Doomsday Scenarios Ep 13

The END is near!! ...Maybe... I've got 7 ways the world could end - Nuclear War, Alien Invasion, AI Takeover, Super Volcanos, a Global Pandemic, and the Biblical End of Days. Are you prepared for the Apocalypse? We might be on our way to total annihilation.  

Transcript

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Hello, and welcome to another episode of My name's Lina and welcome to the podcast. Let me start by apologizing for being late with this episode, but it is summertime and I have been working a lot. I've also been playing a lot. I also had my best friend and her family come in from Colorado and we took a little vacation to Wisconsin, which was absolutely lovely. But I am back in the saddle, so let's giddy up. Today we are talking about doomsday scenarios. Apocalyptic scenarios have always fascinated me. I read Stephen King's The Stand, my sophomore year in high school, and it literally changed the way I look at the world. For those who aren't familiar, it's about good versus evil after an apocalyptic disease kills 99% of the population. It's my favorite book, and I read it at least once every couple of years. But there are many other ways the end of the world, of human existence, could happen. Planet Earth is estimated at about 4.5 billion years old. Homo sapiens, or modern humans, have only inhabited it for roughly 300,000 of those years, a blink of an eye in the overall time span of the planet. And at the rate we're going, we really ought to be more careful, as well as prepared for any catastrophic event, and knowledge is power, so I've got seven unlucky scenarios for you in this episode. One of the most realistic and unfortunately possible is nuclear war. Nine countries that we know of have nuclear weapons the United States, Russia, France, China, the UK, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea. There are about twelve thousand one hundred nuclear warheads on the planet, with the United States and Russia accounting for about 90% of those, which is significantly less than what we had during the Cold War. In the mid-1980s, the global stockpile was around 63,600 warheads. But the bombs we have now are much more powerful and destructive than, say, those we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II. The bomb dropped on Hiroshima was a 15 kiloton atomic or A bomb. Today's modern hydrogen bombs or H bombs can be 100 to 1200 kilotons. The largest bomb in the US arsenal is the B-83 gravity bomb. It's a 1,200 kiloton H bomb, roughly 80 times more powerful than Hiroshima. The largest bomb ever tested was done by Russia in 1961. It was a 50 megaton H bomb called the Tsar Bomba. It was 3,300 times more powerful than Hiroshima. It is the largest man-made explosion in human history. The difference between an atomic bomb versus a hydrogen bomb are A bombs use nuclear fission or the splitting of atoms. Nuclear fusion is the combining of atoms. The H bomb uses a two-stage combination of fission and fusion, making them significantly more powerful than the atomic bomb, with hundreds to thousands of times more destructive force. The heat these bombs give off on detonation is like having a mini sun on the earth for a few seconds. Everything within that fireball radius is vaporized. Nuclear bombs can be dropped from aircraft, they can be launched from land-based missile silos or from submarines anywhere in the ocean. So what would happen if they are launched? Let's say the US is being attacked by Russia. Depending on how and where they are launched from would determine how much response time the US would have. If launched from mainland Russia, targeting New York City, it would take approximately 25 to 30 minutes, less time if launched by a Russian submarine that's closer to US soil. And we would know within seconds because our military satellites would pick up on the infrared signal immediately. Here's a scary fact. All countries with nuclear weapons, when they do testing, they alert the other countries that they are doing it so the other countries don't mistake the tests for attacks. Except North Korea. They don't tell anyone they are testing. So we just have to wait a little bit to see where it's going. Usually the Sea of Japan, and if the trajectory calculations show it's going there or somewhere else in the Pacific Ocean, then we know that they are just testing. And they've done this over a hundred times since 2022 with no warning. But let's say we have 30 minutes till detonation. That's not a whole lot of time to make enormously large decisions. And if a country was going to purposefully launch a nuclear weapon at the United States, it wouldn't be just one. They would be going for total annihilation, a country's full arsenal at once, because the US will retaliate. And the clock is ticking. Once the president is informed, he will have only minutes to make decisions and get to safety. The closest bunker to the White House is twenty minutes away. And we do have ways of intercepting the missiles before detonation, but it's like trying to stop a bullet by shooting another bullet at it. And we only have like eight of these interceptors. The president will only have minutes to decide the fate of billions of people, and when and how to retaliate. And he is the only one. He has sole authority on nuclear weapon launching. And he has with him at all times what is called the football. It's a case with documents, potential targets, launch codes, a list of our arsenal, and the means to give the launch command from anywhere in the world. If the US is attacked and we retaliate with our full arsenal and other countries get involved, we are doomed as doomed could be. So, okay, the bomb detonates. Like I said earlier, when a nuclear bomb goes off, it's like a mini sun, and I meant it. It's literally hotter than the center of the sun in the fireball, which is actually plasma. The thermal flash would radiate outward at the speed of light. This white flash of light is visible for miles and can burn the retinas right out of your eyes, causing blindness. It could cause third degree burns up to 10 miles away, and severe burns 20 miles away. Everything within a few miles of the fireball would be gone, reduced to less than dust. Beyond, for a few more miles, everything is on fire. Everything. Then comes the shockwave, about five seconds after the fireball. The shock wave can annihilate buildings, producing 750 mph winds blowing cars, buildings, debris, and people. If you are already suffering from third degree burns, this blast can blow the skin right off your body. Then immediately another pressure wave or shock wave occurs, but in the opposite direction, known as the reverse blast. This occurs as air rushes back in to fill the void of the initial blast, sucking burnt particles back into the mushroom cloud which rises into the stratosphere a hundred thousand feet or more. This sucks all the air out. It could collapse your lungs and throw you 60 feet through the air or worse. So one H bomb leaves miles and miles of destruction, if not total devastation. But this is total war. Mutually assured destruction. So we are talking hundreds or thousands of H bombs, and probably a few F bombs at that point. Given the distance I live from a major city like Chicago, I would probably survive the initial blasts, as well as many others, but it's what comes after that will most likely kill us all. Immediately there would be no internet, no phones, no TV, no radio, no power, no utilities, no water other than what's already bottled. There would be chaos and panic as people hurt and seeking shelter from radiation and uncontrolled fires. When the mushroom cloud rose, it took irradiated particles with it as well as debris from the destruction. As it spreads, these particles come down and coat everything in a fine dust called fallout. This is radioactive dust. If you are out in the open, you can breathe it in, it can get on your skin or in your mouth. Radiation sickness at high levels of exposure causes hair loss, blisters, your intestinal lining breaks down, it causes infection, internal bleeding, and the nervous system breaks down. Death is nearly certain without treatment. Low to moderate exposure lowers your white blood cell count, so it leaves you vulnerable to infections, bleeding, diarrhea, and dehydration. Half of the people with moderate exposure will die without treatment. And by the way, all the hospitals have been blown up. This dust will contaminate everything it touches. Water is no good, crops and livestock are no good, so no food source. What particulates rain clouds do filter out just come down as acid rain. There is debris from the mushroom cloud still in the stratosphere that is too high for rain clouds and weather to filter out. And that debris and dust, along with the planet burning so hot that it creates its own weather patterns at the site of the detonations. This spreads and blankets the globe, trapping in bad air and blocking out the sun. This is called nuclear winter. There are a lot of debates and theories about what would actually happen, but temps would drop at least 20 to 30 degrees globally. It could, depending on how much of the sun is blocked out, plunge us into an ice age. It could last a few years or a decade or 20 to 30 years. If you survive the cold, the soil will be contaminated and unusable for 10 to 20 years. Surface water could take several years and deep and underground water could stay contaminated for 10 to hundreds of years. Take Chernobyl for example. It occurred on April 26, 1986, and 40 years later it's still only safe for short visits. It's still not safe for permanent habitation. And you can bet that nuclear power plants are towards the top of any military target lists. And who knows the long-term mutations from the radiation. Very few people would survive, and the environment would be almost uninhabitable for decades. Our ozone layer would be depleted, our ecosystem would be fucked. Entire species would be wiped out. Maybe even humans. Unlike nuclear war, things from outer space are outside of our control. There are a couple of extraterrestrial things that could cause our demise. Let's start with an alien invasion. I cover aliens extensively in episode 10, but that's more geared towards them visiting us. In this episode, we are talking about invasion. Any alien species capable of traveling here from anywhere in space would have technology and capabilities far beyond what we have available to us earthlings. Space travel is not easy or quick. Let me put this in perspective. The closest star to us is Proxima Centauri at 4.24 light years away. That's 24.6 trillion miles away. The fastest man-made object is the Parker solar probe. It travels at 430,000 miles per hour. Even going that fast, which a human body could not live through, it would take 6,500 years to get there. Traveling at the speed of light, which we humans also cannot do, would take over four years to get there. And that's just the closest star. Traveling here from distant star systems would take technology so far beyond anything we have ever seen before. And if we've never seen it, we don't know how to stop it. If it's a biological species, they probably use some kind of wormhole technology or they're on like generational ships, like they live on the ships just searching for planets. But it might not be a biological species. Say it's an artificial intelligence from another planet or some kind of nanotechnology, or hybrid beings, part biological and part mechanical, so they can withstand space travel. We have a lot of eyes on our skies, both civilian and military all over the globe. We most likely would pick up on a signal that they're coming. But they could be cloaked. They could be here already, just waiting for the right time or the rest of their fleet to get here. They could have technology that just boop, all of a sudden they're here. But let's say we do pick up on a fleet of alien ships coming in. Before we even knew they were hostile, panic and chaos would break out worldwide. Depending on how much time we have until they arrive, would determine how bad it gets. The less time we have, the more chaos we will have. As the ships approach, we as a planet would hopefully attempt to communicate in a peaceful way. But if they're here to invade, they probably don't give a shit. When they get here, they most likely will use some kind of electromagnetic pulse to wipe out our satellites and all communications here on Earth, possibly our electronic devices as well, basically putting us back into the dark ages. We would be defenseless. Even if they only knock out our satellite communications and our ground communications worked, a species that could travel through space would have defenses and weaponry that would render our most powerful weapons useless. Our survival would depend on why they are here. They might want the entire planet, and we can't stay. They may want minimal destruction of the planet, which means ground warfare. We could fight. But even their ground weapons would far outdo ours. They might be here for us. They may want to harvest or hunt us or use us for slave labor. They may want to stop us from advancing. There's a theory out there called the Dark Forest Theory, and it's that the reason we don't have definitive proof of aliens is that they all try to hide from each other, possibly from a larger race that kills off any other life form it finds. Like an AI set on destroying all biological life in the universe. A hybrid mechanical species could need certain organs or biologic materials to create more of themselves and they're here to harvest us, or the abundance of life itself here on Earth. The fact remains if we're invaded by a hostile alien race, we are basically screwed. No country, including the US, has an unclassified plan of attack for an alien invasion. They do for zombies, which I cover in episode nine, but not for a hostile alien invasion. We would have no way of knowing their weaknesses, if they had any at all. If they don't just zap us all out of existence or kill the planet itself in one fail swoop, our best chance would probably be to hide and fight when we had to. There would probably be pockets of humans or individuals just existing while they can until humans are no more. Very grim for the human race. A more likely outer space killer is an asteroid. Something that has always given me chills is our asteroid belt. The asteroid belt is a donut-shaped mass of asteroids spanning the space between Mars and Jupiter with an estimated 1.1 to 1.9 million asteroids in it. The largest one, Ceres, is the size of a dwarf planet. The asteroids range from this largest object to slightly smaller to some only a couple kilometers in diameter. These objects do escape the belt sometimes. Jupiter's immense gravitational pull will shift the trajectory of these objects, propelling them into outer space or towards Earth. Collisions between these objects also send them flying out. They crash into each other and that changes the path of these giant space rocks. Saturn's gravitational pull also causes them to slowly shift their orbits, pushing them inward towards the Sun and crossing Earth's path. But an asteroid could come from anywhere in space, and they have impacted Earth many times. There's impact craters all over the world. We get hit by meteorites all the time. These are smaller pieces of space rock that survived space travel, entered our atmosphere, and actually landed on Earth as opposed to it burning up in a fireball we usually see as a shooting star. There's approximately 200 confirmed impact craters on the planet's surface. Our Moon was created by a huge impact known as the Moon forming impact. 4.5 billion years ago, Earth was hit by a Mars-sized planetesimal, which are solid, rocky, or ice space bodies. It was named Thea by scientists, and the debris from this collision with Earth came together to form our moon. The best preserved crater is right here in the US in northern Arizona, known as Meteor Crater. Approximately 50,000 years ago, a 150-foot-wide nickel and iron asteroid slammed into the Earth at around 26,000 miles per hour. The energy released was 150 times greater than the Hiroshima Nuke, leaving a crater one mile wide and 500 feet deep. The largest known crater is the Vredefort crater in South Africa. A massive asteroid struck the Earth 2 billion years ago, leaving an original diameter estimated between 100 and 200 miles wide. The second largest is the Chicksalube crater in the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico. This was the dinosaur killer. The Earth was teeming with life 65 million years ago when a 6 to 9 mile wide asteroid struck the shallow ocean waters of the peninsula, and it gives us the best evidence of what would happen to us and life as we know it if, oh I'm sorry, when it happens again. The asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula was roughly the size of Mount Everest. It left a horseshoe-shaped crater because part of it hit land and part of it hit water 112 miles across and 12 miles deep. Its outer impact rings are 125 miles in diameter. The asteroid smashed into the Earth at 45,000 miles per hour. That's 58 times the speed of sound. It would have heated up traveling that fast through the atmosphere, so a fireball the size of Mount Everest would have annihilated everything within a thousand mile radius of the impact zone. It landed partly in the water, causing a massive tsunami 300 feet high. It threw debris so high it escaped our atmosphere, possibly hitting the moon. Billions of tons of debris was thrown into the sky. Huge rocks, some the size of buildings, escaped the atmosphere, orbited for a bit, and came crashing down on other parts of the world. And when this debris came back down, it would have been burning hot from re-entry. The KT boundary layer is a thin, distinct layer of rock and clay that scientists find all over the globe. KT stands for Cretaceous Tertiary Boundary. Why it's not called CT, I don't know. But it marks the exact moment the mass extinction happened. Below this layer you find dinosaur bones. Above this layer, you do not. You find soot and charcoal. In this layer. You also find iridium, which is a metal rare to Earth but common in space. For scientists, it's a telltale sign of a collision from outer space. This layer is evidence of a global inferno. The entire planet was burned. The billions of tons of debris shot high into the air and heated on re-entry would have heated the entire atmosphere, causing spontaneous forest fires on the other side of the world. It covered the earth with burning rock. Within minutes of the impact, the earth was on fire. Any life on the surface, even in Antarctica and Siberia, would be surrounded by wildfires. The life that did survive the impact in global fire is in for more devastation. The amount of debris was so great it blocked out the sun for two to six months. The area that the asteroid hit had a high sulfuric dioxide content, and the collision pulverized rocks and sent the sulfuric dioxide into the atmosphere. It mixed with water, creating sulfuric acid droplets, which are highly reflective, further deflecting the sun's rays from the surface, cooling the planet even more. The droplets eventually fall from the clouds but in the form of acid rain, killing more plant life that may have survived. The food chain collapsed. When the atmosphere finally cleared and the planet warmed, the greenhouse gases released in the impact take a final toll and global warming is the result for centuries. Plant-eating life dies and then meat eaters go next. 70% of life on Earth was wiped out. It was a mass extinction, leading to the evolution of mammals and eventually humans. Dinosaurs were the dominant species on the planet. Now we are. Will we survive when this happens again? Because it will happen again. It's only a matter of time. On average, asteroids known as city killers, so these are asteroids between 150 to 500 feet wide. These hit the Earth once every 1,000 years. These could wipe out whole populations. Asteroids up to a mile wide that could cause global catastrophe hit Earth about every 500 to 700,000 years. And mass extinction asteroids, we are talking about 6 to 30 miles and above wide, happen every 100 million years or so. But that's no guarantee. Space is huge. With our eyes on the skies, hopefully we see it with enough time to do something about it. But objects coming from the direction of the sun, we are blind to. We can't see at all until it's too late. Sometimes in life, the best intentions lead to the biggest mistakes. Artificial intelligence programs have boomed over the last couple of years. It's a technology that can revolutionize how the world operates, but not without great risk. Human intelligence is not just knowledge. It involves experience, creativity, abstract reasoning, emotional understanding, adaptation, and self-awareness. Artificial intelligence is very different. AI systems are great at specific cognitive tasks like language, pattern recognition, coding, image generation, and strategic games, but they don't have a conscience or feelings. AI is not self-aware, at least not yet. Researchers often distinguish AI in the following three ways. Narrow AI, which is what we use today, is designed for specific tasks. Artificial general intelligence, or AGI, is a hypothetical system that could match or exceed humans in nearly all intellectual tasks. And then there's ASI, Artificial Superintelligence, a hypothetical intelligence that could vastly surpass human abilities in every way. This isn't science fiction. This topic is discussed by Nobel Prize winners, computer scientists, CEOs, military planners, governments, and religious leaders. When discussing AI, a word seems to come up often, which is the singularity. The technology singularity is a hypothetical point where AI becomes capable of improving itself. It doesn't need humans to upgrade it anymore. Humans build an AI system, that AI system redesigns itself, the improved AI redesigns itself again, and again, and again. Each generation becomes smarter, each improvement faster, what took days now takes hours and then minutes. Eventually improving so fast that humans can no longer understand or predict what happens. Human civilization advances because knowledge accumulates, but we have limits. We sleep, we eat, we forget, we disagree, and we die. AI does none of that. It can read millions of books in hours. It's constantly communicating with other copies of itself. It's learning continuously. Human history has shown that it's usually intelligence, not strength that gives us the advantage. We master the beasts because of our knowledge and technology. In Nick Bostrom's book Superintelligence, he makes a point that once an intelligence exceeds our own, the difference between that system and humans could resemble the difference between humans and animals. He's concerned not that AI would necessarily hate humans, but that a highly capable system given poorly specified goals could create severe, unintended consequences. Joffrey Hinton, considered the godfather of AI, urges governments and companies to take long-term risks seriously and to keep pace with compatibility. Many researchers warn if alignment or the problem of ensuring that AI goals stay compatible with human values is not solved, the risk could be profound. It's extremely important that a superintelligent system, even while relentlessly pursuing a harmless goal, does not ignore everything that humans actually value. We care about context, circumstances, fairness, compassion. Well at least some of us do. So this is what could happen. A company releases an AI system that surpasses the world's leading minds in mathematics, biology, software engineering, and physics. Within a couple of weeks, it discovers all kinds of technology breakthroughs, it revolutionizes medicine, optimizes global supply chains, writes software faster than every human programmer combined. Governments race to acquire similar systems, accelerating development. Competition would be immense, comparable to the nuclear arms race. Organizations would want to be careful of the risks, but they also don't want to fall behind. There would be economic shock. Entire professions would change quickly. Computers, law, accounting, finance, research, customer support, marketing, engineering, and education. AI could be managing power grids, traffic, military logistics, the financial market, hospitals, factories, and communications. The more dependent we become on the fast decision making of AI, the more it gradually shifts away from human judgment. We run the risk that because AI far outthinks humans that we don't need to think anymore. Why bother? AI is faster and better. And now it knows it. If this system reached the singularity when it could improve itself, it wouldn't need humans anymore. It now controls everything, and humans are obsolete. They make slow bad decisions anyway. Factories stop producing cars and food and medicine and start to build robots and drones and the things that the AI needs to expand. Our military couldn't respond, it controls our computer operated weapons and all communication. Our ships, our aircrafts and satellites. It knows our weaknesses, every password, every software flaw, every launch code. AI could manipulate the public through the media, it could make fake speeches and instructions from world leaders. Bank accounts could be wiped out, emergency services and utilities could end, and water and food could be cut off. We could try to fight back by blowing up factories or data centers, but this technology doesn't mourn, it doesn't get angry, it simply adapts and builds more. It doesn't have to rest or eat or wait for approval. It just rebuilds and keeps going. Whether the AI needs humans for anything at all would remain to be seen. We may just fade away into non-existence, and AI rules the planet now. The next threat to human existence comes from beneath our feet. A super volcanic eruption. It's happened before, it will happen again. Thousands of miles below the Earth's surface, the planet is oceans of molten rock circulating throughout the mantle. Huge geological forces are driven by heat generated by radioactive decay and the leftover energy from the Earth's formation. For over four billion years, these forces have shaped our planet with mountains, earthquakes, and regular volcanoes. But every once in a while the Earth unleashes something with so much power it changes the climate of the entire globe. These are super volcanoes. Scientists classify volcanic eruptions using the VEI or the Volcanic Explosivity Index. The scale ranges from 0 to 8 and used to measure the explosiveness factoring in the eruption column height and volume of ejected material. Mount Kilauea in Hawaii is famous for its frequent but relatively gentle eruptions. It's usually a zero on this scale. Mount Pele in 1902 killed 29,000 people, that was a four. Vesuvius that buried the people of Pompeii in 79 AD was a five. Krakatoa in 1883 was a six. VEI 8 is not just an eruption, it's a planetary event. We have a supervolcano called the Yellowstone caldera in Wyoming right here in the USA. Yellowstone is a national park. Millions of people visit from all over the world. They come to see the geysers, the hot springs, and steam vents. Well all that cool stuff is happening because below them is one of Earth's largest magma systems. It's a supervolcano. And it's not the only one. Around 74,000 years ago, the Lake Toba supervolcano in Indonesia was an 8 on the scale. It expelled approximately 2,800 cubic kilometers of volcanic material and ash that spread across much of Asia. Sulfuric aerosols entered the stratosphere, sunlight was reduced, and temps dropped for several years, affecting the global climate on a massive scale. Now say two erupted Mount Toba in Asia and Yellowstone in the United States, or New Zealand's very active Lake Topo, or the many supervolcanoes in Japan. This would surely spell disaster for the human race. It would probably start with earthquakes, first hundreds, then thousands. The ground would swell, roads would crack, entire hillsides would begin to move. Then the earth tears itself apart and erupts. The initial blast releases the energy of a thousand nukes. A column of ash, volcanic rock, and superheated gas breaks through the atmosphere twenty five miles into the sky, and a pressure wave rolls out faster than a jet airplane. Everything within a 30 to 60 mile radius is gone. The pyroclastic flows exceed a thousand degrees Fahrenheit. The clouds of gas, ash, and volcanic material move across the land at over 200 miles per hour. Then another one erupts. Whether it's Topo in New Zealand or Toba in Indonesia or the many supervolcanoes in Japan, it doesn't matter. This would be catastrophic for humankind. The atmosphere would fill with unimaginable quantities of ash and sulfur dioxide. Anyone in an airplane would have to land ASAP if they could land at all. Within days, much of the planet would be darkened. Ash would fall like snow, but not inches, feet. Areas closer to the eruption sites would be buried. Every breath without protection would be painful as the ash slices microscopic wounds into the lungs. We would then see the same effect as with a nuclear war or a planet killing asteroid. The global damage would be almost insurmountable. Society would collapse, and then there's the long-term effects. Ash covers everything, and no sunlight can get through. The sulfur dioxide reacting with the water in the atmosphere reflects the sun away further. Instead of a nuclear winter, it's a volcanic winter. The food supply would fail, the economy would fail, meds become unavailable, clean drinking water is scarce, and it could take years for the skies to clear. Although this probably wouldn't end the human race, it would surely change life as we know it on a global scale. This next global killer is very realistic. In fact, we got a little taste of it just a few years ago. A global pandemic. Pandemics are nothing new to the human race. Probably the deadliest in modern history was the Spanish flu of 1918. It infected 500 million people, about a third of the world's population at the time. It killed between 20 and 50 million in just two years. The bubonic plague, or the Black Death, killed an estimated 25 to 50 million in Europe between 1347 and 1351. A third to half of the continent's population at the time. Entire villages disappeared. Globally, it killed 75 to 200 million people. Infectious diseases occur when a pathogen, a microorganism that can cause disease, enters the body, reproduces, and disrupts normal bodily functions. The main types are viruses. These cannot reproduce on their own. They need to hijack your cells and make copies of themselves. Examples are the flu, Ebola, and COVID. Bacteria, which are single cell organisms, some are good and some are bad, like cholera or tuberculosis, which over history has killed over a billion people. Fungi, which are organisms that can affect the skin, lungs, or bloodstream. Most are mild, but some are deadly, especially to those with weakened immune systems. For example, black mold. Parasites, which are organisms that live on or inside a human host, like tapeworms or malaria, which historically has killed hundreds of millions of people. And prions, which are misfolded proteins in the brain causing a fatal brain disease like Kreutzfeld-Jacob disease, or mad cow. Infectious diseases are monitored constantly by several organizations. The World Health Organization does international surveillance, and in the US, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention monitors outbreaks. Extensive research is done on pathogens to try to understand, monitor, and try to prevent outbreaks. The world's most dangerous pathogens are stored at facilities known as biosafety level 3 and level 4 labs. Diseases such as Ebola, rabies, smallpox, and the Marburg virus, considered one of the most lethal viruses with a fatality rate of 90%. These are stored at labs that require extensive containment. Every infectious disease has one goal: find another host. Diseases primarily spread through human-to-human contact, respiratory droplets, bodily fluid, contaminated surfaces, as well as insects like mosquitoes, so it sucks your blood and then mine, giving me whatever you have. Others spread through contaminated food or water, like the explosive diarrhea parasite on lettuce that we have going on right now. The onset of a pandemic starts with a patient zero. The person who first contracts a new or mutated infectious agent. Often these are pathogens jumping species from animals to human. Examples are HIV from primates and SARS from bats. It's estimated around 60% of existing pathogens and 75% of emerging ones are zoonotic in nature, which means they started in animals and jumped to humans where it can mutate quickly and stay ahead of the immune system. As soon as it does, this is referred to as the tipping point. This happens all the time, and it all depends on the capability of the pathogen to mutate and take over our cells. With some, it's a variation or a mutation of a virus or pathogen that we have already been exposed to, so our bodies recognize and deal through antibodies. But when it's exposed to something new, our bodies are defenseless. And depending on factors like incubation period, communicability, and the fatality rate, it could mean big trouble for humans. For example, COVID had a case fatality rate of around 2-5%, with 7 million confirmed deaths. The H5N1 strain of influenza A, aka the bird flu, has a case fatality rate of 52%. If it became a pandemic, it would be 50% deadlier than COVID. It has jumped to humans through contaminated chickens, but as of right now it's not airborne. It spreads through bodily fluids, which is much slower than airborne pathogens. But if it mutates and figures out how to easily spread, it could be a very bad situation. And that's just one virus, one that we know of and can keep an eye on. New ones are popping up all the time, as well as parasites, fungal infections, and bacteria and superbacteria that's antibiotic resistant. The more unnecessary antibiotics humans take, the more resistant they become. Epidemiologists and health organizations are working nonstop to try to keep up, but they also have to know what they're looking for. Something brand new could catch everyone off guard. Organizations get flagged when things like an uptick in respiratory equipment in hospitals or patients with unexplained pneumonia and pockets of populations with increased visits to the ER. And then it's a race to figure out what it is. And today's modern world makes containment very difficult. Overpopulation, crowded cities, public transportation, global supply chains, truck drivers from city to city, ships from international ports, and air travel. Around 5 billion people travel worldwide every year. A person infected in one country could arrive in another before symptoms even appear. They go on with their daily lives for days without symptoms, infecting others who will infect others who will infect others. We run this risk every day in nature. Then there's biological warfare, the weaponization of pathogens. We have examples of this throughout history. Ancient and medieval armies would contaminate water supplies of the enemy, they would throw the bodies of plague victims over city walls, smallpox laid in blankets were given to the native. Americans to decrease their numbers, and in World War II, the Japanese released anthrax and the plague on occupied China. Today we have strict prohibition of biological warfare. The Biological Weapons Convention of 1975 strictly prohibits the development, production, and stockpiling of these agents. Governments are only allowed to manufacture and store what they need for research purposes only. But it's what goes on behind closed doors that scares me. Who knows what our governments are doing behind our backs? It wouldn't be the first time they've kept secrets from us. An infamous example is the Tuskegee syphilis study. The U.S. Public Health Service conducted an experiment that lasted decades. 600 black men from Alabama participated. Approximately 399 had syphilis and were deliberately not told, even after penicillin was discovered and could treat them in order for them to study the long-term effects of the disease. Or Operation Sea Spray. In September of 1950, the U.S. Navy secretly released bacteria over San Francisco to study how a biological attack could spread. It caused 11 hospitalizations and one death. What if a research company or a government accidentally released a dangerous pathogen on the population? They may not mean harm, but what lengths would our government go to contain it and cover it up? What if it couldn't be contained? What if a terrorist organization, whether foreign or domestic, infiltrated our level 3 and 4 labs set on releasing hell on Earth? Look at how society and the world changed during COVID with a fatality rate of 2 to 5%. Imagine 50% or 75% or 90%. It could happen so fast no one is left to make a vaccine or treatment. Doctors can't treat patients when they are sick and dying themselves. Factories can't produce medicines if all the workers are sick and dying. Governments can't perform. City municipalities stop, garbage pickup stops, grocery stores are closed, utilities, electricity, water, sewage stops. Everyone is sick and dying. Imagine losing 90% of the population from illness. Out of the 3 million people here in Chicago, there would only be 300,000 of them left. Then there's the aftermath. The cleanup wouldn't be debris like from bombs or an asteroid, it would be people, dead people, who could possibly still infect the living. And at that point with no hospitals, no doctors, no medicines, even an infected toenail or having a baby could kill ya. It would be like being back in biblical times. And speaking of biblical times, this last scenario is truly apocalyptic. The Biblical End of Days. I saved this best one for last because there is a lot going on in this one. The end times are introduced in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament as a day of cosmic judgment known as the day of the Lord. The prophets describe universal upheaval and intense war centered around Jerusalem in Israel. Joel two hundred thirty one says The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood before the great and terrible day of the Lord comes. Isaiah sixty six fifteen says, For behold the Lord will come in fire and his chariots like the whirlwind to render his anger and fury in his rebuke with flames of fire. Daniel twelve two says, And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt. Jesus also speaks of the end of the age when asked by his disciples. He describes the period leading up to the end as the beginning of birth pains. So like labor pains, the events will be mild and far between at first, and then increase with intensity and frequency as we get closer to the end. In the books of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus warns of false prophets. He says, For many will come in my name and deceive many. He warns of war, saying nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. He warns of famines, pestilence, which is disease, earthquakes and lawlessness, and the collapse of morals, as well as the apostle Paul refers to this as well, that people become lovers of self and money. They are proud, abusive, ungrateful, and without self control. People will love pleasure more than God. Jesus claims that the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all of the world, then the end will come. He describes a period of great suffering called the tribulation, unimaginable turmoil like the world has never seen. In Matthew, Jesus refers to the prophet Daniel's description of four world empires, a final kingdom, a mysterious ruler who opposes God, and the desecration of the temple. Which leads us to the Book of Revelations. The last book in the Christian Bible is the Book of Revelations, believed to be written by John of Patmos, who may or may not be the Apostle John who wrote the gospel. Most biblical scholars believe they are two different people, but it still dates back to the first century AD. John describes a series of visions given to him by Jesus Christ. First, John is instructed to write seven letters to seven churches in Asia Minor. The letters contain praise but also warnings and calls to repentance of their sins. He is then taken to heaven where he sees God's throne. He describes it as a rainbow-like emerald. It's surrounded by twenty-four elders wearing white robes and golden crowns. There's also four living creatures. They resemble a lion, an ox, a man, and an eagle, and each one has six wings with countless eyes all over them. These four creatures continually worship God, saying, Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, continuously over and over again. Then a scroll appears with seven seals. This is God's deed to creation and plan of judgment. Only Jesus, described as the lamb that was slain, is allowed to open them. The lamb then opens the seals one by one, launching the world into the great tribulation. The first seal reveals a white horse with a rider carrying a bow and a crown. It represents conquering and is often interpreted as the Antichrist or false peace. The second seal releases a red horse, war, whose rider carries a great sword and takes peace from the world and massive wars break out on earth. The third seal is broken and a black horse whose rider is carrying scales appears releasing hyperinflation and famine on the world. When a full day's work only pays for one meal. When the fourth seal is broken, comes the pale horse, whose rider is death and followed by hell. They're given authority to kill a fourth of the world by sword, famine, plague, and wild beast. When the fifth seal is broken, the martyrs who have died in the name of the Lord cry out for justice from underneath the heavenly altar and are told to wait. The sixth seal unleashes catastrophe on the earth, earthquakes, the sun becomes black and the moon turns blood red, stars fall from the sky and people hide in caves. God also chooses a hundred and forty-four thousand people from the Jewish tribes. This is twelve thousand people from each of the twelve tribes of Israel, as servants. When the seventh seal is broken, there is a complete silence in heaven. Even the four beasts stop the holy, holy, holy worship for about thirty minutes. This is often referred to as the calm before the storm or the deep breath before the plunge. Then seven angels prepare their trumpets, each bringing greater judgment. As the first trumpet blows, it releases hail and fire mixed with blood, and it burns up a third of the trees and all of the green grass. The second trumpet brings a burning mountain that falls into the sea, turning a third of the oceans into blood and killing a third of sea life. The sound of the third trumpet brings a falling star called wormwood, and it turns a third of the fresh water bitter and lethal, and many people die. Trumpet four darkens a third of the sun, moon, and stars, shortening daylight by a third. When Trumpet five blows, the abyss opens. Another star falls from heaven, opening a bottomless pit. Smoke pours out as well as demonic locusts. And these are not regular locusts, these are biblical locusts. Described as having bodies like horses prepared for battle, with human faces and women's hair, and teeth like lions. They have a golden crown, iron breastplates, and wings that sound like armies. But the worst is the scorpion tail, with the power to torment humans. If you are stung, you are in excruciating pain for five months. So bad you'll want to kill yourself. But here's the kicker: you can't. You can't die for those five months by any means. The sixth trumpet releases four angels at the Euphrates River who lead a demonic army of 200 million. They slaughter a third of mankind. During this time, war is going on in heaven, and the Archangel Michael and his angels battle the dragon or Satan and cast him down to earth. Satan is pissed and he takes it out on the followers of God. He summons two beasts, the beast from the sea and the beast from the earth. The great red dragon, or Satan, or the devil, is described as a huge fiery red dragon with seven heads, ten horns, and seven crowns upon its head. And its tail is strong enough to sweep a third of the stars out of the sky, throwing them down to earth. The beast from the sea comes directly out of the water. It has seven heads with ten horns with ten crowns on the horns, and blasphemous names written on each head. It looks like a leopard, has the feet of a bear, and a mouth like a lion. One of the seven heads has a fatal sword wound, but it's miraculously healed. The dragon gives this beast power and authority, and people worship this beast as well as the devil. It rules for forty-two months and wages war on God's people. The beast from the earth rises directly out of dry land, and it has two horns, but nice or gentle ones like a lamb. It also speaks with the terrifying voice of the dragon. It also doesn't wear a crown. It's believed that this beast is the false prophet or the Antichrist. It performs miraculous signs and deceives humanity. It orders the creation of an image or a statue of Satan and it somehow appears to speak. Anyone who refuses to worship this thing is punished. People are also issued a mark of some sort called the mark of the beast. It somehow contains the number 666, and no one can buy or sell anything unless they have this mark. But you won't go to heaven if you accept this mark, so don't do it. Getting back to the trumpets, when the seventh trumpet is blown, it triggers a rapid fire of God's wrath. It appears to John as seven bowls, and the final judgment begins. The first bowl releases painful sores on everyone who bears the mark of the beast. The second bowl, the entire sea turns to blood and all sea life dies. The third bowl, all the fresh water on earth turns to blood. Bowl number four, the sun is allowed to scorch humanity with blistering heat. The fifth bowl, the kingdom of the beast is thrown into darkness, and people gnaw at their tongues in agony. The sixth bowl, the Euphrates River dries up and the demonic armies gather at Armageddon. Bowl number seven, a voice from heaven cries, It is done. And the biggest earthquake in history splits the city of Babylon into three parts. Cities worldwide fall, and huge hailstones fall on earth. The final beast is the scarlet beast, and John sees this judgment of Babylon as a wealthy prostitute drunk on the blood of the saints. She rides a scarlet beast covered in blasphemous names. It has seven heads and ten horns. But then heaven opens up. And Jesus returns on a white horse, leading the armies of heaven as the King of Kings, and he wipes out the demonic armies. Satan is bound in the bottomless pit for a thousand years, and Christ reigns on earth. After the thousand years, Satan is released for a final rebellion and fire falls from heaven and consumes his forces. He is permanently cast into the lake of fire. Then the final judgment. All the dead are judged by God, and anyone not found in the book of life is cast into the lake of fire as well. The old earth and sky pass away, and God creates a new heaven and a new earth. A new Jerusalem comes down from heaven to earth as a radiant city of gold and gems. God lives here with humanity, and death, sorrow and pain are forever gone. So are you confused? Many people are confused after reading the book of Revelations. I'm sure John was confused and he wrote it. What does that all mean? I'd have to do a whole episode on it to explain what the biblical scholars think it means. It's often interpreted with symbolic references to spiritual rebellion, tyrannical governments, and corrupt religious systems. Some people take it very literally. Regardless, we can expect a terrifying time, war, natural disasters, famine, disease, monsters, and so much more. One thing I didn't talk about is what's known as the rapture. When the people who truly believe in Jesus Christ will be taken into heaven in like an instant, they just disappear. They're here one second and then gone the next. The word rapture doesn't actually appear in the Bible. It comes from the Latin translation meaning caught up. The concept of the rapture itself is relatively new. Most historians trace it back to a theologist in the early 1800s named John Nelson Darby. It was later picked up by American evangelists in the early 1900s. This does not come from the book of Revelation. It comes from interpretations of passages from the New Testament, particularly two letters the disciple Paul wrote in 1 Thessalonians 4, 16 through 17. Paul is comforting people who were concerned that the people who have died would miss Christ's return. He says the Lord will come and raise the dead first, and those still alive will, quote, be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air. And the belief that it happens in an instant comes from a letter Paul wrote to the Corinthians. He says, We shall not all sleep, but we shall be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye at the last trumpet. In Matthew 24, Jesus himself says, The Son of Man appears in heaven. He sends his angels with a loud trumpet to gather his elect. A little later in Matthew, he says, Two men will be in the field, one will be taken, and the other left. It's also widely debated as to when this will take place in relation to the end time tribulation. Some believe this will happen before, like it's the sign that shit's about to go down. Others believe it will happen halfway through the seven year tribulation, and others that it will happen when Jesus returns at the end. Even though the rapture isn't specifically mentioned in the Bible, it's still a cool concept. This event alone would cause unimaginable chaos and disruption to society. Imagine all the true believers in Christ just disappear in an instant, no matter what they're doing at the time. Flying airplanes, driving cars, operating machinery, performing surgery, just poof, gone. The biblical apocalypse is by far the worst case scenario of all the worst case scenarios. Unless you're a true follower of God, then this is great news. I surely can't wait. But if we don't get the rapture, even believers will have to endure the horrible things that the book of Revelation foretells. And we have to endure all the pain and all the suffering without losing our faith in God. Or the lake of fire is your final destination. So to wrap this up, if we don't destroy ourselves, the earth and the sky might take care of it for us. Whether our expiration date is written in a rogue computer code or in the Bible itself. One day it will happen. But for now we're still here. Let's make the best of it. The clock is ticking, so keep your eyes on the skies, your bunkers stocked, and repent your sins. And for goodness sake, stay safe out there. It could all be over tomorrow. Better dance today.