How would the World end?

Possible scenarios. We've seen them all in the movies:

Solar collision - Armegeddon
Epidemic - Any zombie movie
Infertility - Children of men
Technology collapse - Terminator 3 / The matrix
Food shortage - Soylent green
World War 3 - The sum of all fears etc.


Which is the most likely? And most unlikely?

I think an epidemic is the most likely while infertility is the least plausible scenario.


Here is an interesting article on the device called the Large Hadron Collider :



This one’s simple enough, scientists will destroy the universe. I’m sure you’ve all heard of the Large Hadron Collider. It was in the news last year and was deemed a doomsday device because theorists said that it could destroy the planet. Well they’re wrong, because it could in theory, destroy the entire universe. In quantum physics it is predicted that the universe is filled with something called vacuum energy. Now think of this energy as gunpowder. It’s ready to explode, all you need is a fuse. So scientists built the Large Hadron Collider.
Without getting to complicated it is believed that the universe is made up of vacuum energy and this vacuum energy could be looked on as gun powder. All you need to ignite this gun powder is a fuse and that fuse is the Large Hadron Collider.
What scientific people fear will happen with the Large Hadron Collider is that one day during the many collision experiments (they slam atoms into each other at the speed of light) certain elements could cause the vacuum energy to collapse in on itself. This would result in the earth being completely destroyed in less than one second and when we say gone we mean completely gone in one second without any trace. No debris and no gas left over. Once the earth was completely wiped out a huge wave of unimaginable destruction would begin to sweep through the universe at the speed of light destroying everything in its path. Nothing in the universe would survive and it would all be wiped out with no trace at all.

Other (Giant Foot).

Not with a bang, but with a whimper.

Other (Enslaved by Ant Overlords, Made to Toil In Underground Sugar Caves).

"I, for one, welcome our new ant overlords!"

Well, Alien Invasion, Asteriod Collision, and Greenhouse Effect should all be listed under Natural Disasters.

I reckon it'll be some sort of nuclear warfare. As I believe the great Albert Einstein once said:

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"When I was younger, I always wanted to be somebody. Now that I'm older, I realise I should've been more specific."

Not well.

Other: Overenthusiastic Boredom.

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It's what you learn after you know it all that counts. - John Wooden
My IMDb page

I'm going to throw my intellect at this one...

The options are based solely on human faults and disease... the planet would recover eventually, even if we had a Nuclear War, life would go on as normal without humans being around. Plus most diseases and infertility would hurt a few lifeforms... but not all of them, not by a long shot. Life would still go on.

Technology collapsing would barely touch human life. We'd learn to live. We've lived with 'tech' for barely 100 years... humans have been around for 150,000 years.

As for food shortage... that's just panic mongering media frenzy just like Global Warming. Even if it did happen... we'd find a way to fix the problem through human intervention.

Natural disasters (earthquakes, volcanos, floods etc) wouldn't finish off the planet, unless it's the earth's upper layers completely turning inside out, but most oceanic life would carry on regardless anyway.
Even Ice Ages wouldn't affect the Earth really. Ice Ages come and go as regularly as the seasons.


Out of the options, there's only one that would be a guaranteed end to our planet: An asteroid impact.
It would need to be a large one though to kill off bacteria... which would still be difficult... bacterial life has been found right down below the Earth's crust where it's safe, so for success in creating the 'end of the world'... the asteroid would need to shatter the planet completely.
In saying that... the Kuiper Belt has more than a few rocks big enough to do that... all it would take is a freak collision to send one of them toward us.



As for the option 'Other'...

Our Star exploding... though that won't be for another few hundred billion years.

I'd say the most succesful end of the world scenario would be a black hole coming into our Solar System. Hard to spot and we'd be finished for sure, and without even knowing it's coming.
I'm going with Black Hole and voting 'Other'.

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Kirstie Alley will eat it.



And afterwards, Earth will become a gas planet.

If Kirsty Alley wanted to eat me, I wouldn't fight.

^^This^^

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5-time MoFo Award winner.

Supervolcano under Yellowstone National Park.

Pops every 600,000 years and last one was 640,000 years ago.

Will end the World as we know it but won't wipe us out completely.

Say bye bye to the good old U.S.A when she blows.

Right after Ashton Kucther accepts his academy award for portraying Steve Jobs in Jobs God loses faith in humanity and blows up the world.

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Going 18600 miles per second.

So basically we will not even know it's happened, not so bad then. Rather that than Kirstie Alley!

*shudders*

I'll go with our ant overlords. It's the most likely scenario.

We will destroy this world, in what way! I really don't know. Look at Brazil, they are destroying the forests and also I heard reports that fuel will only last for another 100 years. Without fuel we will be like people were 150 years ago. Oil/fuel make planes, cars, TV's, furniture, electricity, ovens, microwaves and so on and so on and so on...you get my drift!

Alternatives to fossil fuels are being surpressed by big Oil in order to maximise profit on whats left.

People have even been jailed on trumped up charges when they have invented Petrol alternatives. Don't have a link to that info but could probably find out.

It'll end when I die.