Given the doomsday scenarios offered in books and films, it seems inevitable, doesn't it? Whether it's a zombie apocalypse, an alien invasion, an asteroid impact, or some other spectacular scenario, they all seem virtually inevitable to us. The only thing we can do right now is pray that this doesn't happen in our lifetime, because that would be terrible.
On this beautiful note, we present to you 15 Horrific Doomsday Scenarios That Could Happen In Our Lives. But, oddly enough, they are all preventable. You know, we could start doing something right now to avoid this disaster, but, unfortunately, all of us are just adding fuel to the fire, creating more and more opportunities for the apocalypse to come.
It may surprise you, but not only global warming may soon kill everyone. There are many other options to which we contribute in one way or another and bring terrible events closer.
Of course, there are doomsday scenarios that doom us all to certain death. I don't think we can do anything if the sun explodes or something. The following 15 doomsday scenarios can be prevented by us humans. Of course, some things from this list are preventable only by geniuses, leading scientists and specialists of the world, and for others, mere mortals are responsible! Also pay attention to article 10 predictions about the end of the world.
15. Nuclear War
All humans are inherently self-destructive. Look at Lindsay Lohan. She was the darling of Americans, but ends up spending most of her money in rehab, ruining her public and professional reputation. We all looked at LiLo as a cautionary tale, thinking that we could help her somehow if we put ourselves in her place. It might help, but we (most likely) could "self-destruct" just like her.
What is my point of view on all this? People are self-destructive. The likelihood that we will all go insane one day and start dropping nuclear bombs everywhere seems high. This is the most likely doomsday scenario in our time, and it is absolutely 100% avoidable.
Let's hope that stockpiles of nuclear weapons will continue to lie untouched for at least the next few hundred years and no one will bomb anything on Earth.
14. Lab-Created Virus
Given that when Stephen Hawking was asked about the threats to humanity, he, a super smart dude, answered that nuclear war, global warming and artificially created diseases were, are and will be the main threats to humanity, so I would like to say that we should perceive it is very serious.
Artificial viruses - viruses that have been genetically modified in order to turn them into a kind of weapon. Sounds amazing, doesn't it? We will all die because we will not be able to stop the war, but we will spread the infection to each other.
Considering today's internal structure of city life, diseases have the ability to spread very quickly in society. Think of all the people you talk to every day at work, in the gym, in the coffee shop, in the store. In principle, we are doomed, especially if the disease is transmitted by airborne droplets.
The simplest way to stop this is not to use such biological weapons in the course of hostilities.
13. Pandemic
If the 2014 Ebola outbreak is any warning, we are not prepared for a large-scale epidemic, because it could lead to a real extinction.
Being sick is no joke, and yet it seems that we don't always take the precautions that modern society offers. We should all get the flu shots we need, take our vitamins, use condoms, and basically do whatever the doctors say to be healthy.
Unfortunately, this is not always enough. If an airborne virus were to hit us, we would be in grave danger. Of course, the Ebola virus outbreak hit a part of the world that was not equipped with the resources to fight even common diseases, but honestly, what part of the planet has the means to fight an epidemic of enormous proportions?
Our urban structures and lifestyles will not help. People living in Tokyo, Los Angeles, New York and London are doomed. Let's hope that there is a scientist who works somewhere in the laboratory to prevent the Black Death from happening again.
12. Polluted air
Look, you may or may not believe in global warming. It's none of my business, but the air could be our doom. How crazy is that? What you breathe, every second, every day, can be the thing that destroys and kills us all.
Already in New Delhi, India, air pollution is one of the leading causes of death. In China, the smog is so strong that people wear respirators because they cannot breathe such air.
One way to protect yourself and the Earth from being destroyed by polluted air is to reduce your carbon footprint. Blah, blah, blah, car pools, use of public transport and other such things. Well, it's all true. Also, moving to less populated areas could help, maybe not the Earth, but you. Cities such as Beijing, Mexico City and New Delhi are overpopulated and excessively polluted as a result. Moving to the wilderness would not necessarily save the Earth from air pollution, but it could save us from death in the short term. You might be interested in the article 10 sad facts about the future of the Earth.
11. Obesity
There is no really scientific theory of the end of the world due to the fact that we will all become very fat, but it seems that everything is slowly moving towards this. America is the country that already ranks 9th among the countries with the highest number of obese people. In the states, 74% of the population is overweight. 74% of Americans are overweight or obese. The country of Nauru ranks first in this ranking, with 95% of the population being overweight. This is something crazy. Thus, only 5% of people living in Nauru do not have problems with being overweight.
There are many factors that make you fat, one of them is the transition to a more sedentary lifestyle. We always, always sit. I am sitting right now typing this article. You are probably sitting reading it. Just a couple of decades ago, everyone is in a hurry and running to work in factories, women who did housework and did incredible work. Now everything is equipped with electronics and does not present such difficulties as before, and does not make you overwork much. In addition, we consume processed foods and the media hits our heads with ads that make us hungry all the time.
So what if we all get fat and obese? The scary statistic is that this generation of children have a higher percentage of deaths before their parents.. Basically, we all gain weight, get fat and die. However, the fact that a generation of obese children will grow up to be a generation of obese people who will not be able to do daily mundane things like walking up stairs is scary.
This possible doomsday scenario is very easy to solve: stay healthy.
10 Asteroid Impact
This, like a possible solar flare, seems like one of those ends of the world that we definitely won't survive. Thanks to Hollywood, although it only seems so, we are able to fool an asteroid heading straight for us and avoid extinction.
In the movie Armageddon, Hollywood came up with the idea of just blowing up an object that is heading towards Earth, which actually seems to be the most correct thing to do. Is he moving here? Let's bomb him back. Although doing this is really just creating a bunch of smaller asteroids hitting the earth and possibly creating even more destruction.
In other Hollywood movie theories, we could create something to push the asteroid away from Earth's gravity zone. Apparently, that theory is actually plausible, as the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft actually reached the comet in 2014. The bad news is that it took Rosetta a decade to get to the comet. It is clear that the smart space guys need to step up their research in this area if they are going to save from an asteroid.
9. Overpopulation
The idea of the end of the world due to too many people may sound strange, but it is possible. The problem, in fact, is not in the number of people themselves, but in the amount of resources that all these people need. Think about the food, water, and even air that we humans must consume on a daily basis in order to survive.
It's tons of crap that poor old Earth can't handle. In addition to feeding, clothing and supporting new people, we pollute the world and add factors that contribute to the development of global warming.
The solution is simple. Just use a condom, right? Stop having kids. If each couple had only one child, we would cut the population in half - but then we would have a completely different problem.
On the plus side, fewer kids also means fewer trips to take the kids to football practice, which will reduce carbon footprint. A win-win! Hooray!
8. Mass psychosis
If you're not the type to take medication for a hormonal disorder, personality disorder, or some mental illness, you're in the minority. Everyone seems to be on medication now. This could lead to one thing - either mass psychosis or an overdose. Of course, this, if it happens, is likely much later, but the mass psychosis is believed to have happened before, so it certainly could happen again.
The infamous Salem witch trials, which led to the execution of 20 people, are now believed to be the result of mass insanity. One explanation is that the bread they ate was contaminated with a fungus called Clavicepus Purpurea, the same substance from which LSD is made. So yes, people in Salem just ate this bread, they started to run balls over rollers, and they started burning "witches" at the stake. While it seems insane that the entire town believed in witches and burned these suspected witches, it's also a bit out of the ordinary. Personally, I would think that these people were in the cloud.
7. Taking over the world with artificial intelligence
I probably understand why scientists want to create artificial intelligence. They are interested in it. Recently released two films: Ex Machina and Age of Ultron. Movies about how computers took over the world, and it's not such a fictional theory. Google already knows what I'm going to look for literally after I've typed three letters. MS Word is better at grammar than me. Maps applications can get directions to any place on the planet. It's luxurious, but reliance on these machines could lead to ultimate doom. It seems to be poetic in a way.
Can the iPhone really take over the world? No. But it's likely that a super AI army could. They're smarter than us, and unlike us, they don't depend on all those pesky organs and stuff to keep us alive. Listen, Stephen Hawking, a goddamn genius who even spoke out about his fears about building AI machines that would take over the world. If he's afraid of being taken over by robots, then so am I.
How can we avoid all this? Oh easy. Just stop trying to create AI. Bam, done.
6. The collapse of the ecosystem
We hear about all these endangered species and the state of the rainforest all the time, but what does it really mean? Well, if you don't believe in global warming, then this is the result of its influence. Because the ecosystem is so interconnected, destruction of habitat or species is something that will have a domino effect.
For example, bees were dying at an alarming rate, about 30% every year. The cause of death of bees is ambiguous. The first problem is the chemicals the farmers use, the chemicals in turn seem to kill the bees. The second problem could be rising temperatures, which could be, you guessed it, global warming.
Since bees are the largest pollinators of many fruits and nuts, the death of bees will have many serious consequences in the food industry in general.
This is just a tiny tiny example, so you can imagine how, on a larger scale, this could be a disaster.
5. Zombie Apocalypse
Open your eyes. You have no idea how things might end. I have no idea when the end of the world will come. So, why hasn't it arrived yet, for example, as a result of a zombie apocalypse?
Okay, so in the list of events that could happen and lead to the end of the world, we will put the zombie apocalypse at the bottom of the list in terms of probability. That being said, if it ever happened, it would be one of the worst doomsday scenarios and it would be especially sloppy to be one of those condemned to an eternal battle against a growing army of zombies.
To avoid this, we could definitely start thinking of ways to protect ourselves from this possibility. For starters, America spends trillions of dollars a year on defense. Couldn't we allocate a million dollars to one or two super smart doctors who might start trying to plan to prevent this? Let's just get one or two doctors to find out if the cure presented in the World War Z movie can really be created and avoid extinction.
Also, I'm not saying we're all crazy building John Goodman-type bunkers at 10 Cloverfield, but having an emergency kit on hand can help. It will be the same set that government officials tell people to have in case of earthquakes, tornadoes, hurricanes and all that. Basically you will need water, candles, flashlights, a first aid kit, blankets, a radio and everything else you need to have to survive. Also, you could get a long sword like the girl from The Walking Dead. You would be more prepared than most for a zombie apocalypse.
Of course, the likelihood of such a scenario is very small, but, again, who knows?
4. Global eclipse due to atmospheric pollution
If you are afraid of the dark, then this scenario would be the most terrifying, because a global eclipse is exactly that. Our Earth would simply plunge into darkness.
Basically, the air is polluted due to the use of fossil fuels. The results of this pollution absorb solar energy and reflect it back into space, making it more difficult for sunlight to reach Earth.
The eclipse will have dramatic consequences for the entire ecosystem. If plants use sunlight as energy, we would see the death of plants and wildlife, the death of which would have an impact on those who eat these plants, and so on and so forth along the chain.
We have already seen some eclipses as a result of environmental pollution. Since 1950, the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth's surface has decreased by 10% in the States, by 16% in parts of Europe and by 30% in Russia! It's terrible and frightening.
3. Water pollution
As a result of the fact that we humans are basically slackers, the Earth continues to become more and more polluted. This is not good news for our planet, air and of course water.
Given that we need water to sustain life, the threat of water pollution is a threat to life. Currently, 1 billion people in the world do not have access to clean water.
While a simple solution would be to stop dumping pollutants into water bodies, another solution is to create technological advances that could clean up already polluted waters.
2. Depletion of natural resources
Another environmental issue. Something like. Unlike the threat of polluted water, polluted air, or a global eclipse, there is also the danger that we might simply run out of fossils. The earth, unfortunately, is not always able to recover. It's just one planet that we're taking and taking and taking its resources from all the time. There is a possibility that we just use everything, right down to the end.
There is a day called Ecology Debt Day, which is celebrated on the day of the year in which we used the amount of resources that were calculated for the year. Please don't ask me how these smart scientists came up with all this. Basically, it's a day that marks when we've used up what can be rebuilt every year, so we're borrowing resources from the future for the rest of the year. During the 70's, it hit one day in December, the 80's a day in November, and this year, it hit a fucking August day. Yes, on August 8th, 2016, we used everything that was planned for resources for this year. Right now, while you are reading this article, we are already using resources from 2017.
This can be prevented with the same old carbon footprint.
1. The confluence of all possible circumstances at once
And it will probably kill us all a combination of all options for the end of the world, because everything is interconnected.
The huge number of people and overpopulation leads to many causes of global warming, such as the use of all resources and air and water pollution caused by environmental pollution. A global eclipse could cause the destruction of the ecosystem. The pandemic may be incurable if the ecosystem is destroyed. AI doesn't have to live in these conditions, as global warming could provide an ideal setting for the AI revolution. Oh, and then the zombies will come! It's all interconnected. One problem leads to another, which will cause the next, and so on.
Are we doomed? Well, we can all die eventually, and humanity is most likely doomed in the longer term. The point is, we're not doomed right now. Our children and grandchildren should not be doomed if we take the right steps now. Though, as with the zombie apocalypse, we're all pretty overwhelmed, so let's just really hope this doesn't come true.
Recommended to see:
Whether humanity will die or not, we do not know. But how likely is the development of different scenarios for the death of our planet, you can see in the video below.
