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Ah nature, Spring is here and what better way to enjoy it than getting out and about
and enjoying a stroll in the countryside, enjoying the MASSIVE WORLD ENDING APOCALYPSE
OF DOOOOOOOM!
Yes nature may be beautiful but it is literally trying to kill us every single second of every
single day and one day it'll win and we'll be dead. Here's our top five Hollywood-esque
ways that could actually happen.
Let's get this one out of the way with because we all know it's going to happen - and at
some point it's almost certain it will. Earth has been hit by giant space rocks before,
and it will be again. And it won't need to be big to spell curtains for most, if not
all, of the human race. It's estimated that anything of larger than a mere 10 kilometers
in diameter scoring a direct hit would be enough to threaten all human life on Earth.
Don't believe me? Well look at the Tunguska event. In 1908 an asteroid between 60-190
metres wide struck central siberia, exploding some 5-10 kilometres above the surface as
heat from the atmosphere tore it apart. The rock exploded with a force of 10-15 megatons
of TNT, and flattened EVERYTHING in a 2,150 square kilometer or 830 square mile, radius.
That's the same as wiping out Luxembourg or Mauritius with an object about the size of
a football field. That is, an ALMIGHTY ***. Asteroids actually hitting the Earth aren't
so much of a problem, it's the shockwave when it explodes in the atmosphere which causes
the damage. And if Tunguska is anything to go by, something 10k wide will spoil your
day. And probably kill you.
How likely is it to happen? Well there are just under 1,000 known near-Earth asteroids
over 1k in size. Given time, all will hit Earth or another planet, and roughly two strike
us every million years. Tunkuska level events, happen every few thousand years, Those similar
to the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor happen every hundred or so.
Still, in 2029 an asteroid called apophis will skim Earth's atmosphere, which will change
it's course enough that it could actually hit in 2036. It's 270-metres wide, enough
to be dubbed, worryingly, a 'nation buster'. Fingers crossed it's not got yours in its
sights. Although knowing its luck with violent world events, I wouldn't want to be Belgium
in 22 years.
Supervolcanoes are another Hollywood classic that are actually a pretty real threat, given
enough time. And unlike Hollywood, not even Jean Claude Van Damme could stop one. Like
a regular volcanic eruption but far bigger, the last one, in Sumatra, hit some 75,000
years ago with a force 10,000 times that of the mount St Helen's eruption. It coated the
Earth in ash - up to a foot deep layer has been recorded 2,500 miles away. Global temperatures
plummeted 21 degrees. It's estimated the number of humans was pushed down to just a couple
of thousand worldwide.
It's estimated that today, the death toll would be *at least* a billion. There are some
40 supervolcanoes worldwide, including two in Britain, although most died out. long ago.
Would you believe it though, Yellowstone, believed to be the world's largest supervolcano
with a magma chamber which you could fit Tokyo into, is long overdue an eruption. If it went
off supervolcano style, it would release the force of 1,000 hiroshima's every second. It's
certainly pretty active, but many seismologists and geologists believe Yellowstone is past
its best, and any future eruption will be a mere few times more powerful than Mt St
Helens. Still a problem, but big enough that we'll see it through.
Otherwise known as the Clathrate gun hypothesis, there's a theory that if the oceans warmed
enough, it could cause a release of countless billions of tonnes of methane hidden below
the seabed. This release of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, would further global warming,
causign the oceans to warm more and to release more gas, causing runaway global warming akin
to the rapid burning of gunpowder in a bullet, hence the name.
There's plenty of things that could cause a catastrophic release of methane. Global
warming is one factor, though the depths of the ocean would warm far more slowly over
the course of hundreds of years. If a huge earthquake struck though, THAT could release
enormous amounts of the gas. And recent changes to the gulf stream weather patterns could
cause rapid warming of isolated parts of the ocean, enough to release several gigatonnes
of methane.
It was once thought that the whole process could happen within just a single human lifetime,
though it's now thought a millenia or so would be more realistic. Either way, it wouldn't
be good for us. The first thing that would happen would be huge oceanic explosions, releasing
plumes of smoke and ash akin to volcanoes which, in the worst cases, could lead to rapid
global cooling. Once the ash settled, rapid global temperature rises would take over,
and ocean acidity would rise rapidly killing off marine life, which after global crop failures,
would likely be our primary source of food.
Think it couldn't happen? It has in the past: 252 million years ago a massive release of
methane is believed to have played a part in the elimination of 96% of all marine species
in so so-called Permian-Triassic extinction event. THAT would be no bueno.
Now this one's not *really* likely to kill us all on it's own. Because strange matter
bubbles and micro-black holes don't tend to just happen. But they are a natural physical
phenomenon and we could theoretically accidentally make one happen, reducing not just humanity
but all of Earth to either a glob of quantum wierdness or a gravitational singularity.
The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in Brookhaven National Laboratory, Long Island, is currently
the second most powerful particle accelerator in the world behind the LHC. But it's about
to be upgraded to 20 times its original power. That's a lot, especially combined with the
advances in knowledge and technical expertise scientists have learned from the LHC.
Some, though not many, experts are concerned that some, ironically, quite low energy experiments
at the souped up RHIC, could create so called strangelets, a hypothetical form of stable
quark matter which could, in the right conditions, start a chain reaction which stablilises everything
else around it into the same state. Ultimately, it would consume the Earth leaving nothing
but a hyper-dense sphere of odd, intert nothingness where our planet used to be.
Alternatively, it could create micro-black holes, though in actual fact these would most
likely die out in a fraction of a second without causing any damage and would, in fact, be
very exciting for physics. So the big headline grabebr not so much of a threat, then. But
the one you haven't heard of is probably going to kill us all.
It probably won't.
Think I'm joking? I'm not joking. We've developed a pretty good system of quarantines and shutting
down transport links in order to contain global pandemics, which is how we managed to mostly
contain the highly infectious SARS virus in 2003. But make no mistake, there are chemicals,
parasites, viruses and bacteria out there that can drastically affect the way we think
and act. And if the system fails, or the diseases evolve, we are done for.
Rabies is the obvious example - a virus which infects the central nervous system and brain
causing inflammation and swelling, and alters the behavior of the host, making them hyper-agressive
in order to facilitate the spread of the disease.
The only reasons rabies hasn't become a massive zombie-ism outbreak of rage virus is that
its incubation period is very slow - it typically takes months or years for symptoms to show,
giving a chance for treatment - and because we've traditionally been pretty good at killing
off rabid animals or isolating rabid people before they get to us. If, at some point in
the future, the virus could evolve a shorter incubation or, far less likely for various
reason, become airborne, we'd be screwed. As it is it still kills tens of thousands
of people a year worldwide.
There are other diseases which could cause chaos too. Parasitic Fungii and larvae can
alter the behaviour of ants, bees and other insects, causing them to kill themselves and
others in a way that allows the parasite to reproduce. One parasitic bacteria called Toxoplasma
Gondii affects mice, causing them to become attracted to cats, who eat them so that the
parasite can reproduce in the cat's gut. That disease can even affect humans, ald although
the number of people infected with it isn't known, one side effect believed to be a reduced
perception of fear and risk - it's been hypothesised it may be a major contributing factor in thousands
of car accidents every year - think the happening and you've just about got it.
Actually don't think the happening. It's an awful, awful film. Humanity probably deserves
to get it in the neck just for that. Anyway, there we have it, five ways in which nature
is just waiting to kill us all off. Some would take months or years, others could happen
tomorrow. So get out there and enjoy the bright sunshine and the clear blue skies, because
it might be the last time you ever see it :D