Realistic doomsday scenarios.

[elchevalier]

No zombies, aliens, or any other fantasy stuff. I mean a realistic scenarios, the one i think the most is running out of oil in the world. It will force countries to go for other forms of energy for sure, but in the wake of this a massive shitstorm would surely arise everywhere.

[ECM]

Nah, we'll never run out of oil. The problem w/ believing that is that you also have to believe that technology is simply going to stop advancing[footnote:1]Our ability to find and extract it improves *every* year and North America alone has more oil locked away in shale than the entire Middle East by multiple factors, so even if that were all the oil left in the world, it'd be sufficient to keep us going for centuries.[/footnote]. It hasn't and doesn't and, if it does, we'll have much bigger issues than a lack of oil. (Personally, I'd love to get off oil, but that desire isn't based remotely on any concern that 'Peak Oil' is a real threat to the world.)

Most 'real' doomsday scenarios aren't really 'real': they're based on the sort of mass hysteria that gave rise to the AGW cult and aren't actually grounded in objective reality.

Frankly, the most 'real' doomsday event is probably something like a comet or asteroid impact, something we are ill-equipped with which to deal, but those occur only every several thousand years--longer, yet, for extinction-level events.

[kog3100edw]

I'd like to actually include aliens and zombies as realistic possibilities.

Or the return of the dinosaurs. That they'd end civilisation as we know it would be kind of a downer personally, but that's probably balanced out by the sheer awesomeness of dinosaurs running through the streets killing people.

[ECM]

Dinosaurs w/ lasers attached! (Because we'd need a mad scientist using them for his own, nefarious, ends.)

[elchevalier]

Aliens ok, but zombies? As in corpses turning back to live? They wouldn't last a day, let alone a full hour. Rotting in the sun, easily shot to pieces, slooooowly walking from one point to another. Any decent ammount of human beings with weapons and basic training could take them out before they could even reach the cemetery gates. Maybe if it was of the "infected running people" variety (which are not zombies per se) that could certainly lead to some serious problems, but traditional zombies? Nay.

[ECM]

Besides, the laser-packing dinos could easily take down the running variety--can't out run the speed of light, after all.

[kog3100edw]

I don't really hold to a doomsday scenario-- for the whole world at any rate.

I think a huge natural disaster or detonated nuke could potentially ruin a nation or change the balance of power in some way. Like massive earthquake in China basically resetting their plans to dominate Asia. Or a terrorist bomb going off in Chicago, causing serious problems for the economy, transportation, defense, etc in this country. I mean DRASTIC events are always a possibility, and they can domino into unforeseen complications and bigger events, ie the tsunami in Japan becoming a nuclear reactor crisis.

I just don't see a near-extinction event sending us all into eternal twilight or post-holocaust sorts of scenarios globally. There'd have to be an asteroid hitting us, as ECM posits, or some kind of concerted super-terrorist action that the fanatical jihadist networks just aren't capable of.

It may not be so true now, with all the apathy that seems prevalent, but the USA has a history of adapting and overcoming even huge crises, like WWII and 9-11. I can only speak to our country, but without the Cold War, I don't know of any danger realistically in the offing that would bash us so bad that we wouldn't adapt and overcome. Obviously that could change with China's ambitions or a return to Soviet Russia. But neither of those things looks to be a threat. China is still waaaayyy behind the USA militarily. Our biggest dangers currently are economic. That could make for a lot of hardship, but I'm not seeing Mad Max coming out of it.

[elchevalier]

The world is quite dependant in oil, and while some countries are looking for alternative methods many are just thinking this will either never happen or it will happen in a loooong distant future. I say better be ready than be sorry, same goes for other resources that we have always felt we have them for granted. In that sense i think something like Soylent Green comes close to a convincing doomsday scenario.

[Justin]

Dallas will resurface as a hip new remake staring Linsay Lohan and that guy from Twilight (The one who sparkled).

[elchevalier]

[ECM]

Oh, and here's some more on what I said about how 'peak oil' is a complete fucking fantasy fomented by Luddite loons and the nut-ball left:

New Boom Reshapes Oil World, Rocks North Dakota : NPR

The key quote:

The US, Jaffe says, could have 2 trillion barrels of oil waiting to be drilled. South America could hold another 2 trillion. And Canada? 2.4 trillion. That’s compared to just 1.2 trillion in the Middle East and north Africa.

Got that? Good. Now every time you read some fuckwit going on about how we're about to run out of oil or some other stupid, completely fabricated, bullshit on the topic, you can reference taht data point. (For a start: there are about a billion other resources that say the same damn thing, but pretty much everyone ignores that because we take, at face value, what our 'betters' in the media tell us and they're trying to sell us a product like they did with Barack Obama and, boy, has that worked out well!)

Oh, and: that's just w/ today's technology. Give it another 2-3 decades and we'll be able to extract even more we can't reasonably get at today.

[ECM]

FTI: These are the types of people you align yourself with when spreading fairy tales like "Peak Oil":

Ecocide: Tar Sand Development = Auschwitz » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog

And, yes, if you relate to anything promulgated by the Ecoleft (it's a Druidic religion, not a working philosophy), you are a fucking nut. Period.