Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody

trumpet upon God’s return, and my dear beloved Charles ventured forth into the cosmos. As something akin to hamburger. In retrospect, this idea was poorly thought out, at best.

Some scientists dramatically explain the Verneshot as being akin to the Earth “shooting itself in the head.” But perhaps that analogy could be more accurate: It’s more like the Earth chopping off its own hand and then punching itself to death with it. Because bullets are for pussies.

But the scientists aren’t just pointing at the possibility of a Verneshot because it would make an excellent premise for a Michael Bay movie. They actually have this thing they call “evidence.” The Kiel University scientists say that the K-T isn’t the only massive die-off possibly caused by a Verneshot. There have actually been four major mass extinctions that coincide with potential Verneshot scenarios since life first appeared on Earth: the Late Devonian extinction event about 364 million years ago, the Permian-Triassic event 251 million years ago, the Triassic-Jurassic event 200 million years ago, and the aforementioned K-T event 65 million years ago.

The bizarre thing that first tipped off the Verneshot scientists is that these extinctions all have something in common: Available evidence seems to indicate that they were not only preceded by a massive meteor strike, but that there was always a simultaneous appearance of continental flood basalt, which coats great swathes of the Earth in liquefied basalt lava, forming dramatic landscapes and releasing massive quantities of poisonous gas in the process. I shouldn’t need to tell you that the odds of two mass-extinction-causing events are extremely low (about one in 3,500), but it looks like I just did, doesn’t it?

A lone extinction linked to the one-two punch of a meteor strike and a flood basalt flow? That’s unlucky, sure, but shit happens. However, four instances of species-destroying simultaneous disasters? Well, clearly a new theory is required to explain when two such large-scale disasters seem to be occurring in concert. Because the only other sensible explanation, that global disasters like to gangbang the Earth like an aging porn star desperate for rent money, just suggests a God too perverted and cruel for the human mind to comprehend. So, rather than believe that God uses double-header disasters to fuck life out of existence, there are some scientists who would like to politely suggest that the Verneshot, not a meteor strike and flood basalt flow, is the more reasonable explanation, if only to retain one’s sanity.

Of course, it is just a theory. Most ideas in science technically have to be labeled “theory”—which you can see in everything from relativity to evolution. Absolute proof is such a tricky thing to come by in the best of cases, much less when you’re trying to prove the existence of something that not only would have exploded most of its evidence, but shot half of it into space afterward, then buried whatever scraps were left under continent-blanketing lava. Regardless, some hard evidence is being turned up that helps validate the Verneshot theory: Beneath almost all of the continental flood basalt, scientists are finding concentric circles engraved in the earth on a scale so large that it defies comprehension. Enormous furrows that get both deeper and narrower the closer they lie to the center, creating an inverted cone leading to one central point in the sea floor. A focal point of impact surrounded by the debris of a gargantuan collapsed tube. Sounds a lot like the exploded barrels of Earth- shatteringly huge cannons…

Verneshot Facts, or Things Screamed by Crazy Hobos at the Bus Staton?

1. “India murdered Mexico.”

2. “Where my dick at?!”

3. “Japan is a concealed weapon.”

4. “They take your thoughts out like recycling!”

5. “The United States is ammunition.”

Answer key: 1—Verneshot, 2—hobo, 3—Verneshot, 4—hobo, 5—both.

And though the most definitive proof of a Verneshot would be, much like in normal forensic investigation, to find the actual bullet, I should remind you that oftentimes it’s enough simply to produce the gun in court. Considering that people are currently living on the murder weapon, it shouldn’t be too hard to find. And so the Verneshot theory is gaining ground in the scientific community—ground that it probably just loads up and fires into space—and it could happen anywhere, at any time, though according to Jason Phipps Morgan, that may be sooner rather than later: Northern Eurasia is just starting to rift, and with the immense pressure built up beneath the Siberian Craton ever increasing, the right preconditions exist for a catastrophic Verneshot event to occur. The Yellowstone Caldera, as well, could present some signs of a potential Verneshot… that is, if the impending supervolcanic eruption doesn’t vent the pressure first. And when a life-destroying volcanic eruption of unseen proportions is your best-case scenario, you’re pretty well fucked. Russia and the United States engaged in a race to see who gets to space first; this is like the Cold War all over again, except it’s not so “cold” this time and “getting to space” would be done in tiny gooey pieces.

But hey, look on the bright side: You could literally shoot an entire country in the face with 100 percent pure America. That’ll show all those pinko commie terrorists, assuming that they don’t fire themselves at you first.

14. POLE SHIFT

SOMETIME IN THE very near future, the Earth’s magnetic field will reverse. North will literally become south, and the consequences of this shift are not yet fully known. Experts cite potential side effects that range from the lovely sounding “northern lights in Cuba” to the slightly less endearing “everybody gets cancer and the Earth spits you into space.”

But while nobody is really certain what will happen when it comes, what is sure is its imminent arrival: Earth’s poles reverse every quarter million years or so, and it’s been around 700,000 years since the last one. Like an unwed, pregnant, teenage library book, we are both long overdue and seriously fucked. The Earth’s magnetic field is caused by the rotation of the molten metal in the upper core, just below the Earth’s surface. That magnetic field diverts harmful particles and radiation from space (everything from dust to gamma rays) away from the bulk of the Earth. Most of us probably don’t have a solid idea of what the various fields and layers of atmosphere actually do for the Earth; to your average Joe, it’s all just so much invisible space magic. That could particularly describe the magnetosphere that surrounds the whole planet and reaches far out into space. The poles, being the strongest points of the field, work like giant magnets, dragging foreign particles toward them and depositing them at the extreme ends of Earth. You can even see this process happening: The light reflecting off of these particles is why we have the aurora borealis, or for those who you hate excessive vowel usage, “the northern lights.” Setting aside the somewhat disturbing realization that those pretty green ribbons in the sky are actually a perpetual rain of tiny space bullets, this means that the purpose of the pole is to protect the rest of the world from harm at the expense of the northern and southern extremes. Considering that the southern extreme is Antarctica, which is sparsely populated at best (save for adorable penguins, but do try to avoid thinking about radiated particles giving cancer to baby penguins; it’s just too sad to fully contemplate), and considering that—according to the stereotypes that make up my entire base of knowledge—the northern extremes are exclusively populated by Canadians, Eskimos, and Santa Claus, depositing all this space death at the poles isn’t really affecting anybody that matters (sorry, Santa).

Average Joe’s Understanding of Atmospheric Layers

Troposphere: Really warm, sandy sphere.

Stratosphere: Planes go here, also guitars.

Mesosphere: Me so sphere-y?

Thermosphere: Where nuclear power comes from.

Exosphere: A sphere with its bones on the outside like a bug.

But that magnetic field is long overdue for a flip, and that could mean some very bad things for us. While the