Many people have predicted the end of the world in as many different ways.
Some thought that the world would end in the year 2000, others have predicted the year 2012 and some thought it would happen when they activated the Large Hadron Collider... the means of the world ending range from the wrath of nature, the effects of the irreversible degradation of the environment (e.g. Global Warming), collisions with large celestial bodies, and from being sucked into a man made black hole...
But... by some miracle... we as a species seem to have escaped at least some of those predicted ends... although the others do appear to be ticking time bombs...
You want to know what I think will cause the end of the world?
I think our end is not going to be because of anything external... at the rate we are going... we will likely wipe our race off the face of this earth with our own hands...
In case you have not understood... I am talking about the specter of war...
Do you know that there are more than a dozen active war-zones in the world today? (This is not even including many of the conflicts in Africa)... Here are some I know from off the top of my head... and the affected regions...
1] Arab-Israeli Conflict: Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories and Syria
2] Somali Civil War: Somalia
3] Afghan War: Afghanistan, Pakistan
4] War in Darfur: Sudan
5] Iraq War: Iraq
6] Mexican Drug War: Mexico
7] Colombian Armed Conflict: Colombia
8] Communist and Islamic Insurgency in the Philippines: Philippines
9] Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir: India
10] Naxalite-Maoist Insurgency: India
11] Balochistan Conflict: Pakistan
12] Conflict in the Niger Delta: Nigeria
13] Fourth Civil War in Chad: Chad
Some of these conflicts involve nuclear armed foes. When you add the specter of terrorism to this volatile mix... the threat of terrorists obtaining even one of the massive stockpile of nuclear weapons being hoarded by the world powers... the grim picture emerges...
A single nuclear weapon in the wrong hands.... a single error of judgement by a commander of the armed forces of the nuclear armed countries could mean the difference between life and death for practically all of mankind... This is not mere Cold War hysteria... This is a cold hard fact...
They say that the Arms Race had ended... when they should be saying it has only just begun... Whether for self defense or for aggressive purposes... the ranks of nuclear armed countries have only grown over the last half century.... not shrunk.... the potency of these weapons has not been reduced... but increased... Currently... it is said that Iran and N. Korea may be on the verge of obtaining these weapons... (well... apparently N. Korea already has them...)...
Given the expansionist tendencies of most of the nuclear armed powers (India included)... things only look more grim... the race for obtaining nuclear weapons has also spawned an even more frenetic race to build better conventional weapons systems... It is estimated that as a whole... mankind had upwards of 1400 BILLION dollars on 'defense' related expenditures in the year 2008... that figure has only risen... and it likely does not fully account for the untold billions spent on research and development... but most importantly... that number does not account for the man hours spent by the worlds most brilliant minds searching for new ways for men to kill each other... rather than saving each other... or trying to solve issues of world hunger, global warming and the like...
The New START initiatives by the American and Russian governments give me hope... but only a glimmer... the fact is that even after the reductions... they will both retain enough nuclear weapons to destroy the entire world many times over... not to mention all of the production facilities and materials to make many thousands more....
Closing Note
I have no real message to send here... this is just my view on the question of how the world could someday end...
Unless some steps are taken by the people in the position to do so... I think that we wont be around long enough to have to worry about Global Warming and environmental degradation...
Given my small audience... I don't think this will have much more effect than alleviating that urge I get to yell this out loud in public when people start to talk about how some hypothetical scenario will cause the end of the world...
This is not to say that Global Warming is less of a threat to the survival of the world as we know it... its just not as immediate... nor will it be as quick to kill...
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