How will the world (or maybe just civilization) end in the next 50 years? (Poll)

Sean_sl said:

Voted for Rapture since it's the most interesting, yet least likely scenario!

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Pancreas_sl said:

Except man is producing conditions that are leading to nastier, deadlier pathogens. We are creating environments that couldn't occur naturally, and micro organisms are adapting to these new environments with frightening efficiency. Expecting some random plague to erupt out of the rain forest is not as likely as one coming out of an overcrowded farm or hospital.



Except people couldn't be on the other side of the world in less than a day back then, and cities were not as densely populated as they are now. Combine those two and the ability for a disease to wipe out larger portions of a populace is increased. We have better methods of identifying and treating these conditions, but there may come a point when population density and mobility out paces our ability to successfully contain outbreaks.

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tad10_sl said:

This doesn't seem correct to me. They're finding new earth orbit crossing asteroids all the time and even a 150m asteroid can cause significant problems.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/

Is there an astronomer in the house?

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Firewater Burns_sl said:

You forgot the most probable end: Total global financial collapse from endlessly printing money. Leading to hyperinflation as the global reserve currency (US dollar) starts to look like the Zimbabwean Dollar.

Thus leading to the bankruptcy of the welfare state, where as, the poor and by now the total lack of middle class, having nothing left to lose, unleash massive civil unrest. Bringing the modern industrial world to it's knees!

Or

Thus leading the world powers, with rising discontent, and a glut of young, unemployed, draftable, citizens, to initiate hard line stances on foreign policy issues. Leading to a conventional World War on an unprecedented scale.

Or

You know, Aliens, from Mexico, now classified as invaders, using all those great guns we sold them in fast and furious...

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Eomer_sl said:

I provided a citation. Like it said, approximately 90% of the planet killers (1+ km) in NEO have been found. Less than half of the objects 100m-1000m have been found, however most of those objects are at the smaller end of the scale. A 150m asteroid has an impact energy of about 70 MT, which is fucking huge but also quite likely to be like Tunguska, crashing in to the middle of nowhere. And even those events are apparently fairly rare, at every 16,000 years, according to the link I provided earlier:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_...nd_frequencies

Even if it did have really, really good aim it would only take out a single city, not end humanity. The ones that could possibly end civilization or at least cause a global catastrophe have frequencies of over 100,000 years. The risk isn't zero, but it's not high either, at least on human time scales. We've got lots of time to get good at playing dice in the solar system, and in the meantime there's a lot more pressing concerns to worry about.

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