Someday, believe me, there will be a nuclear war. So it is sung in one cynical song. But do not dwell on this, because, in addition to nuclear war, humanity can be destroyed by one of the many other threats.
And while we're still alive and safe, let's take a look at the top 10 most likely causes of the End of the World. It is based on data from the latest report from the Global Challenges Foundation, which works to reduce global problems that threaten humanity.
10. Environmental collapse
An ecosystem is a community of living organisms, such as humans and animals, interacting with non-living environments such as air and water. Ecosystems can recover after a certain human impact, but only up to a certain point.
Lake Chad in West Africa is an example of modern ecological collapse. Sixty years of drought, overuse of water and the effects of climate change have shrunk the lake by 90 percent. This negatively affected the existence of more than 40 million people in Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon.
Scientists believe this historical moment represents a new geological era called the Anthropocene. Humans are now the primary agents of change, rapidly destroying what makes the planet habitable.
9. Artificial intelligence
This is one of the most famous and anticipated Doomsday scenarios. Let's remember at least films about the end of the world, for example "Terminator". By the way, they exploit the most common misconception about artificial intelligence.
What scares many scientists is not that the AI will be evil, but that it will become too good at its job. As the UN Research Group report says: “If you ask a docile, smart car to get you to the airport as quickly as possible, there is a chance that helicopters will chase you along the way (probably for speeding), and you will show up covered in vomit. That is, the machine will not do what you wanted, but literally what you asked for. "
8. Solar Geoengineering
It is one of two emerging technologies that can manipulate the atmosphere and reduce climate risks.
Another way is to directly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This cannot be done on a large enough scale at present.
If solar geoengineering were deployed, it would affect the entire atmosphere of our planet and become the world's largest global human effort.
However, it is not yet known if solar geoengineering can destabilize local and global climate or ecosystems. Manipulation on this scale without understanding the consequences is likely to be catastrophic for humanity.
7. Pandemic
Twice in its history, humanity has faced epidemics that devastated entire states.
- The first time was in the 5th century. "Justinian's plague", which lasted 60 years, destroyed almost all the countries of the Mediterranean.
- The second pandemic occurred in the 14th century. The "Black Death" wiped out up to 60% of the European population.
Although fatal diseases that can spread around the world are rare, they do happen. Just a century ago, the Spanish flu killed more than 50 million people (of which 3 million were in Russia). Ebola outbreaks in recent years are also alarming.
Antibiotics - our best defense against disease - become less effective as certain strains of bacteria have developed resistance to them.
6. Biological or chemical warfare
There are many examples of the use of biological and chemical weapons in history.
For example, in the battle of Changde in 1941, the Japanese dropped fleas infected with bubonic plague in the grain onto a Chinese city. As a result of the epidemic, over 7 thousand citizens died in 4 months.
And during the Vietnam War (1962-71), the Americans used various chemicals against the Vietnamese, the most famous of which was Agent Orange. According to the Vietnamese Red Cross, the use of the chemical has affected 3 million people, including 150,000 children who were born with mutations.
5. Strongest geomagnetic storm
It's funny that one of the most probable variants of the End of the World is associated with the Sun. More precisely, with coronal mass ejections (CMEs), which are huge clouds of solar plasma.
CMEs do not directly harm people, but the consequences can be dramatic. By directing charged particles into the Earth's magnetic field, they can cause geomagnetic storms and trigger dangerous electrical currents on power lines. The currents last only a few minutes, but they can shut down electrical grids, destroying high voltage transformers.
The largest geomagnetic storm in history occurred in 1859 and was named the Carrington event, after the British astronomer who witnessed the most powerful solar flare. It was followed by a coronal mass ejection heading towards the Earth. It caused telegraph systems around the world to malfunction, and sunshine was visible even in Cuba.
If another such geomagnetic storm hits today's infrastructure, the consequences will be catastrophic. Large portions of entire continents will plunge into darkness for weeks or months, perhaps even years. The thing is, custom-made transformers the size of a house cannot be bought in a regular store. But nuclear power plants may also be left without control. Imagine what might happen then.
4. Eruption of Yellowstone or other supervolcano
The most unrelenting threat to our civilization can do much more damage than geomagnetic storms. Every 100,000 years or so, somewhere on Earth, a caldera up to 50 kilometers in diameter collapses and "spews" a pile of accumulated magma.
Supervolcano Is such a volcano that can provoke climate change on Earth. It spews more than 450 cubic kilometers of magma - about 50 times more than the eruption of the Tambora stratovolcano (Indonesia) in 1815, and 500 times more than the eruption of the volcano Pinatubo (Philippines) in 1991.
Geologists "read" the history of such natural disasters in the deposits of the rock called "tuff". And the stone "records" show that supervolcanoes tend to re-erupt.
Locations that remain active today include the following supervolcanoes:
- Toba on the island of Sumatra;
- Yellowstone in the northwestern United States;
- the Long Valley Caldera in eastern California;
- Taupo in New Zealand;
- and several places in the Andes.
3. Catastrophic climate change
We only have 12 years to keep global warming at a moderate level, according to a report released by a group of United Nations scientists.
Predictions of climate change impacts vary depending on how much the Earth is warming (typically a warming of 1-3 degrees Celsius). None of the scenarios looks good.
- In the best case, frequent and strong tropical cyclones will rage on the planet.
- Mid-level projections include the loss of most of the world's agricultural land and freshwater sources. And major coastal cities like New York and Mumbai will be underwater.
- In the worst case, human civilization will come to an end.
Even if countries' current commitments to reduce carbon emissions are met, there is a possibility that the Earth's temperature will rise by 3 ° C, flooding much of Florida and Bangladesh.
2. Fall of a meteorite or comet
An asteroid 10 kilometers in diameter destroyed the dinosaurs, but a smaller meteorite is enough for people.
At the place of impact, all living things will be destroyed, and strongest earthquakes and huge tsunamis can spread throughout the planet. But the lingering effects will be the most damaging. Depending on the speed and angle of approach of an object with a diameter of up to 1 kilometer, enough particles can enter the air to block the access of sunlight for a month.
Fortunately, large asteroids hit the Earth only once every few million years, and "dinosaur killers" only once every 100 million years or so.
1. Nuclear war
To die instantly from the explosion of a “nuclear bomb” is not the worst thing that can happen if humanity nevertheless enters the phase of the Last War.
The worst thing is the nuclear winter. Clouds of soot and smoke envelop the planet and block sunlight, causing temperatures to drop for perhaps decades. The few surviving humans will not be able to grow food; chaos and violence will follow.
The most likely reason for the start of a nuclear war could be an accident or a misunderstanding between the largest nuclear powers in the world... Let us recall the incident of September 26, 1983, when the Soviet Oko system, created to alert about a nuclear strike, gave a signal that five Minuteman missiles were fired from the United States.
Then only the restraint of Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who made the decision to falsely trigger the "Eye", saved the world from the outbreak of the Third World War. It turned out that the system, having analyzed the optical signal from the satellites, mistook the sunlight for the glow of the operating rocket engines, which was reflected from the clouds in the upper atmosphere.