Bottom of the Ninth

I have a small property I’m readying for sale. The repairs and fix-ups required a dumpster, which I placed not there but on my primary property (my home) since it is in the woods; the other location is visible on a well-trafficked road where everyone in the neighborhood would be tempted to use the dumpster. Besides, as mentioned in the earlier blog Junque my barn and garage attic teem with mismatched stuff left behind by my builder father, so I took the opportunity of the dumpster’s presence to reduce (though far from eliminate) the excess from them as well. While removing some items from the attic I uncovered a small surprise.
 
I should preface this by mentioning that my mom was very unsentimental about material things, photos and documents (such as journals) excepted. She was personally warm, but artifacts didn’t mean that much to her and she was wary of clutter. “When in doubt throw it out” was her motto in such things. It’s not a bad motto really, and I’ve generally tried to follow it though I make more sentimental exceptions to it than she did. My dad (b.1926) by contrast was not sentimental on the surface but he did save keepsakes (which I now own) such as a 6” (15 cm) combination safe from the 1920s, a cast iron toy tractor from his childhood, some shelving he made in shop class in school, and his uniforms from WW2. (My mom, on the other hand didn’t save her wedding dress past the date when it was clear my sister wouldn’t use it.) Anyway, in the attic between wall studs I encountered his baseball bat from the 1930s, which he gave to me in 1960. The last time I remember using it was 1970 before I attended college. I really haven’t thought about it since then: out of sight out of mind. Yet, there it was. I’m pretty sure my dad put it there (who else would have?) out of view to avoid tempting my mom to make one of her “Oh, he’ll never use this again” decisions to toss it.
 

The bat still feels the same with a very familiar balance, but I wouldn’t hit a fast ball (assuming I still can hit a fast ball) with it anymore. Ash is a pretty tough wood but after nearly 90 years of rough use and semi-exposure to the elements I doubt it would survive an impact with an 80 mph ball. Maybe, but I wouldn’t risk it. It is still a suitable self-defense weapon, however, so maybe it has value as more than just a keepsake presently occupying a corner in my bedroom.
 
All of my keepsakes are for me alone since I don’t have kids whose closets can be cluttered in turn. Odds are if I did they wouldn’t be interested anyway. Of course, ultimately no one has biological legacies, for humanity is temporary, just as individual humans are. We are doomed as a species. One might hope the end comes later rather than earlier but the end will come.
 
How will the world end? Back in 2008 the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford took a stab at calculating odds of human-caused catastrophic global events prior to 2100. The researches divided risks into three categories: events causing at least 1 million deaths, events causing at least 1 billion deaths, and extinction events. I’ll mention only extinction events except for the report’s prediction of a 30% chance of a pandemic by a genetically engineered virus that kills more than 1 million people. (Whatever the origins of Covid – crossover from bats is still the official explanation – it has killed 2.8 million at this writing.) The chance of actual extinction from an engineered pandemic was given at 2% by 2100, which is small but non-negligible; the extinction risk from a natural pandemic by contrast is only 0.05%. The risk from Artificial Intelligence was estimated at 5%. The extinction risk from war (all types of war, which might or might not involve nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons) came in at 4%. The total risk of extinction from anthropogenic causes of all types combined by 2100 came in at 19%. In 2008 the decline in fertility that is currently much in the news, though noted, was not yet alarming many researchers, so the risk that humans would just stop reproducing was not considered; in any event, 2100 is much too early to be a global doomsday for that reason.
 
FHI focused on human-caused disasters, but the biggest threats to the species are out of humans’ hands. Natural climate change can be truly dramatic. Where I am currently sitting there was once a mile of ice overhead. There will be again one day. Episodes of mass vulcanism have occurred before and will occur again. Whether or not they would drive us to extinction, they’d make civilization pretty hard to maintain. And, of course there is the punch from outer space, which is not just a plot device for cheesy scifi movies. In 2029 the large asteroid Apophis will pass inside the orbit of geosynchronous communications satellites. It will be visible to the naked eye from the ground. The odds of it striking earth are vanishingly small on that pass, but when it returns in 2068 the odds, while still small, are not vanishingly so. Sooner or later we will be hit by a big one as earth has been hit multiple times before. Even if we somehow escape such celestial catastrophes as lethal asteroids, mass solar ejections, gamma ray bursts from nearby supernovas, and so on, the sun itself will kill us. It is growing hotter as it evolves and will make earth uninhabitable in 500,000,000 years – some say an order of magnitude sooner than that.
 
So, I’m not much worried about my bat as a legacy though it will remain a personal keepsake for as long as I’m here.
 
Hmmm, perhaps tonight is a good night for an apocalyptic movie: maybe Gregg Araki’s 2010 Kaboom about a hedonistic college student who becomes aware of a doomsday cult seeking the end of the world – an end of the world for non-cultists at least. There are real cults of this stripe, such as Aum Shinrikyo, members of which were responsible for the Tokyo Sarin gas attack of 1995. Warning: Araki has his (weird) moments but he is not for viewers triggered by sexual content (albeit R rather than NC-17).

Trailer: Kaboom