We will lose weight! Americans are disgusting, and this is borne out by the fact that the only significant advances we have made in the 21st century are (1) getting foreigners to answer the phone for us and (2) combining fried chicken, mashed potatoes, cheese, and gravy into a single foodstuff. Except for those of us who are throwing up three times a day, we all weigh at least 400 pounds. Well, you fat fucking fuck, once the eschaton has been immanentized, no one will ever be able to call you a fat fucking fuck again. Because either you will have burned off all that weight fleeing from the ravening hordes, or they will have eaten you.

We will have horses! Even before doomsday arrives, you will not be able to run your car anymore, because gas will be more expensive than water, which in turn will be only slightly less expensive than your eyes. And then, even if you manage to get some gas, you won’t be able to drive anywhere, on account of having traded one or both of your eyes for water. You will need a horse. You will name it “Steel” or “Charger” or “Lemondrop,” or, if you are wise, nothing at all, because eventually you will have to eat it.

We will read books again! If you, like me, are finding it impossible to finish, or even substantially begin, your space-opera novel Pothead Space Ninja because there is just so much Internet to look at every day, take heart! On Third Earth (which is what we will call our world, in an effort to maintain our sense of childish wonder), there will be no Internet to look at at all. There will probably be no paper either, or alphabet. The best stories will only be told by old men or women sitting in front of a fire, as the Ancient Ones intended.

Steampunk! Steampunk only makes sense when it is set in the shattered remains of a technologically advanced society—but then it makes perfect sense. We will use oil lamps, and our Turing machines will be powered by winding cranks. We will need trench coats and boots to protect us from the weather and radioactive fallout and the ravening hordes. We will all carry truncheons. We will all wear goggles.

Swords! Bullets will come at a premium, and so those of us who are too good for truncheons will carry swords instead. They will be made from the remains of our cars, which will prove to the benefit of those folks who are still buying American right now, rather than a European or Japanese import, because sure, better mileage with the import, but who wants a plastic sword?

We will have open relationships! Sort of! You, readers, will want to make sure that you have a sword, and that it isn’t a plastic one, because all those lame social mores and conventions that make it so hard to sleep around today will be rendered obsolete in a matter of weeks. If you are male, plan on immediately establishing yourself as a “chief” or “warlord” or “only medical doctor around for miles,” because: harem. If you are female and for some reason not interested in a career in the concubinal arts, set yourself up as a wandering warrior woman. Remember not to give your heart, or your purity, to any man but the one who can best you in single combat, or you’ll get a reputation as the wandering warrior woman who’s kind of a slut. Even in the future, some things will never change.

We will genuinely appreciate things! "We all ask," wrote W.H. Auden, "but I doubt if anyone can really say why all age-groups should find our age quite so repulsive." Gloomy, but I think he has a point: No matter how many Wii DVDs we have on our MySpace phones, a sort of emptiness pervades contemporary life. Post-Ragnarok, though, as we sit around celebrating the Great High Harvest—our swords sheathed, the horses fed and asleep, our thin wives with their goggles pushed atop their heads—and an old man in front of the fire regales us with tales of the battles of the network stars, we will be truly thankful for all that we have. At least until the ravening hordes show up and eat us.

Commenter Moff’s real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found at scribblescribblescribble.com/blog.

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• Geordi LaForge's visor: When Star Trek launched The Next Generation in XXX, one of the most striking visuals was Levar Burton wearing what looked like a car air filter over his eyes. The visor allowed his character, who was born blind, to see in the infrared spectrum, at the microscopic level, and to detect energy levels. He could even detect vital signs and tell if someone was lying, making him handy to have around. However, he must have been happy when the First Contact film came around, because he didn't have to wear that wacky visor anymore.
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• Predator-Vision: In the Predator films, the titular aliens have evolved to the point where they have developed their own infrared vision. However, they've invented helmets with enhancements that take the vision even further, letting them see with X-Ray vision, to detect radioactive sources, auto-target, and even (in the Aliens Vs. Predator films) to see with sort kind of electro-magnetic vision that allows them to track Aliens, who don't show up on infrared scanners. While those helmets looked sleek and cool with awesome functions, they still resembled fugly crab-aliens underneath.
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• Luke Skywalker's binoculars: When Luke was trapped on Tatooine as a teenager, he had loads of time to daydream and imagine what life was like on other worlds. So he'd frequently scan the sky and the horizon with his binoculars, hoping to find some sort of excitement. Plus, they came in handy when R2D2 and C3P0 went missing. No idea what all the different numbers and gauges mean, besides distance (maybe Luke had ganked his Uncle's golf binocs) but the view through them was 1977 gee-whiz tech.
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• Cyclop's visor from The X-Men: This special visor which was outfitted with ruby quartz lenses that have the ability to block his optic blasts. So, it might not allow him to see things closer or at the molecular level, but it does keep him from blowing the hell out of everyone and everything he looks at. If you ask us, that's not a bad enhancement. Later he was able to sport some ruby quartz sunglasses, although that sort of makes his "Cyclops" name a bit useless.
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• The glasses in William Gibson's Virtual Light: In this novel, the characters are trying to track down a pair of glasses that you can't see through. Instead, they use EMP drivers to send signals directly to your optic nerve. As a result, they allow you to see without having photos hit your retinas, and they can also pump more information into the signal. For instance, one of the characters describes that the glasses cost about the same as a "small Japanese car", and that when you look at things through them, "Put 'em on, you go out walking, everything looks normal, but every plant you see, every tree, there's this little label hanging there, what its name is, Latin under that." One pair to go, please.
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• Nanotech eyes in Deus Ex: In Warren Spector's dystopian future video game, you play a "nanotech operative" who has the ability to upgrade and enhance his body in the field, which you'll have to do in order to complete the game. One of the coolest modifications was upgrading your eyes so you could see in the dark and through walls. This usually comes in handy when people are trying to kill you, as you can imagine.
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• The HUD in Down and Out in the Magic Kindom: In Cory Doctorow's future, people live with onboard computers in their brains that allow them to make phone calls, record their daily lives through sight and sound, and provide heads-up displays in their eyes where they can check the time, read files, surf the web, and check other people's "whuffie" scores. Whuffie basically tells you "how cool is this person?" and becomes the currency of the day. As interesting as that is, we're most exciting by surfing the net on our eyeballs.
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• The sunglasses in They Live: In John Carpenter's "I came here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I'm all out of bubblegum" humans vs. aliens film, former pro wrestler "Rowdy" Roddy Piper finds a pair of very special sunglasses. They let him see the world as it actually is with fugly aliens controlling the human race, subliminal messages they keep them sedate and to "Obey." Of course, Roddy isn't too happy with this, and goes on a killing spree.
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• The Bionic Eye: In both the Six Million Dollar Man and the newly rebooted The Bionic Woman (sorry old Bionic woman, you got stuck with a Bionic ear), the main characters are both outfitted with bionic eyes that give them the ability to zoom in on subjects and see into the infrared. Not one was this one of the coolest Bionic upgrades in my opinion, but it also made for the best action figure I ever lost. Colonel Steve Austin's action figure had a big hole in his head that you could look through to "simulate" bionic vision. My parents probably thought I'd glued that thing to my head. Bionic eyes or bionic contact lenses, let's hope you get here soon.
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