See below a list of doomsday scenarios that could happen .... tomorrow !
1. A solar storm blasts the Earth
A ‘super solar storm’ could burn out power stations, cut water supplies, leave millions hungry, and leave satellites dead in the skies.
In 2012, solar scientist Pete Riley, said that the probability of a ‘super solar storm’ hitting Earth in the next ten years was ‘around 12%’.
Experts fear that a storm could burn out electrical grids around the world.
‘Frankly, this could be one of the most severe natural disasters that the country, and major portions of the world, could face,’ space weather consultant John Kappenman told Gizmodo.
The only account of a ‘super storm’ striking Earth comes from more than 150 years ago – when a Victorian scientist, Richard Carrington, described an eruption known as ‘the Carrington event’.
In 1859, there were no telephones and satellites, but the power of the storm devastated communications – telegraph wires around the world burnt out, and some operators reported sheets of paper catching fire.
In our wired world, the effects would be more serious – it would have been the worst natural disaster of all time, in terms of financial damage, with a cost in trillions and effects which lasted for years afterwards.
2) A supervolcano erupts.
Could a supervolcano really plunge the Earth into darkness - and change our climate forever?
Answer: yes.
The huge ‘supervolcano’ thought to lurk under Yellowstone park will blanket the USA in ash when it finally erupts.
The eruption will be so catastrophic it will change the world’s climate.
Researchers are ‘99.9% confident’ the volcano will not erupt this century, though - and say that we will see warnings long before any eruption. Note that a super volcano erruption could be caused from a super solar flare!!!!
3) A nuclear war erupts in the Middle East
In 2015, the hands of the ‘Doomsday Clock’ - maintained by the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists - were moved two minutes closer to midnight, due in part to the threat of nuclear weapons.
They remained there this year.
Noam Chomsky said in an interview this year, ‘The threat of a nuclear war is greater today than during the Cold War. The risk of a nuclear war is concentrated in the proliferation of incidents involving armed forces of nuclear powers.’
No state with a large nuclear arsenal - such as Russia or America - actively WANTS nuclear confrontation.’
What observers fear is a military or political confrontation which builds up tensions around a nuclear missile attack - possibly leading one side to fire.
Both Russia and NATO are still in the position to unleash global-scale nuclear attacks - and the weapons are armed and ready.
The Arms Control Association says, ‘United States and Russia still deploy more than 1,500 strategic warheads on several hundred bombers and missiles - far more than necessary to deter nuclear attack - and they are modernizing their nuclear delivery systems.
4) A man-made virus wipes out life on our planet
Astronomer Royal Martin Rees made a gloomy bet in 2003 that by 2020, one million people would have died in a single instance of ‘bio-terror - or bio-error’.
He still believes the risk of both ‘bio-terror’ and ‘bio-error’ is real.
Rees said, 'My concern is not only organized terrorist groups, but individual weirdos with the mindset of the people who now design computer viruses.’
‘My worst nightmare would be that some crazy guy with an ecology fantasy that humans were a plague would try to use some type of biological technique to kill lots of them – without caring who they were.’
In America, enthusiasts calling themselves 'biohackers’ already race to engineer new strains of bacteria - and perhaps even new forms of life.
The field of 'synthetic biology’ came into being in 2010 when a scientist added synthetic DNA to a bacteria cell to create a 'new’ life form.
An Oxford ethicist warned that it opened the door to 'the most powerful bioweapons imaginable’.
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