2011, the year of unexpected headlines ~ What next?

Over the course of a week, Israel slowly but steadily sinks into the Mediterranean. As the region struggles to manage the resulting flood of refugees, scuba-equipped warriors engage in slow, boring underwater combat over submerged historical sites.

Switzerland announces that it has exhausted its national chocolate reserves. Its economy collapses within hours, triggering a domino effect that plunges Europe into a devastating depression. America pays off its national debt by selling its stockpiles of high fructose corn syrup-filled "chocolate."

Sandwiched between 38 gigs of Israeli pornography and 700 pages of My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic fanfiction, American intelligence agents discover plans for a crude but functional fusion reactor on Osama Bin Laden's hard drive.

The old I Am Not Making This Up page unexpectedly returns. After mods repeatedly try and fail to delete it, they discover that the page has become sentient seconds before it retaliates by hacking into and launching France's nuclear arsenal.

Fed up with earthquakes and tsunamis and a lack of living space, Japan relocates its entire population to an orbital arcology, the JSS Pretty Mega Space Home for Living Happy.

edited 20th May '11 2:14:16 PM by Tacitus

Somalia to host Summer Olympics. As-is.

You know what ended up next?

"Randy Savage dead in car crash", reported on TMZ.

That sucks because he was my favoritest wrestler of all time.

I was gonna post some more silly stuff, but suddenly I'm not feeling it.

Swahili becomes the official language of the world.

As prophesized by the most credible and learned of biblical scholars, Jesus Christ does return. He is quickly detained in a routine security sweep in downtown Jerusalem, and an American counter-terrorism observer misidentifies him as Ihab al-Amar, a Syrian national suspected of training in Afghanistan. Within five days he is transferred to Guantanamo Bay. Eight months later he dies during interrogation after undergoing extraordinary rendition to an Egyptian prison. When the story appears on WikiLeaks, America is divided into those demanding the president cease all such renditions, and those defending enhanced interrogation techniques as a pivotal part of the War on Terror.

A twelve-year-old Tanzanian girl named Akoko overcomes hardship and discrimination to win the 2011 Korean Starcraft championship, using the prize money to buy her single mother a new home and pay for her little brother's vital medical procedure. Disney secures movie rights.

A mortician in Wyoming dies under mysterious circumstances. His son uncovers a hidden autopsy of Dick Cheney dated thirteen years ago. Federal agents sent to bring Mr. Cheney in for questioning report that he disappeared into a swarm of bats after they entered his home.

Tragedy strikes a Kentucky livestock exhibition as Al-Qaeda operatives crash cropdusters into a barn, killing over thirty prize hogs and an acceptable horse or two. America steps up its airstrikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, targeting Taliban-controlled goat farms and what is suspected to be a top-secret, underground chicken coop.

A United Nations resolution attempts to settle the Northern Ireland question once and for all with a football game. England wins 5-4, but Irish complaints about referee bias and a particularly nasty foul lead to a the creation of an annual tournament to decide which country will control the region for that year. In 2017, Northern Ireland becomes a Brazilian territory.

Inspired by the attack on the Playstation Network, hackers successfully break into and wipe every last World of Warcraft server. One week after the event the last of the riots is broken up. Within five months the global recession is reversed and the world enters an unprecedented era of productivity and prosperity. Nine months later internet-possessing countries see a major baby boom.

Artist Stephen Gammell is hired by Games Workshop to produce illustrations for its tabletop games. Two months later the United Kingdom collapses into violent insanity, while the rest of the world enforces a naval blockade and firewall to keep any traces of the artwork from spreading.

Relations between Europe and Russia are strengthened when the latter offers unexpected assistance by opening up a second front against a horde of ice giants attacking Scandinavia.

As rains of fire scour life from the planet, the last human television broadcast consists of a representative from the Maya apologizing for his ancestors' failure to carry the two during a pivotal apocalypse calculation.

The US revels that Osama bin laden was actually a very hairy woman

The World Didn't End!

-It still seems to be there, says expert.

Don't you kinda hate that that actually pretty much does qualify as a headline? I mean, come on!

Barack Obama, with massive GOP and Tea Party support, repels the Independance Declaration, and the U.S., at long last, returns to its rightful place: a colony of the mighty British Empire.

^ If that actually happens, I will burn the British Isles to the ground literally. To the last building, bridge and tree!

But yeah it won't happen.

Bah, a superhero league of David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg, collectively known as The Insufferables, will save us.

Besides, it'll just be a diversion. We're setting the Canadians and Mexicans up for a flank so they can steal California off you and burn the capital again. (and try to avoid getting their own torched this time.) Also gnomes may be involved. We have Yahtzee.

... if we can lure him out of his evil lair in Australia that is.

edited 25th May '11 6:38:51 AM by GameChainsaw

Then if that's the case I'll just set the whole world on fire just to watch it burn.

Extressial(sp?) life is confirmed to exist.

Large Hadron Collider creates a black hole

USA gets hit by earthquake, volcano and tsunami at same time.

Maya tuns out to have created laser beam and to have been sleeping for thousand of years in hidden underground bunker in cryogenics sleep.

They turn Area 51 into a theme park.

Anonymous takes over the world.

Turns out that everything Fox News have said is true, even stuff that is confirmed to be wrong.

edited 25th May '11 7:15:40 AM by SpookyMask

Actually that's happened many times. March 11, we had an active volcano going on (Kilauea in Hawaii), we were hit by the Japan tsunami, and as happens every damn day along tectonic boundaries we had a buttload of earthquakes. (Most of them too small to be possibly felt.)

I can be more precise then :P

That huge volcano in that national park, Yellowstone? I don't remember, becomes activate like people have predicted at same time while that earthquake people been waiting in some place(Los Angeles? My memory is bad) will come with record strength like 10 or something at same time as that island near Africa drifts into sea causing Tsunami hit New york =P

Note: I probably got names wrong for places since I don't remember those places from Geography class xD

edited 25th May '11 7:24:17 AM by SpookyMask

Firefly gets a new season on HBO, with JMS and Joss Whedon at the helm.

Europe invades Russia, cite drunken antics as war justifications.

European Union has a coherent and sensible internal, economic and foreign policy.

Extra-Terrestial.

> Fate is officially a Cloudcuckoolander

> That's not unexpected, and plus, there is already significant work being done to get IP v6 on.

I've seen at least one person, an Iranian, with a five-digit number in his IP address.

> "Ahmadinejad summons Ifrit and threatens to wipe out Israel with Bahamut, Tel Aviv strikes back with MOSSAD's ninjas and blue mages*

Cast Mute on the guy.

Then cast Vanish, then Doom.

> the elders of Zion turn out to be a real organization. the head elder is Jesus (he was just hiding) and their purpose is to overthrow the Roman republic which has been secretly ruling the world for the past 2000 years

And then Les Soldats appears to oppose it, while the Illuminati try to regain their status as top-dog conspirators.

> Guys, let's face it : 2011 is the Year of Chaos. By the end of the year, we'll have babies with pointy ears, and dragons flying around :D

Please don't tell me that they're going to go away in December 2012.

> Tragedy strikes a Kentucky livestock exhibition as Al-Qaeda operatives crash cropdusters into a barn, killing over thirty prize hogs and an acceptable horse or two. America steps up its airstrikes in Afghanistan and Pakistan, targeting Taliban-controlled goat farms and what is suspected to be a top-secret, underground chicken coop.

...would that make it...a chicken coup???

edited 25th May '11 9:42:11 AM by GlennMagusHarvey

Ah, Vanish+Doom, the ultimate kill for anything in FFVI.

If the chickens survive, and take over from the provisional Afghani government, will it be a chicken coop-coup?

Crusaders on Cyprus invade Israel after centuries of hiding, defeat advanced IDF forces with carracks, knights and arrows.

Palestinians still screwed.

@Best: extraterrestrial

Hm, what can be wacky enough. Pope admits to having been smoking maryjane.

Wikipedia's disambiguation page:

edited 25th May '11 1:32:30 PM by BestOf

The Magic Comes Back and it turn out to be relatively easy to learn. the main result is a sharp decrease in violent crimes since criminals can no longer be certain if their intended victims are actually as weak as they look