Good question.
Glaciers moving south
Twenty million years past, living humans and beasts were swept by the latest major ice age in history. (There were at least five recorded by scientists.) Perhaps, with the encroaching unbearable coldness, the living humans at that time thought that the end of the world was at hand. There is no assurance that it will not recur. A theory was posited that apparently, a large meteor impacted on the planet. The dust and debris that kicked up was so immense that they obscured the sun. The earth lost heat and the weather became deathly cold.
Ice Age 3
Noah's Ark
In Biblical lore, it was God Himself who initiated what could have been the end of the world. Actually, it was just a punishment for disobedient humans, who literally had their puny lives snuffed out with the great flood. The flood reportedly annihilated all living forms except Noah and his family and pairs of selected living things.
Leader of the Millerites
In 1843 and 1844 in the United States, William Miller and his followers (Millerites) based on his calculations prepared for the second coming of Christ by putting on white ascension robes and faced east. Expecting the second coming meant the end of life on earth and the beginning of another somewhere else. The series of predictions failed to materialize, though. From the movement arose the Seventh day Adventist and the Jehovah’s Witnesses.
US airforce B-29 bomber over Hiroshima.
Towards the end of the Second World War, the United States threatened Japan, the only belligerent nation still fighting to the end, with a terrible new weapon. What the Japanese didn’t know was what kind of weapon was it, where is it going to be used and how intense will be its devastation? When the first a-bomb was dropped, of course, the people of Hiroshima also thought it was the end of the world. Well it was for a couple thousands at ground zero. Those who caught the blast (“a flash of light”) were instantly vaporized. The living matter within each of those humans was literally deleted from the face of the earth?
Little Boy atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
Us missile launch test.
Recently, the concept of MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction had been a feared event. This concept was initiated by the stockpiles of nuclear weapons that the world’s powers possessed about twenty years ago. They still have them, though the threat of using them had greatly diminished. The nuclear weapons, in theory, had the destructive capacity to completely obliterate the populations of both the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and the Warsaw Pact nations versus the United States and its allies (Great Britain, France, West Germany, Canada, etc). If it occurred, the exchange will not only plaster those nations but also put all other nations and the earth into a deadly cycle of nuclear winter. The sun’s rays will be (again) prevented from reaching the earth due to the havoc stirred up by simultaneous nuclear explosions. According to reports, each nuclear warhead has the destructive capacity of at least a hundred times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. Now, you can imagine how this will turn the earth into a barren planet! And thus, precipitate the end of the world.
French nuclear testing in the South Pacific.
Another, theory is that in the future (approximately 5 billion years), the sun will become a red giant. By then, its size would have swelled up to 200 times its current size. All the inner planets – mercury and venus – would have been gobbled up. The earth, which may escape by increasing its orbit, may not escape the effects of the giant sun. Its oceans will dry up and no life support system will exist to prolong the continued existence of living things. Looks really scary indeed.
Size of the sun as a red giant.
So, given those scenarios, what do you think will I do? To ponder on these things will just make me stressed, depressed, and scared. And my loved ones will be subjected to the same traumatic disorder. Therefore, I choose not to think about anything. I will choose NOT to do anything about this inevitability. In short, I will not do anything! Enough said.
