fossils
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is set "1 Million Years Ago" and shows two aliens in a spaceship orbiting Earth. They are discussing how to prevent the planet from developing technologically advanced life before they can return to colonize it. One alien proposes a devious plan: bury abundant energy resources underground, but engineer them so that burning those resources releases gases that eventually "cook the planet." The other alien laughs approvingly at the cleverness of the scheme.
The joke reframes fossil fuels and climate change as a deliberate alien sabotage plan. Rather than fossil fuels being a natural geological product, the comic imagines them as a booby trap -- a tempting energy source that any developing civilization would inevitably exploit, only to trigger catastrophic global warming that would destroy the civilization before it could become a threat to the aliens.
The Humor
The humor works on multiple levels. First, it is a darkly comic reinterpretation of humanity's relationship with fossil fuels: we are essentially falling into an obvious trap, burning resources that are slowly destroying our own habitat. Second, it satirizes how absurdly self-destructive our energy choices look from an outside perspective -- so self-defeating that they could plausibly be the product of hostile alien engineering. The alien's "Ha!" at the end underscores how laughably effective the trap is: the target civilization will eagerly dig up and burn the very thing designed to kill them. It also plays on conspiracy theories about ancient aliens, but inverts them -- instead of aliens helping humanity advance, they are actively sabotaging us.
References
- Fossil fuels and climate change: The comic references the real-world phenomenon where burning coal, oil, and natural gas (formed from ancient organic matter buried underground over millions of years) releases greenhouse gases like CO2, driving global warming.
- The Fermi Paradox: The comic implicitly touches on this concept -- one proposed answer to why we don't see alien civilizations is that advanced civilizations tend to destroy themselves, possibly through environmental collapse.