While nature has imbued within all living beings, a 'survival instinct' that helps us deal with threats to ensure survival at all costs, some of those threats are just out of our hands to ward off.
Nature can sometimes be just too violent and we all know that nothing can match its destructive power. No matter how technologically advanced we become. There are so many ways that our world and life as we know it could end.
What's ironic is that some of these are manufactured by us and instead of working together to nip these threats in the bud, we are debating whether or not these even exist! Anyways, here are some realistic ways the world could end.
Asteroid Impact
In my last post, I wrote about different ways that we could prevent an asteroid impact in the future. As you may know, a large asteroid wiped off the dinosaurs after its impact kickstarted a mass extinction level event.
If an asteroid of such a size or even bigger were to strike the planet, we would share the same fate. Even though we track a lot of these asteroids in space and we even know that are possibly headed towards us, we miss some all the time and they either fly by us or enter the atmosphere where they are incinerated.
But if a large one were to strike, the atmosphere wouldn't be enough. Nor would our technology because the forces involved are so great that our best efforts would simply fall short or cause a lot of destruction in the process of saving ourselves.
Climate Change
There is an overwhelming consensus among scientists that global warming and climate change are real phenomena and while we are busy debating whether or not we humans are the cause, things are only getting worse for the environment.
The environment functions on a natural balance and any medling with that balance is surely going to stir things up. Human medling with the environment for centuries now has caused its degradation and we are seeing extreme conditions take shape, weather patterns change, extreme temperatures, sea levels rise and many more disturbing effects.
In the coming decades, we could reach a point of no return, if we haven't already and could in fact reach a tipping point which could result in Earth quickly becoming an inhospitable planet.
Pandemic Diseases
History is filled with examples of pandemic breakouts that killed millions of people. These are simply unpredictable and we just wouldn't know when or where a pandemic would strike.
Given how open the world has become in the last century thanks to different means of transportation, today, pandemics can cause even more damage, capable of spreading faster than ever before.
What's more is that thanks to our increasing capabilities in genetic engineering, bacterias or other organisms can literally be engineered that are capable of causing mass extinction. This is not limited to a science fiction plot anymore and can become a real threat.
Warfare
If there is one thing we are good at, it's destroying ourselves. We have managed to create so many ways of killing us and anything we wish in a matter of seconds. This is, I think, a side effect of our intelligence.
We have already had two world wars and countless other wars and battles throughout our history. We have developed weapons capable of destroying entire cities and killing millions in a matter of seconds.
If there was to be another world way, rest assured that it would cause the annihialation of our world. Einstein once said, "I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." This should tell you everything you need to know!