Bunker Blog: 1. Reasonable Ways to Die

There are a lot of justifications for thinking apocalyptically - to believe that the world is ending. Some justifications are entirely reasonable. Others are most certainly unreasonable. And then, there are those justifications that are down right religious.

The Reasonable

There are good reasons to believe that the end is nigh. I mean, look around.

A whole generation of Americans grew up learning about the advantages of fallout shelters. US propaganda taught families how to hide during times of atomic war. Bert the Turtle taught kids how to "Duck and Cover" when the bombs were inbound.

That was then, and this is now. The great political leaders of our time have taken advantage of the opportunity presented by the end of the Cold War to actually make the Earth a more dangerous place. We are now closer than ever to committing mutual suicide via nuclear weapons. It would take one small mistake or one monumental misunderstanding to decimate the human population and could alter the face of the earth.

The Doomsday Clock is now measured in seconds. 

There almost 14000 nuclear weapons across the world. Nine or ten countries now have nuclear weapons. Two of these hate each other enough to use them (India and Pakistan). One country - China - is just beginning to stockpile and has aggressive ambitions for their region. The old nuclear club members are, of course, the US and Russia. These old hands have a tendency to accidentally go boom (Russia) and sometimes forget where they left their nukes (US has lost at least six).

Oh, and lets not forget: North Korea controls 20-30 nukes.     

Nuclear Apocalypse is just one of the perfectly reasonable things to worry about. History has shown that threats to humanity can come from all sorts of different things and are reasonable to consider.

Disease. We are currently in the midst of a pandemic that we will overcome. This disease is a naturally occurring instance of a virus jumping species. It will be difficult to overcome, but it is survivable. What happens, though, when the big one gets loose? What if it is not natural? What happens when some man-made horror show gets loose and we find ourselves smack in the middle The Stand?

Climate change. Scientist refer to this brief geological era in which we find ourselves as the "Anthropocene Epoch". They say this because we are living in a time where human beings are the most important change agents affecting the climate and the health of the Earth. Unfortunately, we're kind of dirty and gross and we have somehow managed to give our planet one hell of a fever.

Ecology. Even if we don't manage to boil the oceans, the mismanagement of our environment could kill us. Rampant, poorly planned exploitation of the Earth's resources are already destroying economies and cultures across the world. Doubling down on this madness will continue to tilt things toward destruction. We are already in the midst of mass extinction event that could took us down with it.

Natural Disaster. The universe may just get sick of us. There is all kinds of ways that nature can kill us. Super volcanoes, solar flares,  asteroid impact, magnetic polar flip, geomagnetic disturbances... There is plenty to worry about. 

There are plenty of things that could end the world, without making things up.

Next time: making things up