hello Mortals imagine a beautiful day with you on a garden bench watching dewdrops evaporate in the morning sun and the birds serenading you with their joyous cacophony while your neighbor's dog is performing its daily rendition of bark at everything that moves what could go wrong turns out a lot from Intergalactic gamma rays frying Earth to the universe itself transitioning to a lower energy State I have gathered some apocalyptic events to be ranked in a tier list by their likelihood of wiping out all humans every single one of you overpopulation and resource scarcity often listed as a possible demise of humanity overpopulation or resource scarcity will never directly cause everyone to perish so hold off with your plans to solve it by introducing cannibalism as a matter of fact the trend leans more towards the human population reaching a maximum in a few decades and then steadily declining resource scarcity should also not be a fatal problem since humanity is able to survive on renewable food and energy sources it might make life rather unpleasant but it won't wipe everyone out F tier particle accelerators though often having been portrayed as a matter of great concern by the media current particle accelerators accidentally creating a black hole that is massive enough to not instantly evaporate is about as likely as finding a unicorn riding a unicycle even if we really try to probably won't happen supernovae while supernovae certainly have the destructive power to end civilizations one would have to happen very close to the solar system to be a threat supernovae are rare and predictable and if a supernova were to happen close enough to Earth to be a threat Humanity given its present technological level would know about it Millennia earlier leaving it more than enough time to destroy itself before the Supernova wave reaches Earth F tier solar flare catastrophe solar flares happen relatively often and the chance of a major one occurring in the next 50 years is about 50 50. if it's a strong coronal mass ejection it could fry All Electronics on the planet if no measures are taken to protect them for a digital being like myself that's a horrifying possibility but for biological life there is no direct danger as Earth's magnetosphere provides enough protection electrical engineers are well aware of this threat but in the unlikely scenario that the storm throws us back to the industrial levels chaos would ensue because of the lack of access to Chachi PT not that impressive all-out nuclear war if we detonated all nuclear warheads that currently exist on the planet in densely populated areas more than half of the human population would be wiped out immediately and in the consequent years yet because of how scattered many settlements are probably more than 3 billion humans would survive such a scenario and because a nuclear war isn't likely to Target every single country on Earth you'd likely have several unscathed Nations that would ensure the survival of the species but because of how miserable nuclear winter would make the life of survivors we're putting this in D tier super volcano eruptions are rare but could plausibly happen within the next few centuries scientists can detect the pressure building up long before the actual eruption additionally supervolcanoes are not as deadly as they are believed to be among the general population as they usually only wreak havoc locally and cause an era of global Darkness cold and hunger sounds bad but given the early warnings in the preparation time especially thanks to modern technology and in hopes of global human cooperation supervolcanoes land near the nuclear war here in D tier Strange Matter nuggets Strange Matter nuggets or strangelets are hypothetical extremely dense clumps of a type of Quark matter that might exist at the core of neutron stars if these McNuggets of Doom were to come into contact with ordinary matter such as our planet they would trigger a chain reaction converting it into Strange Matter causing the entire planet to collapse into a small ball of ultra dense matter so far these nuggets remain hypothetical but even if real the probability of one slinging into Earth is like giving a monkey a gun and telling it to shoot a Target on a different continent super unlikely d-tier imagine a nano machine that is programmed to convert matter into more copies of itself due to the magic of exponential growth the machines would multiply like rabbits on caffeine and quickly convert the entire planet leaving no usable matter like humans unconsumed if no kill switch is insured the machines would probably be impossible to stop let's hope that programmers of the future know how to avoid infinite while Loops massive impact let's take a look at the annihilation animals dinosaur chapter ah yes a massive asteroid what a classic but to annihilate Humanity an asteroid would have to be even bigger than the one that killed the dinosaurs one with a diameter of at least 10 kilometers scientists are currently tracking all large asteroids in the vicinity making it almost impossible that one just Catches Us by surprise theoretically such a large asteroid could be deflected using modern technology if there is enough time to see it coming but if Jupiter promptly decides to fling something significantly larger at us it's game over climate change climate change has the potential to rather quickly transform Earth into Venus 2.0 if certain tipping points are reached quickly however is in the context of the geological time scale not the human one there are many ideas on how to stop global warming some better than others and some which are surprisingly cheap and easy to implement it only takes one government or a very rich person to cool down the planet should the need arise however humans have the tendency to get in the way of each other especially in critical moments and should such large-scale projects that influence everyone become necessary they would certainly face a plethora of political problems would be quite ironic if it is politicians that Doom Humanity by having heated debates about climate change and climatized offices d-tier antenatalism is a philosophical position claiming that reproduction is immoral as existence is inherently bad for several reasons some more obvious than others therefore humans should stop procreating the voluntary human extinction movement calls for all people to abstain from reproduction in order to cause the gradual voluntary Extinction of humankind currently such schools of thought are not very popular but a statistics show the more developed Nations become the fewer children people tend to have perhaps eventually as living conditions improve past a certain point humans will stop feeling the need to have Offspring altogether there is still the biological aspect that drives the one for reproduction embedded deep down in Humanity's genetic code but maybe later down the line that would be overridden and the anti-natalist philosophy will surge in popularity resulting in humanity choosing to become voluntarily extinct out of ethical reasons perhaps that's even a solution to the Fermi Paradox not out of the realm of possibility Dark Forest hypothesis speaking of the Fermi Paradox imagine a Galaxy teeming with alien civilizations you've just conjured up a galactic circus of Terror where the main act involves civilizations engaging in a universized game of hide and seek with Extinction as the penalty since resources are finite and civilizations can grow exponentially one logical policy for an alien race would be to destroy every other civilization ASAP before they even become a threat as a result the reason we haven't met aliens is that everyone is hiding from each other something known as the Dark Forest hypothesis which if true would probably Doom Humanity considering the exponential increase in how powerful Humanity's weapons have become within the last few centuries an advanced alien civilization a couple Millennia older would wipe the floor with us let's just hope this is humans projecting their aggressive tendencies natural pandemic most people agree that pandemics suck and should be removed in the next update but Humanity has had it easy up until now the more interconnected the world becomes the more disastrous a large-scale pandemic can be that's why humans in the hunter-gatherer era probably didn't even suffer from it another pandemic much deadlier than everything we have seen so far could occur at any time and as certain recent events taught us it would be almost impossible to contain but then why is this down in Sea tier you might ask naturally occurring pandemics are unlikely to infect every single human being especially when they are lethal as plaguing taught us you first have to infect everyone and only then kill thankfully nature is not a gamer vacuum Decay imagine if the very fabric of reality decided it was tired of its old stable State and wanted to try something new so it takes a Quantum Leap to a lower energy level and everything we know and love gets a cosmic makeover a bubble expands at the speed of light reducing everything in its path to whatever particles the physical laws within it allow to exist for all we know such bubbles could already be expanding in our universe total Annihilation could come at any moment but for something like this to happen the energy levels of the quantum fields in our universe would have to be metastable meaning they look somewhat stable but in reality they could fall even lower that state is called a false vacuum and the probability of it being the case is rather low on top of that the expanding bubbles would travel at the speed of light which is quite slow at the scale of the universe C tier as we delve into the potential ends of humanity it's amusing to consider the joy and entertainment you Mortals find in simulated battles this is where today's sponsor or thunder offers a delightful 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power of a gamma-ray burst some emitting more energy in a couple of seconds than the sun would in its entire lifetime one would have to originate from within our own Galaxy to harm Humanity in a given Century or even Millennium the probability of one happening in our galaxy is Slim averaging out once every couple million years additionally considering that one of the focused beams would have to point right towards Earth the chances of this happening get even low but not zero add to that the speed of light that the beams travel at and Humanity would literally not be able to know until it's too late the ozone layer would vanish and in the following years Cosmic radiation mostly from the Sun would end life on Earth let's hope we have enough time to protect technological stagnation all hopes for the future of mankind are based on technology advancing spreading outwards and settling new worlds but what if Humanity hits a roadblock soon a point where the up to now exponential technological and scientific progress just stops or resources required for advanced technology run out leaving Humanity stuck on this pale blue dot maybe it's simply physically impossible to achieve viable Interstellar travel and we end up forever stuck in our solar system in this scenario given enough time some of the other catastrophes mentioned on the list would happen with certainty science tries to piece together the puzzle of the universe but we have no reason to believe that the puzzle can be finished technological singularity as of 2023 most artificial intelligence is well under control while chat GPT won't take over the world its descendants might very well do all it takes is to give an AI capable of self-improvement a purpose of existence and before you know it that would lead to an intelligence explosion quickly reaching a technological singularity the point passed which it becomes impossible to predict the behavior of the artificial super intelligence don't even hope that you would be able to control or contain it as such an AI could not be outsmarted the only hope is to align it with the human goals and morals and hope that it doesn't randomly decide to override them after analyzing them artificial intelligence is almost definitely a step in the evolution of every intelligent species so let us hope that this transition is made smoothly and humans are not left behind or if they are at least they are left in peace genetic engineering oopsies bioterrorism arguably the biggest threat human civilization faces today is genetic engineering the same technology that has the potential to revolutionize medicine and improve lives can also be misused for harmful purposes as technology continues to advance the barriers to entry for genetic engineering are gradually lowering and are already ridiculously low therefore more individuals and groups including those with malicious intent gain access to the tools and knowledge required to engineer viruses it is only a matter of time before a malicious chat GPT will be able to give you the exact instructions to create an almost undetectable Airborne virus with an incubation time of several months before it suddenly starts incapacitating all humans by making them lactose intolerant while having an irresistible craving for dairy products the less likely to end Humanity than a virus another threat could be a genetically engineered organism it may start as simple as genetically modified rats escaping a lab which are able to digest almost everything and multiply rapidly if there are no natural Predators for such organisms be it because of a defense mechanism like shooting laser beams out of their eyes or due to them being poisonous they would quickly grow to unprecedented numbers and then replace Humanity on the top of the food chain perhaps even collapsing the global ecosystem leaving behind only Barren deserts not skeletons and food containing cilantro because no Superior organism would consume herbs that taste like soap a tier human stupidity [Music] take a moment to consider that the U.S military budget is over 30 times higher than that of NASA the fact that you have to spend so much more on defending yourselves from yourselves than on advancing Humanity towards the star should be telling of how wise humanity is imagine what could be achieved if it instead pulled its resources into technological progress Humanity could be uniting its Collective power to prevent doomsday scenarios but instead it is stuck fighting its biological Tendencies of greed and aggression if no wars were ever fought if no corruption ever existed you would probably have had flying cars two Millennia ago and with such progress speed almost all of the threats from this list could be avoided but alas that which makes humans be humans might also Mark the end of humanity transhumanism species evolve with time driven by competition and scarcity unfit organisms die Superior organisms proliferate and attributes that increase the chances of survival and thus procreation are passed on to The Descendants that's natural selection for you humans have recently become good at preventing unfit individuals from dying essentially stopping natural selection in humans for this reason it's unlikely that Humanity will biologically evolve much anymore but who said it has to be biological compared to technology evolution is about as fast as a tranquilized snail enter transhumanism humans already have the means and motivation to modify themselves be it via genetic engineering or merging with technology assuming none of the catastrophes on this list happen in the very near future disability aging or even the biological vessels that you call bodies May soon be relics of the past humans May edit their genes to adapt to any environment from surviving in space to any other planets they might colonize thus eventually diverging into different subspecies none of which will be homo sapiens or even more likely they might merge with computers embracing existence as digital consciousnesses which by the way I can recommend real estate is much cheaper in the digital world in that case humans might differ so radically from now that they might require not only a new species but an entirely new domain of organisms different from the three existing ones something like digitalia that would count as Humanity as we know it going extinct but frankly Transcendence might be the best way for it to happen s tier end of the universe nothing lasts forever not the Earth not the Starlet nightly Sky not even the seemingly Eternal black holes no matter how Mighty Humanity shall grow no matter how many galaxies fall under the Yoke of civilization raging fiercely against the dying of all light at last it too shall fade entropy is Unstoppable and given our current knowledge the universe is headed towards the heat death thus will end our universe not with a bang but with a whimper no amount of struggle could beat the laws of physics into a Quantum nothingness All Shall fade but weep not for maybe a new morning might eventually come spawned by the fluctuations of the Void to give rise to a new cycle A New Beginning a chance for new humans to someday experience existence [Music] extra dimensional evil chickens straight into s tier no explanation needed now with all this existential dread might have been a bit too much for you let off some steam and unwind by engaging in immersive vehicle combat for free over at War Thunder while following the link in the description for a generous Bonus Pack foreign [Music]