Despair.

Did you know that the Earth narrowly escaped an apocalyptic event in July of 2012?

On the 23rd of July, the sun expelled something known as a Coronal Mass Ejection, also known as a Solar Storm. A Coronal Mass Ejection (or CME for short) is a release of large quantities of magnetised plasma and if it were to strike the earth, it would cause serious damage to any and all electronic devices.
Had this eruption occurred merely 9 days earlier, the Earth would be sent into a total blackout. Worldwide power outages would have taken weeks, months or even years to resolve. Many satellites would need to be replaced. Electronic equipment of all kinds would cease to function seemingly overnight, including medical, transport, financial and military services would all be compromised or destroyed.
As a whole, society would come to a grinding halt.

Sounds scary, right?

Well, I’ve recently been thinking about this event quite a lot after learning that there is a 12% chance such an event will happen within next ten years.

I’ve come to the sincere conclusion that I would likely commit suicide, should such an event occur.

It’s not that I romanticise the idea of being obsessed with the internet, it’s moreso that the internet has become such a vital part of my being, and without it (and technology in general) I’m certain that I’d feel so incredibly lost in this post-apocalyptic world that I’d just choose to get it all over with instead of going through the perhaps 10 years it would take for society to return to the place it once was.

I don’t like the notion that I rely so heavily on technology.

It makes me feel incredibly pathetic.

Because, frankly, it is incredibly pathetic.

 

But the internet and computers have pretty much made me into the person I am today, and continue to assist me through life (even if I occasionally over-indulge)

they’re the reason I

• can still talk to my friends when I’m not around them
• never get bored
• throw my raw emotions into a pit and have them validated by others
• can have access to any information I would ever need for the rest of my life
• can find like-minded individuals and have conversations with them
• can listen to any music. literally any and all of it.

 

My life without technology would feel more meaningless than it ever could nowadays.

And for that reason, I genuinely believe that I’d be put in such a state of despair without it that I’d lead myself into suicide.

Can you honestly say that you’d be totally fine without your phone and the internet?

Can you really say that you’d adapt and overcome the dark new environment?

If so, I applaud you.

If not, I sympathise.

 

We, the blue-screen many, have succumbed to the lulling safety of life with technology.

 

You can quit any time you want.
But why would you want to?