© Reuters
Comment: It appears as though the scientists involved in this study are underestimating the threats that asteroid impacts, volcano eruptions, and extreme climate change are to humanity currently. Every day we are experiencing more and more fireballs, asteroids, and meteorites in our atmosphere, and the propensity of extreme weather is a threat that these scientists should take more seriously. Just look at what happened in January:
It's also likely that one of the below incidents could cause a domino effect for other serious threats to emerge, like an asteroid impact causing extreme climate change and global system collapse.
Filmmakers, authors, and media have widely speculated about how human life on Earth will end. Now scientists have come up with the first serious assessment, presenting 12 possible causes of the Apocalypse.
Scientists from Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Challenges Foundation have compiled the first research on the topic, drawing a list of 12 possible ways that human civilization might end.
The idea of the study is not quite new. However, due to its treatment in popular culture, the possibility of the world's infinite end provokes relatively little political or academic interest, making a serious discussion harder, according to researchers.
"We were surprised to find that no one else had compiled a list of global risks with impacts that, for all practical purposes, can be called infinite," said co-author Dennis Pamlin of the Global Challenges Foundation. "We don't want to be accused of scaremongering but we want to get policy makers talking."
Below is the list of threats, ranked from least to most probable.
Asteroid impact
If an asteroid about five kilometers in size were to collide with our planet, the main destruction would be from clouds of dust projected into the upper atmosphere - which would affect climate change and food supplies, and cause political instability. Larger sized objects could cause immediate extinction on the planet. Large asteroid collisions happen about once every 20 million years, the report says.Probability: 0.00013%
© Reuters / NASA
A volcano capable of causing an eruption with an ejecta volume greater than 1,000 km3 could cause a global catastrophe. The dust projected into the atmosphere would absorb the Sun's rays and cause global freezing. The effects of possible eruptions can be compared to those of a nuclear war, only without the firestorms. Probability: 0.00003%
© RIA Novosti / Alexander SokorenkoThe Plosky Tolbachik Volcano erupts on the Kamchatka Peninsula
A high impact epidemic is more probable than is widely believed, as all the features of an extremely devastating disease already exist in nature, the report says, giving examples of several devastating illnesses including Ebola, rabies, an infectious cold, and HIV. If all were combined, "the death toll would be extreme." Probability: 0.0001%
© Reuters / Baz Ratner
The possibility of a deliberate or accidental nuclear conflict in the next century or so is estimated at 10%. The larger impact would depend on whether the conflict would trigger a "nuclear winter" - a climatic effect that would plunge temperatures below freezing, destroy most of the ozone layer, and start firestorms, which would likely lead to mass starvation and state collapse. Probability: 0.005%
© Reuters
The report warns that climate change could be more extreme than some estimates suggest. The world's poorest countries could become completely uninhabitable. Climate change could lead to mass deaths, famines, social collapse, and mass migration. Probability: 0.01%
© AFP Photo / Nelson Almeida
The most damaging impact from synthetic biology to human civilization would come from an engineered pathogen targeting humans or a crucial component of the ecosystem, the report states. Such would emerge from military or commercial bio-warfare, bio-terrorism, or leaked pathogens.Probability: 0.01%
© Reuters / Eddie Keogh
Atomically precise manufacturing would create smart or extremely resilient materials, and allow many different groups to manufacture a wide range of things - including large arsenals of novel weapons, such as nuclear ones. Probability: 0.01%
© RIA Novosti / Alexey Danichev
These are all the unknowns that could lead to the end of the world, scientists say, urging for extensive research into the matter. "One resolution to the Fermi paradox - the apparent absence of alien life in the galaxy - is that intelligent life destroys itself before beginning to expand into the galaxy." Probability: 0.1%
There are also a few potential causes of the Apocalypse which have not had a probability assessed to them.
© Wikipedia
In this scenario, the ecosystem would suffer a drastic change that would lead to mass extinction. Species extinction is now far faster than the historic rate, and attempts to quantify a safe ecological operating space place humanity well outside it. Probability: N/A
© Reuters / Cheryl Ravelo
The world economic and political systems are interconnected, and are prone to system-wide failures caused by the structure of the network. Economic collapse is usually accompanied by social chaos, civil unrest, and a breakdown of law and order. Probability: N/A
© Reuters / Toru Hanai
A disaster could be caused by failing to solve major problems; for example, a failure to alleviate global poverty, or actively causing worse outcomes - like constructing a global totalitarian state. Probability: N/A
© Reuters / Gary Cameron
Artificial Intelligence
The creation of human-level intelligence can result in the possibility that this intelligence will be driven to construct a world without humans. There is also a possibility of artificial intelligence waging war or creating "whole brain emulations" that would give machines human minds.
On the other hand, the report also says it is probable that such intelligence could counter other apocalyptic causes presented in the study. Probability: 0-10%
I put the probability much higher. Itys has a mean diameter of about 5.6 kilometers +/-2km and its next encounter with Earth's atmosphere is in about April - June 2015 about 8:00 - 8:30pm. Hopefully it will not suffer adverse lunar perturbations to its orbit and we survive for another four years. Itys has been seen in at least 1985, 2003, 2007 and 2011. In 2003 it all but anihilated Western Europe -and maybe the rest of the planet as it came in horrifically low just a few miles above sea level at closest approach making a noise like continually rolling thunder, shaking houses and terrifying those few locals out in the early hours of the morning.
The lucky ones will be those close to ground zero, the rest will fry or freeze or starve or die in fights over food.
Best of luck.