wired into our skulls and bodies*, we're going to start outsourcing more and more functions to them. Imagine a world where you rely on your adrenal implant to kick you awake in the morning, or you use silicon storage space to juggle extra thoughts in short-term memory. Now imagine if you suddenly lost that.


Once we reach that point, just a handful of nukes detonated at high altitude (Or, alternatively, a non-nuclear phenomenon. I imagine a sufficiently big solar flare could do it, for example) would be enough to obliterate society. People would have to re-learn how to *wake up in the morning*, for chrissakes. Every part of our economy would instantly fall apart. People would have no food, no water, no skills, and when they go to look up survivalist info on Wikipedia... argh.


When that happens, I give Homo Sapiens one month, of which the last two weeks will involve substantial cannibalism. Because the only thing too stupid to run away from a hungry semi-lobotomised human... will be another semi-lobotomised human. (Or possibly a dog. Dogs have it coming.)


And then the world will be silent. At least until the next species sits up and thinks "hey, what would happen if I rubbed these sticks together?" It's downhill all the way from there, folks.”

Alex, you’re getting tickets. I am sure you deserve everything you get in the London Dungeon.

Competition Time: Can You Think Of A New Apocalypse?

Yes, it’s competition time at Chris Writes About The End Of The World. We have been given the shiny prize of free tickets for two adults and two children to go to The London Dungeon, where you will be taken underground, shown various horrific and gruesome things and then get a chance to go on various rides that will scare the poop out of you, because here at Chris Writes About The End Of The World we’re still kind of fuzzy about the meaning of the word “prize”.

See the haunted terror in his eyes? That could be you!

“What could I possibly do to deserve this?” you’re probably asking right now.

Well, it would have to be something pretty bad, let’s be honest. We’re thinking, apocalyptically bad. Yes, to get these four tickets to darkness and terror, we want you to come up with a brand new apocalypse. Killer zombies, killer asteroids, killer aliens, killer plagues, killer robots, killer plants, killer words, killer apes and killer dolphins, all the grass dying, nuclear war, global flood, the earth being obliterated to make way for a hyperspace bypass, everything randomly turning into crystals, greygoo (although technically that’s robots), all the men on the planetmysteriously dying, all the women on the planet mysteriously becoming sterile, and whatever it is that’s supposed to happen in the book of Revelation are all pretty played out. I want you to wipe out all human civilisation, leaving nothing more than a few desperate survivors, in the most imaginative and creative way possible.

Suggestions can be as brief as you want (For instance, “a terrifying disease that turns everyone who comes into contact with it into a mime”- OH you can’t have that one now!) although obviously the more detail you put in, the more impressed our panel of judges will be.

The winner will not be burned alive at the stake. Actually, I should probably check that...

Entries will be judges on Originality and Awesomeness. The panel of judges will be made up of me, and some random person I rope into judging the competition once I’ve got all the entries in. The decision of the judges is final and cannot be bought, although this should not stop you from just randomly sending them cakes filled with money.

Send your entries to: chrisfarnell at googlemail.com with the subject line “A Brand New Apocalypse”.

You’ve got two weeks (Until the 24 April) to get your entires in, and the winner will be announced the week after that. So, GO!