
1. Global warming
The mother of all apocalyptic fears, climate change is the biggest threat facing the planet, many scientists say. Climate change could make extreme weather more severe, increase droughts in some areas, change the distribution of animals and diseases across the globe, and cause low-lying areas of the planet to be submerged in the wake of rising sea levels. The cascade of changes could lead to political instability, severe drought, famine, ecosystem collapse and other changes that make Earth a decidedly inhospitable place to live.
2. Asteroid!
It's the mainstay of disaster movies, but scientists are legitimately worried that a space rock could wipe out Earth. A meteor impact probably doomed the dinosaurs, and in the Tunguska event, a massive meteoroid damaged about 770 square miles (2,000 square kilometers) of the Siberian forest in 1908. Even more frightening, perhaps, is that astronomers only know about a fraction of the space rocks lurking in the solar system.
3. Pandemic threat
New deadly pathogens crop up every year: Recent pandemics have included outbreaks of SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome), bird flu, and, most recently, a coronavirus called MERS that originated in Saudi Arabia. And because of our highly interconnected, global economy, a deadly disease could spread like wildfire.
"The threat of a global pandemic is very real," said Joseph Miller, co-author (along with Ken Miller) of the textbook "Biology" (Prentice Hall, 2010).
4. Overpopulation
The fear of an overpopulated globe has been around since the 18th century, when Thomas Malthus predicted that population growth would cause mass starvation and overtax the planet. With the global population at 7 billion and counting, many conservationists think population growth is one of the key threats to the planet. Of course, not everyone agrees: Many think population growth will stabilize in the next 50 years, and that humanity will innovate its way out of the negative consequences of the overcrowding that does occur.
5. Engineered disease
Natural diseases aren't the only ones to fear.
In 2011, the scientific community was outraged that researchers had engineered a mutant version of the bird flu H5N1 that was transmissible in ferrets and transmitted via the air. The results sparked fears that engineered deadly diseases could inadvertently escape from the lab or be intentionally released, leading to a global pandemic.
6. Nuclear war
Many scientists are still worried about the classic end-of-the-world threat: global nuclear war. Beyond North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's saber rattling and Iran's secretive nuclear efforts, massive stockpiles of nuclear weapons around the globe could wreak destruction if they were to get into the wrong hands. Last year, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, a nontechnical magazine on global security founded in 1945 by former Manhattan project physicists, moved the Doomsday Clock, at five minutes to midnight. The Doomsday Clock shows how close humanity is to destruction via nuclear or biological weapons or global climate change. [7 Strange Cultural Facts About North Korea]
7. Robot ascension
"The Terminator" may be science fiction, but killing machines are not far from reality. The United Nations recently called for a ban on killer robots — presumably because experts worried that several countries were developing them.
Many computer scientists think the singularity, the point at which artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence, is near. Whether those robots will be benevolent helpers or the scourge of humanity is still up for debate. But a lot can go wrong when there are hyperintelligent robots armed with lethal weapons running around.
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Everything I post is fiction.
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