end of the world part 2

5-Improbable catastrophe

Here's a few:


-Short on air:
That thing in front of you between the screen and your face is called “air”. Its made up of about 78% nitrogen, 21% Oxygen and less than 1% CO2 and other gases. The molecules that make up that “air” move around randomly. Coincidentally when you breathe the “air” in, it reaches your bloodstream simply by moving through a 1 cell thick barrier by means of diffusion. This of course means that there is a very small chance that the CO2 in the blood will staysin the blood and the “air” will stay in the alveoli of the lungs. In theory this could go on for half an hour by which time you would be dead or deeply lacking in cognitive skills and it could(again in theory) happen to all 6.5 billion humans who live on earth.




-No solid footing:
What keeps you from going through the ground? Well the answer is the electrostatic force of repulsion caused by the atoms of your shoes getting too close to the atoms of the floor. Again those molecules move randomly so theoretically they can all miss each other(a process scientists call quantum tunneling which nowadays is used in telling the shape of very small things) and everyone on the planet would(in theory of course) just fall down into the center of the earth.


-Laboratory mishap:
A particle accelerate experiment goes awry. Trying to create minute black holes, the Large Hadron colider manages to create a little thing called a strangelet. Strangelets are hypothetical particles so called “strange” because if they exist they are stable, they may also have the ability to turn anything they touch into other stangelets. If one is created in a lab then(in theory) it wouldn't be long before the whole planet and everyone in it becomes a sizzling ball of strangelet.


Why people believe this:

Nobody does. You are infinitely more likely to accidentally fall into a hole filled with thousands of winning lottery tickets, have the love of your life(if you haven't met him/her) parachute next to you and then strike oil in your bathroom. This and the brain in a vat scenario is still and will always be a possibility but what can we do about it? All you can do is live your life assuming the scenarios will never happen

6-Cats




Do you own a cat?
Does the cat come to you when you cat its name?
Does the cat do tricks on command?
If you didn't feed it, would it still hang around your house?


Why is it that a species which we have been domesticating since the time of the Egyptians always act like they are the masters? How come more and more people wake up in bed everyday with their cat on top of them(no doubt about to strangle the person)?


A popular theory(albeit totally fictitious) Is that cats have integrated our society pretending to be loyal pets. They wait patiently(like cats) for the day in which our guards will be down. When dear Mittens looks at you with those round eyes, she is just practising hypnosis on you. When Thomas starts caressing you leg with his head he is just rubbing his scent on you, its his way of saying “this is my property and I shall eat these meatbags soon enough”.


Why people believe this:


People don't trust the media so naturally people will believe the opposite of what the media tells them. Currently the media downplays the danger of cats by refusing to report feline related murders and denying the possibility of a cat-de-etat on the world.


7-War!!!!!!




This one is easy, the reason we fight is because frankly we hate our fellow man. They are too different or too similar from us, they have nice things we don't and want, they are inferior or a crazy bunch. Heck I'm sure even “they live somewhere else” has been as good as an excuse to start a war or two. With all this fighting and new means to kill billions in seconds, it seems that maybe one day war will be a thing of the past...and so will humans


Why people believe this:


Was there actually a time since the rise of modern man when the whole world was at peace?
Probably not.


The cold war was also a prime contributor, death by nuke was a very likely possibility for people living in either Russia or American who had a system of “mutually assured destruction” or M.A.D for short showing that the funny acronym research facilities were still being funded. In any case this lead to the fear that nations, specifically those with nukes, would adopt the philosophy of “if you can't beat them, then DESTROY THE WORLD” and do away with humanity for good.


8-Robots


The idea of robopocalypse comes from movies like the matrix, iRobot, terminator or even 2001:space odyssey. One day robots become self-concious and figure out that humans are more of a bother to them than anything. They are smelly, not very good at lifting heavy object, they make mistakes, they can't even play blue ray DVD's and you get strange sounds if you try to insert a USB in anyone of their slots. With machines nowadays that can make other machines in a matter of minutes and with little to fear from the heat and radiation from our nukes, we are going to be severely outnumbered and outmatched. Chances are that unless a Neo like being comes along, we will lose to them.


Why people believe in this:


Over the decades many people have been replaced by robots. Car assemblies used to require lowly paid workers to do nothing but make cars 20 hours of the day. Now machines do everything in car factories and just a few workers are there to check that nothing goes wrong, tescos and other supermarkets have also decided to contribute to the Robopocalypse by using a self service checkout replacing the cashier with an equally annoying mechanical sounding female voice.


Nanobots have also come into the picture. These tiny machines may one day be found in your body, measuring and regulating your levels of glucose, blood pressure and even killing cancer. If they were to turn on us then we would be royally buggered, they would eat us from the inside and in turn use our dead organic matter to create even more nanomachines.