The World: How Will it End?

By Luke Langlois

I know my posts recently have been pretty negative. First, a review of our decade (we can’t get anything done), then, a showcasing of diseases that will kill, and now, you will learn some of the different ways our world could, well, stop turning! 99% of all species that have existed have gone extinct. Eventually, it’ll be our turn (unless we colonize Jupiter). The following are ways the world may end:

1. Asteroid Impact: Due to Earth’s gravity, an object in freefall accelerates at a rate of 9.8 meters per second squared. It can be painful to jump out of your bed too quickly, and, if you fall from a height of about 3 meters, you could risk fracturing a bone. Imagine a massive cosmic rock smashing into our planet. The impact and aftereffects could be tremendous enough to end civilization as we know it. . . Shoutout to the dinosaurs.
2. Black Hole: If a rogue black hole somehow stumbled close to Earth, we would have a bad time. A black hole’s gravity is so powerful that light itself is unable to escape from its grasp (thus the modifier “black”). If Earth even felt a smidgen of that gravity, it could lose its controlled orbit, which would cause extreme climate shifts. Or, Earth could get flung from our solar system and meet an ice-cold death in deep space.   
3. Climate Change: We would prefer that the oceans do not engulf California, thank you. 
4. Global Epidemic: Just one itty bitty viral DNA/RNA mutation could indeed spell the end of human civilization as we know it. Prominent outbreaks like the black plague and the Spanish flu have already wiped out tens of millions of us, so if a disease took it just one step further, who knows what could happen?
5. A Reversal of Earth’s Magnetic Field: Earth has a magnetic field. That would be the reason why compasses work. Surprisingly, there were compasses before the compass app on the iPhone. Anyway, every few hundred thousand years, the Earth’s magnetic field shrinks until it is almost nothing, and it remains that way for a century or so. Then, it FLIPS! The last time this happened was around 780,000 years ago. It may be about that time! Without the magnetic field, we would be more susceptible to cosmic particle strikes on our atmosphere. That is not good news, especially considering the fact that we already are wounding our atmosphere.
6. Global Warfare: Usually, it is my opinion that the Doomsday “seconds to midnight” Clock does nothing but stir up unnecessary fear. For the purposes of this post, however, let us embrace that fear. We are 100 seconds (closer than ever) to DOOMSDAY! That largely has to do with the fact that we have tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on our planet, more than enough to wipe each other out ten times over (figure not exact). Dear fellow youth, let’s not do that. 
7. Technological Terror:  As the former governor of California once said, “I’ll be back.” While we certainly are more creative and innovative than our technological counterparts, there is no doubt that computers can store and process information much more effectively than our brains. If we are not careful with our developments and let artificial intelligence learn without boundaries, we may find ourselves up against an unstoppable force. Perhaps there will be no killer robots involved, but our exponentially increasing reliance on our devices may lead us to inevitable doom. I’m watching you, Chromebook. 
8. Overpopulation: Thomas Malthus warned us about this! According to the United Nations, in the year 2050 the population will be about 9.7 billion. In 2100, it could rise to about 11 billion. This is kind of a given, but that is a LOT of people. We may figure out how to deal with it, but we also may not. This massive population would contribute to our overzealous resource consumption and our continued destruction of the environment.
9. Supervolcano: If you’ve ever watched a science fiction movie detailing the end of the world, there’s a 50% chance it included a supervolcano. The fear with a supervolcano is similar to that of an asteroid strike. If the volcano is powerful enough, its emitted particles and ash could effectively block out the sun and shatter the ecosystem by freezing us out. 
10. The Sun Explodes: Once the sun has consumed all of its core hydrogen fuel, it will die out just like any other star. We will be consumed by its supernova and, if anything survives, it will freeze over. This one is actually inevitable, but we have a couple of billion years before it will happen. I’m not making any assumptions on your lifespan, so please do not be offended, but you will probably be dead when the sun explodes. 

Sometimes, life is just out of your control. Life is especially out of your control if a country-sized asteroid lands in your backyard. Thanks for reading.

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Humanity Editor: Doreen Yuan