A Brief Look at Death Cannons
Why hello there, traveler, and welcome to the "Apocalypse Tour." This is the tour for all those thrill seekers out there who want to see some things that are downright insane. We note the problematic locations, tools, and, in this case, weapons that contributed to species 947's (947 were also known as humanity [hyoo·ma·nuh·tee]) entirely predictable end on a tiny, weeny planet called Earth in the year 90,423 XE (what humans may know as 2XXX AD).
Today, we are looking at death cannons, known to the natives there as "guns" [guhnz]. These were metal tubes that could propel even smaller pieces of metal or plastic for the purpose of penetrating the flesh sacs of humans. In the words of xeno-anthropologist Qe're'witz Sod: "The simplicity of the tool implies that humans were aggressive creatures. And also stupid."
Every known sentient species at one point or another has developed tools of murder — the mutant flies of Omegar, the supremely terrifying radioactive ice cream of Bastian VI. Humans from the Empire known as the United States of America were unique in believing that carrying such weapons was a divine right. Their country's constitution had enshrined "the right to bear arms," which constituencies such as the National Rifle Association (NRA) had convinced this empire's corrupt government that people should be able to carry and worship unrestricted from the forces of the law. As then-executive vice president of the NRA Wayne LaPierre once noted, presumably before kissing his death cannon, "Our Second Amendment is freedom's most valuable, most cherished, most irreplaceable idea."
Unsurprisingly, this led to a situation where these death cannons were used quite frequently. Disgruntled individuals, mainly on the fascistic end of the human political spectrum, would employ such weapons to execute people who frustrated them, especially social minorities they erroneously believed were inferior. In the human year 2022, the country had nearly 650 "mass shootings" [mas shoo·tuhngz], defined as a situation where at least four or more humans were injured or killed.
Sadly, this trend applied even to younglings called "children" [chil·druhn], with 51 of those mass shootings in the year 2022 occurring in places of learning known as schools [skoolz]. The specter of school shootings became an unavoidable aspect of these fragile human lives. Schools often had to practice drills to prepare younglings for the statistically significant likelihood someone with a death cannon would assault them. The only parallel I can draw is to the ritual sacrifices of younglings on Sticklit Prime, but seeing as that species is immortal, such sacrifices are primarily for show. Again returning to the words of xeno-anthropologist Qe're'witz Sod describing school shootings: "That shits f@cked up."
This situation not only indicated deep social dysfunction at the heart of the US Empire's political structure but also had a direct environmental cost on society. Death cannons emitted many death chemicals (what humans may have referred to as greenhouse gasses, such as carbon dioxide). The firing of Death cannons (as well as the improper disposal of their ammunition) could release toxic metals such as copper, antimony, mercury, and lead as particulate matter, or most terrifyingly, potentially sink into the soil and sometimes leach into groundwater and surface water. This could have detrimental effects on the fragile human body.
This pollution was something that scaled depending on the ammunition and death cannons used, the ventilation at the time of firing, and, perhaps most importantly, the scale of the conflict. For example, a prolonged military conflict in the early 2020s known as "the War in Ukraine" between the fascist oligarchy known as "Russia" and an economic vassal of the United States called Ukraine led to the usage of many death cannons, including more mobile varieties known as "tanks" [tangks]. While capturing an accurate figure is complex, some estimates placed it at 33 million tons of greenhouse gases by November 2022. That number grew to over an estimated 120 million tons in the first twelve months of the war as the country's death chemical industries were damaged in the ensuing months.
Albeit much less than the cost of war (a high bar), there were also the death chemicals that came with the direct production of these items, especially from the production of their corresponding ammo — emmissions that had a long history of ending up in human waterways. As Jeffrey F. Hall-Gale wrote in one of humanity's pathetic academic journals: "…gun and ammunition manufacturers have been identified as some of the worst polluters in the country. The United States Department of Defense's (DOD) Radford Army Ammunition Plant (RAAP) in Virginia, for example, was the second largest polluter among all facilities discharging chemicals in 2010 due to its release of 12,006,602 pounds of toxic chemicals."
Even as these firms allegedly attempted to reduce the death chemicals emitted in their production by creating energy-efficient products such as lasers, there was also all the excessive heat that such goods produced. Like all human goods, the production of death cannons required, according to Glorb's Universal Law of Entropy, that "the total quality of energy not be conserved." This meant that while humans used low-entropy energy to do the work of "making stuff," it inevitably led to high-entropy wastes that were unavailable for further use or degraded, which, when released into their environment, exacerbated the destruction of 947's atmosphere. Even if partially recaptured, it was impossible for death cannon production (and again, all goods) not to emit some heat waste, a fact their modern economy often tried to ignore through an ancient practice known as "lying" [lai·uhng].
As humans continued to experience the worsening effects of climate change, their thinking became more and more detached from the fundamental laws of entropy and thermodynamics, hoping some magical technology would come along to break the laws of the universe and somehow reduce all waste in the process.
In the meantime, there were always death cannons for sale.
A deadly conclusion
Death cannons are a great item to review when analyzing humanity's destruction because they were items that were both socially and environmentally destructive. People used them to kill others, instilling a paralyzing culture of fear and paranoia, while their production and usage released waste that furthered the destruction of humanity's environment.
Many humans did not like the status quo of gun production in America, often calling on leaders to pass legislation that would limit the production or ownership of such weapons. However, there were not many attempts to sabotage production, as humans were very self-conscious of property ownership, believing that those who claimed possession of the land had, within the reason of the law, the right to make whatever they wanted — the social and environmental consequences of that production be damned.
Increasingly, however, death cannon manufacturers were deemed significantly responsible for the costs they had on US society. As fragile human theorist Thomas Metcalf argued in their paper Gun Violence as Industrial Pollution in Public Affairs Quarterly:
“…the prevalence and possibility of gun violence increase the demand for guns, since some buyers want to use the guns violently, and others want to use them for self-defense…
…gun manufacturers are in a position to know the general statistics about the prevalence of gun violence, since these data are presumably helpful to their marketing, public relations, and legal strategies…[the manufacturer] at least foresees that some innocent victims will be victimized by people using those guns….
…Presumably, if anyone is morally responsible for anything, then [the gun manufacturer] is morally responsible for manufacturing and distributing [them]…”
Sadly, not enough humans adopted this mentality, as their species produced death cannons to the end.
For our temporal visitors, see how many of these death cannons you can find in the wild. We have provided a list of the largest Death cannon factories in the US so you can observe them at your leisure.
2100 Roosevelt Ave, Springfield, MA 01104 (Smith & Wesson)
1852 Proffitt Springs Rd, Maryville, TN 37801 (Smith & Wesson)
271 Cardwell Rd, Mayodan, NC 27027 (Ruger)
1 Lacey Pl, Southport, CT 06890 (Ruger)
18 Industrial Dr, Exeter, NH 03833 (Sig Sauer)
129 Broadway, Dover, NH 03820 (Sig Sauer)
7 Amarosa Dr, Rochester, NH 03868 (Sig Sauer)
100 Springdale Rd, Westfield, MA 01085 (Savage Arms)
1 Lawton St, Yonkers, NY 10705 (Kimber Manufacturing Inc.)
200 Industrial Blvd, Troy, AL 36081 (Kimber Manufacturing Inc.)
30 Lower Valley Rd, Kalispell, MT 59901 (Kimber Manufacturing Inc,)
Remember that death cannons were quite lethal, as they were intended to murder other humans. Gun wielders were also very uppity about the different names of death cannons and would chastise anyone criticizing gun ownership for not knowing them. It's advised that you approach all such people with caution. Set your energy shields to their highest safety levels.
Note — for the humans who have somehow bypassed our encryption protocols, take comfort in the fact that this is a joke from a normal human and not a retrospective on your species' imminent demise.
DO NOT use this information to stop this future because that would create a time paradox and go against your people's laws, as well as Medium's ToS, which I'm told are very important. I AM NOT encouraging you to take the law into your own hands, something I cannot do as an appendageless species.
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