Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody

More Things You Can Do in Fifteen Seconds

• Tie your shoes

• Brush your teeth (if you’re gross)

• Disappoint a woman

System checks kept being run on the computers, and everything kept coming back not only positive, but also registering the highest level of accuracy in its assessments. “Everything’s cool,” the computer whispered, “just kill everybody and we’re totally cool.”

Because you’re not a dramatic silhouette burned into a sidewalk right now, you already know what happened: nothing. The “launches” were false alarms, glitches in the system caused by stray sunbeams registering as missiles (although the fact that the Russians’ elite military systems confused a sunny day for a nuclear holocaust and nearly wiped out the Earth in retaliation probably does little to set your mind at ease). The system was actually designed specifically to rule out this exact effect, but due to a near-cosmic alignment of the sun, U.S. missile fields, cloud coverage, and atmospheric phenomena, it was tricked into doing the one thing it was built to avoid, making any possibility of this particular error occurring practically nil. And still Petrov called it out.

If this were poker, Petrov would’ve just bluffed God out of his winning hand without even holding cards. When asked about his personal opinion regarding such an impossibly fucked situation, Petrov laconically replied that it was all just “God’s own little joke of outer space.”

I hope he put on sunglasses while electric guitar solos raged behind him after a line like that.

So regardless of the situation, he saved the world! He’s a hero, right? Nope. Not exactly. As stated before, if those satellites registered an attack, Petrov’s only duty was to hit that retaliation button and murder a continent. The entire human race, Russians included, is alive today only because this particular Soviet soldier made an impossible judgment call. What happened to the man who saved the world?

His superiors were so embarrassed that there was even a problem in the first place that they began a “formal investigation” into Petrov’s “failure of duty.” Among other things, they were quite perturbed that Petrov had not taken notes during this ordeal. They insisted that, between talking down Russian Nuclear Tactics headquarters from their kill frenzy, personally assessing the viability of the most advanced technology on Earth, and playing chicken with the angry hand of God, Petrov should have also shown his work, like a grade-school algebra student. Why didn’t he, they asked?

His exact, word-for-word response:

Because I had a phone in one hand and the intercom in the other, and I don’t have a third hand.

When confronted with such infallible logic by the man solely responsible for the continuing lives of your children, what did the higher-ups do? They reassigned him to a “less sensitive” position, from which he soon retired. He received a pension of about two hundred dollars a month, and the record of this incident was kept top secret until 1998. That’s fifteen years of complete obscurity. Fifteen years of knowing you saved the world, and getting the career equivalent of being reamed in a broom closet for your troubles, and somehow Petrov still soldiered on. During this period of obscurity, he suffered a series of debilitating tragedies: His wife died, his legs became so badly infected that he couldn’t walk for months at a time, and the village he lives in wouldn’t even give him a job sweeping the streets.

Stanislav Petrov’s Shown Work

Step 1: Maintain calm in face of Armageddon.

Step 2: Call computer on its bullshit.

Step 3: Divide by GIANT BALLS.

Step 4: Stand by hunch with fate of humanity hanging over head.

Step 5: Carry the balls.

Step 6: Save world.

So, to recap: He was basically fired, for not completely fucking over his own government. Because in Soviet Russia, government fucks you.

Since 1998, however, when word of his astounding deeds was finally made public, he has received a World Citizen Award! Amazing! It may have taken forever and a day, but a good deed is rewarded!

With one thousand dollars and a trophy!

That’s not a typo. One thousand dollars. And a trophy. The same reward for winning a regional amateur bowling tournament, for the man who saved the world. Thanks for not ending humanity; buy yourself an ’83 Honda Civic.

But what does Petrov himself have to say about his pivotal role in the continuing existence of human life as we know it? What does he think about his own actions, the fate of the Earth, and the subsequent disbarment and tragically inadequate rewards?

“I was simply doing my job and I did it well. Foreigners tend to exaggerate my heroism.”

Well, shit. Let’s hope he never reads this. He’d probably kick my ass.

2. KLEBSIELLA PLANTICOLA

IN THE 1990s, a European biotech company prepared to commercially release a genetically engineered soil bacterium for use by farmers. They were operating under two very reasonable assumptions:

1. Nobody likes plant waste.

2. Everybody likes booze.

Whereas the common man might address these issues by simply not doing any plowing and opting to get plowed instead, scientists at the biotech company thought of a much more elegant solution: Engineer a bacterium that aggressively decomposes dead plant material—specifically wheat—into alcohol. And in 1990, they did exactly that. The bacterium was called Klebsiella planticola, and it nearly murdered everybody; you just don’t know it yet.

Klebsiella planticola is of the enterobacterium family, microbes that typically reside inside the guts of mammals, but this particular strain inhabits the root systems of most terrestrial plants. Actually, every root system that’s ever been tested for the presence of K. planticola has come up positive, so it is as near to a universal plant bacterium as there has ever been (you should remember that part, because it’s going to come in handy later). In its premodified, natural form, K. planticola is partly responsible for the decomposition of all plant matter—a vital step in the natural life cycle—and it’s notoriously aggressive in this role. That’s why it was picked out for experimentation in the first place: Like an Old Testament God, K. planticola is both omnipresent and incredibly belligerent.

Biotech researchers saw these traits and thought they seemed perfect for an agricultural problem they were working on. Burning off dead plant material, as was the standard practice, severely pollutes the air and damages the lungs of farmers. But what if, instead of the regular old largely useless sludge that decomposing plant material results in, we could alter that sludge into something more useful to humans, thus eliminating the desire to simply burn it away? What if we could ferment it, and turn it into an alcohol, a fuel, or a hyperefficient fertilizer? Or better yet, all three! Why not get blitzed off of it, piss it into your gas tank to power your car, and then puke it up into the yard to make your garden grow?

Suddenly alcoholics are useful members of society again. Hell, they’re practically heroes: brave men and women sacrificing both their livers and their dignity to bring us power, food, and alcoholic-inspired confidence! Well, that’s the noble goal biotech researchers had in mind when they spliced an alcohol-producing bacterium into K. planticola. Once their product was released, farmers would simply gather the dead