Top 10 Craziest Apocalypse Scenarios
#10: Catastrophic Volcano Eruption
Did you know that there’s a massive supervolcano buried underneath the western United States? It’s called the Yellowstone Caldera and it’s had three major eruptions over the last 3 million years. Ash from a major eruption could theoretically blanket the whole country -- over 3 feet deep in some places. There’d also be lava and explosions up to 40 miles around Yellowstone Park, but the ash is the real killer. Aside from clogging infrastructure and ruining crops, that much of it could cause a global winter, much like that from a nuclear bomb. A big enough supervolcano could change the global climate for up to a decade. Luckily for us, the experts say the Yellowstone volcano won’t erupt in the next couple thousand years. Probably.
#9: Cosmic Collision
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You’ve seen dozens of movies where an asteroid threatens all life on earth and humans band together to stop it. Asteroids aren’t the only thing zipping around space though. A hypervelocity star passing too close could burn us up like a marshmallow in a campfire. Thankfully, a star flying at us would be pretty visible, what with all the fire, so at least we’d see it coming. You know what we might not see coming, though? A rogue supermassive black hole. They’ve been identified traveling through space at up to 5 million miles an hour. And one could tear up our entire planet and capture what’s left in the blink of an eye - IF the Earth got close enough, that is. We don’t know of any headed this way, but since they’re not directly visible… that’s also no guarantee.
#8: Solar Flare / Solar Storm
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Of course, that’s all deep space stuff. We’ve got a perfectly good world-ender right in our own solar system: the sun! When the sun shoots off charged particles or plasma bursts, the earth’s magnetic field protects us from burning up completely. But severe solar storms still play havoc with electrical equipment. Experts say a particularly bad storm -- or one that happened when the magnetic field was weak, like during a magnetic pole shift -- could shut down sensitive equipment like, say, power stations for days - maybe years. So while this apocalypse isn’t the kind that just outright kills everyone… how would you feel about heading back to the dark ages?
#7: Man-Made Black Hole
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As if all those cosmic threats weren’t enough, how about getting sucked into a nice home- grown black hole?! When they first powered on the Large Hadron Collider, panic writers went wild, saying it might create a microscopic black hole that would grow until it destroyed the Earth. Fortunately, it didn’t. In fact, despite all that panic, actually trustworthy scientific sources, like… y’know, NASA, were quick to point out that was extremely unlikely. If we did create a micro black hole, it would be small enough to slip through the space between atoms and it would be travelling at near light speed. That means the chances of it grabbing any mass at all -- let alone enough to be a problem -- are astronomical.
#6: AI Takeover
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Actually, a lot of people would say they did see this one coming. Tech industry giant Elon Musk, for example, says AI is a bigger threat than nuclear weapons. Don’t smash your toaster just yet, but scientists are teaching AI to organize swarms of drones, recognize human faces and in the case of the twitter bot, Tay, even get co-opted by the Alt Right. So there’s an image to help you relax. Nazi Terminators! Now there’s no guarantee that a self-aware AI would be evil. But if it was… just look at some of the robots Disney’s building to do stunt work in their movies. Now imagine that that thing wants to destroy all humans. Thank goodness humans have never done anything robots would want to avenge (yet…).
#5: Alien Invasion
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This is another one that you might have considered once or twice. We’ve only been writing about it since, oh, the 1800s! The basic idea is, we’re not alone in the universe. Hooray! But our new neighbors aren’t as friendly as we might like. Un-hooray. Anyway, they come over less to borrow a cup of sugar and more to… exterminate and/or enslave us. Unlike a lot of things on this list, this one actually offers us a chance to fight back. But no less a mind than the late, great Stephen Hawking has warned us that any species with the technology to travel here from another star system isn’t going to be too impressed with our nuclear arsenal.
#4: Actual Zombies
Is a radioactive comet or a necromantic virus going to start turning us into ghouls? Probably not. Is there a very real fungus that takes over the bodies of insects and bends them to its will? Yep! So we’d be in big trouble if a strain of cordyceps ever started targeting humans. Meanwhile, there are plenty of existing plagues that could cause a global pandemic. It might not be as cinematic as turning people into monsters, but there’s basically a new epidemic scare every couple of years. Remember swine flu and bird flu? Ebola? And that’s without even touching on antibiotic-resistant bacteria or the chilling idea of a bioengineered disease getting out of control. Look, all we’re saying is… wash your hands, okay?
#3: Someone Turns Off the Simulation
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None of this is real! The world as we know it is a hologram! Sounds crazy, but it’s a real theory by actual scientists. The logic goes like this: If anyone ever figures out how to make a computer powerful enough to simulate a universe, they’ll do it. And since there’s no reason they could only do it once, they’ll do it a few times. Then, the people inside those universes do it and eventually there are more simulated ones than real. So statistically, that makes us just like Mario, here. And when someone gets bored of the game? We’d never see them reaching for the power button. Nor could we stop them. So… start yelling! Let’s hope Horton Hears a Who.
#2: Grey Goo Scenario [aka von Neumann Machines]
Imagine a robot so small you can’t even see it. Not much of a threat, right? But what if it could make more of itself? And to do so, it could use any matter it found just lying around. Now we have a problem. If they don’t run out of power or matter, those machines could just keep duplicating until they convert the whole dang planet into… well, grey goo. This is a pretty easy apocalypse to avoid, in the grand scheme of things. All we have to do is not build the nanobots in the first place. It’s not like science has ever gone too far and created anything that got out of hand, right? RIGHT?!
#1: The Cosmic Bubble Pops
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In this scenario, what we think of as the vacuum of space is actually pretty lively compared to the true emptiness outside the universe. That’s fine, just so long as the emptiness outside the bubble never gets in by, say… a microscopic wormhole. Or if some very complicated quantum processes just kinda feel like it. Which could happen at any time. It’s phenomenally unlikely to happen soon. But if it did? Hoo boy. A bubble of true vacuum would expand through the universe, incinerating everything in its path and leaving literally nothing behind. And moving at lightspeed, we wouldn’t even see it happening until it hit us. So how do you prepare for the sudden unexpected end of everything? You literally can’t. Sweet dreams!
