This Is the Way the World Ends

Dave Knott writes "The CBC's weekly science radio show Quirks and Quarks this week features a countdown of the top ten planetary doomsday scenarios. Nine science professors and one science fiction author are asked to give (mostly) realistic hypotheses of the ways in which the planet Earth and its inhabitants can be destroyed. These possibilities for mankind's extinction include super-volcanoes, massive gamma ray bursts, and everybody's favorite, the killer asteroid. Perhaps the most terrifying prediction is the reversal of the Earth's magnetic field (combined with untimely solar activity), a periodic event which is currently 1/4 million years overdue."

Comments

Tsk Tsk Tsk

[antifoidulus]

not a single one of them even considered the possibility of streams getting crossed...for shame!

vogons?

[adavies42]

no interstellar bypass?

Re:Most likely scenario

[Hal_Porter]

Even the most retarded religious fundamentalist understands that dropping a nuclear bomb on someone who has one, or has a country which has one for a friend, isn't such a bright idea.

snip

Even actually been to the middle east ?

Some of the fundamentalists BELIEVE in their god. They don't care if they all die, so long as they go to heaven.

That's just neocon propaganda. In reality the governments of Iran and North Korea are made up of rational people who will always act in their countries' long term best interests despite their rhetoric. They are totally unlike the US government which will screw up and start wars because of the sort term interest of the ruling class and/or a miscalculation and plunge the world into chaos.

Missing Option

[Arthur Grumbine]

I would vote for the LHC, cuz I saw this totally scary video on Youtube that explained how the LHC was going to create a doorway for Satan. Seriously.

And hey, if you're going to include a science fiction, why not include a couple biblical/religious predictions? I for one, welcome our 6-winged Seraphim overlords...