How Exactly Would The World Go To Hell?

In this day and age. World War II had its Hitler and wacky Nazis and Rome ultimately shot itself in the foot but with our modern age of instant communication, how would society fall apart. I'm not including nations going to war as that's too easy to justify.

Discuss.

Well, the obvious non-war scenario is environmental disaster.

Supervolcano or the Siberian traps opening up. Or, if we're going for mere environmental mayhem, the methane vents in the ocean opening.

All three would probably cause another Permian extinction... which we might not survive.

Super-virus or super-bacteria could pull it off, at least as far as the life-forms on the world are concerned.

We could also run out of resource X, for example drinkable water.

edited 22nd Jan '11 4:37:04 AM by UnabashedFornicator

And of course there's that hole in the ground in Russia...

There's always when the sun goes cold. One day we will have to get off this rock.

^ We'll get boiled away long before the Sun goes cold. Google "red giant phase".

Population goes up higher than expected, combined with poor resource management caused by massive worldwide government instability or global war, or massive resource degradation caused by WM Ds or environmental havoc, causing a population crash.

Well, there's always the good old running out of oil scenario.

Is it wrong to hope for a Zombie Apocalypse, or a literal hell a la Doom3?

Why on earth would you wish for either of those?

If the world is going to hell, I would like it to do so in an awesome fashion.

How about lava pouring out of Siberia and devouring most of that part of the world?

Lady Gaga goes into One-Winged Angel mode?

^^ The Siberian Traps are geologically extinct. Just like the Deccan Traps in India or the Columbia River Plateau in Oregon/Washington State.

Flood basalts have a nasty tendency to be one flood then done. Then you have the fact a lot of those regions are no longer on active seismic boundaries or on active hotspots. The Siberian Traps in particular are 1500 km away from the nearest tectonic boundary (the Mid-Atlantic Ridge incidentally that scrawls along the polar regions) and have no active hotspot under them. Same with Deccan. Columbia Plateau is near an active boundary and vents (The Cascades), but has no active hotspot.

(Phew)

Thats... actually a load off my mind.

Meteor impact's a classic.

Long term obviously through our dying sun...

Short term is so difficult... for humans alone: we use up too much of the resources and when the next big climate change hits we're done.

No idea if there's any possibility to free this rock from all critters.

Not really, life around the thermal vents would survive if the sun skipped the red giant phase.

Hmm, I was thinking more along the lines of what would fail first: the government, the citizens, the military? Who would be the first to take control? Which countries would be the first to fall? Which country would be the first to issue control by force? Stuff like that.

Global-scale natural disaster, biological warfare pandemic, or cartoonishly invasive Orwellian state.

edited 22nd Jan '11 11:28:20 AM by Pykrete

At the moment, I'd say global economy collapse, probably tied with ecological problems, so in a way, I'd say it'd be "Rome shot itself in the foot", The Remake. The pandemic is not impossible, too.

I can share with you that I have a vague feeling of some shit just waiting to happen, though this feeling's still not strong enough to begin stockpiling food and ammo.

The nice thing about an economic collapse is that it's something definitely survivable at a base level, and if you live in a rural area you actually have quite good chances as long as you're fine with farmhanding.

Yeah, don't tell me that, I spent enough time on survivalist websites, before I got fed up with neverending libertarian and conservative rants.

Well those are the kind of folks who do those things. You'd be quite surprised how many libertarian/conservative folks can be stuck in the middle of any wilderness devoid of technology and rescue and when you find them 2 weeks later they've built themselves a shack and fashioned tools and weapons and satellite TV while roasting meat over a fire pit. At the same time a lot of city boy liberals who believe in veganism, every environmental movement ever, government intervention for everything and never once saw a completely dark night outside are usually found 2 weeks later in the same conditions dead on the side of a canyon.

I know exceptions and defiances to those statements exist, but it seems more probable the rural conservatives have a much better chance of surviving should the world fall apart into some kind of apocalypse.