Well, friends, here we are. The precipice of civilization. The end of the line. After tens of thousands of years of crawling out of caves, inventing fire, democracy, Wi-Fi, and almost, just almost, settling in Mars and making it out alive. But, it turns out we’re one itchy trigger finger away from packing it all in and calling it a day. Honestly, it’s impressive. Humanity spent millennia perfecting the art of living, only to perfect the art of dying in a fraction of that time. The Gods of killing efficiently. Oh boy, the “volks” over at the Wannsee Conference would be so jealous right now.

Let’s set the stage for this grand finale. It’s November 20, 2024, the 1,000th day of the war in Ukraine. Most people aren’t keeping count, of course. Wars these days don’t stop lives; they just fill news feeds. We scroll past headlines of headless people, and missile strikes sandwiched between TikToks of Gen Z choreographing dances to Chappelle Roan, and Elon Musk racing to get the fuck off this planet.

But this day is different. Today, Ukraine launched its first U.S.-supplied long-range missile deep into Russian territory. Target: Bryansk, an ammunition depot. The explosion rattled not just the depot but the fragile psyches and ego’s of every global leader with access to nuclear codes. And just like that, the war that was already bad somehow got worse.

Atoms for Peace

Vladimir Putin, ever the master of the overreaction, responded with a little update to Russia’s nuclear doctrine. Russia now considers any attack on its territory—be it nuclear or conventional—a potential justification for launching nukes. You hit a depot, we hit a city. Fair’s fair, right?

Putin’s reaction is the geopolitical equivalent of flipping the Monopoly board when you’re losing—except this time, everyone dies.

There’s also Putin’s sudden openness to “peace talks.” Yes, you heard that right. The same guy who’s lowering the nuclear threshold to ground level, is suggesting negotiations, like a mob boss offering you some coffee before breaking your kneecaps. The terms? Ukraine must give up its NATO ambitions, surrender parts of its land, and basically reward Russia for three years of unprovoked aggression.

Our Saviour

Enter Donald Trump the proposed cataclysm negotiator, the closest thing we have to a tuxedoed James Bond. You can almost picture him at the scene, flanked by Diet Coke cans, closing a “deal” to end the war. Trump’s approach to conflict resolution has always leaned more toward selling time share’s on TV than brokering peace, but here he is, poised to insert himself into the most dangerous standoff of our time.

Look, I’m no right-winger, but how about backing our horse in this race for peace?
How’s this… MEGA: Make Earth Great Again! (sorry.)

Zelenskyy, has been loosing a bit of American sympathy the past couple of months. Putin, meanwhile, sits across the table, stoic, ready to “smash that like button”. The absurdity is staggering. But this is what we’ve come to—a world where the survival of humanity might rest in the hands of two shameless TV stars, and a manly dictator who once posed shirtless on a horse for fun.

The TikTok Apocalypse

Meanwhile, as these high-stakes games play out in gilded rooms, the rest of us are doing what we do best: pretending it’s not our problem. The world is closer to nuclear annihilation than it has been in decades, but we scroll through TikTok’s of hazmat-chic influencers. It would be funny if it weren’t so fucking tragic. But that’s the thing about our species, when faced with the abyss, we laugh. Resilience, or maybe denial. Either way, if the world does go nuclear, you can bet someone will livestream the shit out of it. It’ll be something like the Lebanon harbor explosion, but many times worse. Picture the final moments of humanity reduced to shaky phone footage: mushroom clouds on the horizon, TikTok captions reading, “POV: when you’re the star in Fallout season 2.”

And let’s not forget the comment section. “Where’s my Nuke-a-cola?” “ looks fake” “Better than 4 more years of trump.”

If the end comes, it won’t be grand or poetic. It’ll be meme’d.

The end is nigh

The Doomsday Clock is ticking closer to midnight. Every missile strike, every doctrine revision, every escalation is another tick forward. And yet, life goes on. We order our dirty chai lattes, argue over Marvel vs. Scorsese, or whether men will be able to have sex with women until the next Election Day, or until Trump actually leaves the White House. We pretend we’re not living through the most dangerous era in modern history.

But maybe that’s the real tragedy. The end of the world won’t come with a bang—it’ll come with a “meh” and a shrug. We’ve been so desensitized to chaos that even the thought of nuclear war feels like just another Tuesday. Sure, we’ll tweet our outrage and maybe buy a few extra cans of soup, but deep down, we know there’s nothing we can do. The fate of humanity rests in the hands of a few overly powerful men, and their hands are not exactly steady.

The Legacy We Leave Behind

If this is it—if the world goes nuclear and humanity wipes itself out—what legacy do we leave? What story will we tell the cosmos, assuming anyone’s around to tell it? Maybe it’s something simple, like, “Humans Lived Here.” Or maybe a more poetic: “We Out…”

The truth is, we’ve always been better at building monuments to our failures than learning from them. The ruins of Pompeii, the wreckage of Chernobyl, the scars of Hiroshima—each one a reminder that we are both creators and destroyers. And if the worst does happen, the next ruins won’t just be cities or nations; they’ll be the remnants of an entire species, when it happens, don’t forget to strike tour best emote, teabag a friend and let the next people know we had good times too. If nothing else, humanity will be remembered for its ability to laugh in the face of its own stupidity.

So here we are. End of the line. If there’s a moral to this story, maybe it’s that we were always destined to self-destruct. Maybe it’s that we’re just really bad at long-term planning, maybe that we’re still just wild apes, despite all our rockets. Or maybe it’s that none of this matters in the grand scheme of things. Fuck if I know.

But if we do go out, let’s at least go out with some self-awareness. Let’s admit that we had every chance to avoid this, and we blew them all. Not because we didn’t know better, but because we couldn’t help ourselves. The pursuit of power, the lust for dominance—it’s in our DNA. And in the end, it might just be what destroys us.

Still, there’s a part of me that hopes. Hopes we’ll pull back from the brink, that cooler heads will prevail, that humanity will somehow figure out how to live with itself. It’s a long shot, sure, but stranger things have happened. After all, we invented Ozempic, so maybe we ARE Gods after all.

But just in case the world does go nuclear, here’s my farewell. It’s been a ride, humanity. You were messy, brilliant, frustrating, cringe, and many times beautiful. If it happened already, and by miracle the internet is still around, if there’s anyone left to read this, do yourselves a favor: learn from our mistakes and iry not to blow everything up.