(CNN) If it's not the heat death of the Earth that consumes us; if we are not snuffed out by blight, famine and the volatile hubris of mankind, it's only a matter of time before the cockroaches rise up and conquer us all. They are growing stronger.

They are keen to our defenses and devour them, snickering all the while at our impotent pest control burlesque. If things continue down this dark path the exterminated, in time, will become the exterminators.

This fatalistic vision is brought to you by the very disturbing news that cockroaches have apparently begun to develop a cross-resistance to powerful insecticides.

Scientists from Purdue exposed German cockroaches to different insecticides , and found that the cockroach populations not only developed a resistance to the insecticide they were exposed to, but also picked up resistances to other insecticides.

The super-immune insects can then pass their resistance on to their offspring, making it only a matter of time before a given population becomes, essentially, insecticide-proof.

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