• Question: If there was an apocolypse, what do you think would be the most likely reason for it?

    Asked by issymaple to Aled, Ellie, Fiona, Kev, Willem on 11 Mar 2014.
    • Photo: Kevin Arbuckle

      Kevin Arbuckle answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      I think the thing that will result in a lot of people dying (so kind of an apocalypse) will be a new disease. Because people tend to live in more and more crowded conditions, as our population grows, and people travel more often, it is possible that a new and deadly disease could spread quickly enough to wipe out lots of the population. I guess no one knows for sure but that’s my prediction.

    • Photo: Willem Heijltjes

      Willem Heijltjes answered on 11 Mar 2014:

      There is a whole Wikipedia article on this… Don’t read any further if you don’t want to have bad dreams 😉

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_of_the_world_(civilization)

      It separates possible end-of-the-world disasters in two kinds: anthropogenic (man-made) or non-anthropogenic (natural).

      For the man-made disasters, we have:
      1) Evil artificial intelligence
      2) World War III
      3) Global warming
      4) Other environmental disaster
      5) Overpopulation followed by hunger
      6) Experimental accident

      For the natural disasters, among others we have:
      1) A new disease (as Kevin suggests!)
      2) A new ice age
      3) Supervolcanoes
      4) Meteorite
      And if you thought Wikipedia was super-serious, think again, because the next one is:
      5) Alien invasion

      As a computer scientist, I am very proud that “Evil Artificial Intelligence” is number one of the man-made disasters 😉 But most likely this means there isn’t very much danger of anything like this happening at all! Phew 🙂

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