Not that we spend a lot of days mulling over doomsday scenarios, but theoretically speaking, it appears nearer than ever. Take every other news headline and a million other things that don’t even reach mainstream media, for instance. The ways of the world are not very promising, and if not our creations, our actions may definitely be the end of us, humanity.
Redditors on r/AskReddit community have been pondering over ‘civilization-ending scenarios’, and they appear very realistic. Take a look –
1. “A slow-burn collapse is much more likely than a single major event to cause something major.”
2. “As a kid, I learned that if a gamma-ray burst is coming right at us we really can’t do anything about it, we’d just get fried. Kept me up for a few nights.”
3. “Corn virus. 20% of Human Civilization’s calories, right there.”
4. “I rarely see the media being concerned about water.”
5. “The Big Rip is one of the most interesting possible ways for the universe to die because it happens on scales a human could meaningfully experience. You’d go from a perfectly functional solar system (in an endless void) to the End of All Matter in the span of a couple of months. First, the planets drift away from the star, but you could survive if you have a way of producing heat. Then the planets and the sun explode as gravity can no longer hold them together.”
6. “The aliens finally coming back to harvest their livestock of humans.”
7. “There’s a fear that the trend of human body temp decreasing over time will expose us to more rates of fatal fungal infections. Most people are now less than 98.6 degrees F.”
8. “A successfully created self-replicating nanobot that can consume biomass could trigger a chain reaction in which most of the planet is quickly consumed.”
9. “The disappearance of bees.”
10. “Big volcanic eruption. Winter for a couple of years. So very cold in winter and still snowing in summer. No food. Energy shortages. Massive refugee streams to less affected areas. Etc. Not killing all humans but certainly this civilization. Small but realistic chance.”
It’s strange how the end of the universe looks like a realistic possibility. If not in our lifetime, then not too far away.