NEWS FROM THE FUTURE: Millennials to Blame for Nuclear Armageddon
by Boobie

Note: this is the first edition of what will be an irregularly recurring feature in which we travel into the future, be it a few days of thousands of years, and bring the headlines back to the present day.
3066 AD — NEW YORK CITY — A new archaeological dig in the ancient metropolis known as New York City has revealed an enormous structure metal-and-glass structure that served as the final resting place for thousands of men and women, presumably killed in the infamous First Atomic War circa 2017 AD. Archaeologists’ best guess as of now is that this structure served as their place of work,
One fascinating anomaly: all of the remains found seem to belong to people between the ages of 20 and 30. This is notable because, according to contemporary sources from the few internet servers that remained in the aftermath of the deadly conflict, the workforce at the time consisted of people of all ages. The fact that only the youngest of those workers remained in their workplace suggests that this particular age group, a tribe known as the Millennials, must have had some sort of terrible shared neurosis or brain disease that kept them from spending their last few living hours with family and friends.
The Millennials, according to those same preserved contemporary documents, seemed to have many of these shared neuroses. The group bucked traditional practices such as spending large sums of money on artificially pricey rocks, homesteads, and goods from brick-and-mortar businesses, opting instead to spend all their money on “participation talismans” and artificially pricey pieces of paper that allowed them to work at the jobs where they ultimately perished. The lore of the elder tribes of this era tells that those rocks, buildings, and goods imbued a person with mystical powers of self-determination, aself-respect, and upward economic mobility; when the Millennials stopped following the rituals, those powers suddenly appeared to have been lost by the human race, along with a level of technological advancement we are only now approaching again.
Among the results of these lost powers, it seems, were oxymoronic behaviors such as refusing to take “vacation,” or extended leisure time away from work, while simultaneously not working hard at those jobs; not connecting with other humans while at the same time donating money to sick or suffering strangers; and playing violent video games while protesting war (a particularly vicious consequence, as fighting and killing in the name of character building and national pride was another important power-granting rituals the Millennials foolishly eschewed).
The first of these contradictions likely explains why only members of the Millennial tribe were discovered in that metal-and-glass mass grave, archaeologists say: the Millennials, having spent all their money on those expensive job-eligibility certificates, were too invested in their jobs to risk losing them for something they deemed as unnecessary and frivolous as the aforementioned human connections. Such a callous ending seems fitting for the generation that is to blame for what remains the most extreme population bottleneck in millennia.
Yes, given that the Millennials were seemingly responsible for the loss of many of ancient humanity’s most important and treasured supernatural ability, it seems likely that this finding could confirm the long-held hypothesis that the group was, in fact, responsible for the onset of the First Atomic War. By robbing the species of self-determination, self-respect, and upward mobility, the Millennials may have driven the human race mad, causing Mutually Assured Destruction to look like a reasonable alternative to the continuation of life on Earth. Contemporary sources bear this out: while the Millennial generation is surely to blame for the rapid deterioration of the planet’s collective consciousness, the effects can be seen in the seething anger. underlying every headline that began with “Millennials are killing…”
Now, we get to do the elder tribes justice by putting into print the headline they never got to write themselves because of the sins of the Millennials: The Millennials are killing the human race.
