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Lists of 8 real threats to humanity that no one wants to believe in Gray slime, gamma ray burst, nuclear holocaust and ignorance Artem Luchko, August 5, 2014 165850 28
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Text by Artem Luchko
It is known for certain that more than 99 % of the species of living beings that have ever existed on our planet have disappeared.
And it is unlikely that a person will live forever.
When we ask questions about what threatens our existence, we draw in our head apocalyptic pictures from Sci Fi movies about a giant meteorite or an invasion of alien invaders.
But there are also less cinematic, but quite real scenarios that few people think about.
We decided to list some of them in this material.
Solar storms
The slightest failures in the operation of our giant thermonuclear reactor that is, the Sun, can lead to the fact that our planet can simply become either too cold or too hot to support life and the necessary ingredients for it: namely, a breathable atmosphere and water in a liquid state.
The sun is a fairly constant star, compared to most other stars in our Galaxy, but its radiation flux still changes during a relatively stable 11 year cycle.
These changes are only 0.1%, but even this negligible figure has a rather serious impact on the Earth's climate.
Moderate storms occur regularly 100-150 times a year, but a solar superstorm can destroy a significant part of the energy system in developed countries.
The most powerful storm in the history of measurements was the storm of 1859, also known as the"Carrington Event".
The coronal ejection was so powerful that the Northern Lights were observed all over the world, even over the Caribbean.
The solar storm led to disruptions in the operation of US telegraph lines.
But in the middle of the XIX century there was no serious electrical infrastructure, but if such a cataclysm had occurred today, it would have disabled high voltage transformers and left entire countries without electricity, throwing us back a hundred years.
Gamma ray burst
The sun is not the only star that poses a threat to our planet.
Large scale cosmic energy emissions are observed in distant galaxies, they are called gamma ray bursts.
These are the brightest electromagnetic phenomena that occur during a supernova outbreak, when a rapidly rotating massive star collapses, turning into either a neutron star, a quark star, or a black hole.
At the same time, in a few seconds of the flash, as much energy is released as the Sun is released in 10 billion years.
The sources of these emissions are located at distances of billions of light years from Earth, and in our Galaxy a gamma ray burst occurs about once every million years, but if it happens close enough to Earth, its consequences will significantly affect all living things.
According to a 2004 study, a gamma ray burst at a distance of about 3,262 light years can destroy up to half of the Earth's ozone layer, which is our main protection from ultraviolet radiation.
At the same time, the rays from the explosion in combination with ordinary solar radiation passing through a weakened ozone "filter" can cause a mass extinction of humanity.
If a gamma ray burst occurs at a distance of 10 light years (there are about 10 stars within such limits from us), it will be equivalent to an atomic bomb explosion on every hectare of the sky, and all living things will be destroyed instantly on half of the planet, and a little later on the second half due to secondary effects.
Supervolcans
A serious danger lurks in the bowels of our planet.
It is known that the eruptions of the so called supervolcans, of which there are about 20 on Earth, can change the climate on Earth and lead to the most terrible consequences.
One thing is good — on average, such eruptions occur once every 100 thousand years.
One of the most dangerous underground forces is the Yellowstone Caldera, which measures about 55 km by 72 km, and occupies a third of the territory of the famous national Park.
Scientists have established that the volcano erupted three times, the last time 640 thousand years ago.
The probability of a new giant eruption is estimated by scientists at 0.00014% per year.
The eruption of the Yellowstone volcano threatens all of humanity.
According to scientists, a huge cloud will be thrown into the stratosphere, which can hang for a long time, preventing the penetration of solar rays to the Earth.
Reducing the power of solar radiation by half will lead to a global crop failure, and the food reserves available on earth are hardly enough for a couple of months.
The average annual temperature on Earth can decrease by 12 degrees and return to its original positions only after 2-3 years.
Other smaller volcanoes can threaten with terrible consequences of a different nature.
For example, a volcano on the island of La Palma in the Canary Archipelago, in the event of an eruption, can cause a giant ocean wave that can flood the Caribbean and huge areas of the US coast.
One of the slopes of the volcano is unstable, and if it starts to erupt, a rock weighing half a trillion tons can collapse into the ocean.
It will cause a wave with a height of 650 meters, which will not be difficult to quickly cross the Atlantic.
The population of our planet continues to grow, and at the same time, more than 50% of people are residents of cities.
Overpopulation leads to an increase in mutations, and a high population density leads to a rapid spread of diseases.
Apparently, this trend will only continue, and in the future we should expect the appearance of new terrible epidemics that can kill entire cities.
At the same time, antibiotics are becoming more and more useless, which the World Health Organization is seriously concerned about.
The growth of antibiotic resistance threatens to throw humanity back to the era before the invention of penicillin, when the most trivial infection became deadly.
"Due to the lack of prompt and coordinated action by many stakeholders, our world is entering an era when antibiotics are losing their effectiveness, and common infections and minor injuries that could have been cured for many decades can now kill again," says WHO Assistant Director — General for Health Safety Dr. Keiji Fukuda.
In general, it is not difficult to imagine how a new plague epidemic will break out and doctors will have no way to stop it.
Everyone knows what the black death is, which raged in the middle of the XIV century and destroyed almost half of the world's population, after which it took as much as 150 years to restore the population.
Another terrible pandemic occurred in 1918-1919, when approximately 50 to 100 million people (or about 5% of the population) died from the Spanish flu.
With the current level of urbanization and the development of transport infrastructure, things will only get worse.
In 2010, a team of epidemiologists built a computer model of the Nipah virus, after which they tracked how it would spread and develop.
The report on the results of the computer simulation formed the basis of the film "Infection".
So fantasies about a deadly virus of unknown origin, which is rapidly spreading around the world, may well become a reality.
Resource depletion
No one knows exactly how much oil is still left in the bowels of our planet.
But according to optimistic forecasts, by 2050, half of the world's total oil reserves will already be pumped out (according to published intelligence data)
"The first and most urgent problem that we will face by that time is the end of the era of cheap natural fuel.
It is no exaggeration to say that it is the reserves of cheap oil and natural gas that are the basis of modern well — off life," writes the fatalist writer James G. Kunstler.
The oil crisis will have terrible consequences, for which most of the world's population is not ready.
And this process will affect not only the industrialized countries.
Over time, when oil will become an increasingly rare resource, more developed countries will have to look for it where it will still remain — from their weaker neighbors.
A new stage of exploitation of "poor" countries by "rich" countries will come: new armed conflicts will be unleashed in the Middle East and Africa.
The shortage of oil can provoke an acute shortage of other resources necessary for the life of mankind.
Billions of people will starve because of the universal dependence on fossil fuels.
As a result, all this can lead to a return to subsistence farming.
Perhaps one day humanity will get off the oil needle and replace gasoline with alcohol, which will be extracted from corn or sugar cane.
However, there is no known method by which we can produce rare earth metals, and their potential substitutes either do not exist in nature, or they have insufficient properties.
And without these substances, we would have no smartphones, no computers, no electric cars, no other electronics, and, accordingly, no progress.
According to the calculations of scientists at Yale University in the United States, the sources of rare earth metals are being depleted at a tremendous rate.
At the moment, about 95% of all rare earth metals are mined by China, and most recently its government imposed restrictions on the export of some elements, as well as doubled the price for non Chinese producers.
Gray slime
With the development of technologies, humanity should be afraid that these technologies will get out of control and destroy their creators.
One of the hypothetical threats is what futurologists call Gray Goo — a self replicating molecular nanotechnology that does not obey a person.
For the first time, the American scientist Kim Eric Drexler, who is called the "father of nanotechnology", spoke about the possibility of creating such a substance.
The scientist considered the idea of creating nanorobots in his book "Creation Machines".
In the original idea, it was assumed that microscopic machines could be developed in the laboratory, but they could also get their properties randomly.
In 2010, DNA based nanorobots were demonstrated for the first time, which are able to find and destroy cancer cells, leaving healthy tissues unharmed.
Tiny capsules release the necessary doses of drugs when a target is detected and purposefully destroy the "enemy".
As a result, it turned out that these nanorobots can exist for another month after the death of the"owner".
So far, of course, nanokiborgs are being developed exclusively for the benefit of people, but in theory they can both create and destroy.
If, for some reason, nanobots get into the biosphere and begin to multiply endlessly, using everything they can get to as a material for creating their copies, in fact, they can begin to absorb everything around, including the planet itself.
At the same time, it will be very difficult to destroy the hypothetical "gray slime", since one preserved replicator will be enough for it to start reproducing again.
If such a robot gets into the World Ocean, then it will simply be impossible to destroy it.
The Nuclear Holocaust
As long as there are 7 countries in the world that have nuclear weapons, the probability of a nuclear war cannot be zero, despite the fact that it can lead to the extinction of humanity or to the end of modern civilization on Earth.
The reasons for this threat are quite obvious: a nuclear explosion is accompanied by a destructive shock wave that erases everything in its path, burning light radiation and penetrating radiation that causes irreversible changes in matter.
People who have not even received significant injuries directly from the explosion are very likely to die from infectious diseases and chemical poisoning.
There is a high probability of burning in fires or being immured in the rubble.
A nuclear explosion causes a disturbance of the electromagnetic field, which will disable electrical and radio electronic equipment — that is, all communication lines, transformers, semiconductor devices, which will lead to the loss of all modern technologies.
Despite all the risks that civilization will be exposed to, analysts suggest that billions of people will nevertheless be able to survive a global thermonuclear war.
But at its end, a nuclear winter may begin.
Widespread explosions and fires will carry a huge amount of smoke and soot into the stratosphere.
As a result, the sun's rays will be reflected from these particles, and the temperature on the planet will drop everywhere to the Arctic, and the surviving population will have to adapt to the new most difficult conditions.
Ignorance and stupidity
The most underestimated threat to any society is ignorance (unconscious or conscious) combined with passivity and laziness.
Both types of ignorance are fed by the mass media — the main tools of politicians and corporations.
It is the "cult of ignorance" that is the reason why in the XXI century there are religious fundamentalists, racists, people who worship power and demonize all those who do not do this.
It is because of widespread ignorance that there are people everywhere who deny global warming and exploit others for the sake of personal superprofits.
In the" well fed years", ignorance grows, and the importance and necessity of education become less obvious.
The younger generation, taking advantage of the benefits of the system that was built by their ancestors, gradually forgets how and why this system was built.
In the end, incompetent people gain power with the support of the majority, thereby putting the foundations of the system itself at risk.
Populism and lack of competence are a real danger for humanity.
For example, researchers from the United States (a country that is currently at the peak of prosperity as a result of technological advances and effective economic policies in the XIX and XX centuries) say that this peak can be interpreted as the beginning of decline.
At least because former US vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is not familiar with elementary scientific theories.
The figure above shows a graph showing the development of education in blue, and the accompanying economic development from the time of Ancient Greece to the present day in red.
Although the drawing is quite speculative, such pessimistic views are very common among futurologists.
Max Tegmark, a professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, also believes that human stupidity is the biggest problem of all mankind, and artificial intelligence is its biggest existential danger.
People with limited intellectual functioning, ignoring the potential catastrophic consequences, can assume that artificial intelligence will develop into something that can destroy humanity.
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Other articles on the topics Plot of the future Science and Futurology The Apocalypse The Light of the Cosmos Gray Slime Medicine Society Nuclear Warresursneftepidemiyagamma Splash Solar energyaSai Fi
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