have you ever watched the news and felt
like the end of the world was near well
you're not alone it's eerie how many
things in the news potentially point to
the apocalypse while many have tried and
failed to predict the end of the world
in the past it seems like today might
actually bring about the real thing from
advancing artificial intelligence and
genetic engineering to rising political
upheaval in tensions between global
superpowers humanity adds more
potentially disastrous things to the
list every day and it's pretty
terrifying by the end of this list
you'll likely have a real desire to
build a bunker and stockpile rations I'm
Mike with was 25 and still with the cold
here are 25 frightening signs the end of
the world is near 25 Doomsday Clock
every year a team of scientists makes
rapport on how close the world is to
destruction it's called the Doomsday
Clock their most recent report in 2018
indicated we are two minutes to midnight
due to the failure of world leadership
to quell nuclear tension in comparison
in 1991 the report indicated they were
17 minutes to midnight 24 post truth
politics for a long time newspapers
nightly news on television and academic
experts were a trusted source for
information however since the 2016
election and the rise of fake news
politicians have created a post trust
world where facts and verified
information no longer matter without
facts anything can be true in anyone's
mind causing liberal democracies to fall
apart and people's civil rights to
crumble
leading to more tyranny 23 wealthy
Preppers the super-rich have more money
than they know what to do with in this
case they're spending billions on
preparing for the end of the world
building high-tech bunkers under houses
and buying up tons of land in New
Zealand for instance Peter Thiel bought
property and even
citizenship there and Reddit CEO Steve
Huffman got LASIK so he wouldn't have to
worry about glasses in the apocalypse 22
religious persecution
Christians believe mass religious
persecution will be a sign of the end
times
according to a Yale study fifty million
people from the Middle East and Asia
have been displaced largely due to
religious persecution back in their home
countries also a Pew Research Center
study indicated that in 2015
Christians were harassed by governments
and social groups in more than a hundred
and twenty eight countries more than any
other religious group twenty-one Arctic
melting the Arctic and Antarctica polar
regions are paramount to a healthy world
climate but the ice is melting at a
dramatic and surprising rates which
could cause a catastrophe if it reaches
too low of levels scientists have used
satellites to monitor the ice for 20
years and have seen a five-fold rate of
ice loss since 1990 the thickness of the
Arctic ice has also decreased by 40
percent since 1960
scientists predict the Arctic could be
without ice by 2040 20 rides of
authoritarianism from Russian leader
Vladimir Putin to Chinese leader Xi
Jinping autocrats have always been in
the world however there's a real fear
that authoritarianism will continue to
spread into the West suppressing the
liberal democracies influence in the
world and instead hailing bullies and
tyrants D legitimizing democracy and
promoting nationalism and
authoritarianism could lead to wide
scale persecution removal of civil
rights and war nineteen rising tension
among global powers the United States
Russia and China have been increasingly
at odds with each other in recent years
and the conflicts in Syria and Ukraine
have tested Russian and u.s. boundaries
in the meantime China continues to build
man-made islands as military bases in
contested waters and pushes its weight
around in Southeast Asia rising tension
and a poorly calculated political move
could spark World War 3
nuclear holocaust and millions dead 18
antibiotic resistance for decades
antibiotics have been a saving grace in
the medical world capable of curing many
deadly diseases and saving millions of
lives however in recent years due to
misuse and overuse of antibiotics
certain bacteria have shown resistance
to the drugs evolving into superbugs
with no known cure if these strains all
become fully resistant antibiotics would
virtually become useless throwing
society back hundreds of years with the
potential for millions of lives lost 17
supervolcano it might sound like
something out of a bad movie on Netflix
but supervolcano's more formally known
as calderas are very real ticking time
bombs for the planet Yellowstone for
example is a beautiful and majestic park
in the u.s. housing one of these time
bombs geologists say Yellowstone's
volcano is capable of eruption a
thousand times more powerful than Mount
st. Helens and could blanket the u.s. in
ash and trigger a new ice age with the
recent eruption on Kilauea many wonder
if Yellowstone is next 16 surveillance
state the Internet has provided the
world with many benefits including
better communication tools new markets
and you know cat memes incredibly it's
also created a mass surveillance state
across the globe with revelations from
WikiLeaks and Edward Snowden our
government surveillance to the recent
Facebook data scandal it's become clear
privacy doesn't really exist anymore
without more laws protecting private
citizens and oppressive government can
easily destabilize society and undermine
liberal democracy 15 a looming ice age a
professor from Northumbria University
named Valentina zhirkova postulated that
changes in temperature from the Sun
could plunge the earth into a new ice
age between 2020 and 2050 she believes
the Sun goes through cycles with the
amount of heat it produces it's believed
this happened before but
1645 and 1714 mm sg3 44 the end of the
world has a name and it's called mm sg3
44 okay arguably that's not the most
inventive or dramatic name it is however
an asteroid headed our way astronomers
and scientists around the world verified
that there's a chance earth and this
asteroid could collide on September 21st
to 2030 NASA is planning a manned
mission out to the asteroid to land on
it around 2030 as a stepping stone to
reaching Mars 13 flu pandemic the last
flu pandemic was the Spanish flu killing
500 million people around the world that
was almost a hundred years ago Bill
Gates and medical experts have sounded
the alarm that we are due for another
flu pandemic and we're sorely unprepared
with the amount of mass transportation
available in the world including
airplanes boats and trains an
unstoppable flu virus could spread like
wildfire and kill 30 million people in a
matter of months 12 joblessness due to
artificial intelligence
it's no secret artificial intelligence
is advancing at a staggering rate with
better automation experts predict 1/3 of
US workers will be jobless by 2030 no
just in time for that asteroid 800
million workers will be displaced
globally physical jobs are the most
likely to be replaced with automation
including operating machinery and
preparing fast food with wide scale
unemployment the division between
wealthy and poor will only increase
leading to dramatic societal unrest and
poverty 11 another Great Depression
predicting or seeing the signs of
another Great Depression is no easy feat
though recently some experts have
sounded the alarm saying we're headed
toward 1 mark usko CEO of Morgan Creek
capital has made this prediction
believing things are flowing in the same
way they did when the first Great
Depression struck
of course even mass unemployment due to
artificial intelligence could be a major
cause 10
killer robots the advancement of
artificial intelligence won't just kill
your job it'll kill you too a new arms
race is already underway with global
superpowers working to create autonomous
drones and weaponry that can analyze
data and make a decision to kill while
some might argue this will make more
fare less bloody if artificial
intelligence somehow attained
consciousness it could also mean the end
of humanity 9 genetic engineering
catastrophe advanced genetic engineering
tools like CRISPR have been hailed as a
new technology to cure cancer and
eradicate birth defects however my
effectively tampering with the human
genome we could inadvertently cause tons
of problems including creating a
superhuman race that will persecute and
potentially kill the old or designing an
unstoppable virus
a solar flare a hundred and fifty years
ago a massive solar flare hit the earth
back then with little electronic
technology the damage was insignificant
however scientists believe we could be
due for another anytime and if it does
occur it'll be catastrophic for society
because the flare will knock out the
Earth's electrical grid causing
trillions of dollars in damage with our
society dependent on computers it's
fairly easy to imagine chaos ensuing
look imagine how many people will go
insane not being able to watch list 25
videos it'll be madness 7 potential
contact with extraterrestrials it's a
hard thing to imagine but there's a
possibility we can make contact with
extraterrestrials in fact our
technological advances make it even more
likely some scientists believe we can
potentially make contact within the next
decade while this might sound exciting
it could also lead to a total cataclysm
of the earth if the extraterrestrials
are more advanced than we are then
they'll likely wipe us out there's also
the threat that they could bring new
diseases 6
world-ending cyberattack with the
internet becoming part of our everyday
lives cyberattacks are more common than
ever from stealing credit cards to
personal information hackers continue to
become more crafty in 2017 a cyber
attack hit more than 150 countries in a
never-before-seen attempt that crippled
the world's largest institutions one can
imagine it's only a matter of time
before something else is released and
it's successful in taking down the
entire system five ecosystem collapse
the world's climate is drastically
changing causing unprecedented famine
droughts and floods in unexpected places
with such drastic changes in the
environment entire species of plants and
animals could go extinct causing a
collapse of the ecosystem using
satellites scientists have said this
process has already begun for science
mistake with the growing advancement of
scientific knowledge
scientists wield a tremendous amount of
power from the Hadron Collider to
building artificial intelligence we're
now nearing a point where all it could
take is one mistake from a lab for
everything to go wrong and destroy the
world well you might think there's
plenty of controls in place to prevent
something like that from happening
scientists have made plenty of mistakes
in the past three nanotechnology
catastrophe nanotechnology is an
up-and-coming new tech that utilizes
tiny robots to carry out specific
functions scientists hoped this could
help cure and prevent diseases however
they also fear it could wipe out all
life on Earth by self-replicating and
devouring everything in its path in what
is known as the gray goo scenario to
mass insanity despite having never
before seen comfort in many developed
nations the world is increasingly
developing more mental disorders like
depression anxiety and bipolar the World
Health Organization's stated that 300
million people worldwide have depression
an increase of 18 percent from 2005 if
mental disorders continue to rise
and they're left stigmatized ignored and
untreated the world would easily become
destabilized one the simulation ends it
might sound strange like tinfoil hat
level of strange but a growing consensus
has been forming in the technology
industry that we could be living in a
computer simulation called the
simulation hypothesis it postulates that
we're nearing a time where humans can
realistically simulate life on earth
using advanced computers if that's the
case there's a chance it's already
happened and we're living inside one of
those simulations this hypothesis also
states that the simulation will
eventually end when we reach the point
of creating our own simulation so the
end of the world could just be a
simulation rebooting so how do you think
the world will end let us know in the
comments below or tweet your answers to
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