Doomsday Scenarios.

With 2012 almost over i thought it fitting to discuss this for a bit of comic relief.

How worried are you about this? What do you make of those who are?

And seperately, what do you see as the most likely doomsday or large scale global disaster scenario, do you see any of them happening within our lifetimes? Do any of them cause you any fear?

The only thing I can think of is Y2K, truth be told. I think the same of the Mayan calendar doomsday as I did Y2K, impending ice age, the Rapture predicted by that radio host, etc. Entertaining, but I'm more concerned with the Bubonic Plague spreading again.

It's the same thing with conspiracy theorists in general, sure it COULD have happened, maybe if we stretch the truth a little (or a lot, depending), but is it so unlikely we can say with a fair amount of confidence that it didn't happen that way? Yep.

The most likely "doomsday" scenario would be a huge asteroid. And basically there's no chance of surviving one if it was big enough.

Zombies would be preferable I think. Though only for people who live in countries that allow you to have guns...

quote D-G

The most likely "doomsday" scenario would be a huge asteroid. And basically there's no chance of surviving one if it was big enough.

If i am honest i am kind of obsessed with large impacts. OK so i am kind of fascinated by these large scale events in general but this in perticular. I often day dream of what it would be like to witness such an event. And how society and the people i know would deal with it running up to the event. If we had any warning at all that is.

Scientists and astronomers often try to put our minds at rest by mentioning how statistically unlikely a large scale asteroid impact is in any one persons life. They also tell us we have found most NEO's which could cause largescale destruction. But i have two problems with this:

1: You cant ever say that you have found "all" of something if you are given no overall number to aim for. We can be sure we have found most dangerous NEO's due to the searching techniques we use, but it woulod be very difficult to say "all".

2: Comets. Long period comets can orbit the sun for hundreds of thousands of years before racing inward at 70km/s only outgassing and becoming visible at Jupiters orbit. This means that a Comet on an earthward trajectory could give as little as three months warning prior to impact with no way of discovering them bofore this point on their orbit. This ultimately means that life ending comet could come at us at any point in time with literally no way to stop or even affect it. Asteroids? PAH! Comets are a much bigger threat in my eyes.

Size also comes into it. We could be hit by an Asteroid any day and infact we are, every day. But ones large enough to damage life or our ecosystem are few and far between. It would be very unlikely (though not impossible) for anything more than about a kilometre to hit us due to the various NEO studies the worlds space agencies have been making, it is safe to say we have found MOST NEO's up to a km in size. But Comets come in all sizes, and comes from places so far away we cannot examine them prior to their arrival. Any comet, of any size could be coming our way.

-An object ranging from 100m up to 1km could wipe out a city district AND then some.
-An object of 1-5km would be a global event affecting the earths entire ecosystem and literally obliterating the area it impacts for thousands of quare miles.
-An object of 5km and up impacting earth is known as an extinction level event. the KT boundary impactor was thought to be around 11km across.

First of all MOST comet nucleuses tend to range from 10-15km across. Thats already bad news. However it gets much worse, the largest Nucleus ever to have come within the orbit of the inner planets was Hale Bopp at over 60km. And some long period comets are thought to have Nucleuses of over 100km across.

Scary stuff.

quote wildfire

The one I see the most likely is open nuclear war o.0... America alone holds enough nuclear power to kill 10 billion people. That doesn't include all the other countries that have and are trying to obtain nuclear weapons. A nuclear attack on any country might illicit a nuclear response on who ever they blame for the attack. Pakistan or a terrorist group for instance could launch a nuke into north Korea, and North Korea will blame the U.S. and retaliate with their own nukes. America and our allies might respond in kind and a nuclear exchange of this scale will cause a artificial Ice age. No one is safe from the aftermath even if your country wasn't hit by a nuke.

In all honesty Nuclear war is probably the most likely doomsday scenario for me aswell. Just infront of some kind of pandemic (artificial or natural). However i do not fear rogue states or nuclear terrorism. Terrorists could feasably detonate either a low yield fission bomb or a dirty bomb, its well possible but the truth is i just dont believe the hype we are fed about terrorists. I am not as scared of the boogey man as the rest of the world is apparently. Not only that but the attack or attacks would most likely be very limited in scope and would probably NOT trigger a full scale nuclear response.

Rogue states simply do no have the technology for a full scale nuclear confrontation. I think anyone sitting worrying about an Iranian or Korean weapon detonating above a Western city is maybe panicking too much. These states also know any nuclear attack on a nuclear armed nation would be nothing more than mass suicide. It is not a viable militairty opion and they are smart enought to know that. The media's portrayal of rogue states and the opinions of morons who believe it does this "rogue state" myth no favours. And in any case no matter how much you think Iran with its fledgeling nuclear programme endagers you, just you think how much our arsenals endanger Iran from their perspective.

The threat of MAD and a large scale nuclear war still exists. Our political and economic ties with the east and emerging powers may be stable today but it wasnt always that way and wont always be. People have become complaicent in recent years. During the cold war the general public understood and feared nuclear arms. Today some people couldnt even tell you what they are. That is a dengerous position to be in. People forget too easily. A militairy coup here, a change in the price of oil there, a land dispute the next... It is not difficult to concoct a scenario to destabalise the world as we know it.

And a full scale Nuclear exchange would be indescribable. Humanity decapitating itself. I often wonder and daydream about how it would pan out, how we would react and what the world would look like. I imagine seeing the vertical contrails as re-entry vehicles descend above my city. Try to imagine what it would feel like.

During a recent discussion a mongst mates one of my pals said he wasnt worried and didnt care. It wont happen, he said. I asked him this question. I said "how does it feel knowing that buried deep in a bunker somewhere in eastern europe there is already a warhead with your adress pre-progremmed in". There need be no preperation, no fanfair, no warning. The guidance is all there. Its resting there quietly looking at you, staring you down. Its like walking down your street and one of your neighbour points a rifle at you ever day. He has never fired and you dont even know if the gun is loaded, but he scopes in on you an tracks you every day. Obviously no-one would put up with that, but its a mirror of the situation every human alive is in today. And we somehow put up with it just fine. Familiarity breeds vapourisation.

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There's another likely scenario that I think might be most imminent right now. Genetic engineering of viruses is not a hard thing to do, we've been doing it for about a decade now. What if a deranged doctor who does this for a living and has access to the lab where it's done makes a virus that's as contagious as the cold or flu, but as deadly as the plague was in the dark ages? He wouldn't have to have a bomb to deliver it either, he could take a wet cloth with the virus on it and spread it around on hand rails in international airports and wait for it to spread. The virus would be unknown to anyone's immune systems and infect people easily. If it had a 2 week incubation period the virus could spread around the world without anyone realizing it. Even if we make a vaccine for the original virus, the thing is viruses mutate rapidly so the virus would be able to evolve on it's own, naturally.

Yeah this global pandemic idea is about as likely as a nuclear exchange for me. I doubt it would come as an engineered virus (that is totally possible though). I'd even wager what virus it would be, a version of Influenza. One just has to look back through history at the varius plagues and diseases which have wiped out massive percentages of humanity to see this is possible. Hell just under 100 years ago in 1918 Spanish Influenza killed 3% of the human population. More than the 1st World War, then dissapeared in the blink of an eye.

And god forbid a disease worse than Influenza emerged. Take something like the Ebola Virus, it kills between 90% and 99% of those who are infected and has no known cure. If it ever became airborne it could be a catastrophe. It could be an extinction. Luckily it is not likely to do this at all without a massive and extreme mutation.

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Have you ever heard of gamma ray bursts? It's the energy that's fired out of stars when they go super nova (and at the poles of black holes). If one of these massive stars' gamma rays burst hits the earth it would irradiate the atmosphere or blow it off. The flash would be brighter than the sun, and it travels at light speed, so there's no way of knowing before hand that it's on it way. As soon as we see it, it's too late.

Yeah i know quite a bit about them. There is some speculation that a nearby burst may have caused the OS extinction event a few hundred million years ago. But evidence would be very difficult to find were that the case. The good news is that although we have relatively nearby stars who could go supernova any day now (Betelgeuse, Aldabaron, Eta Carinae) none are close enough or oriented in such a way as to hit earth with maximum output. So a Gamma ray burst in the near future is pretty unlikely. Still, an awesomely scary thought though. And something with literally no viable defence if it did happen.

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If you wanted something to destroy the world instead of wiping out the human race, then a rouge black hole that enters our solar system might be what you're looking for. We wouldn't be able to see it coming until we started noticing that the outer planets' orbits are being messed with violently. The scary thing is, as soon as we detect it scientist will be able to tell us exactly how long it will take for the black hole to reach us. It would be slow, perhaps decades, but in the end the earth would be destroyed as it moves toward the sun.

Ah, so destroying the actual planet itself? Interesting thought. A rogue black hole would certainly be the best candidate. And would be difficult to detect until its gravitational effects started disturbing the outer planets and comets. Infact if a rogue black hole entered our system we may be destroyed by debris before it even affects us. Black holes can scatter and eject objects at relitavistic speeds. A 70km/s asteroid is bad enough. Imagine a n asteroid 10 miles wide travelling at 25% the speed of light... Infact im being a hypocrite asking anyone to imagine that because i cant.

I guess any rogue body would make a decent earth destroyer. The Universe and our Galaxy are full of rogue planets, interstellar comets and asteroids and even roving neutron stars and brown and white dwarfs. Gladly any of these objects which emit alot of light and energy are detectable. But "small" rogue planet of Jupiter mass and bellow would be next to impossible to detect. And in any case what could we possibly do to avoid that?

Again i imagine what that would look like, another planet impacting ours. The world would be destroyed before they even touched as the gravitational interactions tore the planets into oval shapes just prior to impact. It would be trully awesome in the purest definition.

quote wildfire

I often wonder what it must be like to stand on a orphaned planet (they're sometimes called 'exoplanets'). How cold must it be on these planets that only briefly knew the warmth of star?

I too have thought of this. It must be so dark and cold but imagine the view iof our galaxy with no light pollution. It would be amazing. Also if the planet had heavy volcanicity and a thick atmosphere it could potentially exist at a habitable temperature. Though i dont think this is very likely. Call it a hunch.

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Out of all the exoplanets most are rocky or protoplanets. Dr. Michio Okaku described Jupiter sized planets as 800 pound gorillas, where do they sit? Anywhere they want too....

HAHA, i have heard him use that exact quote in interviews before.

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Have you ever thought about the moons around our gas giants? Some have 16 very large moons, it's a testament to the early solar system. These moons were once free floating bodies in space, but were flung out to be captured by the gas giants. They were the lucky ones too...

I think about the moons of our solar system every day. they are more interesting than most of the planets. What i wouldnt give to see the volcano's on Io, ice geysers on Enceledus and Triton or see the lakes of Titan.

And the capture theory is only really accepted for a few moons. But i think your right, I think more of our systems moons may be captured dwarf planets from the solar systems early days.

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some scientists don't think that our solar arrangement will last forever either. Even though the sun dominates gravitationally, the inner planets still effect each other. We might one day be closer to Venus or mars. It just depends on how it turns out. It's even possible that the planets might collide, if it's with Venus then there goes the Earth and Venus >.> .

Hell yeah, i have seen simulations in which mars is ejected and Mercury actually collides with earth. I ave seen others in which mars and earth almost swap places. And all of this is done with minor changes to existing data. Glad i'll be long gone by then. Actually no im nto, i'd kinda like to see mercury coming at me LOL. And in any case our system is not stable now. We are curently moving away from the sun asare all the planets. Its already started WoooooAH

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Here's a picture of the only impact ever recorded by modern science. Astronomers watched as Shoe maker levy 9 passed too close to Jupiter. The Planets' huge gravity tore the comet apart, and it fell into the planets atmosphere. Those black spots are bigger than the earth in some cases:

Yup, an amazing event. Really showed us humans the power of what we could be facing. It was so amazing that the comet broke up in such a lineal way. This also makes me thank Jupiter, its like a big brother watching over us puny planets.

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you have every right to fear comets more than asteroids. In ancient times, they were considered harbingers of doom, I wonder why? LOL

LOl, totally. The ancients actually got something right here, but could not have possibly understood the reality of it. But Comets also brought water to earth. So they can go both ways. We have enough water now though Comets... thanks but we SERIOUSLY dont want anymore!

quote wildfire

quote KR_1250

But Comets also brought water to earth. So they can go both ways. We have enough water now though Comets... thanks but we SERIOUSLY dont want anymore!

Recently NASA (or some space agency) launched a probe to intercept a comet during it's journey to the sun. It was called deep impact, I'm sure you already know about this, so long story short: They found out that comets actually have amino acids (at least some simple form of them) present in them. Researchers are going over the possibility that comets might've actually seeded the earth with life as they did with water. If the comet collided with a primitive ocean in a glancing way the interior would remain cool enough for the amino acids to survive. They think that amino acids might've survived if they arrived towards the end of the heavy late bombardment. It probably won't amount to anything because the starting point of life on the earth is heavily debated.

Yeah, very interesting. The more we look we seem to find simple organic compounds everywhere. If Asteroids anc Comets can infact seed life on other worlds that means it can happen in any Solar system with the right conditions.

Comets and Asteroids are very common and evidence for their existance has been spotted in protoplanetary discs around other stars.



That image shows such a disk against the Orion Nebula. I really love this picture. It shows the birth of a new solar system and that disk of debris is made of dust, asteroids and comets.

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yeah, if one were to hit the earth today or in the near future, I don't think the human race will survive for long. Just look at how we live today, and I'm not saying that it's a bad thing, but we're just too reliant on technology. We'd be sent back to the dark ages if any substantial amount of people were to survive. I just hope that the universe is kind enough to give us a chance ....

Yeah it all depends on the impactor. If we were hit by a KT sized object my guess is that humans would be driven to near extinction but we would survive. Those who were left would have a tough time in a very different and hostile world. They may envy the dead. If we were struck by a larger unlikely body, like a 60km+ sized comet then i dont hold out any hope. I dont think there would be enough survivors or enough of a usable surface to keep humanity going. Like you said lets hope the Universe gives us a break.

There still exsts some deep, dark part of me that wants to see it happen though. I cant explain why. I constantly try to imagine what an impact of that size would look like. I mean as the front of a body that size impacted the planet the rear end would still be in the Mesosphere, almost still in space.

And if you want to see a scary and pretty much impossible impact watch this. It shows a stupidly large 500km asteroid impact:

quote Misty

So, here's a thought-provoking question. Assuming the upcoming Mayan apocalypse doesn't happen, what do you guys think the next doomsday will be? We've had mass computer crashes and hysteria from that, global warming-related mass flooding, the 2nd coming of Christ, and the Mayan doomsday in the last 10-15 years, what's going to be the next one?

Personally I'm thinking Cold War-esque nuclear armageddon when Iran inevitably gets nuclear weapons.

Well the thing is depending where you live in the world the threat of doomsday is almost a constant. Predictions have been concocted and proven wrong countless times before. Check these pages out:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dates_predicted_for_apocalyptic_events

http://science.howstuffworks.com/nature/natural-disasters/10-2012-doomsday-prophecies.htm

So no doubt there is currently a few others already in waiting. The funny thing is there will be a few people sitting at home right now thinking: "2012 Doomsday? PAH ! How stupid. Everyone knows its gonna happen in 2015"

And i think your comment on Iran is relevant. There will be many people terrified by the frankly over the top and exajurated claims about Irans nuclear capability. Iran do not have the capability to impliment a full scale nuclear war and will not for many many years, even decades. They may never develop that all out capability at all. Even then they must surely understand that it would be the worlds largest suicide attempt to use them. Iran want nuclear weapons for national prestige, international bargaining power and technological respect. However i do see this ignorance generating a doomsday fan base as you suggest.

I have also heard the first murmours of a potential nuclear war with China over various interests including a potential land dispute with Japan and Russia, disagreement over space interests with the US and over econimic and energy concerns with the west in genenral. The U.S also owes china much of its national debt. Some have suggsted that were China to call this money in it would cripple the US economy causing some serious tension.

I couldnt be sure what the next one will be. Will it be extraterestrial based like the Heavens Gate cult? Religion based like Harold Campings "Biblical code" theory suggests, maybe be militairy based like a nuclear or biological war, or have more of a scientific basing regarding bolide impacts or pandemics.

For me a serious global Pandemic, bad solar flare or Nuclear war are the most likely disaster scenarios, with an asteroid or comet impact being much less likely but having by far and away the greatest potential for damage. Large cosmic evenst are the only ones which could literally END humanity for my money.

Hmm, i'll agree with you Misty and say a nuclear war (or nuclear terrorism) will be the next big fear driving this kind of panic. But this time it will be much more founded in reality. And a much more likely scenario. It could even be argued that we should fear this scenario. Each person reading this probably lives within the lethal blast radius of a missile which exists right now and has their home adress already pre-programmed in.

This fear at least, is no fantasy.