Editing 2485: Nightmare Code

{{comic
| number    = 2485
| date      = July 5, 2021
| title     = Nightmare Code
| image     = nightmare_code.png
| titletext = Charsets even used to be known as 'alpha-bets' before that word's obvious negative associations caused it to die out.
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|Created by a SCARY ONGOING NANOBOT SWARM. Please mention here why this explanation isn't complete. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

In the future, humans have forgotten the Greek language entirely, and its writing system survives only as a means of assigning names to nightmarish phenomena.

A person using futuristic technology is giving a presentation. The content of his projected screen includes the first four letters of the Greek Alphabet, which he refers to as the Nightmare Code. The presenter expects that the list is familiar to his audience, but that it is novel information to them that it used to have a purpose other than providing arbitrary names to hurricanes, virus variants, and nanobot swarms.

Hurricanes and other tropical cyclones are usually named once they grow nightmarish enough. The names for these storms come from pre-defined lists that have 21 names allocated each year [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_naming]. When the 21 names are exhausted, Greek letters have been used to continue naming storms as needed. Perhaps in this vision of the future, the naming lists have given way to using the Greek alphabet exclusively, despite the World Meteorological Organization deciding in 2021 no longer to use Greek letters when naming storms.

Virus variants may also be given names [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variants_of_SARS-CoV-2] once they are deemed sufficiently nightmarish. At the time of this writing, eleven variants of SARS-CoV-2 have been labeled with Greek letters.  Previously, variants were named informally for the region in which they were discovered (as were many viruses themselves), but this practice has ceased due to risks of discrimination and the {{w|perverse incentive}} to suppress health information for the sake of saving face.

Nanobot swarms identify themselves by Greek letters due to an inadvertent ROM character set bug in the firmware of the original manifestation{{citation needed}}.

The title text indicates that character sets used to be called alphabets, after the first two elements of the Nightmare Code, but people stopped using the term alphabet due to negative associations with the items named by the Nightmare Code.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}
[A person giving a presentation is wearing futuristic gear, including a visor with an antenna rising from it, a backpack-like appliance of some kind, and a futuristic pointer.  The audience is not pictured.  The presenter is floating rather than standing.  The presentation is projected from a small device near the bottom of the frame, and the appearance of the presentation suggests it is a hologram. The content of the slide shows the names of the first four letters of the Greek alphabet, ALPHA, BETA, GAMMA, and DELTA.]

Presenter: We all know the NIGHTMARE CODE, used to assign neutral names to scary ongoing lists, such as hurricanes, virus variants, and nanobot swarms. But did you know it actually originated as the letters of an ancient Earth language?

{{comic discussion}}