Today, the Large Hadron Collider started its slow proton acceleration to our inevitable doooooom (stay tuned for changing conditions)!  My two favorite doomsday scenarios are:

1. It will produce persistent micro-blackholes, which will devour the Earth in a massive fiery conflagration.
2. It will produce super-stable strange matter, which will convert the less-stable nuclear matter of which the Earth is composed into more strange matter, like Vonnegut’s ice-nine.

I find this kind of dualism comforting.  Whimper or Bang.  Good or Evil.  People are consistent, even in their nightmare scenarios.  God bless you, Robert Frost:

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.