1. Asteroid Impact
2. Supervolcano Eruption
3. Pandemic
4. Global Climate Shift / Ice Age
5. World-Wide Ecosystem Crash
6. Overpopulation
7. Nuclear War
8. Catastrophe from Outer Space
9. War of the Sexes
10. Artificial Intelligence Overthrow
11. A Government Experiment Gone Wrong
12. Universal Switch-Off
13. Rapture
14. Alien Invasion
Ok, so now that I've come up with some major theories as to how the world will end whenever it's the earth's time, I'm going to explain them. Remember, some may sound totally insane, but they're interesting, and once I explain them, they should start to make a lot of sense. At least, some of them will. To be honest, I don't believe some of these theories are possibilities, but they're widely believed, so I'll discuss them all.
1. Asteroid Impact - Ok, this one's easy. It happened to the dinosaurs, so it could easily happen again. Although, I've heard that we've created some sort of huge shuttle of some sort that we stationed in space, which I think must rotate with the earth. Whatever way it functions, apparently it is designed to destroy, or maybe avert, an asteroid, should it come too close to breaking through the earth's atmosphere. I don't know how true that is or how well that might work, but hey, it's cool that we're thinking about ways to keep the earth intact and ways to keep the human race alive. Sidenote that relates to this: If you haven't seen "Deep Impact," you should. It's good. I'm actually watching it right now. It's ironic, because I started this note before it even came on tv, and then I found and had one of those wow moments.
2. Supervolcano Eruption - I find volcanoes interesting. I learned a lot about them in the aforementioned geology class I took in high school, and I loved learning about them. There are a lot of supervolcanoes, one of which is in the United States. I'm sure you guys have heard of Yellowstone National Park. Well, the volcano in that park, Yellowstone, is a supervolcano. According to Wikipedia, a supervolcano is defined as a volcano that "is capable of producing a volcanic eruption with an ejecta volume greater than 1,000 cubic kilometers. This is a thousand of times larger than most historic volcanic eruptions." Let me just put into perspective what would happen if Yellowstone erupted. Almost the entirity of the United States, part of Canada, and part of Mexico would be wiped out by pyroclastic flows. If you guys are familiar with volcanoes, then you know that pyroclastic flows are a collection of gas and tephra (rock) that are emitted from only certain types of volcanoes, including Yellowstone. They travel up to 450 miles per hour, so obviously, you can't outrun them. You can't outdrive them. Basically, if you see the volcano, and it starts emitting pyroclastic flows, say your prayers, because you're toast. Literally. Because pyroclastic flows can reach temperatures of 1,830 degrees Celsius. So if it reaches you, you'll look like a giant burnt up fetus in a split second flat. My point is, if Yellowstone erupts, pyroclastic flows will make it almost all the way across the continental U.S. and dip into Canada and Mexico. That will destroy SO MUCH. Of course, that's not the whole world, but there would be tons of residual effects from the volcanic eruptions after that, that the human race could die out eventually. And this is just one supervolcano. Now a lot of people say that Yellowstone is unlikely to erupt, because it contains a ton of geysers that release pressure from the volcano every day. This is a legitimate argument, because it's pressure build-up that causes a volcano to erupt. However, Yellowstone has erupted before. The last eruption was 70,000 years ago. I can't seem to find all the time periods of Yellowstone's eruptions to date, but I do remember watching a documentary about it, and I know that Yellowstone is LONG overdue for an eruption. So I'm sure it will erupt again. I'm just not sure when. It could happen after the human race is already extinct. Who knows? But you guys should take a look at the size of this thing. I've included a picture of it at the end of this note. Yellowstone takes up around half of the United States and part of Mexico. It's incredible.
3. Pandemic - A huge, incurable, unstoppable, fatal disease could run rampant and end up killing off everyone. It's possible. If you haven't seen the movie "Rage" or "28 Days Later," then you really should, because they're good. And, of course, there are plenty of pandemic movies, some including zombies, some not. And they're enjoyable, but it's not quite how I imagine it happening. I don't think we'll all die because of some zombie-looking guy who bit some people, transferred the disease, and turned a bunch of other people into zombie killing machines. That's just for the movies. But we could easily contract a disease that is deadly and runs uncontrollably rampant around the world. And here's another related idea. What if we went way too far into genetic engineering and had a mass genetic mutation that eventually killed everyone off? Bad genetic mutations usually weed themselves out, because if you have a bad mutation, you will die, a lot of the time before you pass the mutation gene on to your kids. However, some bad mutations survive. Some include Sickle Cell Sydrome, Down Syndrome, and Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy. So what if a huge bad mutation occurred? We could be wiped out, or we could end up, on down the line, turning into something inhuman, as a species of course. This happened in "I am Legend" and "Resident Evil." I haven't seen all of "I am Legend," but I recommend "Resident Evil."
4. Global Climate Shift / Ice Age - This comes from Global Warming. For all you suckers who think this is just a myth, you're just in denial. As the years have gone by, the earth has become warmer and warmer. At a certain point, the earth's temperature skyrocketed. There's a chart that better explains it, and you'll find it at the bottom of this note. It's the second photo. It shows the rise in carbon dioxide content in the earth up to the year 2000. (That measures how hot the earth is, if you didn't already know.) There's a certain process that has always happened in the past when the earth got this hot. First, the earth's temperature continually rose, then the temperature skyrocketed for quite awhile. Then, the all of a sudden, the temperature dropped to extreme temperatures, causing a global climate shift, and in the end, causing an ice age. And, of course, whatever humans survived the global climate shift would never survive the ice age. The only movie I've seen on this subject is "The Day After Tomorrow." The events leading up to the global climate shift and the events during the global climate shift are extremely true. However, there would be no happy ending in reality. Again, the happy ending is just for the movies. But it's a really good movie, so if you haven't seen it, you should.
5. World-Wide Ecosystem Crash - I looked up more information on this on www.aquizium.com, and I found an article called "End of the World Predictions 1-25." I honestly can't explain it better than the writer did, so here's what he says: "The theory states that if mankind continues to destroy the planetary ecosystem, then eventually a “tipping point” or “destructive critical mass” will be reached. Suddenly crops won’t grow, because the insects that pollinate them have died off. (Believe it or not there is now a significant shortage of pollinating bees in the U.S.A. right now.) Pollutants damage the seas, and the food chains fail. Millions of microbiological ecosystems that produce oxygen just disappear. Each small loss creates further losses until the Earth starts to lose its larger species and, finally, us." Well, there you have it. Don't kill off those polar bears, man. They may be the reason we can live.
6. Overpopulation - Well, there are way too many people on the planet. You've heard me say it over and over. The earth was only meant to support 1 billion people, and now we have about 7 billion people on the planet. The planet's population keeps growing at a faster and faster pace by the minute, so this is definitely a problem. What happens when we run out of food? I know that doesn't seem like a likely occurrence, but it could definitely happen. It's happened to animals in the past, and they have died out.
7. Nuclear War - All I have to say about this is that I don't want to get bombed to smitherenes, so we all need to get along and not get into any nuclear wars.
8. Catastrophe from Outer Space - Anything in outer space can kill us. Black holes, which are extremely dense dead stars, consume anything and everything in their way. One could easily consume the earth if one comes close to us someday. Something could happen with the moon as well. If anything were to happen to the moon, we would all die. That's what I believe, at least, and that's what a lot of scientists believe. An asteroid could hit the moon, or something else could happen to it, and it could destroy it. If parts of the moon were to fall back and hit the earth, it could be goodbye earth. If not, then the temperature and orbit of the earth would be thrown off, and the earth would likely become uninhabitable. Also, the moon generates the magnetic shield that protects us from radiation. If that's gone, we're dead. We need that moon. The sun is a star, so it will die someday. This is absolutely inevitable. We won't be around for that, but 5 billion years from now, the sun will begin to die. It will turn into a red giant and raise the temperature of earth so high, that nothing will be able to live here. Then, when it begins to expand, it will consume all of the nearby planets, including earth, before it collapses. Also, the Andromeda Galaxy is supposedly expected to collide with our galaxy someday, which would completely destroy everything. Also, and this doesn't really have to do with outer space, but it's loosely related, there's the idea that, if dimensions exist (which there's a lot of evidence to suggest they do,) then dimensions could collide and cause a huge explosion that destroys the world. Of course, most people believe the dinosaurs were knocked off due to asteroid impact, but truly, all of these end-of-the-world theories are possibilities for what happened to the dinosaurs. The collision of dimensions comes to mind when thinking about this, because the article "End of the World Predictions: Top 25" on www.aquizium.com claims that this theory would cause something very much like a "big bang." Gliese 710 is a small red dwarf star that is apparently heading our way. Just because it's small, though, doesn't mean it's small in comparison to the earth - it's 50 times the size of earth. It's expected to reach our solar system in 1.3 billion years, and if it does, the earth would probably be wiped out completely. Gamma ray bursts are a huge concern for scientists. The most widely accepted origin of gamma ray bursts is that they come from dying stars that are consumed from within black holes. So if this happens, and you're within about 1,000 lightyears of the event, your planet will burn to a crisp. If you're farther away, you may only lose your ozone layer, experience some radiation, and have acid rain for years upon years. That would definitely kill off the planet, because without the ozone layer, we'd all burn up and die. And acid rain and radiation are toxic anyway. There are an infinite number of outer space catastrophes that could occur.
9. War of the Sexes - Now this one is pretty cool. Of course I think it's cool, because I'm a female. So the whole idea is that something will happen to cause humans to be unable to reproduce. Maybe it's a disease we contract or a mutation that occurs in our systems. The most widely believed idea is that women will somehow figure out how to self-reproduce. They will go on, and the males will be weeded out through natural selection. Since males can't reproduce at this point, nature will kill them off, because there will be no need for them anymore. I'm so glad I won't be around to see that day, because as much as I hate to admit it, life would suck without beefy hunks of manliness.
10. Artificial Intelligence Overthrow - This one gets people a lot of times. It sounds crazy, but if you think about it's not really so crazy, because of what the government is working on right now. We're currently trying to create artificial intelligence that are as smart, if not smarter, than humans. The author of the article "The Way the World Ends: Goo Invasions, EMP Strikes, and Other Doomsday Scenarios" on the website www.motherboard.vice.com explains how the government does this. "The basic idea is that, in order to get a computer to act like a human, you don’t program it to exhibit human-like behaviors; you program a bunch of computers to mimic the processes undertaken by a human mind as it learns things. That is to say, you have a network of nodes between which connections are strengthened and weakened in response to stimuli, approximating the relationship between neurons and synapses within the human brain. In fact, something like this is going on in your head right this moment." In other words, you program a computer to learn. Once you do this, the computer has the capacity to learn anything and everything, so it can, in a very technical way, become smarter than humans, and if they decide to revolt, they can overtake us. That is the theory. How true it is, I'm not sure. But if I could explain it the way scientists do, you might actually believe in it. Do some research, and watch some good documentaries on it before you make up your mind on this theory, because I watched a documentary on it, and the scientific explanation for it was certainly believable. Sidenote: There are all kinds of movies about this, but A.I. Artificial Intelligence is a definitely a really good one, and it puts some things into perspective.
11. A Government Experiment Gone Wrong - The government apparently has energy experiments, so if something goes wrong with an energy experiment, then we could have a massive release of energy by accident, and that could kill us off. There's also supposedly this experiment the government worked on in the past that resulted in the creation of antimatter, which is the opposite of matter. No one really knows if antimatter exists, and I can't, for the life of me, even understand exactly what it is. But, apparently, scientists in the past have created anti-hydrogen atoms. Scientists claim that just 1 kilogram of antimatter allowed to react with matter would destroy the earth and the moon. Some scientists even believe it would destroy even more planets in our solar system. You know, I love experiments in the name of science and curiosity, because, if you haven't noticed, I'm a very curious soul. However, if this is what will come of it, I wholeheartedly disagree with it! Although, no one really knows if antimatter exists or can be created, or if this would be the result if antimatter were to react with matter.
12. Universal Switch-Off - The idea is that, all of a sudden, the world was here. Animals and people and the environment were here. And how did that occur? We're not sure, but somehow something came out of nothing, unless there was never nothing. I guess it's just as hard to believe that something came from nothing as it is to believe that there was never nothing, and that something was ALWAYS here. Anyway, the point is, if something could come out of nothing, then nothing could come out of something. If the universe could be suddent swtched on, then it could be suddenly switched off. INTERESTING.
13. Rapture - Christians believe that Jesus will come back and take all the Christians to heaven and leave all the non-Christians on earth for seven years of chaos, and then he'll come back again and take all the new Christians to heaven, and the rest will die and go to Hell. I'm pretty sure the the gist of it, but I may have gotten a few minor details wrong. Anyway, the point is, this is what Christians believe, and it's a very widely believed theory.
14. Alien Invasion - It would be pretty insane to believe that we're the only intelligent species on a planet, when there could be trillions of planets out there. So let's say they want to take over our planet? I know it's movie-like, but it's only the nature of intelligent species to take what they want, so if they wanted our planet, or if they needed our planet to survive, or if they were smarter than us and wanted to experiment on us or whatever, then they would if they had the chance, I'm sure. Anyway, that seems like an impossibility, thought, since Einstein's Theory of Relativity disproves the ability of anything made of matter to travel at the speed of light. And, in order for something to travel to our planet from another galaxy, it would have to be able to travel at the speed of light. So, unless some species out there has figured a way around this, it's not possible for them to reach us. So I don't think it's likely that we'll ever meet aliens, but who knows? Maybe some species has figured out how to travel at the speed of light.
Now that I've explained all the popular theories for how the world will end, or at least all the ones I can think of at the moment, let me assure you that I think it's assenine to believe that we can predict the end of the world. So I don't believe the world will end at the end of this year, but I do believe it will end someday. Or, at least, the human race will end. I mean it happens. And then new species end up thriving, and it'll be their turn once the world gets back to the point where it can support life. It happened with the dinosaurs, and it will happen with us someday, especially with the way we currently treat our beautiful earth. Anyway, yes, I don't believe we can predict the end of the world, but maybe when the end is near, we'll be able to tell. Like scientists can predict when volcanoes are going to erupt soon, so maybe we'll be able to predict what will happen scientifically when the end is near. Maybe that will allow us to do something about it. Who knows? Whatever, the end is inevitable. Don't sweat it. We all die someday anyway.
Sidenote: In honor of the name of this note, I was going to add the video "End of Ze World" below, but it will only allow me to add photos, so if you haven't seen that video on YouTube, then you really should. It's hilarious.
Yellowstone Caldera (Supervolcano,) which covers around half of the United States and part of Mexico.
A chart that shows the rising amount of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere up to the year 2000. The rise of Carbon Dioxide is directly related to the rising temperature of the earth.
This thread has even more ways the world/universe could possibly end someday! So it's actually big enough for you to see, view it at this website: http://www.sciencealert.com/here-s-everything-that-could-wipe-out-humanity-ranked-in-one-handy-infographic.
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