/sci/ - Science & Math

A black hole.

>>6365845

By a delayed reaction of the higgson particle.

>>6365845

Higgs boson

sorry.

>>6365845
That can theoretically be created by humans?

I forgot to mention that the setting is roughly the present, maybe give or take a couple decades. but yeah that works.

>>6365823
You can spin off the pop drivel about LHC going bullshit and creating a black hole.

>>6365849
It's okay.

False vacuum

>>6365823
This is at least 60% bullshit, but here goes.

The Sun, because Reasons (insert technobabble here; it'd be basically impossible for humans to in any way affect the Sun, and pretty much no feasible natural phenomenon could fuck it up THIS much) is slowly going nuts, greatly increasing in the rate of fusion and spewing plasma and radiation towards Earth. The skies light up with beautiful aurorae all the way down to the equator, the ionosphere discharges in massive lightning bolts, gradually roasting the Earth as it grows hotter and hotter.

Eventually, it erupts in a cataclysmic coronal mass ejection of unprecedented power and duration. Power lines and transformers are melted to slag by the massive induced current. Plumbing corrodes away. Just about everything with a wire turns on, even if not plugged in, then blows out. So much radiation hits the Earth it practically glows. Everybody looking out the window goes blind and gets dangerous X-ray exposure. The Moon glows bright enough to read by, on the night side before the flare strikes.

Afterwards, the Sun mostly calms down, so the survivors can take part in post-apocalypse stories.

Suggestions for the requisite totally bullshit technobabble - a completely made-up particle is made in the LHC and flies into the Sun, where it somehow catalyzes a massive increase in rate of fusion (muon-catalyzed fusion on batshit steroids) before it decays and things return to normal.

>>6365871
Nigger, we had the exact same idea. I was just about to post this.

>>6365823
The spectacle before the cataclysm is the hardest part. I can think of a lot of semi-plausible scenarios, but they either wouldn't look impressive until after or during the catastrophe, or be too sudden/unpredictable to be known but inevitable beforehand, or both.

Could it have something to do with satellites? I once heard that the amount of shit we put into orbit might one day collide and cause a chain reaction surrounding the earth in debris. Maybe spin it so that the debris has some sort of aurora-like effect on the atmosphere/thermosphere?

I'm going less for a "progress bad" approach and for more of a "humanity as a whole fucked up" sort of scenario.

>>6365865
Reiterating this. Google this, OP. Also there's a high chance we are currently in a false vacuum.

>>6365881
>I'm going less for a "progress bad" approach and for more of a "humanity as a whole fucked up" sort of scenario.

I should clarify. The higgs boson thing seems like it sends the message that you shouldn't play god and science is bad, which is by no means what I want. I'm aiming at drawing parallels to our destruction of the environment, global warming and all that. The problem with that is that's generally too slow for what I have in mind.

>>6365891
False vacuum

>>6365823
If you're not remotely worried about it being realistic, try this one on for size.


A large scale experiment to test the feasibility of creating an artificial, traversible wormhole appears to be successful at first, giving researchers in the lab a brief glimpse to another part of the Universe. Suddenly something goes catastrophically wrong, the lab is damaged, and the wormhole appears to close.

Unbeknownst to the researchers the experiment has produced an unstable wormhole in our solar system. The wormhole periodically opens in the night sky, revealing distant stars and planets and is at first hailed as a magnificent achievement - a bridge for humans to eventually utilize to travel throughout the Universe.

But as the wormhole's aperture grows and as the length of its periodic openings increases, gravitational effects permeating through the wormhole begin to cause serious perturbations in the Earth's orbit.

The scientists realize it's only a matter of time before the increasing perturbations disrupt the orbits of the solar system or the wormhole opens up to an exploding star or the jet of an AGN or a black hole, scientists and hurry to devise a means of permanently closing the wormhole.

>>6365881

You're thinking of Kessler Syndrome, which is a real thing but wouldn't be apocalyptic. It'd be really, REALLY bad, though. You'd lose GPS (so most modern navigation capability) and a massive fraction of world communications would be lost, permanently. Civilization would be severely disrupted, and might take years to recover fully. But most people would survive, and things would be okay afterwards. No more satellites or space travel for a hundred or so years, though.

And you wouldn't get spectacle w, either. At best you'd get a pretty meteor shower a few days afterwards.

If you were talking about a future world much more dependent on GPS tech (self driving cars, and drone deliveries, and infrastructure dependent on asteroid mining and space based solar) it could be apocalyptic, though, especially if we were automatically robot-mining asteroids and lost control of them when the satellites went down, and we'd know the rock was coming but couldn't do a thing to stop it...

But I can't figure out how to get the spectacle.

An experiment related to antimatter on a space station explodes releasing tons of particles of antimatter, it takes days for the material to descend to earth but when it does it creates a spectacular light show as the antimatter reacts with the matter.

Due to economics it is not possible for the majority of the world's population to escape lethal amounts of radiation. You can alter the levels of radiation to suit the level of lethality, bear in mind whatever kills humans will likely also kill plants and animals to a similar extent.

Fusion is another alternative, the light show caused by the interaction of these particles with the solar wind, like the aurora borealis.

Instead of an experiment on a space station it could also be a bomb which only obliterates a local area but which causes tons of material to be ejects into space, which then slowly descends having a similar effect.

>>6365823

Yellowstone mega eruption.

Plenty of spectacle there.

>>6365933
>Instead of an experiment on a space station it could also be a bomb which only obliterates a local area but which causes tons of material to be ejects into space, which then slowly descends having a similar effect.

OP here, I'm liking this one so far. It fits the profile and my caveat about the source being that humanity a shit. Would the bomb idea also work if it (or perhaps many bombs) was launched up above the thermosphere but was destroyed en route by some sort of "star wars" defense system?

a rogue dwarf planet traveling at 10% of light speed due to being slingshotted by a black hole is on course to hit the moon and vaporize it, which will block out all sunlight for the next 100000 years.

a rogue nuclear missile somehow found its way into an irregular orbit and will soon come crashing into the earth with enough force to blow away half the planet as well as alter its orbit or some other bullshit
it has to be really really strong though, so go a few decades into the future

>>6365823
A genetically engineered super algae, never meant for use outside a synthetic life laboratory, escapes and contaminates the water supply.

Over a period of a few months, it begins to spread and take foothold in various parts of the world. At first authorities are oblivious, then confused, then alarmed, but by then it is too late.

A tipping point is reached and the algae begins exponential growth, killing everything in the water and dying the world's oceans and river systems blood red (the color of the algae). The algae is incredibly toxic in these concentrations and any 'bloodied' water is completely unfit for human or animal consumption.

Chaos and death ensues.

20 years or so in the future. There are giant nuclear powered hydro fusion center things, turning sea water into giant batteries.
Turrurists blow it up, causing giant earthquakes tsunamis and shit. Turrorirsts give count down. Looks like the bomb will be defused so people get happy, it doesn't. Giant as fuck hydrogen storage plant detonates. Giant as fuck explosion. Floods, tsunamis. Awesome

>>6366194
>turrurists

oh my god. its like you've never seen this word EVERY FUCKING DAY in the headlines somewhere.

a dwarf rogue travelling at 100ft/round due to being slingshotted by a black half-giant barbarian is on course to hit the moon and vaporize it, which will block out all sunlight for the next 10000 rounds, or until you make a successful will save

>>6366197
I read it as "Tourists", and I had no fucking clue of what he was talking about.

>>6366197
Fine. No terrorists. America has a giant hydrogen sea plant thing. It's just another thing like nuclear power plants are now. They privatise it to make money to fund welfare due to in the future being much less employment.

Private company wants to make profits. Neglects certain safety things and bribes people to maximise profits. Due to neglect something goes wrong and half the east coast is wiped out in a very bright instant.

Better? Or swap out neglect private company from said private company being owned by China or Europe who want to see America burn. Or a false flag attack in order to get citizens to beg for more government welfare in exchange for rights. Better?

Or a combination of both. An actual accident that the government blames on terrorists in order to gain control

>>6366197
I'm pretty sure it was intentional.

>>6366213
Fusion plants can't blow up. This is about as dumb as saying that the world is destroyed by lax building standards on a hydroelectric dam.

If you go for the terrorists angle, it could work, though. The fusion plant itself can't blow up like a bomb - but if the deuterium storage for the plant was built in the right way, a properly designed fission bomb could set off the deuterium tank as a recreation of Ivy Mike on a larger scale.

The explosion would still be orders of magnitude too work as an apocalypse, though.

>>6366243
It wouldn't be the fusion plant blowing up, it's be the giant hydrogen batteries they're making using the fusion blowing up.

Unless giant hydrogen batteries couldn't blow up

Then fuck. NK flies a nuke at it? Fuck knows, it's not like general plebs who watch films care anyway.

>>6366254
The hydrogen tanks could blow up, but so could a big tank of gasoline. Neither would be apocalyptic.

Set a movie based in the ISS
First quarter ISS crew have some mission, you think the movie is about this thing that can go wrong (think LHC in space) and all this hype that science might blow up the world
They can watch TV and observe what's happening on earth. Protests etc.
As they do the experiment, it works. Records results finished. They celebrate.
Iran attacks Israel.
Israel fires a nuke
Russia nukes Israel
America nukes Russia.

Big scene during a party where this ISS crew see their world in nuclear hell fire from above

Movie was actually about war being a danger, not tech

Possibly ISS return to earth some how. Try and rebuild with their fancy future tech (if set several decades in the future) or take it down the lonely route of last few humans left alive