User:Kuhzoo/sandbox

To be honest, I'm creating this entirely because I'd like to fill out the stub for The Jackpot Event linked to from The Peripheral article. It should probably also link from Agency (novel) too. I think the Jackpot is interesting because it presents a little talked about idea of an apocalypse that happens over decades. When we think about an apocalypse we usually think of something like an alien invasion, nuclear war, or zombie infestation that manifests itself in a day or a few months tops.

IIRC, The Jackpot didn't happen because of one cause. It happened as a locus of climate change, economic upheaval and disease. The resulting conflagration results in the extinction of roughly 80% of all animal species, including a comparable percentage of all humans dying. In the Agency novel, it's mentioned that remaining humans are only really holding back the completion of the apocalypse through the continued use of nanotechnology and massive CO2 scrubbing towers that now dominate the London skyline.

The reason it's called "The Jackpot" is a black humor joke that surviving the apocalypse was analogous to winning a gambling jackpot.

I also think it would be a very useful article to be able to link people to as a short-hand of explaining my own fears surrounding climate change, growing economic inequality and, recently, COVID-19 pandemic. One of these alone would qualify as 'bad', but combining them all at the same time seems worse.