End of the World Scenarios?

with hopes that things can change so that the end is NOT near I will list briefly (for lack of time {right now}) things that may or may not contribute to beginning of the end (most of which are already in play)

Greed in many ways:
1) by food processors trying to make money by marketing far from nutritional "food products" and these same processors exploiting the health in newly developing markets (For example Nestle likes to claim, frequently to people who will not know any better, that processed infant formula is better and more nutritional than a mother's milk)

2) by large corporations and banks getting BEYOND wealthy at the expense of the people everywhere losing the little they have left

3) by countries who appear to be or who hope to appear to have a humanitarian focus but who exploit other nations in order to provide cheaper commodities to their own people

4) by countries who can be persuaded to forget about human rights violations when other countries agree to import more goods from them...selling out!
etc., etc., etc...

other issues:
over population; world food shortages yielding world hunger & famine

nuclear warfare and the never-ending (so it seems) local and international ideological battles that create unnecessary tension and hatred that often fuels violence

environmental melt down in regards to available farmland that hasn't been executed in a sustainable way

climate change that affects global weather patterns: causing detrimental storms, rain pattern changes which could greatly affect agriculture

water shortages that can affect all aspects of life

we as humans need to wake up, care for each other, and the land that sustains us. Open your hearts to each other and open your mind to all that is.

 

An anti cancer Immunization drug under testing gets stolen and brought to China where it interacts with some of the less closely governed GMO products after some of the smuggler / patients eat some Tainted Tofu making,,, here it comes,,, hold your breath,,, wait for it,,,

28 days later type Zombies. Thats right, not "undead" just infected with a virus that makes people raging sociopaths and constantly nauseous thereby the virus increases it's chances of spreading via projectile vomiting as well as ensuring the Mad as a hatter disease carriers are always trying to bite their targets for a quick "Snack on the go".

OR the virus will arise once the next great famine hits and the starving masses stumble across the Monsanto lab's with similar results after eating "not for human consumption" grains and veggies that were initially being weaponized for use in the Middle east and other places the Federated Corporation of America has a habit of poking with a pointy stick..

 

A new strain of Ebola emerges out of Africa which quickly mutates into a more virulent pneumonic form of the disease. This new airborne strain has a mortality rate of 88% striking down all in its path.

The panic stricken populace begin to flee the cities and begin to fight amongst each other for food, water, and transportation.

The military is called out to quell the uprisings but they too eventually succumb to the disease. Roving gangs of survivors begin to stake out their territory. They begin to wage war against each other for the depleted resources.

To be continued…


H

 

Now are we talking the end of the world,
the end the humans reign or
the end of society as we know it?

If we are talking the end of the world as in a dead planet then the best would be the planet getting zapped by a gamma ray burst. That would basically fry the planet's surface in a matter of a few seconds, too fast for us to even really take notice of it.

If it's the end of humans reign on earth, well who can beat a nice big asteroid. Not so big as to completely screw the planet, just wipe out the current food chain and bring about mass extinctions.

But the absolute worst for the world right now, and actually one of the most likely is a huge mass coronal ejection, or big friggin' solar flare in layman's terms.
Getting bitch slapped by the sun.
I think that would be the worst and would definitely bring about the end of civilization as we know it. Think it through for a minute, EVERYTHING electrical would be fried and rendered useless. Communication would be dead. Transportation would be dead. Mass food production would be dead.
All the stuff used to make the stuff that got fried would also be fried.
All the machinery we depend on daily would be fried.
The planet would essentially be thrust back to a time pre-industrial revolution at least.


Scary thing is that the sun is supposedly entering a period a very strong solar flare activity and just such a massive ejection could occur.

 

Humans will be dead long before the world dies. And if there are no humans there to experience the end of the world, would it really happen?

 

Humanity might destroy itself. But probably not the universe or the planet. Even if the ecosystems change or deforestation takes place, the world will outlive us, it does not care what kind of climate or lack there of it has. I just hope humanity leaves the green and fertility of the earth intact enough to bounce back eventually.

 

I do believe that if humanity continues on the path it has chosen to take we will eventually destroy ourselves. I hope that we change and do so in time to right the wrongs we've done, but only time will tell....

 

It's not the heat that fries everything, it's the Electro Magnetic Radiation that would render electronic devices useless. The last big one recorded was in the late 1800's and it overloaded the telegraph lines with so much EMR that many lines literally burned and shorted out.
The norther hemisphere regularly gets hit with EM blasts that bring down communication relays, satellites and similar equipment. There have been a few blackouts that were also the result of circuits being overloaded and fried from strong solar flares.
Humans wouldn't even really feel the EM blast, but it would reek havoc on anything with electrical circuits. That is why I said it would send the planet back about 150 years technologically. Any electrical device would be dead.

It is the same energy that produces the Northern lights. When it hits the magnetosphere surrounding the planet the interaction excites the ions in the atmosphere and we get a pretty light show.
Luckily the majority of the energy is deflected by the magnetosphere and goes around the planet, but every once in a while one is powerful enough to punch right on through.

I've seen a few links/threads about this very thing here.

 

acoustic guitar will still work..

 

And harmonicas

 

And Kazoos..

 

sorry but none of my options are in the poll. (i am not at all "unsure", and none of the others come even close)

humanity MAY come VERY CLOSE to destroying itself by coming very close to destroying the entire web of life, BUT, the mineral substrate of the planet will remain intact long after humanity as a species has been naturally extinct for as unimaginably long of a time, as it existed before life ever emerged on it.

nor will the extinction of humanity happen within the lifetimes of anyone now living.

but it may likely come very close to within the next few centuries, or even decades.

and i would give almost anything to be one of the grandchildren of the relatively small percentage of humanity that does survive that probable but not inevitable, near extinction event. one which yes, current policy of currently dominant governments and cultures, ARE creating.

i say not inevitable, because changes in course, however unlikely they may appear now, or any time foreseeable, can, and are not THAT unlikely to, occur.

eventually of course, many hundreds of thousands of years down the road, humanity, what we today call humanity, will have become extinct. but it won't likely be for many millions or even billions of years after that, that loss of integrity of the mineral substrate of the planet is likely to occur.

 

Wealth and technology mean the 3rd world country populations multiply because of the advances in medical technology. More natural landscapes destroyed for housing AND for farming areas, be it hydroponic or traditional methods. Obviously even less trees, plants, and therefore less medication. Because of the exponential increase in population we can't keep up with it by making more houses, so huge slums develop outside cities. New diseases and illnesses evolve in these slums due to the lack of decent sanitation, and the lack of trees, plants and new medication means yet another possible pandemic.
Once again because of the ever increasing population and limited resources, more wars are likely to break out using all our funky new technology which can obliterate continents by the push of a button. Countries will fall apart and fingers will be pointed causing complete pandemonium and world wide chaos.
Even the Amazonian cultures we haven't even discovered yet will go all tribal on our ass cos we chopped down their homes and trod on their mushies.

Whilst all this is going on we're being bombarded by natural disasters - more intense hurricanes, solar flares, and apparently if Yellowstone erupts, the amount of ash and other shit that will get pumped into the upper atmosphere will block out the sun and supposedly cause the next Ice Age - I like that one because then global warmings eradicated and another series of brilliant films is likely to come about in a few thousand years.
More disasters are likely, such as in Australia with all the insane fires and floods, more tsunamis etc.

Earth will live on whilst our dust gets blown around by Arctic winds....

 

The end of humanity is not necessarily the same thing as end of the world. Or more importantly of life on earth. It is my hope that life on earth survives humanity with all our destructive capabilities, and it will probably happen, but you never know. I don't think that human life is more important than animal life, so to me humans going extinct is not the end of anything; the end of my life is something to me. So we'll inevitably go extinct; so what? Nothing can last forever.

 

with typical journalistic hyperbole, any population implosion event, however localized or minor, will likely be headlined "the end of the world".

i do expect a likelihood of one, or rather a protracted sequence of several, within the next few decades. though with very definitely a morning after i would oh so much like to see for myself.

though as i always point out, there is a perfectly good chance of avoiding it if we choose to. it just looks very much like we aren't doing so.

 

I think regardless of what we may or may not think about the human race; we all still want to be around to bare witness to the aftermath and the eventual fall of mankind


H