Five Ways the World can End

Five Ways the World can End

www.foxnews.com

How many ways can the world end? We can think of at least five.

But before we get into detail, let's dismiss two things that won't cause the demise of the planet.

Global warming is bad for people who live in low-lying coastal areas and at the edges of deserts, but the truth is that Earth been much warmer throughout most of the past 500 million years, and life did just fine.

(visit the link for the full news article)

Well, this is interesting. Super volcanoes, asteroid hitting the Earth, nuclear war, massive blackholes. Sounds like they've been reading ATS recently or at least one of it's competitors. What is everyone's take on this article? Besides of course calling Foxnews fearmongerers like you guys always do.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Unfortunately, global warming can certainly contribute to a world ending scenario. Too much heat = world wide drought, then famine. Then, all it takes is a country with a starving population to level the playing field...

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


nah, it wont be a boring end if it comes.

Well, this is just a technicality, but the title is misleading.

The WORLD will not end with most of those scenarios. However, the human race might die out.

Believe it or not, we are NOT the world, and the world managed without us for quite a long time, and I dare say will manage without us quite well when we inevitably cease to exist as humans.

After all, the one way that "humanity" most assuredly WILL come to an end is evolution. (Assuming that it survives long enough to evolve.) And since the word "world" in that article seems to actually mean "humans" I think that should have been included.

Actually, this is one report that I completely agree with and am glad to see that Fox put this out. There is not a great deal of spin and there is a strong measure of research in the report.
All 5 of the global killer events listed are perfectly logical and theoretically possible.

I am particluarly glad to see the honesty about global warming not being a global killer event. It looks like that ship has sailed for more accurate science.

Supermassive fissure eruptions, black hole, nuclear winter, asteroid impact and the expanding sun. All great ways to go out with a bang. Of course, they did agree that the only one that will definitely happen is the expanding sun. There's just nothing we can do about that.

Its sad really. Our poor little solar system on has about 1 billion years left before being consumed by her matriarch.

reply to post by Illusionsaregrander


A black hole and the expanding sun could most assuredly be the end of the world. I realize that the other reasons do focus on human loss, but they do also have an impact on the world. An asteroid large enough could certainly destroy the world.

The image of a "global killer" event uses the word world far to often to represent humanity. On that, I certainly agree with you. There are more than 5 ways to kill off humanity. In that scenario, certainly the temperature has to be a key factor. Warming and cooling have both left their marks on the planets history.

I agree that a black hole or the expanding sun could be the end of the world, and feasibly even the asteroid scenario.

It just annoys me both that humans are so incredibly egocentric, and that "science" articles are so sloppily constructed that they cant even be bothered to distinguish between a world ending event, a life ending event, and a species ending event.

can someone explain to me how the volcano scenario would play out?

all i can see happening in the scenario is one continent being destroyed.

reply to post by iced_blue


It has to do with the amount of ash and debris getting into the air/atmosphere and blocking out sunlight for a time. That would also cause choking of oxygen levels, colder weather from the sun's heat being blocked out, killing off plant life and in turn animal life. The ash would also cause widespread panic because of it getting into vehicle engines and killing them. It would be likely toxic to breath it so that would also be another killing factor.

reply to post by iced_blue


First of all, the premise for the volcanic disaster is not from the eruptions of volcanoes, but from large fissures broken open in the techtonic plates of the earths crust. The global killer scenario is obscured in the report because it starts off as if volcanic eruption is the killer event, but then goes on to compare it to the fissure eruptions from 250 million years ago. The destruction is a life killer, not a planet killer. The life killing aspect is the 100s and 1000s of miles of lava spewing up from the core combined with the toxic gases and ash being sprayed into the atmosphere.
The lava melts off everything on the surface, except of course the actual surface itself. The ash and gas makes the air toxic and dark. Sunlight is blocked out, the ozone layer becomes more damaged, life runs out of food in stages until everything is dead. Solar radiation turns the land into a dust bowl and the seas into poison.

Of course, the earth still spins and runs round the sun. The moon still orbits and has her way with the tides.

In a few thousand years, some microbe that had been dormant deep in the earth's crust or at the bottom of the abyss slowly makes its way to the surface. One day, it crawls out of the water and eventually it will grow legs. It creates fire, weapons, buildings, computers and bombs. In a million years, it too will see its own demise and blame global warming for the entire thing.

I guess if all people were dead the world would have ended at least for human kind.

I see a deadly biological weapon getting loose from a lab and mutating to be such a virulent disease that everyone gets sick and dies.

Then the dogs take over!

The world can both stop and cast in HELL times -infinity.

Then the world no longer is (I plural), is (I plural) lume, yet is (I plural) in such sever how commas tell against -one still and against -all still and against -men lume still.

Can God have revenge deep against those both knowledge-able and ignorant-able and wise-able?

God can hurt negative infinity-type in each way side-side-side (side times side times side times).

"Plural I times" rescore negative infinitely into such more into negative infinity...