Possible ways the world could end (As described in science fiction)
Submitted by bertie on Sat, 11/05/2005 - 06:05
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- NOTE: the bracketed [ ] comments on this list are there because the original list, sans comments, belongs to another Listologist - see bottom of list.
- 1. A meteor hits the surface of the planet. All life is obliterated. [By definition, meteors don't come that big; it would have to be a comet or asteroid. So see Lucifer's Hammer by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle or The Hammer of God by Arthur C. Clarke]
- 2. Nucleur war, then nucleur winter. All life evetually dies. [See On the Beach by Nevil Shute]
- 3. A nearly star, maybe even the sun, explodes, showering earth with radiation. [See One in Three Hundred by J.T. McIntosh]
- 4. The environmental damage to Earth continues, eventually making our planet unlivable. We slowly die out. [See The End of the Dream by Philip Wylie.]
- 5. Aliens atttack the earth, slaughtering us all in an invasion. [See Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.]
- 6. The Core stops spinning. We are showered with radiation. [See the movie The Core.]
- 7. Another species emerges as the dominant one on earth, maybe through genetic engineering by us. It obliterates us. [See War with the Newts by Karel Capek.]
- 8. A biblical apocalypse occurs. [What would make it a biblical apocalypse, as distinct from a common-or-garden apocalypse?]
- 9. An extremely lethal virus wipes us out. Maybe AIDS becomes airborne, or ebola gets out of control, or something. [See The Stand by Stephen King.]
- 10. A time paradox is created. [An event that might create an alternate universe in which we no longer exist but leave us thriving in this one.]
- 11. A black hole enters our solar system. [See Earth by David Brin]
- 12. Whatever entity created us decides he's bored of the universe and so he ends it. [God, being perfect, is never bored.]
- 13. Maybe we're just someone's thought. That person stops thinking that thought. [But we live on in His memory.]
- 14. A message somehow reaches us, somehow, stating that when you die, you go to an absolute paradise no matter what, whether you commit suicide or not, and a mass suicide cult leads everyone to take their lives. [Not a bad idea, because it would remove the incredibly gullible from the population. Of course, pretty soon they'd be with us again.]
- 15. The icecaps melt, covering most of the earth in water. [See The Sea and Summer by George Turner.]
- 16. Another ice age falls, eventually starving humanity to death. [Um, if the others didn't, why should this one?]
- 17. A rip in the fabric of space somehow forms right outside the earth, and we are annihilated in the process. [I've heard of being caught in a rip, but....Okay, you guys - launch the needle and thread!]
- 18. Our universe runs into another, causing both to be obliterated. [This may involve a contradiction in terms, making it logically impossible.]
- 19. Our galaxy collides with another, destroying the earth. [Actually galactic 'collisions' are surprisingly non-violent. They pass through each other without tremendously violent interaction:
- "Galaxies smashing into one another sounds like an explosive event. On the contrary, they probably slide together smoothly, generating little fanfare. Galaxies are mostly empty space, and the distance between stars is so huge that the probability of stars colliding is actually very small." - quoted from here.]
- 20. The entire water supply of the earth is poisoned, maybe by terrorists or something. We are all poisoned. [Nice pure ice, anybody?]
- 21. Y3K occurs in the year 10000. The computers all stop running, which causes the world to end, since by that year, computers will probably control everything. Humans will then have no where to get food, nothing to pump their water, recycle their air, etc, etc, etc. [If we haven't licked computer bugs by then, we'll deserve to die.]
- 22. We develop AI. The computers we put AI into then rebel against us, and enslave humanity (or just wipe us out). [See The Monitors by Keith Laumer.]
- 23. Our entire world turns out to be a dream. In reality, we are on a completely different world, and all of us are just trapped in a mass hallucination, and the schitzophrenics turn out to be the people who are seeing reality for what it really is - seeing through the hallucination.
- [See The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin.]
- 24. World War 3 erupts. Whether nukes are used or not, it would wipe us out. [Sounds like wishful thinking to me.]
- 25. A massive volcano erupts, blocking out the sun worldwide for hundreds of years, bringing on the same effect as nucleur winter. [Again? Those pesky massive volcanoes!]
- 26. The HAB theory comes true - due to the weight of the ice building up on the earth's poles, they become unbalanced, and eventually the entire earth's crust shifts, causing Antarctica to reside on the equator, etc etc. (there's a LOT of evidence for this one - for example, archaeologists found detailed maps of Antarctica that are thousands of years old. When we scan the surface of Antarctica with lasers, what we find matches the ancient maps (most famously, the Pyri Reis map - I don't know if that's the right spelling. Some people say Atlantis was Antarctica before the shift. Also there are some geological records). But, even if this did happen once, it's not likely to happen again, because of global warming melting the poles. [Well, if it couldn't happen it doesn't belong here.]
- 27. The animals rebel, and go on a massive human-killing rampage. [See The Fittest by J.T. McIntosh.]
- 28. The laws of physics change, causing Earth's atmosphere to be sucked into space. [This would likely involve a change in the 'gravitational constant', leaving Earth with insufficient gravity to hold its atmosphere - rather than it being 'sucked away'.
- 29. A giant solar flare consumes the earth. [Again? Those pesky giant solar flares!]
- 29a. A particle accelerator goes wrong, setting off a chain reaction that destroys the entire world. This COULD actually happen. [Maybe. But it is a fact that when the first atomic bomb was tested the scientists were unsure that it wouldn't set fire to the atmosphere.]
- 30. Mass insanity. Eventually the insane outnumber the sane, and the world collapes. [I expect it would collapse long before 51% of the population became insane.]
- 31. Humans eventually evolve into something else, over millions of years. However, the earth can't handle our new form, which is somehow even more parasitic than we are now, and the world collapses under the stresses we put on it. [My, this is actually a very optimistic scenario. We don't bring about environmental catastrophe until we become (not merely humanly destructive, but) hyper-parasitic.]
- 32. We turn out to be an genetic experiment made by aliens. The experiment then ends. [See the movie Dark City.]
- 33. A nanotechnology disaster occurs (ie a nanomachine plant explodes in the future), causing millions of nanobots to be released into the biosphere, which reproduce and form more nanomachines, then, without controls, randomly attack and destroy everything in the biosphere. All life is wiped clean off the surface in a matter of weeks. [See "Blood Music" by Greg Bear.]
- 34. The universe turns out to be a bubble in a much larger world. The bubble pops. [What do you get when you fall in love?...hum...hum...la, la, la, la,...]
- 35. The universe turns out to be an atom in a much larger world. The atom is smashed in a particle accelerator in the larger world, or torn in half in a fission reaction. [You won't believe how old and cliched this notion is. See, for example, "The Girl in the Golden Atom" by Ray Cummings (1922) - the year, not the listologist.]
- 36. Energy suddenly stops working. All the atoms decay, causing all existence to be reduced to nothingness. [Energy is work, so work stops working? Contradiction alert!]
- 37. The vacuum balance of space stabilizes further (it was unstable in the beginning of the universe - filled with energy rather than nothingness), causing an energy blast that destroys everything in it's path. [Vacuum balance? That sucks! I'll have to take your word on this one.]
- 38. A world dictatorship is formed, and everyone born is given an implant chip to track them, and also so they can be killed for thinking unpatriotic thoughts (maybe the chip sends out a massive electrical shock or something). The leader then goes insane, and orders that every chip be activated. Every human on earth dies (except the leader) as by that point everyone has one implanted. [You'd think they'd know not to 'form' a world dictatorship, seeing how badly most national ones have turned out.]
- 39. A worldwide announcement system is set up. However, a mistake is made in the broadcasting, and we are all forced to endlessly listen to country music. [Or, the World Wide Web is set up and we are all forced to endlessly watch 'erotica' made by people who clearly have no concept of the erotic.]
- 40. Sex is outlawed worlwide. [See The Disappearance by Philip Wylie.]
- 41. Rapid climate change occurs, and the world is rapidly turned into an ice planet, when the cold water from melting icecaps halts the ocean currents. (yes this is a real possible scenario, although the movie did exagerate it somewhat - I've read about this one before) [See The World in Winter (a.k.a. The Long Winter) by John Christopher.]
- 42. A bizarre demon is summoned through some sort of pagan ritual, which then obliterates the earth.
- [See selected episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.]
- 43. Human technology advances to the point that we can create an absolute paradise world inside a machine, which will never break down. We then all download ourselves into that machine, and live in a state of eternal, unchanging bliss. See "The Machine Stops" by E.M. Forster [yes, *the* E.M. Forster] (kind of like the "first matrix").]
- 44. Men start having periods. Of the menstrual kind. [That would be bloody awful, but the end of the world?]
- 45. "When Hell is full, the dead will walk the earth" ( Zombie epidemic). [See any of the numerous 'Dead' movies.]
- 46. Cochroaches realize they outnumber us several thousand to one, and rebel against their human masters. [See the movie Mimic.]
- 47. A bunch of people get degrees in 16th century French poetry. The only thing to do with this degree, is teach other people 16th century French poetry, which they will do...and their students will do the same...and so on, until everyone on earth is a 16th century French poetry teacher. The economy will crash, b ut it won't even matter by that point, because the world's currency will be 16th century French poems rather than money. Society will unravel by the seams, and the survivors will be unable to rebuild our world as they fall into an obscure poem-reciting stupor, and eventually die. [See the 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' novels by Douglas Adams.]
Cloned From:
Well, when you sum it up like that, the plotlines either seem extremely ridiculous or extremely plausible.
I think you actually just made a bunch of those up....
And I would argue with your use of The Machine Stops.
Actually they're not my plotlines but darktremor's - the link is at the bottom of the list. I hoped to get a rise out of darktremor, but he hasn't bitten yet.
Yes, thanks for catching my mistake with TMS. Perhaps it would fit No.21 a little better.