The scientist stands over his creation, waiting for the moment of truth.
It’s taken him months to collect all the parts, and soon nature will deliver the powerful
shock of life.
His colleagues said he was mad, but soon they’ll all see!
The sound of thunder claps overhead, followed by a blast of lightning conducted by the lightning
rod directly into his creation.
The smoke clears, and the scientist stares at…
A singed, destroyed experiment.
Okay, not all experiments work out, and some are probably ill-advised in the first place.
But a few experiments in human history could have backfired terribly.
In fact, everyone’s very lucky the ten experiments in this list went mostly right - because they
had the potential to end the world.
#10.
Kola Superdeep Borehole
It was the height of the Cold War in 1970, and the United States and the Soviet Union
were each seeking an edge over their rival.
So naturally, the Soviet Scientists decided to embark on a very practical project - seeing
just how deep they could dig into the earth’s crust.
Deep underground bunkers were a common strategy in the Cold War, both for storing classified
weapons and for hiding in the event of a nuclear war.
The Soviets, however, wanted to push the limits, and what they created was the deepest artificial
structure in human history - over 40,000 feet below surface level.
But that level of deep drilling doesn’t come without serious risks.
No man-made structure had ever penetrated that deep into the Earth’s crust, and Russian
scientists were worried that it would destabilize the delicate balance of the tectonic plates.
Dire predictions were made of massive earthquakes or fractures in the Earth’s crust that could
cause untold damage.
But when the borehole was finished in 1989, there were no obvious negative effects on
the surrounding area.
It did give Soviet scientists the chance to study plankton fossils never before observed.
So what stopped construction?
The extreme heat, reaching 180 degrees celsius.
The Kola Superdeep Borehole didn’t destroy the world, but maybe only because of Earth’s
natural defense system.
#9.
The Trinity Test
Necessity is the mother of invention, and few things cause necessity faster than war.
World War Two was raging in July 1945, and the United States was in an arms race to complete
the first nuclear bomb before the Axis powers did.
There was no time to waste, as they intended to use the bomb to end the war with Japan
as soon as possible, and when the prototype was finished they were ready to set it off
in a deserted area of New Mexico.
There was only one problem - no one had ever set off a nuclear bomb before, and there was
no way to know what would happen when the atom would split.
Could it rip apart the atmosphere itself?
Many were nervous, and physicist Enrico Fermi offered to take wagers among the top physicists
and military on the project on multiple long-shot disasters that could occur - from destruction
of the state, to incineration of the entire planet.
This briefly caused a panic among the guards, but United States brass decided to go with
the assurances of the Manhattan Project’s team, and the Trinity nuclear test went off
successfully - followed by the only two nuclear bombs ever used in combat in Hiroshima and
Nagasaki.
Nuclear tests didn’t end the world, but the ongoing threat of nuclear weapons nearly
did many times in the decade since.
8.
Starfish Prime
The Cold War and the ensuing arms race led both sides to develop new and more powerful
nuclear weapons, to the point where their national stockpiles of nukes far outstrip
any other country’s decades later.
That also meant new and inventive nuclear weapons tests - some of which had scientists
deeply worried.
As the Cold War combined with the Space Race, the United States began planning for a possible
space war.
To that end, they decided to see what would happen if they detonated a nuclear weapon
in space - far above the Pacific Ocean.
What’s the worst that could happen?
Only the disruption of the Earth’s Magnetosphere.
The bomb chosen for the test, named Starfish Prime, was a hundred times more powerful than
the bomb detonated over Hiroshima.
Scientists worried that it would destroy the layer of charged particles that serve as Earth’s
defense system from powerful solar winds - potentially increasing Earth’s temperature and radiation
levels massively.
Despite these warnings, the test went ahead - and while the Earth didn’t burn alive,
many satellites in orbit were disrupted and radiation could be detected around the Earth’s
orbit for years after.
7.
The Magnaporthe Grisea Experiments
The food chain is one of the main things keeping human civilization running smoothly.
Food production has been industrialized to keep trillions of people and livestock fed,
and it all hinges on the health of crops.
That’s what makes fungi and other blights so dangerous.
A plant-pathogenic fungus named Magnaporthe Grisea has been a plague on rice farmers for
a long time - and has been shown to be able to spread to other grains like wheat, rye,
and barley.
Each year it destroys enough rice to feed 60 million people, and occurs in 85 countries.
It’s not surprising scientists were studying it - but not all were studying it to stop
it.
There were few weapons the United States didn’t look into during the Cold War, but one of
the most dangerous was a weaponized form of Magnaporthe Grisea.
Scientists experimented with turning the fungi into a spray or something that could be distributed
via bombs - potentially disrupting an entire country’s food system and forcing them into
surrender.
There’s no evidence that these weaponized strains were ever used - but many people have
noted that the fungi started spreading faster than ever during this period.,
#6.
The Oil-Eating Bacteria
Not all potentially deadly experiments started out to be weaponized.
Some actually started out to heal the planet.
It was the 1970s, and oil spills were a common event that threatened to devastate the planet.
One enterprising scientist, General Electric R&D team member Ananda Chakrabarty, had a
unique solution.
She would add a plasmid to the chemical makeup of the bacteria Pseudomonas Putida that would
give it the ability to dissolve organic solvents.
That would potentially make it able to dissolve petroleum, making it easier to restore natural
environments that were tainted by oil spills.
And what could go wrong with a bacteria that eats anything in its path?
Many scientists feared that the bacteria would mutate, becoming impossible to contain and
eating everything in its sights.
Less-terrified scientists still warned of its use, saying this powerful genetically-engineered
bacteria could upset Earth’s ecosystem by out-competing other bacterial organisms.
While none of these apocalyptic scenarios came true, it made history in a very different
way - becoming the first patented living organism in history when Dr. Chakrabarty won a court
case giving her the rights to it.
#5.
Russian Underground Nuclear Tests
It’s back to the Cold War, as the Americans and Russians continue to find interesting
places to detonate nuclear bombs.
As the United States had already covered deep space, it was time for the Russians to go
deep underground.
It was the tail-end of the Cold War, but the militaries were still trying new techniques,
which led to four underground nuclear weapons tests in the Soviet Union which were detected
by geological surveys.
That means humanity managed to create its own earthquakes - as if there weren’t enough
of those.
What’s the worst that could happen?
Scientists worried about the disruption of tectonic plates, which could cause massive
earthquakes and even disrupt the Earth’s electromagnetic field.
Of course, that could also have been the purpose of the experiment - that would be a devastating
blow to strike against a rival.
The four tests didn’t have any long-term consequences, but the world was so worried
about the possible results that they eventually passed a treaty banning the use of military
weapons to affect the environment.
#4 SETI
Not all potentially apocalyptic experiments are military.
Some start with peaceful intentions - but things can quickly spiral out of control.
The Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence is a combination of private and government
organizations that look for radio waves from deep space that could be evidence of alien
life.
This not only searches for evidence of existing radio waves but beams our own radio waves
into space - hoping that any alien out there will notice and contact us.
But it’s like the dog chasing the car - what would it do if it caught it?
The world has just barely begun to master space travel, with only one country ever pulling
off a manned mission to the moon.
If an alien civilization heard our radio waves and had the capability to pay us a visit,
they would be much more advanced than us in technology.
If they came to visit us in peace and to welcome us to the universe, it might be fine.
But if they were a hostile, imperialist civilization, there would be very little we could do to
resist.
So SETI might just be putting out a flashing red light for our future conquest.
This scary experiment is one that could still wipe human civilization off the map for good
any day now!
#3.
Operation Cirrus
Few forces of nature are more dangerous than a hurricane or tsunami.
Powerful winds can devastate a major city in a matter of hours.
So it was only a matter of time before people decided to find out if they could control
these.
The original project, Operation Stormfury, was an attempt to divert the path of hurricanes
by seeding them with dry ice.
The hope was that this could make it easy to divert hurricanes away from populated areas
- but the actual results were far more unpredictable.
It turns out nature doesn’t like to be messed with.
A joint project of General Electric, the US Air Force, the US Army Signal Corps, and the
Office of Naval Research, Project Cirrus was launched and seeded a hurricane with 180 pounds
of dry ice.
It was obvious that the cloud deck seemed modified - but it didn’t cause the desired
results, as the storm continued its current trajectory into nearby Savannah.
One person was killed in the ensuing storm, causing a massive public outcry against the
project.
The technique of seeding hurricanes was abandoned for years, and the government didn’t officially
acknowledge the project for years.
The science continued to be developed, but seeding hurricanes never proved to be effective.
It was far from the only time scientists experimented with controlling the weather, though - During
World War Two, New Zealand and American scientists worked on developing bombs that would create
artificial tsunamis.
#2.
Return of the Black Death?
Everyone knows how dangerous a pandemic can be, but no pandemic has ever approached the
deadliness of the Bubonic Plague - better known as the Black Death.
It killed as much as sixty percent of Europe’s population in the fourteenth century before
largely fading away - but it’s never been exterminated fully, with cases cropping up
in animals and people every year.
An enhancement in treatments has reduced its fatality rate, but it’s unclear what would
happen in the event of a mass outbreak.
During the Cold War, one country may have tried to do that intentionally.
It wasn’t until the fall of the Berlin Wall when one of the deadliest experiments in human
history was made public.
Vladimir Pasechnik, one of the Soviet Union’s top scientists at the Soviet All-Union Institute
of Ultra-Pure Biological Preparations, revealed that Russia had successfully weaponized the
Black Plague in the 1980s.
They used a powdered version of the plague, encased it in a polymer capsule, and planned
to load it on warheads that would be equipped with a time-release - dusting enemy populations
with the worst plague in human history.
Thankfully, the end of the Cold War meant it was never weaponized - or accidentally
released in a lab mishap.
But as deadly as these nine experiments, none of them had the potential to rip apart the
fabric of the universe.
#1.
The Large Hadron Collider
Seventeen miles below the border of France and Switzerland lies the world’s largest
and most powerful particle accelerator, built by the European Organization for Nuclear Research.
It was built to collide beams of protons at almost the speed of light, letting scientists
view particles never before observable by human eyes.
The Higgs-Boson particle was the most famous example, and the collider was able to create
miniature black holes in the collisions - giving scientists their first chance to observe some
of the universe’s most powerful phenomena.
Wait, black holes?
Those things that consume anything in their path?
On Earth?
As the Large Hadron Collider ramped up production and testing starting in 1998, many began to
worry it could accidentally create a black hole that would consume Earth and grow uncontrollably,
annihilating everything in its path.
Scientists brought in their best teams to show that the black holes disappeared in less
than a second and were nothing compared to the ones that occur naturally in space.
If no spontaneous black hole in space has consumed us yet, it’s unlikely a man-made
one is about to.
The Large Hadron Collider continues to provide invaluable scientific data, but fears about
its safety continue.
For more disturbing experiments, check out “Science Experiments That Went Horribly
Wrong”, or watch this video instead.