Believe me, there will be a nuclear war someday. It is sung in one cynical song. But do not dwell on this, because, in addition to nuclear war, humanity can destroy one of many other threats.
And while we are 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 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 inanimate environments, such as air and water. Ecosystems can recover after a certain human impact, but only up to a point.
Lake Chad in West Africa is an example of modern environmental collapse. Sixty years of drought, overuse of water and the effects of climate change have reduced the lake by 90 percent. Which negatively affected the existence of more than 40 million people in Chad, Nigeria, Niger and Cameroon.
Scientists believe that this historical moment represents a new geological era, called the anthropocene. Now humans are the main agents of change, quickly destroying what makes the planet liveable.
9. Artificial Intelligence
This is one of the most famous and anticipated doomsday scenarios. Let’s recall films about the End of the World, for example, “Terminator”. By the way, they exploit the most common misconception about artificial intelligence.
Many scientists are not afraid that AI will be evil, but that it will become too good in its work. As stated in the report of the UN research team: “If you ask an obedient, smart car to deliver you to the airport as soon as possible, there is a possibility that helicopters will chase you along the way (probably for speeding), and you will appear there all covered with vomit. That is, the machine will do not what you wanted, but literally what you asked for. ”
8. Solar geoengineering
This is one of two new technologies that can manipulate the atmosphere and reduce climate risks.
Another way is to directly remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Currently, this cannot be done on a sufficiently large scale.
If solar geoengineering were deployed, it would affect the entire atmosphere of our planet and become the world's largest global effort by mankind.
However, it is not yet known whether solar geoengineering can destabilize the local and global climate or ecosystems. Manipulation on such a scale without understanding the consequences is likely to be disastrous for humanity.
7. Pandemic
Twice in its history, mankind has been confronted with epidemics that devastated entire states.
- The first time was in the 5th century. The Justinian Plague, which lasted 60 years, destroyed almost all the countries of the Mediterranean.
- The second pandemic occurred in the 14th century. "Black Death" mowed up to 60% of the population of Europe.
Although deadly diseases that can spread around the world are rare, they do happen. Just a century ago, more than 50 million people died from the Spanish flu (3 million of them in Russia). Ebola outbreaks in recent years are also alarming.
Antibiotics - our best defense against disease - are becoming less effective as some strains of bacteria have developed resistance to them.
6. Biological or chemical warfare
In history, you can find many examples of the use of biological and chemical weapons.
For example, in the battle of Changde 1941, the Japanese threw fleas infected with bubonic plague into the Chinese city, which were in the grain. 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, 3 million people were affected by the use of this chemical, including 150,000 children who were born with mutations.
5. The strongest geomagnetic storm
It is funny that one of the most likely variants of the End of the World is connected with the Sun. More specifically, with coronary mass ejections (CME), which are huge clouds of solar plasma.
CMEs do not directly harm humans, but their effects can be impressive. By directing charged particles into the Earth’s magnetic field, they can cause geomagnetic storms and trigger dangerous electrical currents in power lines. Currents last only a few minutes, but they can turn off electrical networks, destroying high-voltage transformers.
The largest geomagnetic storm in history occurred in 1859 and was called the Carrington event, in honor of the British astronomer who witnessed the most powerful solar flare. After it was followed by an ejection of coronary mass, rushing toward the Earth. It caused the failure of telegraph systems around the world, and the sunshine was noticeable even in Cuba.
If another such geomagnetic storm hits today's infrastructure, the consequences will be disastrous. Vast parts of entire continents will plunge into darkness for several weeks or months, perhaps even years. The fact is that custom-made transformers the size of a house can not be bought in an ordinary store. But nuclear power plants may remain without control. Imagine what could happen then.
4. Eruption of Yellowstone or another supervolcano
The most inexorable threat to our civilization can do much more damage than geomagnetic storms. Every 100,000 years or so, somewhere on Earth, a caldera with a diameter of up to 50 kilometers is destroyed and "spews out" a bunch of accumulated magma.
A supervolcano is a volcano that can trigger climate change on Earth. It erupts more than 450 cubic kilometers of magma - about 50 times more than the eruption of the stratovolcano Tambora (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 deposits of rocks called "tuff". And stone “records” show that supervolcanoes tend to re-erupt.
Places that remain active today include the following supervolcanoes:
- Toba on the island of Sumatra;
- Yellowstone in the northwestern United States;
- Long Valley Caldera in Eastern California;
- Taupo in New Zealand;
- and several places in the Andes.
3. Catastrophic climate change
According to a report published by a group of United Nations scientists, we have only 12 years to keep global warming at a moderate level.
Forecasts of the effects of climate change vary depending on how much the Earth heats up (typically warming by 1-3 degrees Celsius). None of the scenarios seem favorable.
- At best, frequent and violent tropical cyclones will rage on the planet.
- Mid-range forecasts include the loss of most of the world's agricultural land and freshwater sources. And large coastal cities such as New York and Mumbai will be under water.
- In the worst case, human civilization will come to an end.
Even if countries' current commitments to reduce carbon emissions are fulfilled, it is likely that Earth's temperature will rise by 3 ° C, leading to flooding of much of Florida and Bangladesh.
2. Fall of a meteorite or comet
An asteroid with a diameter of 10 kilometers destroyed dinosaurs, but a smaller meteorite is enough for people.
In the place of the impact, all living things will be destroyed, and severe earthquakes and huge tsunamis can spread throughout the planet. But the lingering effects will be the most devastating. Depending on the speed and angle of approach of an object with a diameter of up to 1 kilometer, enough particles can get into the air to block sunlight for a month.
Fortunately, large asteroids hit the Earth only once every few million years, and "dinosaur killers" once every 100 million years or so.
1. Nuclear war
To die instantly from the explosion of the "nuclear bomb" is not the worst thing that can happen if humanity nevertheless enters the phase of the Last War.
The worst thing is a nuclear winter. Clouds of soot and smoke envelop the planet and block sunlight, causing a drop in temperature, possibly for decades. The few surviving people will not be able to grow food; chaos and violence will follow.
The most likely cause of a nuclear war may be an accident or misunderstanding between the largest nuclear powers in the world. Let us recall, for example, the incident of September 26, 1983, when the Soviet Eye system, designed to warn of a nuclear strike, gave a signal that five Minutmen missiles were launched from the United States.
Then only the endurance of Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, who decided on the false operation of 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 satellites, took sunlight for the glow of the working rocket engines, which was reflected from the clouds in the upper atmosphere.
