20 Ways the World Could End

Are we in danger of being erased from the universe? Here we look at the factors that could doom humanity: natural disasters, human-triggered cataclysms, willful self-destruction, and greater forces directed against us.

It's difficult to imagine it all coming to an end. Yet 99 percent of all species that ever lived have gone extinct, including every one of our hominid ancestors. In 1983, British cosmologist Brandon Carter framed the "Doomsday argument.

The current rate of extinctions is, by some estimates, 10,000 times the average in the fossil record. At present, we may worry about snail darters and red squirrels in abstract terms. But the next statistic on the list could be us.

1 Asteroid impact

2 Gamma-ray burst

3 Collapse of the vacuum

4 Rogue black holes

5 Giant solar flares

6 Reversal of Earth's magnetic field

7 Flood-basalt volcanism

8 Global epidemics

9 Global warming

10 Ecosystem collapse

11 Biotech disaster

12 Particle accelerator mishap

13 Nanotechnology disaster

14 Environmental toxins

15 Global war

16 Robots take over

17 Mass insanity

18 Alien invasion

19 Divine intervention

20 Someone wakes up and realizes it was all a dream

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