we humans have had a pretty good run on
this planet but everyone knows it can't
last forever
at some point people will go too far our
mother nature will get us all here are
the most likely ways the human race will
come to an end the Doomsday Clock it's
not just for boosting DC's book sales
anymore since 1947 The Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists has been tracking
potential threats to humanity's
existence via a metaphorical clock with
each progressive tick toward a world
ending midnight representing the threat
of a more eminent potential end of human
civilization according to the physicists
biophysicists diplomats and inventors
who contribute to the bulletin we've
only ever come within two minutes of a
world and a nuclear disaster twice once
in 1953 when the US and the Soviet Union
started testing atomic weapons as a
means of freaking each other out and
again in 2018 why so glum expert chums
well with the United States recent
abandonment of the decades-old
intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty
and also of the Iran nuclear deal as
well as major funding hikes to nuclear
armaments maybe they're just a little
skittish
remember that time a pair of nukes
dropped on North Carolina two bombs
roughly 200 times more powerful than the
ones used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki at
the end of World War two that's all
right it was one of those funny little
oopsies that fly under the radar until
the documents are released five decades
later so goofy look look gosh it sounds
like a wild internet conspiracy but it's
true in 1961 an American b-52 bomber
broke up while flying over Goldsboro
North Carolina it then jettisoned its
payload two nuclear bombs one bombs
parachute deployed and it remained
unarmed the other ones didn't it armed
itself and here's the really cool thing
nobody is positive why it didn't
detonate all of this would be terrifying
enough but near misses like this
happened more often than you'd think
there was the 1980 Damascus type missile
accident in which a missile silo and
Arkansas exploded or that time in 2007
when a pair of nuclear weapons just sort
of went missing for a day and a half and
those are just a few of the ones we know
about the near-miss is one of at least
700 significant incidents involving
nuclear weapons recorded between 1950
and 1968 combined the massive
destructive force of atomic weapons with
mankind's potential for giant screw-ups
and what do you get the very real
possibility of an endgame scenario an
accident like any of these could
activate America's computerized mutually
assured destruction protocols
automatically launching thousands of
missiles at Russia and triggering an
apocalyptic unintended exchange of
enough bombs to effectively kill the
planet who knows maybe we live up to the
challenge of responsibly maintaining
more nuclear weapons than there are
Popeyes restaurants in the world
maybe the safety measures put in place
are enough to cover every nightmare
scenario and no terrorist cell or
enraged dictatorship will ever start us
on the path to Mad Max maybe the nukes
will go on nuke but don't sleep soundly
just yet because you know what's cheaper
and more accessible than a mushroom
cloud and aerosol can full of a
particularly bad sneeze biological
weapons are cheap easy to produce and
nearly impossible to detect before the
damage is done in short there's a reason
that entire government office buildings
shut down when there's so much as a
hands of exposure to anthrax but wait it
gets scarier experts say these
untraceable death machines are getting
even more accessible and dangerous with
the rise of technology like the CRISPR
gene editor and they were already pretty
bad before they could be custom built
joy scientists agree Earth's
temperatures are rising there's more
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at
any point in human history and we might
just be beyond repairing the damage
here's how it works
greenhouse gases like co2 and methane
absorb heat from the Sun and reflected
back into the atmosphere warming the
planet it's an observable fact that you
can test for yourself at home
as humans release more and more of these
gases into the air through
industrialization and vehicles the
temperature continues to rise changing
the world and so so many terrifying ways
permanent effects have already been
documented in 2016 scientists announced
that a species of
mo had gone extinct due to climate
change for the first time the bramble
came Elemis was suspected of going
extinct in recent years but it was made
official recently the ice caps are
melting raising ocean levels to the
point where cities like Venice or
flooding killing residents as weather
patterns become more extreme entire
areas of the world could become
uninhabitable economies could crumble
ecosystems could collapse and according
to NASA
it'll take decades maybe even centuries
to stop even if we stop producing co2
right this minute
maybe it's a little dour to pin all the
potential end-of-days blame on human
beings after all a deadly highly
contagious microscopic organism could
sweep through mankind and we'd all die
with a clean conscience historically the
only thing that's killed more humans
than humans has been disease a few of
the all-stars
the Black Death that killed between 1/3
and 1/2 of everyone in Europe in the
14th century the 1918 Spanish flu
pandemic that infected 1/3 of the world
and killed more than 50 million aids has
led to the death of at least 25 million
the good news first you'll notice that
those numbers keep getting smaller with
time our ability to confront and contain
diseases gets better all the time now
the bad news diseases are getting better
at fighting back overuse of antibiotics
has made drug-resistant bacteria newer
more impressive strains of the flu come
every year and despite our remarkable
advances we still can't cure viral
infections combine all these facts with
the knowledge that an infected person
can travel more easily across the ocean
than ever before and you'll understand
why doctors would just love for you to
go get your flu shot man's ability to
eat up resources is unparalleled in
nature and that can mean the end of
delicately balanced ecosystems it can be
seen today in the way we suck the life
out of rainforests or in the rapid
decline and worldwide insect populations
due to the destruction of the natural
habitats some scientists point to the
collapse of ecosystems in the past is
the beginning of a new era dubbed the
Anthropocene era in which human actions
such as deforestation and oil drilling
caused more change more dramatically
than any natural phenomenon
history they posit that it could lead to
worldwide biome instability that said
we've seen it happen before and it
hasn't always been our fault around a
thousand BC a natural disaster near
Iceland through the Northern
Hemisphere's environment into disarray
cooling temperatures and blocking out
the sun's at the point where crops died
out what sort of event could trigger
this on a global scale yes
Yellowstone could explode it probably
won't but hey it could Yellowstone is
home to roaming herds of bison the Old
Faithful geyser and a supervolcano so
deadly that if it rubs it will make
Michael Bay pack it in and start
producing ASMR videos dubbed the
Yellowstone Caldera
it's upsettingly big bigger than you're
thinking
significantly larger than Manhattan the
crater stretches for 1,500 square miles
what would happen if this puppy blew
worst-case scenario it could spew enough
dust particles into the atmosphere that
the air would become unbreathable the
Sun would be blotted from the sky plants
would die off ecosystems would crash
mass extinctions would rock the world so
take comfort in the fact that despite
the occasional tabloid claims to the
contrary Yellowstone isn't in danger of
going up anytime soon and even if it did
things likely wouldn't be that bad
then take fear in the knowledge that
there are two other super volcanoes in
the United States an even bigger one in
Indonesia and over a dozen more around
the globe so much better so let's be
real people have been warning that
cataclysmic overpopulation was just
around the corner for thousands of years
the thing is as we approach the modern
era medicine improved so did technology
suddenly things like disease and
horrifying infant mortality rates
weren't keeping us down the way they
used to hitting 50 stopped being
considered old age birth rates
skyrocketed and grew exponentially it
took us 120 years to get from 1 billion
to 2 billion and only 32 years to get
from 2 billion to 3 billion in 1999 the
Earth's population hits six billion 12
years later it crossed 7 billion
no new continents to colonize our
Imperial eyes we're running out of
places to put people and the resources
to support them although we've slowed
way down on the growth still it's part
of why Stephen Hawking and a speech
given shortly before his death stated
that the move to other planets needed to
happen soon no doubt that we will
eventually find ways of crossing the
immense distances of space in just a few
years the idea of an exploding star is
undeniably awesome and science fiction
adjacent but putting to one side the
fact that we have no way to stop the Sun
from eventually engulfing the earth like
an unimaginably large pac-man eating a
single dot that contains all of human
history you might think that our humble
planet is pretty safe from any damage
that heavenly bodies might hold then
comes along science to give you more
night sweats
apparently the dangers of a star going
supernova aren't confined to planets
with an up-close view if it happened to
a relatively close star the earth could
be positively drenched with radiation in
the form of gamma rays the kind you
might think would Hulk you out but would
actually just kill you an X rays the
kind from the doctor's office that boil
your skin if you don't use them
correctly the ozone could burn or the
nitrogen and oxygen in the air could
ionize so how many stars are close
enough to be concerning that's the
exciting part we're not entirely sure
but probably a few hundred from
terminators to Ultron to Black Mirror
pop culture has been making humanity eat
its robotic hubris vegetables for a
while and what if we learned if all
those Boston Dynamics videos are any
indication not much except for how to
make scarier robots to figure out how
the rise of a super intelligent new race
of self-aware machines would change the
world
IRL we turn to the expert researchers at
the University of Cambridge ha's Center
for the study of existential risk in an
experiment that will have you saying
that's what they do at Cambridge
researchers modified the game
civilization v to simulate what would
happen if artificial intelligence went
uncontrolled the results game over
do you want to destroy humans please say
no ok I will destroy humans
no I did get back they're not the only
ones that are concerned some of the
world's biggest thinkers have warned us
about the dangers of toying with machine
consciousness bill gates Stephen Hawking
and Elon Musk have all spoken publicly
about their fears with some experts
convinced that will experience the
singularity by 2047 during a close
approach to earth taking just a few
weeks ago using radar it's the biggest
ben affleck related longshot since maybe
he'll be the new batman but his history
has shown us crazy things just happened
sometimes yes the plot of Armageddon
could slap humanity right across the
face the threat of enormous space rocks
has fascinated mankind since early
humans first noticed that the sky just
sort of throws stuff at you once in a
while
the constant existential dread is what
keeps astronomers ever vigilant tracking
thousands of near-earth objects at any
given time
great big catastrophic collisions on par
with the one that wiped out the
dinosaurs can weigh heavily on a
person's mind that's part of like NASA
formed the planetary defense
coordination office a team tasked with
tracking comets and asteroids with the
potential to cause devastating damage
the bummer news is that they think
they've only found about a third of
those so far and that the information
they do have wouldn't give us the
10-year window necessary to prepare a
way to divert an incoming asteroid or to
raise the money to get Ben Affleck to do
it check out one of our newest videos
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