Thunder sound. Behold, brothers and sisters, gather around as we lament the
loss of our dear civilization. This is blurry photo. To those who are
hearing us in the far distant future, perhaps alien archeologists, this represents the
pinnacle of mankind's achievements. Repent, repent, and be safe for low.
I am David Flora, and I am the broken remains of David Stacko.
I never have an adjective for myself, and I do it to myself every
time, every time I have every opportunity to call myself something and I just
say my name. Well, you don't spend as much time thinking about yourself
as I do. You're well adjustment, not me. I can't do anything
but think of cool adjectives for me. My world's coming to an end.
Oh you and me, brother, you and me? Both? Am I
right? I one of these one of these uh episodes. I'm gonna strong
arm in an adjective in most product post production, so it's gonna be like,
hello, everyone, arm then please let your amigdala do that do the
the post. Oh man, well, you better hurry because not much time
left. TikTok. I hope everyone's doing all right, in their final days
and these the waiting hours of this dream we've called a life. That's right.
This uh, this podcast huge, giant, huge, it's it's a
popular thing, and we actually we work really hard to kind of to dig
pick at the weirder corners of the of the weird tapestry. But this is
this we cannot ignore. No, this is so ubiquitous in culture and our
modern age of all the flashes and beeps and bloops. And you can't sneeze
on a chicken without hearing about the apocalypse, can't swing a dead cat without
hearing about the armageddons. So that's right. This is our pod episode of
Oh that is good. That doesn't count, though you still owe me puns
later. I got you, all right, I'll pay you in spades.
You'll wish I didn't have. Yes, this week we are discussing in in
glorious, miraculous two part omnivision now in technicolor. But that's entirely up to
you in the ability of your imagination to imagine what we're saying in color and
then more than two dimensions, yeah, perhaps even more than three. Whoa,
Yeah, let's let's jump in this thing. As you said, two
parters, so we got a lot of ground to come. Oh man,
and this is this is huge. This is it. This is us explaining
why you will not be here in a month's time. The apocalypse, that's
the old familiar turn for everyone. I think the apocalypse refers to a revelation
of something hidden, that's that's a classic meaning or or something of a hidden
meaning. Today it's pretty common referring to prophecies about an end to time.
Yeah. Usually usually and believe me, we're going to get into everything else.
Usually a biblical in nature, yeah, yeah, but a biblical some
kind of or some kind of religion. Yeah. Apocalypticism is a fostering of
the belief that the world will end very soon. Also the next album by
Lady Gaga, Right, and I'm probably within one's own lifetime. Yeah,
everyone is positive that they are just they're the last people in line and we
are not in this one of the interesting things that I've learned about this.
We're not there, We're not like the Chosen One. Like it's every single
generation has dealt with this crushing belief that we are the last people on earth.
Right, I want you it makes you wonder though if there was a
time, it's just not recorded that people were sitting around like, man,
life's good, nothing to worry about here. Yeah, it's just gonna work,
tire and learn an instrument. I think things will just keep continuing as
they are. Ye, No change is imminent. Hey, help me build
this temple. We'll call it go Beckley Teppi boo. This is all dealing
with a thing called eschatology, which is the study of the end times.
It's concerned with what are believed to be the final events of history or the
ultimate destiny of humanity. Eschatology. That is a word. If you drop
it in the office, you are instantly an expert. Yeah, no one
knows it. And when you say, you claim the right, so clip
and say that's right. A lot of times it will pertain to a prophecy,
a messiah, death, judgment, reunion with the divine, which is
another way of seeing death and judgment. A lot of apocalyptic literature deals with
large scale change. It also can deal with the end of reality as we
know it, the start of something new in terms of living or thinking or
existing. He's come via war or violent destruction, a deities intervention, a
confrontation between good and evil, or a change in consciousness if you want to
raise your vibration. Yeah, this is everyone's This is everyone's big free ticket
for ascension. Yeah yeah, there you go. Or if you're the wicked,
you're a ticket to descension. Red light, honking horn. And now
you don't understand why you're going down to slide. And it's getting hotter and
hotter and more humid. It's not even a dry heat. Oh that's the
worst. That's just gonna end up in Florida. Just kidding. I lived
in Florida for a while, so you're not kidding at all. The vast
majority of escatologies see the apocalypse of something good in the sense that it changes
or cleanses things for you know, a better age to come. Yeah,
no, I'll buy it. I mean, I mean, I see therespective
on that. I mean, the Christians had the millennial Age, and there's
like a cleansing kind of there's this this repeated theme of a cleansing of the
earth or or reductionism to a simpler time. But I think that anyone who
got what they quote unquote wanted would be sorely disappointed by what's in the box.
I'm going to go through. If you've got your seatbelt on, I'm
going to go through a list of modern apocalyptic scenarios. Oh, thank you.
All right, when you say modern, do you what do you mean
by that? I mean things that could happen right now to us. Okay,
at any time, all right, you ready. I'd like to believe
I am probably not only not nuclear warfare, pandemic disease, alien attack,
impact of a celestial object, cybernetic revolt, technological singularity, dysgenics, divine
judgment, climate change, resource depletion, ecological collapse, and the inevitable Nazis
from hollow Earth, any of which could happen. All right now, I'd
like to thank you first of all for editing out all of my sobbing.
I did not realize things for that bad. It's been three days and I
think we're ready to continue. You can't. You can't hear it, but
I've grown a beard. No, they can hear it. Yeah, that
is one of my in the course of researching this, and as anyone listeners
can imagine, the Internet is built for two things. The first and foremost,
as always, is pornography. The second of all is to catalog the
ways and means by which our society either could, should, will, or
will be saved from its demise. Right, I chose personally to kind of
research more of the things on your list that you just read, the things
that are very not only could happen, but in some cases are extraordinarily likely
to happen. I like the more tangible threats to my existence, the existence
as a society, and so those are the things that I like to look
at. So I did. I did more of my research on the things
that you just listed as opposed to like the religious or spiritual, your more
traditional apocalypse tie right, the workingman's apocalyptic scenarios. These are the things I
research. Aren't your gram parents apocalypses. These are new and hip some of
them. Drink go gurt? Do you drink go gurt or eat it or
just choke on it? Why do you get near it? Because you're cool
and you're on the go. You probably have two skateboards. So nuclear warfare,
we all know, we know what we love it. We right,
trying to listen to all the alien people tell us not to do it.
Pandemic disease. They get pretty scary with that, saying what could happen and
how fast? And oh yeah, the transmission rates, the disease modeling.
It's a weird balancing act because people when they when they look at the idea
of a pandemic virus or bacterial phage or something like that, when people look
at those things, they kind of without meaning to, they bring their luggage
to the party. If people want to be afraid, if they want to
be like, oh no, we could die at any second, if that's
kind of their their aim, it's very easy to say, well, you
know, look at the Spanish flu epidemic in the early twentieth century, so
bad that it's actually not in history books. People just were done with it
and people don't talk about it anymore. But the death rates are phenomenal for
it. And one of the reasons why it was so very bad as it
was in the run up to World War One, where every large country in
Europe and in the US were putting all of their people together, they were
they were barracksing soldiers and moving them around on trains, and so there was
a while the world was getting more interconnected too. Exactly, so while the
Spanish flu was a terrible disease, human beings were literally doing everything they could
to help it by putting people into these concentrated areas and then redistributing them to
more other concentrated areas. I honestly couldn't even think of a more effective way
of distributing a disease. Also, you're just coming off of in the Civil
War when they were just figuring out to wash their hands and tools and stuff
and hygiene, you know. Oh, and the race to isolate the cause
of the Spanish flu is fascinating, and I've read a bunch about it.
I love reading medical history and it's a cool, fascinating subject on these guys
who researched these diseases, and it's so much of it happened at the turn
of the twentieth century. But you have to balance those things. Yes,
we are we are far more mobile now than we ever were before. But
we also have a far better understanding of what makes us sick. There's no
guessing. We know very quickly if things are bacterial, or virological, or
even preons. That's a pretty new one. It is. It is.
It's what you get for driving hybrid cars. Notable side effects are a smug
sense of self satisfaction and odorless flagelens. But you know, like Chrisfield,
Jacob, you know, that's a new classification disease. But our ability to
diagnose, like our technology allows us such a faster response to diseases, that
while there are things that are still terrifying. I mean, we still have
outbreaks of Ebelow or or Marburg, you know, these these awful hemorrhagic fevers
around the world. But we are far better at fighting than than we were
before. We would never in a million years say, oh, there's a
dangerous flu strain. Well, let's just put all the soldiers here and and
and we'll burn some nap the candles and hope that gets rid of it.
Here have a pet monkey, right, you know where we're So those those
the risks of a of a more mobile society, a global mobile society,
are largely balanced. I mean, we have a world Health organization, we
have individual health organizations that do a very good job of cooperating with each other.
So while it is very possible that something could spread so quickly through a
major metropolitan area, I'm by no means saying oh we're safe. That could
never happen there. We're much better at fighting it, and I feel like
that that very strongly mitigates the effect of virus whose means of progression. I
mean, we know how viruses replicate, and we can very quickly determine how
effective a virus is and how it does propagate itself. So we're pretty good
at We're pretty good at identifying those things early on and sequestering them. Now,
there are things that, like I said, preon disease that's very new
to us, that's you know, ten years old, fifteen years old,
you know, something like that. There's always something that could come out of
left field that we've never seen before, or mutate or mutate, absolutely like
a new strain of something. But I think personally, I think that we
are at a much higher risk, especially in the US, of a badly
done inoculation campaign or something that which is not to say you shouldn't get inoculated,
you should get your shots. There was a recent outbreak of meningitis from
that. Absolutely, yeah, the leningitis is a good example of that.
I think that we're more risk from ourselves than we are from the natural world,
which is what the rest of this list discusses. I mean, things
like nuclear war are a constant threat, but it's almost its own breaks.
Yeah. I mean, we have been as as a global society, as
a species, on the brink of nuclear war a handful of times, and
we just know how it ends. Everybody knows how it ends, which isn't
to say at some point, hopefully never that some complete lunatic would get his
hands on such a weapon. But everyone, every person knows how that ends
for everyone. Everyone can now blow up everyone, so it's no point.
There's no point in blowing up anybody, right, So I don't think hester
would be to be cool, just chill. I was never like a particularly
globally concerned kid, but I do remember being in junior high in high school,
right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union going they did track down all
those trucks with nukes on them, right, they know where all those are
because things were real loosey goosey for a couple of years, and I remember
being really concerned about that. The answers, no, Yeah, what do
you think about the next one on the list? Alien attack? Alien attack
would be awesome, Yeah, I said it. Alien tack would be awesome,
because hey, aliens. Other things that would be awesome about it.
It wouldn't last long because we wouldn't last long. True, unless they wanted
to enslave us. Can't imagine they would. Seems like a lot of work.
But on the other hand, it's entirely possible. I mean, we're
functionally confined to this planet right now. We can attempt to go to other
places. And what's to keep an alien from quote unquote enslavingist just saying hey,
you're all ours now, you just can't leave the planet. Yeah,
you know, it gives a territorial grab. You know, what if what
if we were to, you know, conquer a country of people that refuse
to leave their town, then you just announced that you've they're yours, and
no one in the town cares. That could go so many weird ways.
Sure I don't well sure, I mean yeah, yeah, impact of a
celestial object, I don't think that would happen, Okay, I mean,
I mean the possibility is always there. This planet has been around for a
very long time. We've had plenty of time to clear our orbital path.
While we do historically and have received what is I think a six extinction level
impacts to this planet. And I know that especially right now, I read
a whole article about this, how we are uniquely ill equipped to deal with
something like that. Were we to locate a large object heading straight for Earth,
I think they would say, well, we have maybe about six months
warning on that, and as it stands right now, we actually don't really
have the capability of launching something to intercept that we don't have where we're kind
of between space programs at the moment, but we don't really have the capability
of intercepting that. I think that there are certain things that don't merit concern
because either they could absolutely happen or they absolutely will never happen, alien attack
being one of them. Impact by immedia, I mean, these are the
things that are just guided by weird fate. Might might happen right now,
It could be happening as we speak and we just don't know it yet,
or it could never ever ever happen in our lifetimes. I mean just ever
we you know. I mean that's true. Space is big, right,
Space is inordinately big, and these impacts are probably fairly common in the early
planetary formation. But a planet does sweep out its orbit and now, granted,
in the gigantic celestial universe, as as it is. We're not static.
We don't just keep going in the same circle. We don't keep literally
treading over the same ground. You know, the galaxy itself is in an
orbit around a universal core. You know, everything's moving, so we are
always in a different area. But regionally, I think we've largely swept the
big players out of the field. And there are some efforts that gets continually
funded worse and worse. But there are efforts to detect near Earth objects,
things that will potentially mess with our lives. But I don't put that.
That's not one of the things that I concerned myself so much with. Yeah,
Hollywood does, yeah, well, yeah, but we fixed it with
Morgan Freeman. That's right. Oh yeah, what was it the way it
was? Which one did Morgan Freeman's Deep Impact President Morgan Freeman. Yeah,
that was a great one. I the scene where Talione gets obliterated on the
beach, it was awesome. I like TALIONI yeah, but yeah, that
I mean Armageddon. They did so much good scientific research when putting that movie
together, and I was really surprised. I mean they really dotted all the
teas and crossed all the eyes. Yeah, that that was a great,
terrible movie. I will say one thing that they got really solid on Armageddon
is Russian cosmonauts are absolutely that's crazy. Yeah. When I was in Antarctica,
the Russians have a base there called Vostock, and one of the rules,
one of their training guidelines for cosmonauts is they have to do like this
really long stint at the Russian Antarctic station in Vostok, which is not an
easy station to live at. And all of those guys come out of that
thing bug house nuts. And when I was in McMurdo, when I was
shipping back home, there was a bunch of these Russian guys there who are
also shipping back home. They just finished their prolonged stint and they took a
like twenty four hours for them all to get confined to quarters for just getting
drunk and just raising hell and being absolutely bad bit crazy. So that's the
part that they got right in Armageddon. That's my little two bits speech about
Russian cosmonauts. How about cybernetic revolt. Oh see, that's one that I
like because that's one that we're building. We are working so hard to make
that happen. We are, I mean, and in this absolutely in our
lifetimes. Absolutely, these drones. We don't have enough pilots for drones right
now. And the way you fix that is by programming the drones to pilot
themselves. We already have autopiloting drones, and they you know, like like
the beginning of every great movie. Oh no, we have like an override.
We haven't shutdown. It's absolutely going to happen. I mean. And
when I say within our lifetimes, if even if your lifetime is ten more
years, you're gonna see it like we're gonna see autonomous robots, military robots
destroying targets, and by targets I mean people right, terminator style. Absolutely,
and that I don't think that they're going to become sensient. I don't
think it would be like a Skynet thing. Yeah, I mean AI,
it kind of falls under that. I think that there will come a point
at which AI is a genuine threat to us. Yeah. But what I
see is when you create a bunch of computer based autonomous systems, someone will
find a way to hack that, someone will find a way to gain control
of that illicitly, and people, right, and people will die. Lots
of people will die as a result of that, and I think that the
better you arm these things, the more people that will die. Now on
the heels of this technological singularity. That's the good one, that's the best,
that's the best quote unquote apocalypse there is. I mean, when when
there's no like the singularity capitalisque that people talk about. If you've never heard
about it, it's really cool to just google it and just read a few
articles here, and there is the belief that we are going to within the
next hundred years of our life or maybe longer. I don't know that humans
and technology in the Internet, all these things will fuse in some manner,
whether we find a way to actually download a consciousness into an artificial network,
or we bring the network into ourselves by means of implant that we can interface
with it within our own skulls. Where there is no necessary distinction between you
and your computer and your network, where your body is a largely non necessary
thing. That we are all electrical signals, we travel where we want.
It's this this melding of man and technology that people refer to as the singularity,
which sounds pretty damned cool to me. Why that would be considered an
apocalypse? I'm not entirely certain, but I know that anyone who fights it
would have to be rounded up and killed or made into slaves. So people
get on the winning team now be on the right side of history. Phone,
Yeah, exactly. This is not a difficult call to make. How
about dysgenics. Yes, I did not know the phrase dysgenics until today,
but I know exactly what you're talking about, and that is the belief that
that over time, through and in some cases it's poor diet, like we
like the way we eat, the way we um floorhide, but um,
we are changing in for the worse we are. We are every generation is
genetically worse off than the one before through damage, spray tanning, you know,
all these things that we are becoming less functional genetically, like our our
actual genome is getting degraded over time. I'm not I am conflicted on that.
I think that, Yeah, what what do you think with with this
one? It's not a it's weird to put it in the apocalypse bucket because
it's not something that happens quickly. Yeah, now, I it sounds like
I probably just shot myself on the foot because it's on the list. But
I was taking the list from a place a site that was you know,
just listing all the possibilities, and I think they were probably thinking long haul
on all this stuff. You know, what are all the things that are
happening right in modern day and this could you know, it could really wreak
havoc upon humanity by basically making the population just functionally inept now. And that's
that's such a hard thing to to isolate. I mean, is that a
cultural ineptitude? Is that a lack of overall like an idiocracy kind of thing,
that's I think what it is. Yeah, it's uh, you know,
m plants, Plants love electro likes you. That's what makes them grow.
Ro likes make you strong, plant hard. Um. I would watch
absolutely, I would watch a show called All My Balls. Um. But
I that's that's a hard thing. Is that a social problem? Is that
an actual biological issue? My belief is that one of the great things about
having the ability to be self aware as humans are that lets us do virtually
anything we feel like, good or bad or indifferent. I think that that
takes the reins of evolution. I don't think that we need to worry about
our genetic evolution anymore because we can literally correct it. We are the only
animals on earth that can say, you know what, this is, how
we're doing it from now on because we don't like the fact that we only
have five fingers on each hand and seven would be way cooler. We can
literally fix that if we are so inclined. So I think if left to
our own devices, yes, and there are some sort of examples of that
North and South Korea. The chronic lack of food in North Korea means that
their medium height, their medium weight for both men and women is significantly lower
than for South Korean men and women. Just so you get, you get
owing to whatever circumstances, in this case, a terrible government, that there
are these regionalized genetic differences, and genetic isn't even the right word. You
know, if these kids had all been fed properly growing up, they would
be stronger and taller, yeah, and smarter. There is also a lot
of cognitive problems that come from malnourishment, and so I think that you're going
to see those things crop up around the world. I don't think that anytime
in the near future we're all going to join hands and fix these things.
Were all going to join hands and turn the Jersey Shore on exactly. I
mean that I think that we here in good old North America will spend more
money on penis pills and things that burn fat, and people in South Central
Asia are still going to need polio vaccines and things like that. How about
divine judgment, We're going to go over that here. Yeah, I think
that that's really I think you did a lot of great work on divine judgment.
I have done everything I can in my life to incur the wrath of
the Lord, our God, whoever you consider that to be so, I
do consider that something of an inevitability. But I think it's going to be
dulled down on a much more case by case basis. Yeah, I think
that I will be singled out for my crimes and punished accordingly. How about
climate change, That again, is something that is absolutely happening. Bad news,
sorry everybody, that's happening lessing. Yeah, ice is melting, and
this the climate change is a magnificently sticky wicket in that it actually starts to
eke into some of our other apocalypses. Ziz APOCALYPTI sure not only do you
get the problems of coastal flooding, crazy rain storms, the amount of energy,
the way that changes the weather patterns on the Earth. You get crazy
storms, which we've already started to get. Coastal flooding. We will lose
cities, portions of the land will be gone forever. See in New Orleans,
yeah, and my Atlantic city. And then the secondary effects of that
when you get a lot of coastal flooding and you get the temperate zone on
the globe becoming broader. It is now warmer, farther north and far south
of the equator, more rain, You get more rain, but that also
increases the range of disease carrying insects. Now, this is actually what I
studied in college. Of the many times that I wasted in the terr classes,
I took. What I ended up with was a degree in insects that
carry infectious disease. And so you see things like dengey fever, yellow fever,
malaria, these things spreading westn Island cephalitis. Absolutely, that's like the
most recent fun thing to hit the US. But these diseases have not been
eradicated. They are at best regionally controlled, but they still kill millions of
people. It is a huge problem. And when these diseases start showing up
in areas that are not equipped to deal with it anymore. That used to.
I mean, the Tennessee Valley Authority drained the entire basin around the turn
of the century, eliminating yellow fever from a huge port from the southeastern US.
When those diseases come back, those areas that haven't seen them and forever
have no ability to combat them, and so you get huge amounts of deaths
from that. And these domino effects from a huge changing climate are so far
reaching. That's just one example. YEA. Even geologically, the redistribution of
that much mass of of a melting polar ice cap, of that much mass
literally deforms the Earth itself and changes the manner in which the tectonic plates move.
It can actually trigger huge cataclysmic earthquakes. And again that's those things happen
on a geological timescale. We'll never see oh tectonic plate fly to this direction.
You know, South American and Africa aren't going to crash into each other,
but you will see more earthquakes. That that those things will happen literally
as a result of global warming, and that the holes that the poles will
open up for sure, absolutely, and we'll all ride our kayaks to safety.
I can already tice that giant and grape they've got white. And for
me, we also have resource depletion and ecological collapse, which I think go
hand in hand in a way. Oh absolutely. I think that China has
had for such a long time limits on their own nation's population to keep the
number of people down. Very few other countries do whatsoever. And we just
keep we just keep breeding, and we are already over pillaging the planet it
is. This planet is not an internal free lunch buffet, right, And
I think that, I mean maybe at Cynical, I don't think it ever
will ever stop. I read a great book by Jared Diamond, the guy
who wrote Gun, Germs and Steel. He wrote a book called Collapse,
and it's about different societies historically on the Earth and how they collapsed, like
what brought them to their end. They were very stable for hundreds of years
and then they ended. Why and how that came about? And one of
the really interesting things is the Polynesian islands in the South Pacific. They had
a huge these giant boats that were the backbone of their society allowed them to
travel between the islands that allowed them to fish in deeper waters to bring in
more food, but they chopped too many of them down. This this one
very specific species of palm tree which is now extinct, that would grow very
fast and they could make these giant boats out of it. And he raises
this amazing question. It's like, what what was the guy thinking as he
cut the last one down? Is he looked around this whole island and saw
but one tall tree left and cut it down. And that, I think
is a perfect example of how people are. People just think it'll work out.
They just think that ze, well, you know, something will come
around the world owes us this. Yeah, this can't be the last one,
but it is. And there are the last one of everything, and
it's if you haven't read it, it's a great book, but it is
as a tragic failing of human beings, regardless of what country or part of
the globe you're from, that we just don't stop, We just don't figure
it out. Absolutely. While there are portions of the population that are very
concerned with that and trying to save it, and the highest of fives to
them, there are still more people who are poor and desperate that just you
know, maybe that last guy, he's not a villain. Maybe is he
cut that tree down? He was crying, but his wife needs food and
his kids are having and if he has this boat, he can go get
more fish. Yeah. It's not even a captain planet. Like, there's
no say, there's no supervillains. There's just poor people who are doing whatever
is available. You know, nobody grows up in Kenya going God and those
elephants. If it's the last thing I do to my last breath, I
shall hunt there. They're there. They are people who just need food and
money, they need to survive in this world, and they end up doing
whatever they can to do it. And that means that there's no more rhinos.
Yeah. Now, this obviously is not a problem for the Nazis in
the Hollow Earth that will eventually come out in their advanced aircraft and destroy destroy
the world for the Fatherland. Yeah, you know what, I think that
one thing that happened when we recorded our Hollow Earth episode was actually a three
parter, the third part talking about the time the Nazis and evaded the Hollow
Earth completely took it over, killed the giants, and turned all the giant
fruit into poisonous bombs and bread the super huge bats to drop upon majors and
the entropolitinarias. Immediately after recording that, we were visited by some reptilian Nazis
who made it quite clear to us that people that we know and love would
be injured to the point of death where we to release Part three. So
we didn't do that, right, So I can sound pretty good authority.
Yeah, hollow Earth Nazis, that's happening. Oh you're you're going for it
now? Huh, Well they showed us. They showed us all their plans.
That's a lie. They there's no such thing as that. Oh now
you're redacting it. Well I just got an email from that. Yeah,
so that's uh, those are all a modern apocalyptic scenario. Well, the
major I'm sure there are some crazy ones that are out there that we haven't
even Uh oh, well there's you know, there's there's one other one that
is phenomenal that is not so imminent or maybe it is Yellowstone National Park.
Yeah, that's supervolcano. Yeah, they were doing some work. They had
some geologists and Yellowstone years back trying to determine how, you know, where
the volcano way is and where the caldera, and they couldn't find the caldera,
and they thought, well, this is really unique. We've got this
huge volcanic area, but we can't find the caldera. Some swoll folks from
NASA sent over some of their satellite imagery because they thought it was cool looking.
You know, there's so many sulfur dioxides and there's yellows and everything,
and they just thought, hey, it was literally a hey, we thought,
you guys think these pictures were pretty cool. You know, you could
make postcards out of them. They send over their their satellite photography and these
guys, you know, it was like the the really great moment in all
those movies where someone just goes a Mother of God, it turns out the
entirety of Yellowstone National Park is the caldera of the volcano. And not until
they saw the satellite imagery they realize the size and scope of the volcano that
they're dealing with. Now, were this too erupt, it would cover all
of North America an approximately one centimeter of ash, everyone within say a thousand
miles, which is a fairly big radius. Dead that would kill all vegetation
North America. Nuclear winter for decades. That would be as close. That
would be a very near thing. That would pretty that would come pretty close
to end the end of the world, right right, that would and it's
in it geologically erupts about every six hundred thousand years or side, and their
last Yeah, her last eruption was six hundred and forty thousand years ago,
So on the bad side, she's definitely due for a booming. On the
plus side, there's a lot of geologists believe that part of what makes Yellowstone
such a fascinating area, you know, the guysers, is that it's a
continual venting of the presstion of gases and pressures. So they think that maybe
that's this is it's far less likely to erupt in the manner it used to
before because it has a more regular venting schedule, right. So it's it's
a heck of a thing to realize that that you've been living on the back
of the giant, terrifying volcano. It's yeah, it is terrifying. Indeed.
Now for those of you who don't know what a caldera is, you
think of your classic volcano, as you know, shooting up into the sky
and then having the little lake of lava, you know, in the ringing
and stuff, and you throw in a virgin in. Now this this one
is actually a massive underground cavern that was hollowed out for one reason or another,
but then filled with magma and the pressure of all that has just been
you know, just continually builds in this in this cavern almost like a balloon.
So you don't want to drill into it to relieve the pressure because then
it would be like sticking a pin. I've just needed to relieve the pressure
in the balloon, right, So you got to find a way to untie
it from the bottom. It's not gonna happen. So that's why this is
so so freaky because this, uh, it throws the world into one of
these, like you said, nuclear winters, you know, where everything there's
just a cloud in the sky that blocks out the sun, which adds you
know, if if anything didn't get killed in the initial heat blast or the
ash, then you've got the clouds that that will blot out the sun.
So nothing grows. Isn't the sulfur gas the gas that comes along with it
the rivers. It's one of the biggest cases in the old worst case scenario
yeah, and sadly enough is one of the more probable ones too. If
you ever read the book or saw the movie The Road, oh this it
may you know something like that would be how life would probably end up.
Yeah, And if you haven't read or seen that and you have a weak
stomach, if you if you have, if you have a medium stomach,
I would advise against or if you just if you're a little bit down in
the dumps, you stay away from it. So this is the part we
just review movies. Now here we go. What's the name of the guy,
Carson McCullum or something, Cormick McCarthy. Cormick McCarthy, Caroline. Yeah,
Cormack McCarthy wrote The Road. Yeah, it's it's pretty um rancho your
soul um anyway, it's said in post apocalyptic times where there's it's it's just
mostly all ash rain all the time, and it's pretty sad um. So
that's uh, that's so some modern apocalypse for you. Let's get in the
old time machine and go back to uh, talk about some eschatologies of the
old major religions. Oh man, there's that word again. I'm not kidding.
People learn the word eschatology drop it on your friends because you know this
is a huge office conversation. Yep, you're gonna be talking about it.
You drop this and people are just like, oh man, he knows.
Yeah. Probably Statistically from what we've heard from RS Buddhist eschatology, Buddhist eschatology
speaks of the appearance of the next Buddha, who's named Maya Trea, preceded
by an age of about five hundred years, which in the Dark Ages was
upped to five thousand years of societal degeneration, which means greed, lust,
poverty, ill will, violence, murder, things like that will be prevalent.
Sound familiar, Yeah, exactly, and everything will be forgotten in terms
of Buddhist teachings, the dharma, the Buddha himself will even be forgotten,
so that when that's all played its its hand, Maya Trea will come back
and go on to teach dharma and bring enlightenment back to this plane of existence
to establish an earthly paradise. Sounds good. Apparently the scripture I read something
about the scripture concerning my Atrea is very much unlike any of the other scriptures
in Buddhist literature. So there's there's a thought that it may have been added
afterwards, or or maybe it's been tampered with somehow to make it more apocalyptic.
And oh, there's there's that weird. There's somewhere a Buddhist at an
editor's desk with giantsagaga and nah nah needs more pizzas. We got to really
reach out and grab them, get their retention. Where's that poker kidsph editor
Buddhists. So the Buddha gave a sermon of the Seven Sons, in which
he described an apocalypse where seven sons would appear as sons as in stars like
the Sun, causing progressive ruin with each Sun that appeared, until the Earth
is basically engulfed by a vast inferno. So everything starts drying up, and
everything starts wilting and dying, and then everything starts catching fire and basically melting
into molten fire. That's really depressing. Well, and it's not even it
doesn't even have the sexiness of a giant meteor impact, like, no,
it's just it just gets warmer. Yeah, and it gets warmer, It
gets warmer. Then you die, but then it still keeps getting warmer.
Yeah, but that one has the number seven in it, which I mark
that on your old post it note. Yeah, exactly. We will come
back to that. I don't know if you ever heard that seven is an
important number and none so none more important than in the end of days.
Right. A lot of these eschatologies a lot of similarities between them. So
just h note, lookout for patterns here there, They're gonna become an atche.
Yeah. This is one of those kind of fun things where a lot
of different cultures and religions have a very similar underlying logic to what's going on.
Yeah, so that's Buddhist. Oh yeah, that had a very Eastern
mystic sound to it that I enjoyed. Uh, let's go into Hindu eschatology,
repeating the word so that you don't forget it. I I'm not around
here. Remember the word seriously, say escatology. So Hinduism believes that time
is cyclical, consisting of cycles known as kalpas and uh follow me here,
Uh, okay one one kalpa is one thousand. Maha yuga's word is made
up. A maha yuga, if if I'm getting this correctly, consists of
four yugas, each broken down into two separate sections lasting many years. But
but different years, uh, a descending order, Like the first one has
a million point like seven years, the next one has a million point three,
the next one has like eight hundred thousand something, you know. Like
so there are four four yugas like that, and they total around four point
three two million years. That's a cycle of of the yugas. They encompass
a beginning of complete purity to dissent into total decay. The first yuga is
when everything is pure and self aware and great. It just gets worse every
day. And and yeah, yeah, I'm depressing. Is that it's believed
we are in the last yuga right now, the Kali Yuga and human kind
will ultimately be destroyed after degenerating and to war and ignorance, and then the
cycle will start a new where everyone will come out and it'll be great.
But at that time, the final incarnation of Vishnu, who at that time
will be called Kalki, will appear on a white horse, amassing an army
of pious souls and destroying evil to begin Satya Yuga, the first of the
yuga cycles, to reset it again exactly. So we're just right now,
just just wallowing in our own filth, Yeah, pretty much, and that
is depressing. According to some Hindu I guess math about it, We've still
got a good like five thousand years to go in here. Some of them
think we're we're right at the end of it, but some think that we've
still got quite a waste. We can still get a lot worse. Right.
And in the Satya Yuga, people live for like one hundred thousand years.
They don't really need like, they feed on spiritual energy, you know,
they're they're one with everything. But then in the Kali Yuga degenerates down
to where people live to be twenty years old at most. They're sexually mature
at five. They're living in trees and caves, and that is that is
such a depressing perspective because no matter where you're at, it's just tomorrow's worse.
Yesterday was better. Think about how enlightening it would be if they had
flipped it. Um, Yeah, you know, we're just yeah, we're
here now and man, but we're tomorrow is going to be better, and
it's my job to make it better. Well that's that's you know what next
next podcast, Dave's problems with Hindus. So the Yuga cycles are the Satya
Yuga, the Traita Yuga, the Devapara Yuga, and the Kali Yuga.
All right, great, that's a Hindu. Nice. I liked where you
got with that one. I feel like I could do a little dance to
it. Let's let's talk about our friends in the Islam and the eschatology that
they have. Yeah, I would very I'm very interested to hear this because
I don't know anything about it, and I'll bet you it's fascinating, you
know, strangely enough, not that far off from from the Christian and oh
no, no, that can't be right. Sorry, it's perfectly balanced and
one percent opposed to the Christian perspective. So it talks about Al Kayama,
or the Last Judgment, and that's described through twelve major signs, along with
many minor signs of the coming judgment. Corruption and chaos reigns. At the
time of al Kayama. There will be a battle between add de Jal,
who is, for all intents and purposes, the Antichrist, and the Machadi
who is the guided One or the redeemer of Islam, and Issa who is
Jesus a resurrection. No, wait, let's let's just not blow past that
that signpost real quick? Do you mean literally Jesus or their religious equivalent of
Jesus literally Jesus. They believe that Jesus didn't actually die on the cross,
he was taken up into heaven where he lives currently, and he's going to
come back to help the Mahadi to deliver the Islamic faithful from That is fascinating.
I knew it. I knew. I didn't know about it, and
I knew I wanted to. Yeah, they don't think he's the Messiah per
se, but they think he's like, Oh, he's a great prophet.
He's a cool guy. He's gonna be the sidekick, and when it all
goes down, we're gonna need him on our side. Someone kicks the door
and on Jesus's office and says, hey, we need you for one last
mission. I told you I was out. I told you I was out.
I haven't been on that I been down there for two thousand years,
and they want me now. Jesus is here. I God, I knew
he'd come back someday. They also have a resurrection of the dead and a
judgment of the righteous and the wicked. At that time, after it's all
said and done. Kind of silly for fighting. Here are some of the
minor signs of the end times. There's a ton of minor signs, but
the pencils ready. Here are the Here are some highlights. Men wear silky
clothes and merry other men. Ding. Women are more numerous than men ding.
Inanimate objects speak ding, sire, tell me a joke. I don't
really know any good jokes none. In fact, you dirty whore. That
was my phone talking. But there's a small spirit in there, or at
least a demon right a gin? Uh So some of the major signs again,
I repeat, we're four for four minor signs. I did not realize
that that might tell phone was a harbinger of the apocalypse. What isn't anymore?
But when I saw the service contract, I can believe it. Major
signs. Mahdi appears on a white horse, the sun rises from the west,
there's a trumpet sound, and humanity dies for forty years, and then
there's a smoke in the sky for forty days, and then a second trumpet
sounds to resurrect the dead, and then they are they're judged, so everyone's
dead at the end of it. Then they all come back. Yeah,
M I need to read more about that because that's interesting. It was really
interesting to read about this stuff. And like I said, strikingly similar to
a lot of other major religions. You know. But you've got a white
horse, which we have already heard. You've got trumpet sounds which dare I
say, we'll hear later thunder sound ominous. So yeah, that's uh,
that's quickly uh Islamic, I don't make you think. I thought that that
would that sound would remind me more of a Laddin, but it didn't.
Great, let's go into h Judaism. Yeah, the end of days is
called and and forgive me for the pronunciation, because a lot of a lot
of places have what it's called. None of them have how to say it,
no phonetic spellings. Ahara Hayamin. I thought that was that sounded great.
Maybe in which tumultuous events will overturn the old world order, creating a
new world order. What when God rules everything and he is recognized by everyone.
The Talmud states that the world as we know it will only exist for
six thousand years, beginning with Genesis in the Bible. Uh. That puts
the end of time around two thousand, two hundred and forty got a ways
to go, m the main tenants of the end days. The Jews will
return to Israel. God helps Israel defeat it to enemies. A third temple
in Jerusalem is built. A Jewish Messiah leads the people in a battle against
Gog, king of Magog. At the Battle of Armageddon, the chauffar sounds,
which is a ram's horn. The dead are resurrected and they are judged.
That's that's basically it for I've been to a few funerals where they blew
a chafar. Yeah, so again we got we've got the a horn sounding.
Yeah, it might as well be a trumpet. We get. We
get Armageddon and they're Gog and Magog. That one comes up some the dead
resurrected and judged. Yeah, now the Gog and Magog we're gonna get.
We're gonna come back around to that again later when we get to the kissing
cousin of Judaism. Chris Chanity, I ever heard of it, um,
But yeah, again, there's so many similarities here. It is. It
is a little, it's it's it's fascinating and it's all I mean is it.
Does it seem depressing at the same time that there there is such an
extraordinary amount of common ground, even theologically, across these these beliefs. Depressing,
Yeah, yeah, because because this is such a point of contention for
everyone. It's just I don't know, it's like saying, I'm mad at
you for wearing a two shirt. My two shirt is better, right,
And and and the thing that is truly sad is that I would imagine both
sides are like, yeah, yeah, we're at the end of the days.
We have to raise an army to fight you. And they're like,
that's what we're saying too. Like the everyone everyone thinks it's the other guy.
They have to be fighting again. Yeah, that's true. And I
went really quickly through through these tenants and here, of course it's it's stretched
out quite a bit um within there. But these are these are the main
highlights. And and again we see these over and over. They're they're the
same things that come up a lot. And that's uh, that's Jewish eschatology.
That's awesome. So what do you got next for us on our on
our international globe trotting tour of cultures? How about standing in the Middle East
and getting some Zoroastrianism. Oh that's exciting. Are you sure that's how that's
pronounced. I've been told. So this is the oldest eschatology and recorded history.
Oh see, now that there we go. So this one's right and
true. This is the real one. This is basis the basis from many
of the major religions uh, Christianity, Judaism, in Islam. The end
of days uh happens when days are shorter. The land gets barren, men
are deceitful and vile. A dark cloud makes the whole sky night, and
it will rain more noxious creatures than winter. There's a guy by the name
of sal Shunt, the man of Peace, who battles the forces of evil
and triumphs by condemning them to an eternal existence in molten metal. And the
final judgment will then commence with a resurrection and souls will be reunited with God
to live in immortality. That's amazing. I don't know anything about Zarastrianism,
but that's so, that's the oldest one. So it's the right one that
works, right, this one, This one will get into later. I
love that this mega episode is going to birth so many many babies of stuff
to talk about later. Zarastrianism in particular is right along the lines of the
Ananochi, which I want to talk about eventually, the Anna Nachi creatures who
may have created mankind to harvest gold for them, monoatomic gold. Zerastrianism is
a Mesopotamium. So yeah, there's there's a lot to this um that we
we can cover later. Yeah, ably, Yeah, I love it when
when these things raise as many, if not more questions and then we put
to rest. But in this one we also we get another resurrection. We
get one dude coming in saving the day kind of thing. Lone Ranger sands
Tonto. I thought, I thought it was really interesting. They mentioned a
dark cloud makes the whole sky night. Yeah, you just like the smoke
and it will rain more noxious creatures than winter. That that sounds pretty nuclear
winter to me. Yeah, absolutely cool. So that's zero. Okay,
Now I know that you just made that one up, because I mean,
was that was that an actual cultural Zorastrian sound? Part of it was Gungham
style. I thought there was a reason I started dancing. Oddly enough,
somebody has thrown out there that Gungham style was mentioned in a Nostradamus prophecy that
the horseman from the East will be followed by nine zeros and the end will
come or something like that, and then it shows like him doing that little
horse dance and then one billion views on his video. This is this is
I just uh, I just stole the pie off the seal. Oh,
that is awesome to it. I got one more Norse eschatology, and before
before I think we should break and go crack into some of the heavy hitters.
Right, So Norse mythology, you've got a strong winter that comes on
called fimble Winter, and that brings disorder and war to people of mid Guard,
which is Earth basically, and that happens just before Ragnarok. And Ragnarok
is the twilight of the gods or the end days of the gods. Also
the coolest sounding of all the ends of days. Right, the gods all
all get together in battle against the forces of chaos led by Loki and some
monsters and giants, and yet don't forget the yoting and basically it's a huge
fight. Everybody dies and the world is torn asunder. The Earth ends up
sinking into the sea, and eventually land reappears and there are some survive,
a couple of surviving gods and a man and a woman that survive to repopulate
the earth and they live in basically a golden time from down That is unique.
We have not heard that one yet. Yeah, where it's almost like
the beginning is put at the end for this week. Yeah, it's just
the reset of everything. I love what happened in in Norse mythology just in
general, but for Raging Rock in particular. The final fight is, uh,
it's just a mega Yeah, it's all your favorite stars and the giant
cage match. It's awesome. Uh, We're going to take the Earth and
submerge it into the CC. But there's all kinds of imagery in there.
You've got the u Rman Gander, the world serpent comes out and Thor kills
it, and then it's it's noxious Thor versus Located versus Yarned and garm see
the Flaming Sword of s. Yeah, so that's that's that's pretty that's one
of the most badasses that is. That is that is the the guy playing
a guitar on a motorcycle. But of all of these that I've heard,
also, not much to do with with mankind. This is yeah, mostly
gods U in this, sir. We wrecked your house with our brawl.
We're still alive. Can we crash? Yeah? So that's uh, that's
north. You put the guitar in it because it rocks. And a motorcycle
Mmm, I did that to myself. Let's call it today for for now,
I need a nap with so much. You need to to go and
think about all the sins that you've committed. No, you go think about
what you've done. Oh that's awesome. We got some some part one puns.
All right, let's do it. I got a big al Kiamas going
out of business sale. Everything must go. What's the name, big al
Kayamas, big alcay. This is going out of business sale. I judge
these prices to be fair. What do you got You're gonna you're gonna hate
to love this one. I've got a street car service named trolley Yuga.
I like that. How long does it take you forever to get there?
Each ride is incrementally shorter than the one before it. Okay, I've got
one. Um. This is a judaic internet joke site called Hilaria hyamme.
It's mostly uh, just meme jokes. It's like inger it is, but
it's for judaic jokes. Hilaria, hyamme, I've got one more. Oh
sweet, I've got a gentleman's club called Maya playa not maya tria, maya
playa that again a week dismount. It's a pun. What do you want?
We're just lucky to make it off the horse. We actually got a
pun this week. Yes, sweet, delicious puns. Here's the pun sound
triumph of children. Children, They're so happy as you see you guys,
you you make children happy to send punts in. This one is from Kentucky
native. Hey what hola hola hola Kentucky go bowling Green. I don't know
anything about Kentucky. There is a bowling Green and Kentucky. It's good enough.
Um, this is uh. This is a pun based on our channeling
episode Sweet and it says it's a lamp reading shop called light to medium.
Well done. That one that one bites off a couple puns in the same
Yeah it does. That's a compound pun. Well done. Yeah you just
yeah, you just elevated our game. Thank you. This is exactly that.
That's that's what we wanted to see that want. That's that's how we
learn. If you have any questions about anything that you've heard today, or
perhaps would you like to correct any glaring inaccuracies about our quick cliff notes of
your religious beliefs? Right, please tell us because we don't have to be
right, We just prefer to be right. Yeah, we would love that.
This is a This is a dense cookie to be gnawn on here.
So if you have any corrections for us or anything to add in there that
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come up like when it auto feels it's great. It makes me feel important
and that's what I like about it. For now, though, we will
leave you I glaring questions about what's coming next. Yeah, just sit there,
just hold tight and don't worry, baby, We're coming back. We'll
be back. I am the inestimable David Stecco. I said that first,
and I'm drawing it out so as to give you time to think of some
excellent adjectives. David Flora, and your time is out. I'm the inconceivable
David Flora. Yeah, next time, we're gonna hit you with some Christian
eschatology and the big One, the Big and Officers, the South American elephant
in the room, h