15. Asteroid
It’s a big ass sky up there and we can only monitor so much of it. And even if we could accurately track every rock hurtling our way, some of those things are so big there wouldn’t be a thing we could do about it. That’s the sort of outside-the-box thinking I could bring to the Whole Foods team.
14. Gamma Ray Burst
Invisible giant clouds of radiation are currently hurtling around our universe, and one of them could hit us at any moment. How the hell am I supposed to figure out how to pass a piss test with that looming over my head?
13. Rogue Black Hole
That’s right, some black holes are just floating around the universe aimlessly, and one of them could happen upon our humble little third rock from the sun at any second. Even light can’t escape the suction of a black hole, so I don’t think a “career” at Walmart would escape the event horizon.
12. Nanobots
Nanotechnology is evolving, and some of those little robots can even replicate themselves. What if one of them goes haywire and starts assimilating all organic life into tiny metal ants? It happened on “Gargoyles” once. You know, the cartoon? You haven’t seen it since you were a kid? Really? I watch “Gargoyles” every morning. How do you start the day?
11. Chemical Mishap
The Kurt Vonnegut novel “Cat’s Cradle” centers around a scientist who develops a substance called “Ice 9” which teaches water to freeze at anything above the boiling point. If one sliver of it hits the ocean, we all die. It may be a work of fiction, but every passing year chemical research grows and regulations shrink. Any minute now some researcher could produce something that inadvertently makes water useless, knocks out a tier of the food chain, blocks out the sun, etc. That’s why I’m passing on the Footlocker callback.
10. Bond Villain
Between Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerburg, and Jeff Bezos we’re pretty much halfway there. Megalomaniac billionaires are getting more powerful and more emboldened every day. They’ve hijacked our media, they’ve eroded huge sectors of our economy, and now these fuckers are messing around in space! I’m guessing one of these psychos goes full “Moonraker” within our lifetime. And my Mom wants me to apply at Amazon?!
9. A.I
Like, duh. I’m not saying ChatGPT will go full Skynet or anything, although it’s possible and would be pretty badass. More likely some advanced learning model will be put in charge of crop production and realize it can grow more crops if humans aren’t around to eat all the crops and bing bang boom apocalypse. How the hell am I supposed to apply for an IT gig knowing I would be a part of that?
8. Plague
Yeah, the one that almost just happened definitely cracks the top 10 here. It might not even be a virus next go-round. We’re already seeing new antibiotic-resistant bacteria strains all the time. Mother Earth is wise to our game and she’s cooking up the cure to the infection that is man. Sorta makes hitting a sales quota seem kinda pointless, doesn’t it?
7. Earth’s Core Goes Cold
Nothing lasts forever. Who’s to say the fire that keeps our world alive isn’t seconds away from going out? And no, my fear of Earth being destroyed by a giant volcano does not cancel this out, I can let two opposing anxieties stop me from applying for the same job.
6. Earth Knocked Out Of Orbit
The dance of the spheres is a delicate thing and it wouldn’t take much to throw the whole damned thing into chaos. It wouldn’t even have to be our planet that gets knocked of course. An asteroid could hit mercury causing its gravity to push Venus into a collision course with Earth. Maybe it’s already in motion!
5. The Sun Explodes
Or implodes or whatever. Pretty much if the sun does anything other than what it’s currently doing every single one of us is dead. Hard to be a “team player” with a group of people who are so okay with this that they show up to work every day.
4. Population Tipping Point
As a guy with no job, I’ve had a lot of time to poke holes in “Avengers: Endgame.” Cut the population in half yeah? Okay, well the population of Earth in 1960 was only three billion people. After the snap, we still would have had more than that, and we would be right back to where we started in like 3 decades. The larger a population is, the faster it grows. You know when you’re at Starbucks and they say “Latte for Dan” and like, 4 Dans think it’s their coffee? We’re like a week away from an unsustainable population density. If I had a job I would only be more motivated to start a family and become part of the problem.
3. Fungus
Forget viruses and bacteria, fungi are evolving into infectious forms at an alarming rate and we have no idea how to stop it. I happen to have some inside information on this one. I ate some shrooms instead of applying for jobs.
2. Computer Virus
Our world is now completely dependent on tech, but with everything so connected it’s completely plausible that one mega computer virus could take out everything, obliterating our digital infrastructure in an instant and turning the world into a lawless hellscape. Sort of like the premise of that show “Dark Angel.” You know, “Dark Angel.” Fox, early ‘00s, Jessica Alba? Geeze, catch up!
1. Nuclear War
We’ve been on the brink of this one since the ‘80s, and every passing second technically brings us closer. I’m broke so I won’t be able to watch “Oppenheimer” until it hits Tubi, but surely they drove that point home right?
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