Of all the scientifically possible doomsday scenarios,which one do you think is most likely to happen one day?

Question

Asteroid? Sun going Nova? Giant comet? etc etc etc

Which one is most likely to happen in the near future?

Answer 1

In the near future?  It's all based on chance.  A Supervolcano the most likely to me, since the Yellowstone supervolcano is expected to be twice as powerful as the Toba one that almost wiped out humanity 70,000 years ago.  Then again, there is a Wolf-Rayet star only 8,000 light years away that might become a gamma-ray burster, with its pole pointed straight at earth.  Half the earth would be instantly fried by it and the ozone layer destroyed.

Answer 2

My cheerily optimistic outlook for Earth in the next 1,000 years is overpopulation, war, disease, loss of resources and a declining quality of life that will make the Plague look like Mr. Rodgers' Neighborhood. The Earth will die out from under us, we with it, and then it will heal over many centuries, becoming the next 'clean slate' for whatever lifeforms prevail. I hope that Felis Domesticus gets the nod.

Answer 3

Sun going nova - not possible, the sun is an average, stable star with not nearly enough mass to explode

Cosmic events that could occur include a nearby supernova or gamma ray burst - though none of the stars within 50 light years of are massive enough to explode or to form gamma ray bursts of any strength, and further than that and the radiation of either event won't do much to the Earth.

The likeliest event to cause significant damage to the Erath (an "extinction level event") is an asteroid, giant comet or other "dark object"  collision with Earth - any of these are certainly possible, several asteroid impacts over the past few billion years have been linked to mass extinctions and ice ages.

Answer 4

The most likely is a pandemic where a virus or other infectious entity mutates to a deadly strain, probably airborn, with little or no symptoms for days or weeks, and for which we have no resistance.

The Sun going Nova will happen in a few billion years, but by then I'll be too old to care. An asteroid or comet hitting us is like hitting a marble rolling downhill in California with a bb-gun shot from Miami. And if such a thing were to happen, we would have seen it coming long before getting here, enough time to come up with a Sci-Fi movie scenario to avoid it. And volcano and earthquake activity simply wouldn't have enough range to be global. Even a tsunami to beat all tsunami's would only devastate low lying lands in continents directly in its path, again not globally.

Answer 5

Gamma ray bursts is a possibility. It happens on a basis of 2-3 per week and their affects can be across the universe hundreds and sometimes thousands of lightyears away. It can cause mass extinction on Earth. It is one of the possibilities of the Ordovician-Silurian extinction events (it was the five major extinctions that occurred on Earth). Gamma ray bursts are the after effects of a hypergiant star going hypernova. Gamma ray bursts are the cosmic radiation after a hypernova. Also, when a hypernova happens, a black hole maybe created. The nearest hypergiant star is Eta Carinae which is located 8,000 lightyears away.

Answer 6

I don't think any of these are likely in the near future.  I guess for semi-near future possibilities, it would be the destruction of our environment and overpopulation.  Next would be a large asteroid impact.  

I am not talking about anything that I expect soon, only those things that have a fair likelihood of occurring before the sun goes to a red giant and incinerates the surface in 4 billion years.

Answer 7

Global Nuclear Warfare followed Very Closely By Biological Warfare Experimentation that Gets Away from its Developers Creating Mass Deaths to a " No Antidote" developed yet Disease. Similar to the Plagues that have Hit the Entire World in the Past.

Answer 8

I would say that at this point, the two most probable things that might destroy human civilization completely are one, total war using large quantities of weapons of mass destruction, and two, consumption of the entire surface of the Earth by self-replicating nanomachines. Asteroid impacts are simply too rare to match up in terms of probability, and the Sun won't go nova for billions of years (unless someone makes it, of course, but we don't have nearly that kind of technology yet). A genetically engineered super-disease is more probable than either of those, although I think it is still less likely than nuclear war and nanotechnology in terms of destroying all human life. The LHC-type doomsday scenario caused by a physics experiment is also highly improbable, I would say less probable than being hit by an asteroid.

Answer 9

slowly cook ourselves in our own waste products.  all plantlife removed, no O2.

Answer 10

Thermonuclear global war and total extinction of mankind. The sun will not go Nova for a long time, way longer than mankind will survive.

Answer 11

McCain dies suddenly and they decide W can run for a 3rd term

Answer 12

Our sun cannot go supernova, it is too small for that.

Asteroid and giant comet are the same thing from our perspective, it is in both case a large chunk of material in space on a collision course with earth. It happened, and will happen again; events like the suspected dinosaur-killing asteroid that fell on the Yucatan peninsula 65 million years ago is assumed to occur about every 65 million years or so, so we are "due".

Of course, if we spot the celestial boulder, we make be able to take measure and sent rockets to deflect it, something that was a bit out of the capability of tiny brained dinosaurs.

Then, if we manage to avoid all asteroids and comets though active defelction, the one event that is 100% sure and impossible to stop is the progressive warming up of the sun. In  one billion year, it would have gotten hot enough than all the oceans on Earth would boil away.

Surviving this one means either finding a new planet somewhere else (the moons of Jupiter, maybe?) of finding a way of getting the Earth out of harm's way by fitting it with orbital shades or dragging it further away.

A big task, but we still have a bit of time to work out the details.

Answer 13

I think the most likely scenario is one in which all the people who believe in these other doomsday scenario's will band together and create such a mob mentality that we destroy ourselves (a self-fulfilling prophecy).

Answer 14

I think the most likely doomsday scenario is some crazy person convinces everyone on Earth to jump up in the air at the same time.

you don't wanna know what that would do!

Answer 15

I'm with the nuclear war thing, while the others are probable, if a terrorist got a nuclear devise he would use it, and that could happen in the near future

Answer 16

A comet or meteorite could strike at any point in the semi-near future. We can only really watch 2% of the sky with sensitive telescopes at any given time. A big rock could be sneaking up right now. A big enough rock would be impossible to divert.

The sun will become too hot for life on Earth long before it could go nova. The life cycle of stars like our sun is well known. It will be over millions of years before anything significant will change there. Leading up to any major change, the sun will just keep getting hotter, gradually.

The chance of humans nuking ourselves or creating a deadly plague is disturbingly possible.

Earth's environment shifts gradually over time through cycles of greenhouse and icehouse conditions. Human atmospheric meddling could affect this cycle in strange ways, creating deadly climate shifts like The Day After Tomorrow.

Personally, I think humans will make it into space and spread out a little before the Earth has anything like a major crisis...but I just might be wishing on that part.