What is Digg?Sponsored by Sony Pictures
Watch a scene from 2012, in theaters November 13 view!
whowillsurvive2012.com - Get ready for the biggest event in history – the end of time. How will you survive? 2012- opening 11/13
83 Comments
- johnmatias, on 09/30/2008, -0/+303. Blindness
The doomsday scenario:
The entire population except for one woman goes blind almost instantly. Mass hysteria breaks out, quarantines are ineffective, the strong and brutal hoard food and commit atrocities.
--- how the hell do they commit atrocities if they're ***** BLIND?! - neveroddoreven, on 09/30/2008, -1/+27Skynet wrote this article to make it appear as tho skynet would never be possible. Clever ploy but I'm onto you. Please pardon me while I destroy the computer I'm writing on.
- DekarCorvus, on 09/30/2008, -0/+26But there is SOOO Many possible end world scenarios...its hardly fair to narrow it down to 5.
and frankly i disagree that those are the most likely...we have MUCH better candidates...
check for yourselves and be the judge....
http://www.exitmundi.nl/
(its work safe, and has MANY articles to read...so take your time and enjoy! lol) - S1lkySm00th, on 09/30/2008, -7/+25Buying a go-kart will dramatically increase your chances of survival in a post-apocalyptic environment.
- barryiggins, on 09/30/2008, -0/+16brutal games of pinata and pin the tail on the donkey.... TO THE DEATH
- GetItBuilt, on 09/30/2008, -4/+18Thanks for showing me how little chance of survival I have on this planet. LOL!
- sqrt2, on 09/30/2008, -0/+14Dugg for Children of Men
- SamW, on 09/30/2008, -2/+165. Waterworld
The doomsday scenario:
Global warming causes the complete melt of glaciers and polar ice caps, flooding nearly the entire planet.
Could it really happen?
No. Make no mistake, rising sea levels due to climate change are very likely to cause major problems in the the next century, but a near-total covering of the world in water is not possible. While the melting polar ice caps are destroying the habitat of the polar bear, it’s important to remember that most of the Northern ice cap is already floating in the ocean, so its contribution to sea level rise will not be as severe as Greenland or Antarctica. And even if all the ice melted off of those two land masses, the collective sea level rise would be about 67 meters, or 220 feet. That’s very bad news if you live in Amsterdam or New Orleans, but it’s certainly not enough to cover all but the highest mountains, as in the film. We also shouldn’t expect those chucks of ice to melt too fast. It will likely take a thousand years or more for them to be gone completely, so we’ll have plenty of time to hoard paper and build cool boats, or just move to Denver.
4. The Terminator/The Matrix (Separate films, similar problem)
The doomsday scenario:
Computers converge into one super intelligence, hell-bent on destroying the useless parasite known as humanity.
Could it really happen?
Probably not. In the 1980’s Vernor Vinge popularized the theory of a technological singularity. The basic idea is that computers will eventually become smart enough to think for themselves, and therefore make even smarter computers. Those computers would then make even smarter computers, and so on until the exponential growth of artificial intelligence goes far beyond human comprehension. At this point, as in The Terminator and The Matrix films, the machines would realize they no longer need humanity and seek to eliminate it. Most credible scientists doubt Vinge’s hypothesis. While it’s easy to imagine the exponential growth of computing power, as Moore’s Law does, it’s a big jump to assume that such increased power will lead to the creative thinking that would be required for self-improvement.
So that’s the good news, the bad news is that if the singularity did want to destroy humanity, it wouldn’t be nearly so merciful as the machines in The Terminator and The Matrix. I’m sure it wouldn’t take long for the super intelligence to master the fields of biology and nanotechnology, at which point it would engineer a super virus that would wipe out humanity in a mater of minutes. Is it really a smart use of robot-overlord resources to send mechanized assassins back in time or dispatch swarms of tentacled machines into abandoned sewer tunnels? Sure, biological warfare seems like cheating in human-on-human conflict, but I doubt the machines would be so forgiving.
3. Blindness
The doomsday scenario:
The entire population except for one woman goes blind almost instantly. Mass hysteria breaks out, quarantines are ineffective, the strong and brutal hoard food and commit atrocities.
Could it really happen?
Maybe. There is a form of infectious blindness, caused by the bacterium Chlamydia trachomatis. It’s usually passed physically, through towels or by touching an infected person’s eyes. It’s most common among children in poor areas where hygiene is lacking. The up side is that it takes a while, unlike the mysterious plague in Blindness. The down side is that blindness caused by trachoma is extremely painful, as the eyelids turn inwards, scratching the surface of the eye to the point where it’s no longer transparent. In its current state, Chlamydia trachomatis could not cause instant mass blindness, but if by some fluke the bacteria became exponentially more contagious, we could be in for a dark future.
2. Children of Men
The doomsday scenario:
Mass infertility. In the film the cause is unknown. Not only are women unable to get pregnant, pregnancies in progress also fail when the mysterious event occurs.
Could it really happen?
Maybe. In the landmark 1995 book Our Stolen Future, the authors examine how chemical pollutants effect reproductive health. In short, there are an increasing number of chemicals floating around that mimic hormones. These have been shown to cause all sorts of problems including reduced puberty age, fetal defects, and reduced sperm counts. The kicker is that many of these chemicals are extremely persistent, meaning that they do not break down. So even if the junk leaching out of your Nalgene bottle is very slight, it will join the other hormone disruptors lodged in your fat cells until they gather enough friends to do some real damage, even if it takes several generations. This differs from the film in that it’s likely to be far more gradual. A steady decline in global sperm count wouldn’t effect pregnancies in progress, and we’d see it coming.
1. Armageddon
The doomsday scenario:
A huge asteroid strikes Earth, wiping out every living thing.
Could it really happen?
Yes. It nearly happened 65 million years ago, causing the extinction of most dinosaur species, and it could happen again. More recently, a meteor or comet exploded over a remote region of Siberia in 1908, detonating with the force of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs, knocking over trees in an 830 square mile area, and on the scheme of things, that was a small one. The US government and the UN have recently begun to take the threat of asteroid collision more seriously, but that doesn’t mean we’re prepared. Many experts put this scenario at the top of their list of likely causes of human extinction. There have been several near-misses, some quite recently. As far as we know, the rock that most likely has our name on it is (29075) 1950 DA, which could spin through space in one of two ways: if it picks door number 1, it will miss us by millions of miles, if it picks door number 2, it will have a 1 in 300 chance of ruining everyones’ day. Luckily, that day won’t come until March 16, 2880.
In the meantime, we can work out a reliable way to either destroy the asteroid, as they did in Armageddon, or alter its course and eliminate the threat. The latter solution is looking more reasonable at the moment, but it’s no surprise Michael Bay preferred interstellar nuclear weapons to a film about altering an asteroid’s course by a fraction of a degree using the gravitational pull of an unmanned spacecraft. The really scary part, however, is that while about 800 near-Earth objects larger than 1 km across (the really bad ones) have been accounted for, many estimate that about 200 have yet to be found. Let’s just hope they find the one heading for us in time to get Bruce Willis and his team from their offshore oil rig and into a nuke-laden space shuttle. - IndustrialJones, on 09/30/2008, -0/+12Yep, still a theory. My personal theory is that they were allergic to shrimp...
- Garofoli, on 09/30/2008, -0/+11Zombies?
- russ3, on 09/30/2008, -2/+12Yes... Push the meme forward... Yes
- dezweber, on 09/30/2008, -0/+10Whew - glad that's cleared up - I lose sleep worrying about those sneaky back-stabbing computers...am I stupid or is it actually a fact that a meteor killed dinosaurs? I thought it was just a theory....
- SgtQuackers, on 09/30/2008, -2/+12Database error! OH MY GOD ITS ALL OVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
- doremon313, on 09/30/2008, -0/+7did the asteroid hit this website's server?
- DekarCorvus, on 09/30/2008, -1/+8you sir....win at the internetz....
that made me laugh out loud....for real. my co-workers are giving me dirty looks now.
well done mate! - QuixoticNoob, on 09/30/2008, -0/+7MIROAR!!!
- Garofoli, on 09/30/2008, -0/+6This digg has a poor title, in the article it says whether the ideas are feasible. The title is contradicting the article.
- rockon4life45, on 09/30/2008, -0/+5it's more fact than theory these days. they believe to have found the exact location of the meteor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicxulub_crater - Sornos, on 09/30/2008, -0/+5I love Children of Men. Absolutely fantastic film. Amazing cinematography (watch the war scene and check for cuts, as well as the car scene) and a great sense of mood.
- Retrospekt, on 09/30/2008, -0/+5Your title contradicts the article. The second paragraph asks "Could it really happen?", and the response is "No."
- emaf37, on 10/01/2008, -0/+5How about America becoming $700,000,000,000 poorer?
- BingoPower, on 10/01/2008, -0/+4What, no zombie-plague?
Buried for being retarded. - inactive, on 10/01/2008, -0/+4I thought everyone was saying the year was 2012...
- inactive, on 09/30/2008, -0/+4i think the i am legend story would be pretty believable as well. Scientists release a pill to cure something without fully testing it, or it mutates and we have a hella contagious bug/virus like the black plague. Though the zombie bit is probably pretty unlikely.
- tbredofsin, on 09/30/2008, -0/+4Dugg for having knowledge of actual science fiction books, to which almost every science fiction film owes its ideas.
- chelsealeaf, on 09/30/2008, -0/+4Nice site!
- dezweber, on 09/30/2008, -0/+4@dekarcorvus - it made me laugh, too, but it's even funnier because it's an inside joke!
- vinceislegend, on 09/30/2008, -0/+4Silly Spout, you're not Cracked.
- inactive, on 09/30/2008, -0/+4Soylent Green
- geneusutwerk, on 09/30/2008, -0/+3Love that site, wished it was updated more often.
- inactive, on 09/30/2008, -3/+6especially if said go-kart is painted with flames.
- Grimthwacker, on 09/30/2008, -1/+4Soviet Union suffers worst wheat harvest in 55 years... Labor and food riots in Poland. Soviet troops invade... Cuba and Nicaragua reach troop strength goals of 500,000. El Salvador and Honduras fall... Greens Party gains control of West German Parliament. Demands withdrawal of nuclear weapons from European soil... Mexico plunged into revolution... NATO dissolves. United States stands alone.
- OutlawSundown, on 10/01/2008, -0/+3
Eh we shouldn't forget Doctor Strangelove or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love The Bomb.
- inactive, on 09/30/2008, -2/+5Threads
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-202379069 ...
Could it really happen? Yes. Skip to 45:00 to see all hell break loose. - Daxx22, on 09/30/2008, -0/+3True, but the vision presented in Waterworld is more the infeasibility (AKA Madmax on skidoos)
- chelsealeaf, on 10/01/2008, -0/+3The graphics alone kind of gave it away. If I haven't seen it, it's new to me.
- TwwIX, on 10/01/2008, -0/+3What? No WALL-E?
- IndustrialJones, on 10/01/2008, -0/+3I did take a look and I still argue that a theory is still not a fact in the context of this article. The link you posted mentions the theory of gravity. Does that mean gravity is not a fact? No, it exists and it's what keeps us glued to this big blue ball called Earth instead of being slung out into space like a fly trying to hold onto a spinning baseball. Theory when used in relation with gravity would go by the following definition - a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena: Einstein's theory of relativity. Theory as it pertains to this article, dinosaur extinction, as follows - a proposed explanation whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual fact. There is great evidence that it may have been extinction level event such as a meteor, but it is not 100% sure known exactly what caused the dinosaurs to be wiped out. Not fact, theory. There are multiple definitions of theory and I think you may be slightly confused.
Take a look at
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/theory
The word can be used several different ways. - TheMachine1, on 09/30/2008, -0/+3"it’s a big jump to assume that such increased power will lead to the creative thinking that would be required for self-improvement."
Creativity is noise. And introducing noise into a circuit is easy.
http://space.newscientist.com/article/mg14920134.0 ...
Will Machines take over? Do humans try to take over every other lower life form? - murph1004, on 10/01/2008, -0/+3no black holes from a crazy science experiment?????????
- IndustrialJones, on 09/30/2008, -0/+3I'll be here all week!
- lyrica42, on 10/01/2008, -0/+3Where the hell is 28 Days Later in that article? That was a hell of a lot more plausible than some of the movies mentioned on that list.
- mcbutterbuns, on 09/30/2008, -4/+6I'm really hoping this one doesn't become a reality.
http://www.thepalinpresidency.com/ - tejanse, on 10/01/2008, -0/+2Buried as Inaccurate. No self respecting scientist would support a doomsday scenario not involving zombies.
African rabies anyone? - inactive, on 10/01/2008, -0/+2Can i get a com check Kurt Russell??
- scarwars, on 10/01/2008, -0/+2yea.. ten years ago.
- charlietuna, on 10/01/2008, -0/+2I hear it's made from people. Or Karl Rove bakes it up from the remains of his enemies or something like that.
- Beatmiser, on 10/01/2008, -0/+2RED DAWN!!!!
- inactive, on 09/30/2008, -0/+2I watched a movie called Prime Risk some time ago that involved this underground commie group hacking the Fed's and bank's computers and attempting to destroy the monetary system. Not really apocalyptic but a good 80s thriller if you ever get the chance to see it.
-
Show 51 - 85 of 85 discussions
The Digg Toolbar for Firefox lets you Digg, submit content, and keep track of Digg even when you're not on the Digg site. Download the official 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is