End Of The World Scenarios

By James Donahue

There is something in the collective mindset that warns that we are fast approaching the end of the world as we know it.

The stories are everywhere. We see them on television, read them in various news or magazine articles and find them on the Internet. The finalities such scenarios as nuclear war, a massive solar flare, polar shift, strike by a giant asteroid, and various other possibilities like a death plaque, super heated planet, or a new ice age.

I have written some of the ideas myself and posted them on this site.

I recently read an interesting list of world ending scenarios with a few strange twists to them. I have added a few of my own to liven up things a bit. Read on and sleep well.

Global Dimming: Atsumu Ohmura, a climatologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, discovered in 1985 that sunlight records in Switzerland declined 10 percent over the previous 30 years. Continued studies find that the dimming is continuing, and can be shown in records kept all over the world. No one is sure whether this dimming is caused by air pollution, aerial seeding by the U. S. military, or something else. All we know is somebody or something seems to be putting out the lights. A more recent report, however, says the Earth is brightening up. What is to be believed? And why is it happening?

Supernova: There is evidence that a supernova, or killing hot death star, once drifted close to Earth to scorch all life a few million years ago. Core samples dating to that era contain a rare iron isotope, believed to be debris from a stellar explosion. Also there is evidence of massive extinctions of primitive sea life, or plankton, at that time. All it would take is one relatively nearby sun in our galaxy to do it again.

Climate Change: A report by the Pentagon warned earlier this year that global warming threatens major climate change that will cause the destruction of the civilized world and probably spark major wars. The report warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a Siberian climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting could erupt around the world.

Nuclear Winter: During the height of the Cold War, the late science writer Carl Sagan joined other authors in warning that a nuclear war could cause the Earth to go into a self destruction from nuclear winter. Sagan warned that the spread of smoke in the atmosphere from nuclear explosions and fires on the planet would absorb sunlight, darken the sky and ultimately lower the temperature of the planet from one to five degrees Centigrade within a few months. A drop of just one degree could unbalance the ecosystem and threaten the survival of life.

Doomsday Bug: Two scientists at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, claim they used genetic engineering to create a designer virus that they believe will stop the HIV virus and bring an end to AIDS. But they say they worry that if they can create a virus to do something that might help mankind, somebody else can use the same methods they used to create a doomsday bug that could destroy us.

Environmental Ruin: Other scientists worry that even if none of the above events occur, time is quickly running out for an overpopulated world filled with people eager to exploit the natural resources of our planet for personal profit.

With more and more countries acquiring nuclear capabilities, and with an overpopulated world quickly running out of natural resources like food, water, lumber and oil, the probabilities of nuclear war, a great world war, and/or the release of a doomsday virus that brings an abrupt end of everything may be closer than we think.

That the Mayan Calendar comes to an abrupt end on December 21, 2012 plays into world mythology linked to the end of the world as we know it. Then there is the problem of the Christian belief in an apocalyptic return of Jesus and a final world war.

Are we doomed? We are only if we allow ourselves to collectively believe it.