Top 20 Events That Could Have Ended The World

2018
Asteroid impacts are staples of Hollywood, but the idea isn’t just science fiction. At least, not when the discussion includes the 2018 GE3 Asteroid, which came within 120,000 miles of Earth on 15 April 2018. In terms of the vast distances in space, that’s actually quite close! And it was only discovered the previous day! Roughly 160–360 feet in diameter, it became the largest known asteroid in observational history to pass so close to Earth. This record will be demolished on 13 April 2029 by the asteroid 99942 Apophis, which will fly by less than 20,000 miles away!

2011
Scientists study viruses to develop treatments and vaccines. That includes gain-of-function research, which alters viruses to better study them in the lab and prepare responses. However, such research can also pose considerable risks. In 2011, Dr. Ron Fouchier and Dr. Yoshihiro Kawaoka both announced that they had modified the avian H5N1 influenza virus to spread between ferrets via respiratory droplets. They concluded that natural mutations could lead to the same result between other mammals, leading to a potential pandemic. Many scientists considered their work dangerous, and research was halted in 2014. It resumed in 2019 under new oversight rules.

1987
Today, the regulation of chlorofluorocarbons, also known as CFCs, has resulted in the compound's usage being relatively under control. The presence of CFCs within our daily aerosols or refrigerants has been diminished, and often outright banned. This is despite their former prevalence throughout our daily lives, when CFCs were here, there and everywhere. The Montreal Protocol of 1987 was an international treaty that assisted in phasing out CFCs, since they directly affect the planet’s ozone layer. Had this agreement NOT been put into place, we would be facing a much more damaged atmosphere and future.

1815
The eruption of Mount Tambora in 1815 was the largest in recorded human history. The stratovolcano, which remains active, is located on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia. The eruption was so powerful that between 38 to 51 cubic miles of volcanic material was ejected into the atmosphere. As a result of the ash that spread the planet, the climate changed drastically the following year, during a period known as The Year Without a Summer. The extreme weather led to crop failure in various places in the world. Direct effects killed between 10 and 11 thousand people, and 49 to 90 thousand from famine and diseases.

1961
It’s important for those on nuclear watch to make sure everything is moving smoothly over communication channels. That’s why this false alarm was such a close call. On November 24th, 1961 contact was lost between Strategic Air Command and NORAD. Further missile warning system sites also went down, leading to Strategic Air Command to scramble in case of an attack. Luckily, the root of the false alarm was found at a relay station in Colorado, and a very real (and potentially deadly) nuclear counterattack was averted.

1918-1920
Also known, inaccurately, as ‘Spanish flu’, this outbreak of the H1N1 influenza A virus ravaged the world in the early twentieth century. It first broke out in the U.S. and Europe during the last year of World War I. By 1920, over 500 million people had been infected - a third of the global population! It was incredibly lethal, leaving an estimated 17 to 50 million people dead, although some estimates go even higher, to 100 million. It was one of the deadliest pandemics in history, and at a time when the world is anything but stable.

1979
There have been an alarming number of nuclear close calls over the years. One such incident occurred on November 9th, 1979, thanks to a computer mistake that almost cost everyone their lives. Zbigniew Brzezinski was serving as the United States’ National Security Advisor under President Jimmy Carter at the time. One night, he was the recipient of the kind of phone call no one ever wants to hear. Nuclear weapons had apparently been fired at the United States by the Soviet Union, and impact was imminent. The US prepared nuclear bombers for takeoff. Thankfully, it was a false alarm, instigated by a training program that had been accidentally uploaded into the wrong computer. Still, this almost led to The Big One.

1859
It’s a good thing that home electricity didn’t become commonplace until the mid-1920s. Otherwise, this solar storm could’ve had disastrous consequences. It was known as The Carrington Event, after the British astronomer Richard Carrington, who recorded the solar flare with his colleague, Richard Hodgson. This was a geomagnetic storm of unparalleled magnitude, even by today’s standards, and caused chaos within the telegraph industry. If such a storm were to happen today, damage to the electrical power grid could be widespread and devastating. Rolling blackouts, fires and more could be expected, resulting in the sort of chaos usually reserved for disaster movies.

1995
The fear of nuclear armageddon was on the minds of many during the Cold War. Yet, this incident from 1995 proved that tensions still ran high, even after that period of history was considered to be ‘over’. The Black Brant Scare gets its name from a type of rocket. Norwegian and American scientists launched one on January 25, 1995 to study an aurora borealis, but the altitude of its flight led to the rocket being misidentified by Russian officials. Then-President Boris Yeltsin had only a brief window in which to decide whether or not to strike the United States with a nuclear attack. Fortunately, Russian observers realized that the rocket was heading away from Russian airspace. The realization that this wasn’t an attack potentially saved the world from mutually assured destruction.

1346-53
This pandemic of the bubonic plague must have seemed, at the time, like the end of the world. The most fatal pandemic in human history, it caused the deaths of an estimated 75 - 200 million people. That included two thirds of the population of Europe, and one third of the population of the Middle-East. Some villages were virtually wiped out. While rat fleas were the primary vector, it’s possible that a pneumonic form also spread person-to-person. It was a devastating event with long-standing repercussions. Fortunately, we now have antibiotics and vaccines against the bubonic plague.

1986

If it wasn’t for the quick thinking and incredible heroism of the response team, who knows what could have happened with Chernobyl. In the early morning of April 26, 1986, a reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded and sent fatal amounts of radiation hurling into the atmosphere. The USSR and Eastern Europe were hit by dangerous radioactive fallout, and the immediate surrounding area became uninhabitable. Nearby cities were completely evacuated, and a massive effort involving over half a million people and the equivalent of $68 billion worth of clean-up was immediately launched. The reactor is currently enclosed within the Chernobyl New Safe Confinement, and cleaning efforts continue to this day. This was the workplace accident to end all workplace accidents.

1989

Turns out the ‘80s wanted to kill us all. An asteroid known as 4581 Asclepius was discovered by astronomers Henry Holt and Norman Thomas on March 31, 1989. They also discovered that the asteroid had nearly hit us. Just over a week earlier, Asclepius came within just 425,000 miles of Earth. Unfortunately, detecting approaching asteroids is very difficult, and this one managed to sneak by the late ‘80s detecting systems. In the words of Holt, “On the cosmic scale of things, that was a close call.” If Asclepius did manage to slam into Earth, its damage would be the equivalent of a 600 megaton atom bomb. To put that into perspective, the bomb dropped on Hiroshima released just 15 kilotons of energy.

1945

Everyone was desperate to end World War II, resulting in the Manhattan Project and the creation of the atomic bomb. There were a few problems with this. For one thing, some calculations posited a horrifying reality: that the bomb could quite literally ignite the atmosphere and destroy life on Earth through something called “runaway fusion.” Retests and further studies proved that this was probably impossible, but the threat nevertheless remained. And the worst part of all? No one but the scientists knew about this world-ending possibility. They and the military officials went through with the tests knowing that, no matter how small, there was a possibility that their bomb could destory the world.

2012

The world was supposed to end in 2012. Maybe this is what they meant. In July of that year, the sun experienced a massive solar storm. It was the most powerful storm in over a century, and it emitted something called a coronal mass ejection. Known as a CME, this is essentially an enormous beam of magnetized plasma. The sun fired a CME directly into Earth’s orbit on July 23, 2012, but Earth had luckily passed that exact area of space just one week earlier. If Earth had been hit, we would’ve experienced a catastrophic blackout and been sent back to the Dark Ages. By some estimates, it would have taken years and approximately $2 trillion to fix the damage.

1883

On August 12, 1883, Mexican astronomer José Bonilla saw something strange while observing the sun. According to him, hundreds of dark objects began crossing in front of the star, and he managed to take a few photographs. Unfortunately, these mystery objects were hand-waved away by the astronomy community as mere birds. But were they? In 2011, the National Autonomous University of Mexico theorized that the objects may have been fragments of a comet. They estimate that over 3,000 fragments passed by Earth over two days, some of which came within just 400 miles. Astronomer Hector Manterola theorizes that if these fragments had hit Earth, it would have resulted in an extinction level event. And they thought it was just geese…

~ 66,000,000 BCE

This asteroid had the power to destroy the dinosaurs. If we were on Earth back then, it would have easily wiped us out, too. As everyone knows, an asteroid slammed into Earth sixty-six million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs. The massive asteroid struck off modern-day Mexico with the force upwards of 900 billion atomic bombs. Yes, 900 billion. The impact changed the very climate of Earth, with its resulting nuclear winter causing three-quarters of all life to go extinct. This only proves the tenuous nature of life. At any time, a giant asteroid can destroy us all with the force of 900 billion Hiroshimas.

1957

The Windscale disaster is England’s Chernobyl. On October 10, 1957, a fire broke out in England’s Windscale facility, releasing large amounts of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere. The fire burned for three whole days and dispersed large amounts of the cancer-causing iodine-131 throughout the United Kingdom. Like Chernobyl, this event was significantly covered up and downplayed by the British government. Some things never change. Windscale was considered the worst nuclear disaster in history at the time and directly caused hundreds of cancer deaths. Luckily, the fire was extinguished before it spread even more harmful radioactivity throughout the atmosphere.

1962

October of 1962 is the closest that the world has ever come to nuclear war. Ballistic missiles were found all over the globe, with America placing some in Turkey and Italy. In retaliation, the Soviet Union pointed missiles at America from Cuba. Both countries anticipated nuclear war, and President Kennedy was forced to create the Executive Committee of the National Security Council. They advised Kennedy to invade Cuba and start a war, but he decided on a more diplomatic approach. He quarantined Cuba and demanded that its nuclear missiles be dismantled. Following some tense negotiations, America and the Soviet Union reached a deal in which each country would dismantle their missiles. By deciding not to invade Cuba, Kennedy basically saved the world.

1983

If there’s one single person we owe the world to, it’s Stanislav Petrov. The famous false alarm incident occurred on September 26, 1983. The early warning system of the Soviet Air Defence Forces was activated, indicating that five American missiles were headed towards the Soviet Union. Petrov suspected a false alarm, but he had a decision to make: either inform high command and launch a retaliatory attack, or ignore his orders, do nothing, and hope that his instincts were right. The fact that we’re still here tells us what he did. As it turns out, the warning system had malfunctioned and erroneously displayed American missiles when there were none. Essentially, nuclear war was prevented by one man with the steely nerves of a god.

1996

The Great Comet of 1996 was observed the world over, and its bluish-green light could easily be seen with the naked eye. That’s because it was incredibly close to Earth - so close that it very nearly wiped us all out. The comet was officially discovered on January 31 and could be seen with the naked eye by March. In terms of Earthly distances, the comet was nowhere near us, passing by about nine million miles away. By comparison, the moon is only about 240,000 miles away. But on the cosmic scale, this was practically right next door. In fact, it was one of the closest comets to pass by Earth in over two hundred years.