The Last Days on Earth
ABC’s 20/20 program recently counted down the seven most likely ways for the world to end. This informative, yet extremely depressing, show was titled Last Days on Earth.
Science superstar Stephen Hawking was on hand to offer his opinions. He said that natural and cosmic disasters could end everyone’s party, but he also added that the biggest threat to humanity may be humanity itself.
The program ranked the seven calamities from the least likely to the most. Let’s count them down and then have a good cry.
7. Death of a Star. Most of us don’t think the sun will burn out in our lifetime. The problem is, we could be victimized by another star burning out, especially a star in our galaxy. When a star burns out, it causes the biggest explosion in the universe.
This explosion is accompanied by gamma.ray bursts. If we get hit by one of these, it will burn off the top layer of our atmosphere. That would wipe out the ozone layer and blast everyone’s molecules to bits. Buildings would be OK, so the entire world would be one big ghost town.
Another galactic calamity is a black hole, which sucks up everything like an enormous vacuum cleaner. Earth isn’t close to a black hole, but scientists recently made the distressing discovery that black holes are not stationary. They can move. We just have to hope they don’t visit our neighborhood.
6. Intelligent Machines. If you’ve seen movies like A.I. or I, Robot, you can envision what it would be like for machines to run amok. The scientists on 20/20 couldn’t say exactly how the machines could stage a techno-coup d’etat. The scientists just said that giving machines the ability to think for themselves could lead to bad things.
5. Asteroids. As bad as it sounds for a huge asteroid to smash into the earth, we may not have to worry about this one too much. For one thing, scientists will be able to give us years of advance warning about a runaway asteroid. Even better, astronauts might be able to use a space platform to divert an asteroid away from the Earth. So I think this won’t be a problem.
4. Supervolcanos. Now here’s a problem. Did you even know supervolcanos existed? The last time one blew up, the city of Pompeii was instantly buried by ash from Mt. Vesuvius. Scientists have located several supervolcanos around the world, including one in Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. If that one goes off, it will make Mt. Vesuvius look like a mashed-potato mishap.
3. Nuclear War. I used to have nightmares about this when I was growing up in the Eighties. Fortunately Sting sang “I hope the Russians love their children, too,” and the Berlin Wall promptly fell down. Although America is at peace with the former Soviet Union, most of the nukes are still in place and could be activated within 15 minutes. So even an accident could cause us to annihilate our new friends, or vice versa. Let’s hope the people in the control room have seen the video for “99 Luftballons.”
2. Pandemic Flu. This is another really scary one. Just 90 years ago, the flu killed millions of people. With the new strains of bird flu that scientists are trying to control, the world is holding its breath that the other shoe won’t drop. The worst part is that there is nothing we can do about it, before or after an outbreak. We just have to hope for the best.
1. Global Warming. All of the previous calamities were either caused by nature or humans. This one falls into both categories. Humanity’s use of the earth’s resources has caused the ozone layer to be depleted and the polar ice caps are melting. Al Gore’s documentary film “An Inconvenient Truth” deals with this issue. Some people think global warming is a myth, especially when they are shoveling 12 inches of snow. Scientists and Gore believe the melting ice caps could submerge several major cities, including London. The show ended on the somewhat hopeful note that we can work to slow the effects of global warming if we take the problem seriously.
If you’ve made it to the end of this story and the world has not ended, congratulations!
