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« on: October 15, 2009, 07:28:54 pm »
Suddenly, everyone in the world has an IQ of 400. All menial labor disappears - we have machines for that now. Resource efficiency increases to the point that even the poorest citizen lives like a king does now. 1% of the world's land can now feed all of its people - no one goes hungry. Thanks to fusion power and cleanup technology, not only is there no more pollution being made, but what's already up there is cleared. We fix the ozone layer while we're at it. Everyone thinks for themselves, and now with no wars over religion or resources, there's pretty much just plain no war. No one ages... and yet there's no overpopulation - as the population goes up we develop underground cities, arcologies, and finally, simply expand into space - and there we encounter various alien species, trade technologies, and advance even faster! It appears to be utopia.
Unfortunately, no one's moral alignment changed, only their intelligence. Your common gang leader is now a supervillian. Your manipulative, evil, political type has no real political power anymore... but he finds a way to get it back. Weapons... very, very powerful weapons. Devices of destruction are created on a scale the greatest of sci fi authors can't even imagine today. Inevitably, someone is immoral enough to actually use these weapons. 99% of the population of all species in our galaxy die out - and most of the rest are on planets where life is no longer sustainable. The few survivors band together, desperately hoping they can rebuild civilization... only time will tell if they succeed.
I wish friendly aliens would land here.