Darkness into Light

I just got back from the cinema watching I Am Legend, and I was reasonably pleased. A decent balance of action and plot that had an ending slightly ruined by pseudo-religious prophecy and martyrdom. However, the most lasting impression the film I got was the concept of humanity being wiped out; our extinction. There's a staggering range of possibilities, too.

A meteor of a size between 2-6km wide could completely annihilate the human race if it collided with Earth. The last meteor to do so was 65 million years ago, and astronomers are monitoring any and all potential "Near-Earth asteroids", so it's not really cause for concern, as I'm sure America would proudly nuke anything that came near and have all other countries eating from it's hand as a form of thanks.

Sticking with the space theme, there's the end of the universe (don't worry - this could only happen in an amount of time longer than the life of the sun, a possibility in itself). Of course we have the much championed and more pressing issue of the greenhouse effect to tend to beforehand, but still this won't happen any time soon. Furthermore, Earth's axis could randomly shift and cause a gravitational change that would be deemed unsuitable for survival.

Less likely is the classic "Gamma Ray burst", which could hit us at any time (theoretically), but is so unlikely to happen you may as well disregard it. If it were to happen, we'd all be dead in a split second anyway, so never mind. Extra terrestrial life is a slim possibility, but unfortunately I can't see anything cropping up within our lifetimes.

Medically, HIV could mutate to become as widespread and crafty as the common cold, killing the majority of humans, leaving a few naturally immune to repopulate the Earth. This one in particular is very similar to the I Am Legend scenario, without the zombies and Will Smith. Bacteria could also mutate to become immune to antibiotics, rendering years of medical research useless.

The ever budding country of Japan, quite capable of making innovative things (Wii, self-cleaning toilets, etc.) could create a small universe within a particle accelerator and destroy the entire planet from the inside-out.

Lastly, nuclear war is a scary one for me. Never really liked the idea of it, because frankly, of all the possibilities mentioned, this is the most likely and feasible within this lifetime. Thankfully, Bolton doesn't really seem like a priority target, plus I'm sure we've plenty of mines and coal pits to keep a resistance going. Who knows? A nuke could take out London and the majority of the South, leaving Scots and northerners to repopulate, turning the UK into a typically hard-working, stiff upper lip, don't take no shit, lets fight every fucker in the world until they start listening kind of country. That would be quite interesting indeed.

Technologically, we've only really been going at our stride in the past few hundred years. The wheel, Archimedes' Screw and other commonplace technological advances have come quite steadily and slowly. It's the same with our population too. Only really in the past 4000 years have we really come to life, so to speak. Earth is far older than that. I just can't see us getting this far in this little amount of time for it all to be wiped away on account of something random like the Earth falling from orbit. There's no control of it happening, but it would sort of feel wrong if we didn't make a huge discovery.

Imagine being around when fundamental concepts we have today, like electricity, were discovered. I'd love for a major social/economical/technological breakthrough to occur in my lifetime. Something to really shake up the system, like a complete change to how we view physics, or absolute 100% proof God doesn't exist (if only).

Still, there's no need to be worried. All of the aforementioned are unlikely, statistically improbable and the result of an idle half hours research on a December evening.

If I was fearful of impending doom, I'd have spent this precious thirty minute window building a bomb shelter, right?