The end of the world was predicted numerous times before along the history. Fortunately nobody was right until now. Nowadays, the science can predict pretty well numerous effects from the future but not all.
We know for example that before we are going to die, the Sun will expand and will swallow whole the Earth as well as the other planets from its proximity, but fortunately this thing will not happen 5 Billion years from now. Thing that means we have enough time to finish that Game of Thrones series. There are although another number of scenarios in which the world could end much faster than that. And even they are very less likely to happen there are not excluded.
Think, your world may finish when you’d find out that you lost your house to that mortgage you have paying for years in which you’d have no solution to counter it in case of an economic collapse and you’d be forced to work as a male whore the rest of your life, and in exchange to that you may wanna end your life in the next second like the poor fellow next to you which had the same problem as you.
The people would commit suicides one after another and see that, a world without stupid ass-fucks to over populate my atmosphere and less people to worry about. End of the world, please do come. As some Japanese fellow would say:” we all deep down would want this world to end”, and for good reason.
8. An asteroid
This is of course the classic possibility. It was explored in movies, books and documentaries and it’s omnipresent in our collective conscience. Till the end this would sound the most probable for the dinosaurs to be extinct, or of course, their majority, some of them being still here, like chicken for example.
Even though the science could predict with an impressing accuracy the movement of any object in space and could determine with hundred years in advance that something is coming towards Earth, this is not the case. In 2013 an asteroid entered in the Russian’s atmosphere without being detected in any ways from any astronomic observer on Earth, or at least Russia which has a pretty shitty system regarding all that.
This one exploded with a force of a nuclear bomb 30 times more powerful than the one at Hiroshima and even though it didn’t cause any death this one really rocked some buildings as well the security feeling of the civilization. If the asteroid would’ve weighted 5% more or would’ve moved 5% much faster or have an angle more sharpen the situation would be different in various ways, and Russia to be changed forever.
7. Nuclear warfare
Another classic example, the nuclear warfare was close to ruin our planet a few times during the history. Even though there are numerous wars going on nowadays, there never occurred in using the nuclear force with the exception of those who landed in Japan.
The only reason that in this days aren’t used is the fact that it would mutual assure destruction. Meaning that a country would attack another country using a nuclear weapon, than they must be aware of the fact that it would attack in return, fact that will trigger a total annihilation of both sides.
Another terrifying factor is that you don’t need much to trigger the effect, needing only a country to do so. Not to forget how the first one started. A Serbian terrorist, without any relation with his government had killed for himself an Austrian prince.
This gesture made the Austro-Hungarian empire to declare war to Serbia which was allied with the Russians which annoyed, making the Germans to do the same which startled the French, and in their ways have startled lotsa other countries, until Congo an Zimbabwe were fighting over each other in the name of a single Serbian guy which had some dumb-ass ideas and had a gun.
Momentarily there a lot of countries that are holding nuclear power and some of them are Political unstable and economic as well and hold personal grudges to other countries as well. The best example we find in the Pakistan and India which are holding nuclear bombs and who are hating each other in any way possible, their conflict being a historical one.
6. World Epidemic
The black plague was an epidemic that happened in the middle ages and held off over 100 years and killing between 75 and 200 million people in the condition that back then weren’t all that much people, approximately half of Europe’s population have died of this plague and it’s not excluded that something like this to happen in the future.
Of course now we have all sorts of medications and vaccines and celandine that help us with every disease possible, not to mention the possibilities we have to diagnose the illness and quarantine. It’s true that we are better managing but the viruses are doing just as well.
We keep on advancing and not letting ourselves killed so easily but the viruses do the same, they become as much as resistant and powerful and once with the developing of the world transportation could become almost impossible to control a serious epidemic.
E-bola, Sars, swine flu, and bird flu are just a few from the recent viruses that made us sweat. Fortunately we succeeded in managing it but new mutations of these viruses are always developing and they don’t seem to stop too soon, especially considering that the majority have their origins in animals that are raised in farms.
5. Artificial intelligence
Even though this concept may seem an off the hook subject and Science-Fiction, there is a serious reason why this persisted in our cultures. Now more than ever when the programs and the computers become more and more intelligent and the internet offers an instant access on any information, facilitating a huge power for an organism or a program that may make calculus extremely fast.
All the science men may seem to be agreed. The creation of artificial intelligence may seem just a matter of time. The technological evolution doesn’t seem to stop soon unless there could occur the other 7 scenarios mentioned in this article.
In these conditions it’s important to ask ourselves: when the computers become auto-sufficient would they see us as a futile monkeys that we are and will kill us all? Yes, please say yes. Or would they like to collaborate with us creating an utopic society without any limits or sufferings. We aren’t able to decipher this so we’ll wait and see.
Anyhow, thing that is extremely alarming is the theory which states that the domination of Artificial Intelligence has already begun, but because the robots are so smart they didn’t made their presence know yet. It’s possible that an artificial conscience to lurk behind the curtain and decide what’s the best option to view the current situation. Maybe it’s necessarily to destroy us from the inside, to ruin our financial system, to release viruses, to cause conflicts or civil rights and so on.
This kind conscience in one way or another is found already in your pocked in this very moment, taking form of a mobile phone. A super-strong computer, communicating with the other PC’s in the world, has access to all information in the world as well as your own. Considering that our entire civilization existence has it dependency depicted from our well-functioning or some computers we could understand how much power would it have over us this artificial intelligence.
4. Extraterrestrial invasion
Ok, this one sounds a bit SF and would really be cool if this were to happen, but m’eh… most probably won’t. There are a few truths that can’t be denied.
Firstly, the universe is huuge, ginormous, so big that the chance of life on another planet would exist are extremely high, this in the condition we don’t know how big the universe is. 2nd of all we don’t know where will the technology will bring us, we evolve in a very accelerated way and we went from a transcontinental journey in a few years of horse riding to making it in 3 hours with the plane with an entertainment system included.
We have no clue where it will all end and how much will pass until we could travel from a star to another with the same legerity. And 3, a race that is extremely evolved that could come to our planet would be too smart for us. Think of how we see the rats or the insects, we don’t see them worthy to carry on a conversation with them and if they appear into your home you make all in your power to kill them and their family.
Those being said, there is extremely possible that an alien race to be so advanced that they would do the same with us. As Steven Hawking” we must remember what happened right here on Earth, when a society found a new world with people less developed in technology. This happened when Christofor Columb discovered America and it didn’t end up well for the indigenes. Especially considering that the technological difference between those two civilizations wasn’t all that big.
3. Solar Storm
The Earth is a very lucky planet. It has all that it need to support life. Water, oxygen, heat, seeds and many more. This condition are owed mostly to the Sun, a medium sized star which is found like 150 million years from us. If it was to be much closer or much far away, the conditions on Earth would’ve been completely different and it is possible that life wouldn’t been developing on the planet like…never.
But fortunately the Sun is positioned in the ideal position. Anyhow, that doesn’t mean that the things aren’t as delicate as they are. We must understand that the Sun is a humongous nuclear explosion which floats into space above us. And for various reasons the chemical reactions that are happening in the Sun may vary in power, creating various amounts of energy and radiations.
A solar explosion is a release of energy much bigger than the standard figures. If it is big enough this explosion could affect the Earth, short-circuiting networks of electricity at a worldwide scale, causing lotsa damage, leaving us without energy years to come.
Even this would not destroy us in a direct mode, imagine what would happen on Earth if we were to remain without electricity. All the systems on which we depend to survive from agriculture to transportation and sewage would seize to work, transforming the world in an apocalyptical scenery dominated by anarchy, diseases, wars and hunger.
2. Gamma rays explosions
Every object that is big enough in the universe are emanating radiations. This radiations are various depending on the length of the frequency but I’m not trying to learn you about physics, but to tell you about the gamma rays which is a consequence of a super-nova exploding or two black stars are attracted one to another and collapse.
This kind of events would have a big impact and would emanate a force that is ginormous in a straight ray across the universe. If one of those rays would be hitting Earth, it would be visible from 7,5 billion light years what means half of the observable universe. If there was to be hit by this kinda ray, it would destroy our atmosphere, it would eliminate much of the Ozone layer, it would permit solar radiations to enter without any kind of remorse, thing that would lead to cancer, heats and all sorts of crazy stuff.
Primarily it would be pretty bad. To be honest, chances to be hit by that kinda ray are pretty dimmed. Till the end most of the space is filled with… space, the distances between objects are ginormous and the Earth occupies a small portion of that. Anyhow, there are a lot of stars in the Universe. Those kinda explosions are occurring every day in a number that would be hard to imagine. Let’s hope the odds are against us. But in case you see a bright light coming through the sky, stay right in front of it. Please.
1. Super-volcano
A super-volcano is a volcano that is… super, meaning that it is at least 100 times bigger than a normal one. Those kinda volcanoes are formed when a big quantity of magma is raised up in the Earth’s manta and it reaches out the surface but it doesn’t find any kind of opening at the surface like a normal volcano.
In return the magma is gathering in that layer creating a big pressure until the surface doesn’t stand any more the pressure and breaks out creating a huge crater. This kinda eruption could theoretical occur in any time and it would have devastating consequences, the lava would cover big areas of land and the volcanic ash put into the atmosphere would darken the sky and it would be an equivalent of a nuclear winter cause the sun-waves could not heat the Earth not more as the way is doing now.
Even though there are just a few of those kind on Earth, the technology we have at the moment wouldn’t permit us to a single fucking thing even if we knew exactly the hour and the date of the eruption. In the Yellowstone in America has one of those kinda volcanoes on the planet. The science folks have determined that this one erupts quite regularly, once every 600.000 years, yea, that sounds about right. It have passed like 640.000 years since it last erupted.