 Nos. 1 and 2: Doomsday Odds
posted: September 1, 2010
No. 1: Killer Pandemic. According to the Global Viral Forecasting Initiative, humankind is more vulnerable than ever to a devastating pandemic, which will either be a virus new to humans, or a more deadly adaptation of a known common virus. Just as scary is the opinion of experts that civilization only rates a two on a 10-point pandemic preparedness scale. Odds: One in two within the next 30 years. Destruction ranking: 4.
And the winner of our Cataclysm-Most-Likely-to-Eradicate-All-or-Most-of-Us Contest, the winner is... Killer Pandemic! So, those of you who picked it can cash in your tickets at the cashier's window. However, Solar Superstorm came in a respectable second, and in the event that Killer Pandemic cannot fulfill its duties during its reign, I'm afraid that responsibility will have to fall upon the shoulders of Solar. These are two of eight illustrations from a very satisfying assignment for "Laying Odds on the Apocalypse" for the September issue of Scientific American. Pictured below: the magazine's two-page layout with everything in place. Thanks again to SA's Melissa Thomas and Mike Mrak.
See all eight illustrations here. Feel free to check back in a few years to see which one got us first. 
No. 2: Solar Superstorm. The chances of at least some of us surviving our runner-up here are ranked pretty good in comparison, but there's a joker in the deck. A large-enough solar eruption would knock out most of the world's power grids and communication systems. Bingo... the most advanced countries with the most reliance on high technology would suffer the most devastating destruction. Odds: One in 20 within the next 15 years. Destruction ranking: 2. 
The vertical ODDS scale climbs from "Exceedingly Rare" all the way up to "Probable." The bottom horizontal DESTRUCTION scale reads from a ranking of 1 for "Moderate Devastation" on the left over to a ranking of 10 for "Total Extermination" on extreme right. 9 comments |
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Nos. 3 and 4: Doomsday Odds
posted: August 30, 2010
No. 3: Nuclear War. I know, I know... A lot of you had this pegged as maybe number one. Me, too. But we've got two more to go, kiddies. Meanwhile, a cyberattack or an accident could spur a nuclear exchange between the U.S. and Russia, killing hundreds of millions of people. Unfortunately, a more likely but less deadly scenario is a terrorist attack using a smaller nuclear device on an urban area. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists pegs the odds for that at better than 50-50 over the next 15 years. Odds for an all-out duck-and-cover nuclear war: One in 30 in the next ten years. Destruction ranking: 6.
Continuing with my dandy assignment from Scientific American to illustrate the eight most likely ends to our lovely world. All eight were done as part of a special two-page feature, "Laying Odds on the Apocalypse." We've already been subjected to (8) the strange possibility of bubble nucleation; (7) an ozone layer-destroying gamma-ray blast; (6) an earth-smashing asteroid that even Capt. Kirk couldn't stop; and (5) the explosion of a supervolcano causing the Hollywood end of us all. Today we move on up to nos. 3 and 4: good ol' nuclear war and unstoppable global warming. It's interesting to me that the higher up on the list we go, the more we hear of each particular threat, and the less we pay any mind to it. The final scene from Dr. Strangelove is inspired by Paul Rogers' comment.
See nos. 5 and 6 here. 
No. 4: Runaway Global Warming. The ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica together contain enough water to raise sea levels almost 40 feet, erase most coastal cities and make hundreds of millions of people homeless refugees. Without a change of behavior, humankind could set into motion the irreversible melting of both ice sheets by the end of this century. Henry Pollack, professor of geophysics at the University of Michigan, believes it may be too late to avoid such an ice loss: "The consequences of displacing so many people -- the world has never dealt with something like that." Nos. 5 and 6: Doomsday Odds
posted: August 27, 2010
No. 6: Asteroid Impact. An asteroid just 10 kilometers wide (roughly a little over six miles across, but I love it when scientists say "kilometers"!) crashing into our planet would mean the end of us all. But a dinkier one, say three kilometers wide (odds: one in 200,000 this century), could kill a quarter of the world's population and temporarily destroy civilization. Odds: One in 1 million. Destruction ranking: 9.
Scientific American recently handed me the dream assignment of illustrating the eight most likely ways we're all going to all say, "Sayonara!" at once. Yesterday, working our way up from the least likely to happen, we posted nos. 8 and 7. In today's post, weighing in as contenders no. 6 and 5, we find the mother of all asteroids creaming the Earth and the eruption of a "supervolcano" leading to global drought and famine Wow, what fun... just like being in our very own Irwin Allen movie!
See nos. 7 and 8 here. 
No. 5: Supervolcano. The explosion from a supervolcano would produce about 4,000 times more lava and ash than Mount St. Helens in 1980. The Earth's weather patterns would drastically change, causing inconceivable worldwide drought and famine. Surprisingly, we've already experienced such an eruption roughly 75,000 years ago, and we're still here, breeding like rabbits. Odds: One in 100 over 1,000 years. Destruction ranking: 5. Nos. 7 and 8: Doomsday Odds
posted: August 26, 2010
No. 8: Bubble Nucleation. We have a slight change in the universe here, folks. Basically, as our present universe decays and weakens, a new universe would naturally expand at the speed of light through nucleation of a tiny bubble -- engulfing all surrounding space, including our own solar system. Odds: One in 1 billion over 1 trillion years. Destruction ranking: 10.
Don't get me wrong... all assignments are simply just the best, and each and every art director out there is a very personal and special friend of mine -- as long as they don't borrow money. But that said, Melissa Thomas at Scientific American may have recently given me the Assignment of the Year by sending me the manuscript for "Handicapping the Apocalypse". The project fascinated me and still does: illustrate the eight most likely scenarios of the actual end of mankind. Man, now there's some USDA Grade A material! Researched by Scientific American's own panel of nutty professors, all eight have been precisely positioned across a two-page chart according to the likelihood of it happening, as well as the destruction capability of each. I'll show the chart on the final post.
You can try and guess the top eight beforehand, but I guarantee that you'll be wrong more times than you think you will. I'm working backwards, starting today, from the two least probable. Then two at a time over the next few days, till we're up to number 1 (which I'm betting won't be what you think!). They're all scary and wild, but not all Dr. Strangelove stuff. And the real high anxiety probably won't hit you until around the top three. Meanwhile, as they used to say during school a-bomb drills: "Crouch under desk, put head between knees... now kiss your ass good-bye!" 
No. 7: Gamma-Ray Burst. Cosmic blasts known as gamma-ray bursts occur in our universe when a supermassive star collapses into a black hole. A nearby burst would clobber Earth with an unimaginable dose of fatal radiation, probably destroying our ozone layer at the same time. So far, none has ever been observed in our galaxy. Odds: One in 15 over 100 million years. Destruction ranking: 8. |
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