9 Examples of Apocalyptic Extinction-Level Events
Sure it sounds crazy, but extinction-level, apocalyptic events have happened, and they could happen again. At this very moment for instance, earth is undergoing the Holocene extinction event, featuring the loss of countless species of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods. Scientists estimate that during the last century, between 20,000 and two million species have become extinct, and the rate of extinction has accelerated dramatically in the last 50 years.
Here at Green Overrun, we’re dedicated to helping you find the gear to survive the end times, but first you must be prepared. So to help you know what to expect, let’s start with a breakdown of examples of the most likely possible cataclysms.
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological damage to American and Canadian prairies in the 30’s. The Dust Bowl was largely a man-made disaster caused by an abnormally severe drought combined with the deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains, which killed the natural grasses. Such grasses normally kept the soil in place. During the drought of the 1930s, with the grasses destroyed, the soil dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastwards and southwards in large dark clouds. At times the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C.
Modern agricultural technology combined with contemporary levels of climate change could make for an even worse version of this farmland collapse.
Chernobyl
On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:44 a.m. reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. By December a large concrete sarcophagus had been erected, to seal off the reactor and its contents. However, the structure is not strong or durable. Some 200 tonnes of highly radioactive material remains deep within it, and this poses an environmental hazard until it is better contained. The sarcophagus was never designed to last for the 100 years needed to contain the radioactivity found within the remains of reactor 4.
(29075) 1950 DA
(29075) 1950 DA is a near Earth asteroid first discovered on February 23, 1950. If 1950 DA continues on its present orbit, it will approach near to the Earth on March 16, 2880. The energy released by a collision with an object the size of 1950 DA would cause major effects on the climate and biosphere which would be devastating to human civilization.
Hiroshima
After six months of intense fire-bombing of 67 other Japanese cities, the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed on August 9 by the detonation of the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. These are to date the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare. According to most estimates, the immediate effects of the blast of the bombing of Hiroshima killed approximately 70,000 people. Estimates of total deaths by the end of 1945 from burns, radiation and related disease, the effects of which were aggravated by lack of medical resources, range from 90,000 to 140,000
1918 Flu Pandemic
The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. The disease was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas, United States, on March 4, 1918, and Queens, New York, on March 11, 1918. In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the U.S. at Boston, Massachusetts. The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but is estimated at 2.5 to 5% of the human population, with 20% or more of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent.
Global Warming
Increasing global temperature is expected to cause sea levels to rise, an increase in the intensity of extreme weather events, and significant changes to the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely leading to an expanse of tropical areas and increased pace of desertification. Rising sea levels, glacier retreat, Arctic shrinkage, and altered patterns of agriculture are cited as direct consequences of human activities. Predictions for secondary and regional effects include extreme weather events, an expansion of tropical diseases, changes in the timing of seasonal patterns in ecosystems, and drastic economic impact.
SuperCollider Blackhole
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons (one of several types of hadrons) with very high kinetic energy. Opponents assert that the LHC experiments have the potential to create low velocity micro black holes that could grow in mass or release dangerous radiation leading to doomsday scenarios, such as the destruction of the Earth. Other claimed potential risks include the creation of theoretical particles called strangelets, magnetic monopoles and vacuum bubbles.
Gamma Ray Burst
Gamma ray bursts are flashes of gamma rays emanating from seemingly random places in deep space at random times. Scientists suspect that if a GRB were to occur near our solar system, and one of the beams were to hit Earth, it could cause mass extinctions all over the planet. In 2005, scientists at NASA and the University of Kansas released a more detailed study which suggested that the Ordovician-Silurian extinction events which occurred 450 million years ago could have been triggered by a gamma-ray burst.
Pole Shift
The ‘pole shift theory’ is the hypothesis that the axis of rotation of a planet has not always been at its present-day locations or that the axis will not persist there; in other words, that its physical poles had been or will be shifted. Regardless of speed, the results of a shift occurring results in major climate changes for most of the earth’s surface, as areas that were formerly equatorial become temperate, and areas that were temperate become either more equatorial or more arctic.
When he opened the sixth seal, I looked, and behold, there was a great earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth, the full moon became like blood, and the stars of the sky fell to the earth as the fig tree sheds its winter fruit when shaken by a gale; the sky vanished like a scroll that is rolled up, and every mountain and island was removed from its place …- Revelation 6:12-1
Sure it sounds crazy, but extinction-level, apocalyptic events have happened, and they could happen again. At this very moment for instance, earth is undergoing the Holocene extinction event, featuring the loss of countless species of plants and animals including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and arthropods. Scientists estimate that during the last century, between 20,000 and two million species have become extinct, and the rate of extinction has accelerated dramatically in the last 50 years.
Here at Green Overrun, we’re dedicated to helping you find the gear to survive the end times, but first you must be prepared. So to help you know what to expect, let’s start with a breakdown of examples of the most likely possible cataclysms.
The Dust Bowl
The Dust Bowl was a period of severe dust storms causing major ecological damage to American and Canadian prairies in the 30’s. The Dust Bowl was largely a man-made disaster caused by an abnormally severe drought combined with the deep plowing of the virgin topsoil of the Great Plains, which killed the natural grasses. Such grasses normally kept the soil in place. During the drought of the 1930s, with the grasses destroyed, the soil dried, turned to dust, and blew away eastwards and southwards in large dark clouds. At times the clouds blackened the sky, reaching all the way to East Coast cities such as New York and Washington, D.C.
Modern agricultural technology combined with contemporary levels of climate change could make for an even worse version of this farmland collapse.
Chernobyl
On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:44 a.m. reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant exploded. Further explosions and the resulting fire sent a plume of highly radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over an extensive geographical area. Four hundred times more fallout was released than had been by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. By December a large concrete sarcophagus had been erected, to seal off the reactor and its contents. However, the structure is not strong or durable. Some 200 tonnes of highly radioactive material remains deep within it, and this poses an environmental hazard until it is better contained. The sarcophagus was never designed to last for the 100 years needed to contain the radioactivity found within the remains of reactor 4.
(29075) 1950 DA
(29075) 1950 DA is a near Earth asteroid first discovered on February 23, 1950. If 1950 DA continues on its present orbit, it will approach near to the Earth on March 16, 2880. The energy released by a collision with an object the size of 1950 DA would cause major effects on the climate and biosphere which would be devastating to human civilization.
Hiroshima
After six months of intense fire-bombing of 67 other Japanese cities, the nuclear weapon “Little Boy” was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on Monday, August 6, 1945, followed on August 9 by the detonation of the “Fat Man” nuclear bomb over Nagasaki. These are to date the only attacks with nuclear weapons in the history of warfare. According to most estimates, the immediate effects of the blast of the bombing of Hiroshima killed approximately 70,000 people. Estimates of total deaths by the end of 1945 from burns, radiation and related disease, the effects of which were aggravated by lack of medical resources, range from 90,000 to 140,000
1918 Flu Pandemic
The 1918 flu pandemic (commonly referred to as the Spanish flu) was an influenza pandemic that spread to nearly every part of the world. The disease was first observed at Fort Riley, Kansas, United States, on March 4, 1918, and Queens, New York, on March 11, 1918. In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France, in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and in the U.S. at Boston, Massachusetts. The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but is estimated at 2.5 to 5% of the human population, with 20% or more of the world population suffering from the disease to some extent.
Global Warming
Increasing global temperature is expected to cause sea levels to rise, an increase in the intensity of extreme weather events, and significant changes to the amount and pattern of precipitation, likely leading to an expanse of tropical areas and increased pace of desertification. Rising sea levels, glacier retreat, Arctic shrinkage, and altered patterns of agriculture are cited as direct consequences of human activities. Predictions for secondary and regional effects include extreme weather events, an expansion of tropical diseases, changes in the timing of seasonal patterns in ecosystems, and drastic economic impact.
SuperCollider Blackhole
The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is the world’s largest and highest-energy particle accelerator complex, intended to collide opposing beams of protons (one of several types of hadrons) with very high kinetic energy. Opponents assert that the LHC experiments have the potential to create low velocity micro black holes that could grow in mass or release dangerous radiation leading to doomsday scenarios, such as the destruction of the Earth. Other claimed potential risks include the creation of theoretical particles called strangelets, magnetic monopoles and vacuum bubbles.
Gamma Ray Burst
Gamma ray bursts are flashes of gamma rays emanating from seemingly random places in deep space at random times. Scientists suspect that if a GRB were to occur near our solar system, and one of the beams were to hit Earth, it could cause mass extinctions all over the planet. In 2005, scientists at NASA and the University of Kansas released a more detailed study which suggested that the Ordovician-Silurian extinction events which occurred 450 million years ago could have been triggered by a gamma-ray burst.
Pole Shift
The ‘pole shift theory’ is the hypothesis that the axis of rotation of a planet has not always been at its present-day locations or that the axis will not persist there; in other words, that its physical poles had been or will be shifted. Regardless of speed, the results of a shift occurring results in major climate changes for most of the earth’s surface, as areas that were formerly equatorial become temperate, and areas that were temperate become either more equatorial or more arctic.
