Rubbish Please: 3 Trashmageddon Scenarios Predicted by Movies (and Supported by Science)
Are you tired of zombies, AI revolutions, and nazis from the Moon ending the world? So are we, which is why Rubbish Please and I are here to introduce the radical new concept of Trashmageddon and how the world is going out in a huge, steaming pile of fermented trash, drowning into the vile juices of its own decadent ways.
This is actually pretty plausible, and we will prove it with facts, figures, and industrial quantities of speculation. All of this is based on good ol’ Hollywood predictions (and the occasional report from scientists, but what do these overestimated and under-performing nerds know?), so what can possibly go wrong?..
WALL-E (2008)
The scenario: WALL-E is an animated science fiction comedy movie made by Pixar and released in 2008. Director Andrew Stanton shows us a bit of a more interesting take on the concept of overpopulation and the potential solutions to the problem. WALL-E is widely regarded as one of the best Pixar movies of all time, as well as one of the most successful pieces of science fiction. Not bad for a little waste removal robot.
Overpopulation and over-consumerism (the American Dream on supersteroids) result in the entire planet being covered with garbage by the year 2100. We’re not saying things are neat and tidy right now. Just think about ocean trash, nuclear waste, corrupted politicians, heroin syringes, and cheap knockoff Chinese vibrators. And now imagine this going on for 85 more years. Actually, don’t — it’s filthier than a cheap prostitute in a poor neighbourhood on a Friday evening.
In 2105, the Buy ’n’ Large Corporation decides to clean up the mess it created (we get why you’re sceptical — this never happens in real life). They evacuate everybody so the cleaning crews (WALL-E units) can take care of the waste disposal, but as it turns out the air is too toxic for life on the planet (other than cockroaches), so they drop the project in five years.
How typical.
700 years later, WALL-E, our main protagonist, is making skyscrapers out of trash and is the only unit left functioning in his own garbage-filled version of I am Legend.
Why it might come true: The human population in the movie has reached around 200 billion unenlightened halfwits by the year 2100. This figure goes way beyond the United Nations predictions, which state the human population will continue to grow at least until 2050, reaching around 11 billion people. Just for a reference, that’s 4 billion people more than today, which makes it more than a 50% increase by 2050 if the prediction is accurate. The UN goes to say we might be looking at as many as 16 billion people by the year 2100 (assuming our balls don’t fall off in 2050). It’s highly unlikely the planet can ever sustain 200 billion self-indulgent professional consumers, anyway, but even 20 billion can cause a Trashmageddon, so get used to the idea of living in a landfill. Oh, well… At least we can make robots from trash… Though we doubt they will be as useful as WALL-E. Or a garbage bin.
The amounts of garbage will increase substantially. Countries like India, which have colossal garbage piles even today, will probably overtake most affluent states by the end of the century. This would mean even taller garbage mountains with a repugnant stench so saturated, a noseless person would be able to whiff it through a double-filter, military-grade gas mask, from another continent. This Trashmageddon scenario is about as likely as a fat kid stuffing his face with chocolate pie at Christmas dinner.
Soylent Green (1973)
The scenario: Soylent Green is a science fiction movie released in 1973 and was directed by Richard Fleischer and stars Charlton Heston in the role of detective Frank Thorn. The movie is set in a dystopian future, in the year 2022 (not too far from now), and offers a very interesting premise.
Because of overbreeding (we assume contraception has gone out of fashion at some point), the world has reached its maximum capacity and has basically become the planetary equivalent of an Indian train going to Mumbai. At that point, New York has a population of 40 million, which is (as you can imagine) way too much even for a city such as the Big Apple. There’s poverty, disease, food shortages, rat carcasses, and a genuine all-encompassing feel of utter desperation. The city has become nothing more than a huge pile of trash covered in litter and coated with detritus — a real Trashmageddon. Overall, not your average holiday destination.
Amidst all of that somebody has to make a profit (because this is how it usually goes in these movies), and in this case it would be the Soylent Corporation (no, not those guys). They produce daily rations that feed most of the population. Needless to say people are basically eating recycled junk with a distinct garbage aftertaste. We’re talking about the kind of “food” that would make a garden variety hotdog seem like something they would serve you at an official dinner party in the White House.
Why it might come true: As disturbing as Soylent Green was upon its release, it doesn’t carry a huge shocking value today. We’ve seen a lot worse (just look at a Nicki Minaj video and you’re set). Here’s why there’s a cause for concern it might come true.
In some ways, it looks worse than Escape from New York(1981) (which is how New Yorkers probably call their holidays away from the city). And this is with a population of 8.5 million. Don’t get us wrong — things still look relatively well thanks to the increased levels of efficiency of the garbage disposal industry, but imagine what it would be like with 40 million people living there.
Oh, what’s that? “It won’t happen,” you say? “This is absurd,” you exclaim? Oh, it would be, if the population of the Big Apple wasn’t still steadily increasing. It is right now higher than it’s ever been, and this trend is only going to get stronger with more people boning. Think about it — throughout its history, NY has been a gateway for immigrants going into the States, and there will be a lot more of that with the populace increase in underdeveloped regions. That’s not even mentioning illegal immigration, which is widespread in the area.
The population increase will inevitably lead to an increase in garbage levels, because you know people are trash factories with an unlimited capacity for disorderly filth. In fact, according to the World Bank, garbage levels will double by 2025 (which is a fairly optimistic prognosis with the way things are going). We know waste disposal services are advancing, but let’s be honest — in a straight-up boxing match, trash beats the environmental effort with a knockout every time.
Idiocracy (2006)
The scenario: Idiocracy is a science fiction comedy released in 2006 and directed by Mike Judge and starring Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. The movie is set in a dystopian future in the year 2505 and offers a very interesting premise (where have we heard that before?).
Thanks to a suspended animation experiment forgotten in time, Joe Bauers, a perfectly average army librarian from 2005 wakes up in the year 2505 and, as it turns out, is the smartest man on the planet. Everything has been automated and because the reproduction process has been completely outsourced to bludgeoning morons with a negative IQ, most of the population suffers from severe cognitive deficits. Basically, the depictions seen in Here Comes Honey Boo Boo will seem like the work of a highly intellectual and sophisticated group of Nobel-prize winning brainiacs as compared to this grim future.
“What does this have to do with trash,” you ask impatiently. Well, because everybody is so clueless beyond reckoning or hope, they forgot about the garbage problem and caused a Trashmageddon of biblical proportions (whoops?). Large heaps of junk erect high as the sky, far as the eye can see and beyond (if that makes any sense at all). In this dystopian future, ads are being explicit about your lack of masculinity if you don’t use their product, crops are being irrigated with a sports drink, and the president is a professional wrestler. All of this sounds absurd, until you think about it…
Why it might come true: Five words: Here Comes Honey Boo Boo. This is the most utterly,insanely idiotic thing we’ve ever seen in our entire lives. Literally millions of people watched this show in the States. Millions of semi-conscious Americans enjoy this colossal dull-witted brainlessness in their spare time. This is but one of the symptoms. TV, music, movies, and even pornography is becoming dumbed down.
Not only that, but education is slowly deteriorating, as well, and uneducated, ignorant people are 254.7% more likely to cause a Trashmageddon (according to the Party of International Made-up Probability Statistics (or PIMPS, for short)). Aside from a few deviants (mostly in Europe and, of course, Japan), education hasn’t moved much forward in the past few decades. The general public is becoming more and more uninformed and intellectually stagnant. Looking at Donald Trump’s latest polls, we don’t think it’s far-fetched to say we might be getting something like President Camacho in the States 500 years early. Don’t worry, we don’t want to get all political — just proving a point. And our point is, the Idiocracy scenario is not that far-fetched. It doesn’t seem like humanity is going down with a bang. No, it’s probably going down in heaps of garbage, laughing at farting sounds and babbling semi-coherent vulgarisms.
Conclusion
There you have it — three Trashmageddon scenarios that are not actually as absurd as they seem to be at first. All of them are somewhat possible if we don’t take notice of them today. Facts, statistics, pure speculations, and PIMPS all agree we have dire times ahead of us. But, hey, don’t get all gloomy. At least we might learn how to garbage surf or live without having to clean the kitchen. This is the kind of world we dream of.
Acknowledgements
We want to thank our friends from Rubbish Please. This environmentally-friendly rubbish removal company in London is trying to prevent the impending Trashmageddon. They were the ones who came up with the idea of raising awareness and provided all the research they had done on the topic. We were the ones who came up with the movies, though, so this article was a collaborative effort. Thank you, Rubbish Please, for making this possible.
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