A group of scientists came up with a list of the 12 most likely causes of the dreaded apocalypse. The list is the first serious scientific assessment of risks that can lead to the destruction of human civilization.
Researchers at Oxford University's Future of Humanity Institute and the Global Challenges Foundation explained that the reason for listing the global risks is not to incite fear but rather to encourage everyone to work together to prevent or at least minimize the impacts of the global risks.
"The idea that we face a number of global risks threatening the very basis of our civilisation at the beginning of the 21st century is well accepted in the scientific community and is studied at a number of leading universities. But there is still no coordinated approach to address this group of risks and turn them into opportunities," the authors wrote.
The team categorized the threats into four groups: current; exogenic or a process that happens on the surface of the Earth; emerging or brought by technology and innovations; and global policy risks dependent on our leaders' decisions.
The current risks include extreme climate change, nuclear war, environmental catastrophe, global pandemic and global system collapse. The authors say the most controllable among these current risks is climate change, and if that can be resolved, then it would also lower the risk of catastrophe.
Although nuclear war might be unlikely because of global coordination, the fact that nuclear power exists in different countries still poses a risk. Global pandemic, on the other hand, is still killing millions of people. Some of the known pandemics are influenza, H1N1, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS.
And who can forget the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008 which economists described as the worst since the Great Depression. Stock markets dropped, banks closed, house foreclosures and unemployment rates skyrocketed.
Humans might be able to mitigate the impacts of the current risks but probably not the exogenic risks. No one can stop the supervolcano from exploding or a huge asteroid from hitting Earth. Scientists have been studying other planets and how supervolcanos contributed to their destructions in an attempt to plan ahead. A huge asteroid is also believed to have killed the dinosaurs billions of years ago, although other studies suggest that the creatures were wiped out by a supervolcanic eruption. NASA scientists have launched the "asteroid redirect mission" to divert an asteroid to the moon instead.
And finally we have the emerging risks that include artificial intelligence and other scientific and technological advancements. Humans are becoming so intelligent that they can create robots to think like them. Picture "Terminator: Rise of the Machines," and you will have an idea of how we might end up.
But all these can be alleviated by choosing the right leaders to make effective global policies. The politicians play a major role in making decisions for the environment, health, and funding research projects.
"There are two main divisions in governance disasters: failing to solve major solvable problems, and actively causing worse outcomes," the study authors wrote.
