10 ways the world could end tomorrow
James Rollins
The poet Robert Frost once wrote: Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. Could he be right? We’ve certainly heard about the apocalyptic threat from global warming (fire) or how the Earth might be at the beginning of a major climatic shift, heralding a new Ice Age (ice). But screw that. Those global threats are decades away. Until then, we’ve got more immediate worries: apocalyptic events that can occur tomorrow.
Here are ten ways the world could end before you even finish reading this article. So you’d better read fast.
10 Creation of Black Hole on Earth
When the world’s largest particle accelerator, the Large Hadron Collider in Switzerland, was turned on back in 2008, there was some fear that it might create a black hole that could consume the Earth. Well, that didn’t happen. But more and more reputable physicists around the world are expressing concern about this danger, along with the risk of such accelerators creating a particle called a strangelet, a particle so dangerous it could turn the earth into a dead lump in a matter of seconds. How likely is all of this? One report puts the odds as one in 50 million. That’s less than a jackpot lottery. Let’s hope we don’t win THAT lottery.
9 Asteroid Impact
We all saw this earth-shattering disaster portrayed in movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact. But how likely is it that an asteroid or comet will hit the Earth? The answer: very likely. At this moment, astronomers have identified over 1000 near-earth asteroids that could be a danger. But that’s only those that we know about. Estimates suggest there are actually hundreds of thousands more out there. The Kuiper belt alone (near the planet Neptune) contains over a hundred thousand asteroids, which continually rain comets toward the sun and Earth. It would only take one unlucky hit to end life on this planet. Remember, it was an asteroid that killed the dinosaurs — are we next?
8 Plague
It seems every year there is a new threatened global pandemic: SARS, avian flu, swine flu. Most ended up fizzling out, but history is chock full of such natural biological disasters: from the Black Plague of the Middle Ages to HIV today. The Spanish Flu alone wiped out close to a hundred million people. And today with antibiotic resistance on the rise and mutations growing steadily, how long until there is a new such outbreak? With the rapidity of modern travel, one study reveals that a deadly organism can be spread globally in nine hours. And this threat might not just come from nature. Bioweapons are being developed in labs around the world. It would take only one accident. Today, most biologists believe it’s not a matter of if a global pandemic will happen, but when.
7 Nanotech
The newest global threat comes from a danger even smaller than a bacterium or virus. It can be summarized in one word: Nanotechnology. In a nutshell, it means manufacturing at the atomic level. But strange things happen at such small levels. Aluminum foil, if broken down to nano-sized particles, becomes explosive. But that’s not the biggest worry. Scientists are already creating nanobots, self-replicating microscopic robots. Some worry that these robots could break loose and begin consuming all matter on Earth. Scientists even have a term for this danger: ecophagy (meaning “eating the environment”). When scientists begin coining terms for such a danger, it’s time to worry. But there is also a layman’s term for this threat. It’s called grey goo — because that’s all that will be left of this planet after the nanobots swarm.
6 Polar shift/Earth shifts of its axis
Life exists on this planet because of its precise axis to the sun and its protective magnetic field that shields us from cosmic radiation. If any of that changed, all life would quickly end. How likely is that to happen? It’s happened before. Every three hundred thousand years or so, the Earth’s magnetic poles reverse themselves: north becomes south, south becomes north. This wreaks great havoc, including momentarily weakening or wiping out that protective magnetic shield. Unfortunately the last time the poles shifted was eight hundred thousand years ago. That means we’re long overdue for such an event to happen again. And what about the Earth’s axis? Surely that doesn’t change. Well, it actually has — and just recently. The Japan earthquake shifted the Earth’s axis by six inches and shortened the typical day by about two microseconds. It wouldn’t take much to tip us even more, wiping out all life. And with the magnetic field already weakening, perhaps it’s time to invest in sunscreen (preferably SPF 10,000,000).
5 Nuclear Holocaust
Few words are more disturbing than “mutually assured destruction,” which was the U.S. nuclear policy during the Cold War. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, are we any safer from a nuclear holocaust? The consensus among nuclear scientists is a big NO. Currently there are 20,000 active nuclear warheads globally, many of which are poorly guarded. And still, more weapons are being produced by unstable countries, such as Pakistan and North Korea — not to mention Iran, who will soon be joining that nuclear club. It only takes one crazy world leader with his finger on that nuclear button to wreak global destruction. And even scarier: how long will it be before a terrorist organization gets their hands on such a device?
4 Solar Flare
Let there be light — just not too much of it. The sun regularly emits solar flares. These eruptions bathe the Earth with high-speed subatomic particles that cause magnetic disturbances, interfere with satellites, and create the Aurora Borealis. So far, such flares have been mostly nuisances. But other suns warn us what might happen at any moment. Astronomers have noted sun-like stars in other solar systems that briefly flare twenty times brighter. Why? They hypothesize that those suns released super-flares, eruptions a million times more powerful than any ordinary solar flare. If our sun did that, it would literally fry our planet. So again, here is further support for investing in sunscreen.
3 Alien Invasion
We’ve all seen this play out in a thousand different scenarios in books, television, and movies. But how likely is it that we’d actually be invaded by extraterrestrials? Scientists have already identified earth-like planets in other solar systems. And they’ve only begun to look in earnest. With a hundred billion galaxies, each made up of a hundred billion suns, how could there not be other intelligent life out there? This, of course, raises the next question: if aliens should make it out here, would they be friend or foe? We already know what happens most times when an advanced civilization encounters a primitive one. Even the genius physicist, Stephen Hawking, weighed in on this debate. His verdict: we’d be toast.
2 Gamma Ray Burst
If you ever watched The Incredible Hulk, you know the dangers of gamma rays. But what you might not know is that massive gamma-ray bursts occur in space on a regular basis. The bursts arise when two collapsed stars crash into one another. The resulting explosion generates 10 quadrillion times more energy than our sun. How much energy is that? If a burst occurred 1,000 light years from the earth, it would be as bright as our sun and broil our planet with radiation. How often does such an event happen in the universe? The answer is every single day — but there is no telling when such a burst might happen closer to Earth. Until then, keep watching the skies — because it’s the very last thing you’ll see before you die.
1 Supervolcano
Sometimes size does matter. Volcanic eruptions have plagued mankind throughout history, resulting in deaths, changes to climate, even altering coastlines. But the real threat comes from supervolcanos. Seventy thousand years ago, a supervolcano erupted in Sumatra, triggering a volcanic winter that wiped out most humans on the planet, dropping our numbers down to only a few thousand breeding pairs worldwide. The human species survived that event by the breadth of a hair. When’s the next one due to erupt? The answer: yesterday—and it’ll occur in our own backyard. Under Yellowstone National Park, a massive supervolcano is already showing signs of increased activity. It has erupted three times in the past, on average, every 600,000 years. The last eruption was 640,000 years ago. So we’re 40,000 years overdue for another eruption. When it does explode, it will be the loudest sound ever heard on Earth. It will also be the last sound most of us will ever hear. So, before it’s too late, maybe we’d better reinstate the ancient custom of sacrificing virgins to the volcano gods.
Any volunteers?
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A final word:
After reading this list of apocalyptic events, maybe it’s best to remember the old nugget: live each day as if it’s your last.
Because it just might be.
James Rollins’s latest thriller, The Devil Colony, addresses two of the above end-of-the-world scenarios. To learn which ones (and ways to survive), pick up his novel today… before it’s too late.
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