No more funny voices!
Yes that's right. Comedy is in danger. Put it on your list of things to save. While the avengers are trying to save the world from a guy who loves jewelry, you save Helium from getting depleted.
Are you in Hellium?
Do you know that no matter how noble the gases are, they can still be endangered?
We are losing Helium and the many benefits helium has for comedy.
You want to speak in a cartoonish voice, now you’ll use some unnatural half-assed technology instead of Helium.
Thought your balloons could defy gravity, well think again, they might as well have lead inside them.
What are clowns going to carry in parties? Fruits, regular balloons filled with Uncle Gary’s Halitosis?
What about the goodyear blimp, will future generations not see how unproductively we pass time?
Leave me Alone
Helium is inert. I doesn’t like mixing with other elements. Like me when I was 13 and human beings thought looking directly at me was an option.
This is makes it difficult for Helium to be present for parties like the one going on in the atmosphere. Meanwhile it’s neighbor Hydrogen is the popular girl who’ll get on with everything.
So, the loner is fighting for survival while the popular thrives. Sigh.
Why is Helium being depleted?
Helium reserves on earth are due to the decay of Uranium and Thorium. Since it is difficult to produce, we relied on existing deposits of Helium. This process has taken millions of years. However, humans are stupid. They have the self control of a baby when confronted with a lollipop. They suck immediately.
It has been used at a pace far outstripping it’s production.
Do you think you’ll get this morgan freeman squeaky voice in a few years time ?
Can we do shit?
Kinda. You can travel to the sun, which has large amount of Helium deposits. But you’ll be burnt like a nerd asking a cheerleader out to prom or a lady who collected brooms in Salem during the seventeenth century.
There is scope of getting it from nuclear fusion but that ain’t exactly cheap. Meanwhile it lies trapped in natural gas. Not that natural gas, ew.
But harnessing it from the atmosphere is like your bank account after taxes. there's very little left.
Here’s a radical idea, we can stop being greedy and conserve it.
Other less important uses of Helium
Coolant: It is also a super coolant so it is used in MRI machines. It can’t substituted because of how cool it is. But remember the primary use is in funny voices.
Espionage: It is also used for cooling infrared detectors, so spies can work at night
Dating: Helium makes anyone funny so your date goes well, but I dont mean that dating, I mean the one where we check if the rocks are older than the queen.
Semi-Conductors, large Hadron colliders, blah blah blah
Someday years from now future family screw ups will find tapes of us talking in funny voices with gravity defying balloons behind us, and they'll cry.
Thanks @nostoneunturned for getting this to my attention.
I nominate @jayna and @veryspider to make an entry for COM.