Watch Stephen Colbert Completely Freak Out About the NY Stock Exchange Shutdown

On Wednesday, the New York Stock Exchange temporarily shut down due to a technical problem — and this news really, really freaked out Stephen Colbert. The soon-to-be Late Night host promptly went into survival mode.

“Do you understand that for nearly four hours America’s bankers had no idea how rich they were?” the comedian asks from a windowless office, where he’d hoarded supplies like bottled water, rope, a fire extinguisher and a few reams of paper.

Colbert explains that Wednesday was a “festival of dread and an all-you-can-eat hysteria buffet.” He points out that in addition to the NYSE shutdown, Wednesday’s horror also included grounded United Airlines flights and a “totally unusable redesign of Seamless.”

The upcoming Late Show host decides that he will ultimately become humanity’s new leader: “Worship me, you minions of the worldwide wasteland, for I have amassed over 60 bags of snackable chip.”

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