Doomsday! Just like how dangerous this word sounds, similar is what it means! It is the worst nightmare of human life. Doomsday is a day described to happen when there will be no human life on Earth. Yes, it is possible in multiple ways. Being understood what doomsday is, you might want to know the meaning of doomsday scenarios! Doomsday scenarios are those situations or possible ways by which this planet will be left with no presence of human life. These scenarios might or might not happen. But, as said there is slight or more possible for each of it to happen. Some are predicted to happen in millions of years from today and some might just affect the planet way too sooner than that. Also, some of them are just accidents that could happen while some of them take place over a period of time, as a result of human activities or some natural activity. Some of them are inevitable, i.e. they are certain to happen while some of them could be controlled. This article will cover all those scenarios that have already started to happen and will affect the Earth in a number of ways over the period of time.

Firstly, you should know what those inevitable ones are.

  • Asteroids: about 1400 asteroids are under observation by NASA because of their size that could severely affect the Earth’s surface. The good thing about them, they are predicted not to affect the Earth for at least 100 years.

 

  • Flip in the magnetic poles: imagine your school is in the north but you go towards the south. You will never obviously reach the school that is your agenda. Now imagine a natural phenomenon turns its process like that. It’s dangerous, right? This is what flip in magnetic poles is. Magnetic poles of the earth that are believed to be facing north will start facing south and it happens once in millennia. And when that will happen it will welcome the destruction of human life on earth.

 

  • Supernova explosions: supernova explosions are a great boom that is produced by collapse of a star’s surface that lives millions of years. These happen almost once in 100 years. Also, they take place far away in Milky Way galaxy but can deplete Earth’s ozone layer.

 

  • Supervolcano eruption:volcanoes have evidently affected the Earth in inevitable ways a long time ago. They might have happened a long time ago but there are still existing ones like Yellowstone. Volcano eruption definitely has the potential of destroying human life. What it can do is turn thousands of cubic kilometers into ashes. The smoke released has a potential of blocking the sun for not a single day or year but decades which will turn the earth’s surface into ice age world and hence human extinction.

These were some inevitable scenarios for doomsday. While these can’t be controlled, these are not also definite to happen. At least not in the near future. Besides, there are also multiple numbers of scenarios that are in existence because of human life only. These could be controlled but is quite impossible to be controlled. Those are:

  • Global warming: there exists a term called “extinction risk of global warming”. This term basically implies how global warming can lead to the extinction of human life on earth. Global warming is a wide term to depletion of the ozone layer of earth. The layer that protects the life on earth from harmful UV rays. Who all are behind this harmful process taking place? The whole human species are to be held responsible for it. Multiple human activities have resulted in the following situation that too to the extent of human extinction as well.

 

  • Evolution of deadly diseases: be it the Black Death or influenza, some deadly diseases have been a part of human life since long. The Black Death occurred in the 14thcentury and took 350 million lives and yet being infamous is one of the most deadly diseases ever come into existence. It was a plague that spread with high speed taking a huge number of lives. Just not one or two, but multiple diseases have created a threat of human extinction earlier in times. If any such disease again gets spread, can cost earth its living life.

See this article to know more diseases that hopped from other species.

 

  • Nuclear war: There is a possibility of occurrence of a nuclear war at any possible time in the future. The idea of certain people gaining power and using nuclear technology to create threat and chaos in the world is quite prominent. Most nations have finally understood the dangerous effects a nuclear bomb can cause after what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. If sometime in future, there occurs a war, and a country might use a nuclear weapon to create a threat or take revenge causing the entire human race to get effected and in turn make it impossible for any living creature to reproduce and thus will ultimately result in the extinction of human species.

 

  • Technology:Many scientists worry that the day is not far away when the Artificial Intelligence (AI) that is being developed right now with great speed will ascend to a stage where they may even take over the human race. The developments of such a technology that can make computers think and develop their own army against humans to take over humans can result in the extinction of humans from earth. There have been arguments over the fast development of technologies that help humans live a simpler life, that one day machines may start to feel like slaves to humans and thereby try to take revenge by killing each and every last human living on earth. Think of the possibilities of harm a super-intelligent robot can do if it is armed with weapons on a large scale. So guess what, robots aren’t that good of an invention as they seem.

Now, we know what are the possible scenarios and which one of them are controllable or not. But, it is yet to know which one of them might have started already. There might be a scenario to doomsday that has already taken place and is affecting human life every day. The question is, is there anyone of them? The answer would be yes.

First, is very evident as mentioned above is global warming. Global warming has been a talk of the world since a very long time now. Everyone knows about it, knows the way to control it, knows all the hazardous effect it is putting to human life, but the sad part is nobody is actually working on it. The human life itself is performing a part to its extinction. Global warming is a low but definite factor of human extinction on Earth. Actually, not only human life but also the geological life is adversely affected by it. A term “Holocene extinction” also referred to as sixth mass extinction defines a current event of extinction of a big number of species. It is believed to be the most significant extinction on Earth. So global warming is not a scenario to doomsday that might happen someday but a definite event bound to happen that has already taken place.

A very common and heard the term “overpopulation”. Overpopulation is basically a situation where the existent number of the human population exceeds the capacity of Earth. There could be many reasons for overpopulation like decreased mortality rate, better medical facilities being provided, absence of sex education and many more. It obviously cannot be the fault of one person or country but the whole human population. It is an irony that more numbers of people on Earth will extinct the human population. How is it going to happen? It is believed that earth can only produce a limited amount of resources, be it water or food. If there will be more people to consume those resources, it will eventually deplete the resources to a level of consuming them all. Some scarce resources take years and years to be produced and if they will be consumed more than they are produced, it will automatically result at the end of such resources. Even while knowing that trees and nature are the only way out of this situation, mankind has been cutting down trees, reducing the possibility of human life to survive with limited sources on earth. Also, some of the natural resources such as coal have affected the earth in ways that are very harmful. They produce chemicals and substances that result in the degradation of our environment making it impossible to survive for humans.

To conclude, the answer to the title “has one of the doomsday scenarios started” would be yes. Global warming and overpopulation are two evident possibilities for human extinction on earth. These two for a fact that if tried could be controlled but for a fact have been noticed to increase day by day. Be it the population or the population’s activities, they both are hazardous to the earth’s surface. They both are a big risk to doomsday.

 

Lyman Ward