5 Horrifying Apocalyptic Scenarios (That Have Already Happened)
It's impossible to turn on the news or go the movies without hearing about some disease or cataclysm that's about to end the world. There's a movie coming (2012) that as far as we can tell is about every apocalypse happening at once, and in the news the flavor of the week is swine flu--though so far the fatality rate has fallen rather short of, say, Popsicles.
Our apocalypse fixation ignores the fact that the things we're afraid of are old-hat. Extinction level events have happened again and again throughout history and, lo and behold, we're still here. And hell, we probably wouldn't be without number five...
#5.
The K-T Extinction
Everyone knows this story: For millions of years, dinosaurs roamed the earth, snacking on the odd mammal that was unfortunate enough to get in their way. They were big, hungry and had some terrifying weaponry.
As for mammals, our only saving grace was that we bred like crazy and were too small to easily kill. We presumably spent our days scurrying in terror and it was pretty clear who'd won the genetic lottery.
Then one sunny day 65 million years ago, a big rock fell out of the sky like a game of cosmic billiards gone drunkenly sour. This falling space matter is suspected to have made the 110-mile-wide Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan.
To understand the scale of the collision, know that according to newer versions of the theory, the crater in question was caused by only one of several fragments of a larger asteroid that did to our planet what a falling cinder block does to a Chihuahua. Also remember that the Yucatan crater is 100-damn-miles across.
The initial blast(s) threw up enough ash to blot out the sun, killing all plant life. With the plants gone, the food chain snapped, leaving all the dinos yabba-dabba dead. The mammals' policy of being small and annoying paid off, and they grew up to be us, you and the Knicks City Dancers.
"Suck it, T-Rex!"
The K-T rock was six-miles across. If that sounds big, know that the earth is approximately 7,000-miles across (which is quite small by stellar standards). Heck, K-T wasn't even the biggest one to hit our planet--a few billion years ago, one such impact shat out the entire moon.
Documentary.
Don't worry, though. The good news is that we have dedicated teams of nerds giving up their social lives to stare at the night sky in order to tag and track most cosmic debris in the solar system longer than a mile.
The bad news is that objects smaller than mile across can still ruin your day, particularly if your name is Ann Hodges.
#4.
The Clovis Comet
So could something like K-T happen to humans? Well, it already did. In Michigan. Crap.
They call it the Clovis Comet, and if you want a very small idea of the scale of this thing, look at the above photo.
At first glance, you may believe that this image is the result of nuclear testing, rabid beavers or some horrifying combination thereof. In fact, this is a picture of the aftermath of the Tunguska explosion, which demolished Siberia in 1908. The blast, which some scientists attribute to an earthbound comet, leveled 80 million trees with the force of 1,000 Hiroshimas.
Scary, right? Now raise Tunguska to the power of "holy fuck" and you'll get an inkling of how devastating the Clovis Comet was. "How devastating?" you query. Well experts say it was an explosion equal to about 1.5 billion Hiroshima bombs (or 20 million Megatons).
The Clovis Comet exploded over the Great Lakes about 12,900 years ago. The blast ignited continent-wide forest fires, spurred global cooling and killed all the neat animals like mastodons and 14-foot tall grizzly bears.
We're actually glad he's extinct.
As humanity's big innovation that millennia was putting the meat on sticks before cooking it, we weren't in much of a position to do anything about the biosphere turning into tears and excrement, so we apparently gritted our teeth and boned our way back to the top.
#3.
The Bubonic Plague(s)
The bacterium, Yersinia pestis, has beaten the human race into a gibbering mess with such regularity that it's embarrassing. The first known outbreak--the Plague of Justinian--hit the Byzantine Empire in 541 AD. At its peak, the contagion killed an estimated 5,000 people a day in Constantinople.
Just look at these smug bastards.
Think of it this way--if you met a friend for a nice cup of Turkish coffee, chances were one of you was either A) infected or B) already dead. And if your buddy looked healthy, it was probably a good time to go update your will.
"Sigh. Stood up again."
After killing 50-60 percent of Europe's population, the Justinian Plague laid low for a couple centuries, repackaged itself as the Black Death and killed a third of Europe from 1348-1350. Like your mom's cooking, the bubonic plague wouldn't stay down--it hung around until the 1600s, when improved medicine and sanitation stanched its spread. And like your mom's cooking, the Black Death gave people fatal, necrotic tumors.
One hundred million people.
And because we love ruining your day, we'll inform you that the bubonic plague is still kicking about. Just move to the West Coast!
"The human race may as well have licked a pay phone at a bus station."
ReplyEw.
That macaroni and cheese at the bottom of of page one looks pretty good.
ReplyAw, no Permo-Triassic extinction? That wiped out 95% of all life.
Replyand no Snowball Earth? (600-500s million bc) no Oxygen Shock? (3500 million bc) those were even more freaky. Surviving them would be like colonizing Pluto, or telling your children to breathe sulfur from now on.
I know it doesn't make for a very interesting article, but the Toba Event had little to no effect on global populations. Turns out Wiki is not the best source.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesWiki is not a source, it uses sources and cited things on the page.
Jakob, when you reference wiki, that makes it a source!
So, "fvckaccounts", what are your source(s) ?
There was a definite genetic bottleneck in the human population around the time of the of the Toba event. The human population dropped to less than 10 000. The Toba eruption is the leading candidate for a cause. The exact timing of the events remain not precisely settled, so it may turn out that Toba occurred after or before the bottleneck by a few thousand years or so, which would rule it out as the cause.
But something pretty bad happened to humanity at the time, one way or another.
The number was not 10,000 but more like 50,000. Though honestly since the population was scattered and unable to come together as easily as we can know it probably didn't make much difference. Also, the Toba even occurring before the bottleneck is why it is even a candidate. It most likely did.
For every stupid comment, I give myself a scar. Lets see, one.. two. That brings me to 183!
Good job fvck and Gurrty. You missed the point entirely and jumped to the first "wiki" link you saw.
In terms of percentages of the population killed, the Black Death or the Spanish Flu has nothing on the absolute epidemic apocalypse that was the depopulation of Americas.
ReplyThere was a 80-95% reduction in the population of pre-Columbian Americas in the years following 1492. 80% of the population is the absolute low-end, conservative estimate. 90% is probably closer to the money.
That's a real apocalypse. In less than a century, pre-Columbian American civilizations ceased to exist because everybody died.
Columbus day ftw.
not to mention all the european diseases were passed to us.
So even those who are descended from the survivors have to deal with a lot of diseases.
like diabetes.
The thing about the bubonic plague is there were only 13 cases, and two were fatal. The flu kills more people than that. So unless it develops a strain resistant to antibiotics...
ReplyAlso, I read an article about a woman from Texas who'd contracted the plague- she got it after handling a dead rat. I'd take a guess and say this isn't something that can just happen to you.
If you live in a poor region with lots of rats of rats its more dangerous and really can happen. In those places it is something that can "just happen"
Apparently, someone hates the multi-regional theory. That, and I can't bother to scroll all the way down through the comments to see if anyone mentioned it already.
Reply"a figure roughly equal to the seating capacity of 12 747s"
ReplyOMG! Scientology was right! Oh no...
Damn you Xenu!
How did they forget Anton Chigurh?
ReplyBecause they didn't feel like putting it in a*****e
Wait, what does a character from a movie have to do with anything?
I was hoping to see things more along the lines of "these things the news go on about have already happened and we survived." But no. Sad face.
ReplyBubonic plague!
Replynone of those are zombie apocalypses though.
ReplyDidn't you read? Dead people got coffee in Constantinople.
boobs are awesome
ReplyBest. Ending. Ever.
ReplySo you believe that one volcano was resonsible for every 'missing' link? Get out of here.
ReplyThat's not what was said. It just was theorized that that one volcano was so devastating it wiped most of the races of the face of the earth. But even then it's just a blanket theory as they continue to research backwards.
Have you heard of megavolcanoes?
The plague IS actually on the West Coast? Holy shit, I thought S.M. Stirling was just going overboard on the whole medieval aspect of The Change!
Replyhaha. nice one.
In thee first image of article,guy on extreme left looks like Gandhi,really ..lol
ReplyKT Extinction was a mere walk in the park compared with the PT Extinction: 76% of all terrestrial life extinct, 96% of all sea life extinct. And it was all caused by global warming - from a series of volcanos igniting a massive coal bed called the Siberian Traps, releasing massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. But sure, the idiots out there keep lapping up the Koch-Teabagger Global Warming Denialist propaganda...
Reply Hide All See All 3 RepliesThe Permian Extinction took thousands of years.
Anyways, I myself am not entirely sold about this current issue. In the 1920's, people were concerned about Global Warming, and the Glaciers were melting just as they are today. Forty years later, people were afraid of Global cooling, and the glaciers mostly reformed. Another Forty years later, we are now concerned about Global Warming again. The pattern has jaded my oppinion.
Dinosaurs were alreadu dead before the astroid hit. Archiologists have not found a single dino bone from imediatly before the meteor hit
Regarding glacial increase in the 40's, this can probably be attributed to a significantly greater volcanic forcing (about .5-.7 W/m2). However glacial retreat has been occurring since the 1800's and the dawn of the industrial revolution, punctuated by a few reversals which can all be scientifically identified. My point, really, is I hate when people oversimplify such a complex subject and and up with, according to all evidence, an incorrect conclusion
We have to add the ancestors of the Hobbits of Flores to the list of human species that survived the Toba event (as well as the newly discovered H. denisova).
ReplyConsidering how close Flores is to Toba, that means those hobbits were pretty badass....
you guys really love that last boobie picture dont you? i swear ive seen it in at least 4 different articles.
Reply Hide All See All 6 RepliesI'm pretty sure they use it in half of all the articles on here.
And they use the exploding head in the other half.
you have! but theyre great boobies, are they not?
I love these two pics so badly!
Every time I see it I just have this irrational hope that somehow, that button will give out
It's a hugely powerful image.