Shannon Turlington

Note: I originally posted this somewhere else, but I thought it was cute, so I’m reposting it here.

With so many ways to die out, it’s a wonder our species can get out bed in the morning. Yet, despite all odds, the sun rises each day, and the planet continues in its natural course. How long can this go on?

While there are unlimited scenarios for complete annihilation of the species, here are the top 50, ranked in order of likeliness to happen. This list will be adjusted as circumstances warrant.

1. Robot uprising
2. Nuclear war started by self-aware computers
3. Nuclear war started by unaware humans
4. Global warming
5. Another ice age
6. Mother Nature’s revenge
7. Overpopulation
8. Soylent green is people!
9. We’re no longer able to have babies
10. Stupid people breeding exponentially more than smart people
11. All the men die out (hey, maybe that one wouldn’t be so bad)
12. The Mayan calendar said so
13. Economic downturn
14. Genetically engineered superflu
15. Swine flu
16. Bird flu
17. Some other disease, possibly alien in origin
18. Aliens themselves, blowing the shit out of us
19. Some vaguely understood alien-government conspiracy involving pod people
20. The terrorists win
21. Meteor strike
22. Comet passes by real close
23. The sun blows up and/or goes out
24. Super-volcanoes
25. Zombies
26. Vampire-zombies
27. Peak oil
28. Y2K
29. Twitter
30. Mass suicidal impulse
31. The series finale of Lost erases all will to go on living
32. Everybody gets really fat
33. We run out of food
34. We run out of water
35. The antichrist returns and hell reigns on earth
36. A big-ass flood
37. A big-ass fire
38. Some other awful thing dreamed up by a vengeful, pissed-off god
39. Ancient monsters rise up from deep inside the earth to devour us all
40. Ancient monsters come from another dimension to devour us all
41. Rip in the space-time continuum
42. Singularity appears deep inside the earth
43. Large Hadron Collider
44. Someone invents time travel and whoops! they changed the future
45. Some other scientific experiment goes horribly awry
46. Mad scientist thinks he’s doing us a favor
47. Apes get really smart and really mad
48. Man-eating plants
49. Everyone goes blind at the same time!
50. It was all a dream.