2012-03-16
Explanation
This comic presents a satirical doomsday narrative about bottled water taken to its logical extreme. It begins with the observation that "people decided putting water in a bottle made it better," showing someone holding a bottle of Pierian Spring water. The trend escalates as people start questioning whether non-bottled water is even safe ("You drink bottled water? How do you know it'''s safe if it'''s not bottled bottled water?"), leading to the concept of bottled bottled water. A graph shows the ratio of plastic per ounce of H2O increasing exponentially over time.
Eventually it becomes "easier just to bottle everything else," and the comic shows an entire cityscape encased in giant bottles. By the time humanity notices the mistake, it'''s too late: "Oh God we'''re running out of air! We need a chainsaw or a blow torch to get out!" But all the petrochemicals have been used to make bottles. The comic then jumps far into the future, where alien visitors discover Earth'''s perfectly preserved remains. They note that "these creatures left a perfectly preserved record of their final day" and are not surprised by the outcome.
The aliens explain that humanity "did not survive the Sixth Test of Civilization," implying that the bottled water obsession is a known failure mode that civilizations encounter. One alien asks if "finding out the Higgs mechanism also generates free brownies" is the test, but is told that'''s actually the Seventh Test. The votey panel has one alien asking "What'''s the fifth test?" with the answer being "Kirk Cameron" -- a joke referencing the actor-turned-evangelical-activist as another existential threat to civilization. The comic satirizes consumer culture'''s tendency to create artificial needs and package natural resources in increasingly wasteful ways.