The 5 most likely doomsday scenarios

There are a ton of different possible situations as to how the world could end, with everything from an alien invasion to a zombie virus outbreak usually making the list. In reality, the chances of the most expected things happening are highly unlikely as a virus lacks the ability to control its host like a zombie and A.I is a huge way off from creating terminators to wipe out the human race. Here are The 5 most likely doomsday scenarios and realistic situations that could end the world as we know it.

A new Ice Age

Something that most people don’t know is that we are currently living in an ice age. There have been five major ice ages in Earth’s history and some have lasted for millions of years, but every so often there’s an inter-glacial period where the Earth warms up enough for animals to thrive. The last glacial period peaked around 20,000 years ago and ended around 12,000 years ago, and since then the earth has been getting warmer. The problem is that we are overdue for another glacial period by a few hundred years according to some research, and in the past when a glacial period comes the earth gets colder very fast.

It can take a few hundred years for the temperature to reach a level that no one would be able to survive in, but before that happens mass starvation from the lack of crops and the spread of disease and of course, freezing to death could gradually break down society as we know it. Instead of something that “might” happen, the earth is guaranteed at some point in the not-too-distant future to fall back into a frozen wasteland.

Pandemic

The latest pandemic is the Coronavirus which is getting worse by the day, but pandemics are nothing new and disease causes more deaths each year than war and accidents combined. When a new disease comes out there is a chance that it’ll only kill a small amount of people who are already susceptible to illness, and a vaccine could come out weeks after it’s noticed. On the other hand, an antibiotic-resistant virus could emerge and constantly mutate into something new, causing the deaths of most of the earth’s population.

Over the last couple of decades, we’ve seen Sars, swine flu, Ebola, mad cow disease, and a ton of other things that haven’t caused the breakdown of society, but it only takes the right one to evolve in the right way to cause another disaster like the black death did, a disease that killed half the populations of the countries it affected.

The Yellow stone super volcano

The Yellowstone volcano isn’t even close to being one of the tallest in the world, but it does have a magma chamber larger than any other. The lava-filled chamber in the main body of the volcano is big enough to hold a major city and contains enough liquid rock to wipe out several of them. There have been three major eruptions over the last 2.1 million years which occur in 600,000 to 700,000-year intervals. The last major eruption was 640,000 years ago which leads some to believe we are overdue for one but as of yet no eruption activity has been detected. The monitoring stations have found no minor activity of any form leading up to what could become an eruption.

The eruption is 40,000 years overdue from one perspective, but not due for up to 60,000 years by the other. If it did go off then the shear force of the eruption would trigger earthquakes and tidal waves around the planet, and the amount of ash would spread around the world in weeks. Crops would be starved of sunlight and covered in volcanic ash and water sources would become contaminated, not to mention the physical effects of major earthquakes crippling infrastructure and collapsing buildings.

War

Of course, it would be people who are the most likely to wipe themselves out. War in general is as old as the human race itself and even though it causes horrible tragedies it has never come close to actually wiping humans out. The Second World War was the biggest conflict in history and saw approximately 60 million people killed, most of which were civilians, but in terms of the global population loss, this was less than 3%.

Technology is our friend, or possibly the reason that a handful of people will be able to wipe us all out. So far the deadliest things humans have created are a nerve agent called VX which can kill in minutes from as little as 10mg, and nuclear weapons. The problem with nuclear weapons is that when the next Hitler comes along there’s a very high chance he’ll use them if he has access. When one person hits the launch button the enemies will launch back and cause a domino effect of nuclear fire. Certain countries have had nuclear weapons for decades and haven’t used them, or not since Hiroshima at least, but as long as the countries of the world get along as friends this won’t happen, because it’s highly likely they will all be pals forever, right?

The melting of Antarctica

This enormous continent holds around 90% of the world’s freshwater supply and contains enough ice to flood millions of square miles of land. There have recently been some troubling findings from the researchers stationed there who’ve found glaciers to be melting at an accelerated pace, to the point where they are melting much faster than they should. If all the ice on the continent melted then it would raise sea levels by over 60 meters. This may not seem like a huge amount but it would put entire countries underwater and displace well over half the earth’s population.

People already struggle to grow enough food in many countries and if sea levels forced everyone into a much smaller space then mass starvation and disease would be the initial killer. It would also put thousands of mines and other raw material sources out of reach and cause shortages of pretty much everything. After the human race had finished killing each other over resources and dying from disease and starvation, there would most likely be less than half the people there are now.