The Apocalypse... Soon?

Top 5 Facts: Is the End of Days as We Know It happening any soon?

Welcome in this blog we're counting five fascinating things that you probably didn't know about the probably-maybe-could-be-someday upcoming apocalypse, and how close it really could be!

We're Already Leaving Messages for a Post-Apocalypse World

Built anonymously and often labelled as 'the American Stonehenge', the Georgia Guidestones consist of six granite slabs, onto which ten commandment-like rules are etched in eight different languages. According to the Stones, a future post-apocalyptic civilisation should (amongst other things) cap the global population at five-hundred million (one fourteenth of what it is now!), invent a universal language, and ' leave room for nature' - that last bit is repeated twice! The hope is that the stones will steer us into an 'Age of Reason'... It's a lesson in how to live your life without causing the end of the world, taught by those who learned that lesson the hard way!

There's a 10% Probability of a Twenty-First Century Nuclear War

The Cold War, in its traditional sense, might have passed… But the modern-day geopolitical landscape is hardly at peace! The 10% figure was reached by Stanford professor, Martin Hellman, making statistical sense of the 25,000 nuclear weapons in existence, in 2015. The US, the UK, Russia, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea could all start a Nuclear War... Given all this, Hellman says that we are each thousands of times more likely to die from a nuclear war than we are a nuclear power mishap– and that’s if you lived next door to the power plant.

The Real Apocalypse Won't Be like the Movies

Of course, if the end really was coming, then no one would really be expecting Bruce Willis to actually save our skins! But, and as the apocalyptically clued-in Cracked.com points out, there are plenty of other reasons why cinematic Armageddons get it all wrong! For instance, staying fed and physically healthy will be pretty tough. Even if you can hunt forest animals, you’d still be prone to malnutrition. Where’s your vitamin C going to come from, and then how’re you gonna stave off scurvy? Or any other disease, for that matter– you’re more likely to die from a relatively simple but untreated disease than the actual zombies or what have you. Also, regular gasoline is unusable after a few months. So, by the third or fourth season, all those folks in The Walking Dead should really be… walking. And dead.

Apocalyptic Predictions Have a 0% Success Rate

With around thirty forecast since the year 2000, we've really been spoiled when it comes to end days predictions this century. However, none are yet to come true... so far, false predictions have ranged from American evangelist Harold Camping's claim that 3% of the world's population would ascend to heaven in 2011, to the much-publicised Mayan prophecy that the world would end on December 21st, 2012. Not to mention the many Armageddons that should've occurred in the year 2000 itself! So far the prediction success rate is 0%, but that score can only go up! Or remain constant.

If All Else Fails, the Sun Will Kill Us All

It's the single-most important entity in our entire solar system in terms of achieving and maintaining life, but science says that the Sun will one day bring about the Earth's demise! On the one hand, humanity may speed the process along a little by, say, blasting holes in the Ozone layer and generally causing climate change beyond that which is humanly manageable... But, environmental snowball effect or not, the truth is that the Sun will end us! It's estimated that in 500 million years (at most) it'll be too hot to sustain life in its current state, and that in around 5 billion years the sun will evolve into a red giant star, which will engulf, consume and generally kill our planet entirely! Basically, even if the apocalypse isn't near, it is unavoidable! Take that, 0%!

So, are you heading to the store to stock up on canned food? How do you think you’d fare in the After-Time?