The World is abuzz about the end. Everywhere you look there's something else that depicts the End Of The World and there's new stories just about every day. Are we really heading towards the Apocalypse. It's time for us to take a good look at these possibilities.
Nuclear Bombs....Since the early to mid nineties and the end of the Cold War it seems this possibility has decreased at a daily rate until Sept. 11, 2001. A lot of things changed on that day. If they were able to pull off such an unbelievable attack what could they do for an encore? You have to think that if terrorists were to somehow come upon some type of nuclear device they'd be hard pressed to pick a target. The United States would be it's most likely destination but would knowing they only had one bomb as opposed to having hundreds, even thousands pointed at us ease your mind at all? There best bet would be to somehow get Russia and the U.S. in a major fight and then use their one bomb on either a major city in the U.S. or Russia in the hope that one of the SuperPowers would push the button thus destroying most of the planet.
Another scenario would be for the terrorists to somehow breach the Russian Command Center and launch their missles at us from there. Though both of these scenarios seem highly unlikely who would of thought they'd ever be able to hijack 4 airliners and use them against us?
Global Warming....Everywhere you look we're "Going Green." Is it too late to try and save our planet from catastrophic events that were put in motion by us? My feeling is that this didn't just start over the last few years. This is something that took decades to get to this point and it will take decades to repair the damage. The World has always been able to handle Natural Disasters and I have no doubt we could weather just about anything thrown at us by Mother Nature. On a scale of 1-10 with 10 being the worst i'd have to rate this threat at a 3 or maybe 4, in other words not likely.
Asteroid or Comet....Science continues to amaze us at a daily basis and the Scientific Community started preparing for this event years ago. The one thing about an Asteroid or Comet Collision is they're going to know it's coming so we'll hopefully have a few years to get ready. You've seen all the movies where they blow them up with bombs. That would have to be a last chance since blowing one up could rain thousands of smaller ones down on the Earth. Our Technology is at or near the point where we would possibly be able to change the course of the Asteroid so it would miss us. The only bad part about that is when it comes back we may not be able to. I'll give this one a 7 out of 10.
Pandemic....We're possibly about to be in one this Winter. The Swine Flu Epidemic is taking the world by storm but is this one really the "Big One?" Probably not say's the CDC. We already have a Vaccine in place and ready to go. It's at the point where our biggest problem will be the distribution of the Vaccine to all the Third World Countries. The CDC does however state that the virus could possibly mutate and become more virulent and less susceptible to any new vaccine. I do believe that thousands of people could die from this outbreak but our planet can survive this threat. I give this a 4 out of 10.
The Sun.... While you won’t be around to see it, about 5 billion years from now our sun will expand into a red giant and boil off all the world’s oceans. Talk about global warming! It's inevitable but a long way off and by then we will hopefully have another planet we can all go to before that happens. 2 out of 10.
Alien Invasion....Ever since Orson Wells scared the you know what out of us with the radio broadcast of The War Of The Worlds this possibility has been in the back of millions of peoples minds. If you were to ask a group of people if they believed there was or is life on other planets the majority would say yes. What would happen if you turned on turned on CNN one night and they were showing alien ships lined up across the horizon heading straight for us. Are the friendly or hostile. We'd have to assume the worst and hope that our's and the World's Military could defeat them but at what cost? Assuming they were far more advanced than us you would think that if an Alien Force was heading for Earth they'd have the weapons needed to destroy us but not the Planet since that would be their ultimate goal. I'm going to give this one a 4 out of 10 because you never know.
Black Hole....In order for anything to happen to the Earth and all the other planets in our Galaxy there would have to be a Black Hole in our Galaxy. When you're talking about the Universe you're talking about millions of miles between Galaxies and millions of miles means lot's and lot's of time. Even if one did occur in our Galaxy it could take many years before it finally reached us. If it started tomorrow we could have possibly 10 years before we felt any of the effects. Would that be enough time for us to find another planet to go to? Probably not so I wouldn't expect the Government to let the cat out of the bag any time soon. What good would it do anyway? This one's still a long shot so it get's a 4 out of 10.
Gamma Ray Burst....A long gamma-ray burst within 6500 light years of Earth could produce enough radiation to strip away the ozone layer and cause a mass, or even total, extinction. Unlike a Black Hole, if one were to occur closer to our Galaxy we may not have much time at all. Picture waking up one morning to go to work and as you leave your house you look up and the sky has gone from blue to a light red color. One look and you'd know something bad was happening. Every living thing on the planet would die. All that would be left would be the cities and roads we built. Try watching Life After People on TV. Something tells me this is the most likely scenario out of the bunch so it get's a 7 out of 10.
Hopefully none of us will ever have to go through one of these events but everything that has a beginning has an end.
