Everytime The World Almost Ended

 

  2020 has reminded us just how fragile  humanity's reign over planet earth  really is a simple virus and life has  changed as we know it but it's not the  first time we were threatened by the  possibility of armageddon  welcome to  and today it's  all about narrowly averting disaster and  hanging on by the skin of our teeth  as we bring you the 10 times the world  almost ended    number 10 hold your fire  it's amazing that something so small can  bring us to the brink of nuclear war  in 1979 a computer chip glitch falsely  indicated that 250 intercontinental  ballistic missiles with atomic payloads  were on their way to the u.s from the  soviet union  in response the u.s had their own  nuclear weapons loaded into bombers  flying north to unleash  their own destructive forces the truth  was that a norad programmer had run a  simulation that somehow made its way  into the main warning system  amazingly these phenomena of  misinformation happened to the americans  again  in 1980 and the soviets in 83 and nato  in both 83 and 95.  on each occasion the cool-headed  thinking of military brass on both sides  prevented the cold war from becoming  world war iii number nine  achoo normally having the flu involves a  week resting in bed  sitting on a cup of chicken noodle soup  and reading reruns of judge judy and  jerry springer on daytime tv  what you may not realize is that after  the first great war the world was left  in extreme  poverty famine and eventually sickness  a particularly violent and deadly strain  of the spanish flu  took hold and ripped its way through the  global population  the global pandemic wiped out at least  three times as many people as world war  one  and in the end had taken a death toll of  at least 50 million and possibly  exceeding 100 million  that's anywhere from three percent to  six percent of all the world's  inhabitants  number eight forget gmo buy organic  the 1990s were a strange time boy band  in sync and tv show friends  and a bizarre genetic research that gave  rise to the first successful cloning of  an organism  dolly the sheep european mad scientist  also genetically engineered klebsiella  planta cola  a soil bacterium specially developed to  convert decomposing plant material into  alcohol both for human consumption and  for use as fuel  the aim was to prevent the need to burn  the remnants of harvested crops in order  to revitalize the soil  the truth was that this bacterium was  far from a farmer's friend  it didn't wait for a plant to die before  eating away at its healthy living roots  if released it would have created a  barren wasteland  leading to a global famine and the  eventual collapse of our terrestrial  ecosystems  number seven aw rats the dark ages was  not a time for laughter and joy  you could be burned at the stake for  being a witch become a torture victim in  the inquisition  or be killed in battle as the  neighboring kingdom eyed off your lambs  but that's nothing compared to dying in  a pool of your own vomit and excrement  as you bleed from your eyes and other  orifices  while your skin was a horrific mess of  bursting black pustules  the black plague swept across europe in  1343 and was carried by fleas hitching a  ride on the backs of black rats  the fleas fed on the blood of humans the  disease wiping out as much as half of  the local population  with many people getting sick before  breakfast and dead before dinner time  number six comet me bro there have been  a couple of times when we've had close  encounters of the third kind  the bonilla comet was discovered by a  mexican astronomer in 1883 after he  discovered 450  dark objects in a cloud of fuzzy mist  passing close to the face of the sun  what was initially dismissed as dust on  his telescope was actually a billion-ton  comet on a collision course with earth  that had just broken up  about the same size as the one that  wiped out the dinosaurs  in 1989 the asteroid 451 aslepius passed  so close to earth that it missed us by  just  six hours and would have been equivalent  to a 600 megaton  nuke in 2018 we had another close call  as asteroid ge3  passed between earth and the moon number  five  storm in a teacup we've all heard of the  mayan calendar in particular that it  predicted the world would end back in  2012.  that date came and went with many  drinking from a tall glass of i told you  so when the doomsday predictions of  conspiracy theorists didn't come to pass  what you may not know however was that  an apocalyptic event did  actually occur around this time in the  form of a coronal mass ejection or solar  storm  a massive solar flare erupted from the  surface of the sun  with the plasma ring ripping through the  earth's orbit a position we had been in  just  nine days prior the resultant  electromagnetic pulse would have fried  anything with a circuit worldwide  sending us straight back to the dark  ages  four turn day into night the largest  ever recorded geomagnetic storm was  dubbed the carrington event  a solar flare burst through our  atmosphere and played havoc with the  earth's magnetic field  the resulting interference with the  earth's magnetosphere was so  strong the northern lights generally  viewed in areas close to the north pole  such as canada iceland  and greenland was instead seen as far  away as cuba and hawaii  telegraph polls around the world were  rendered useless with some bursting into  flames  the effect was so bright many americans  thought that morning had come  hours too soon 3. in the catcher's mitt  the tenguska event is perhaps the  biggest impact to never  actually reach the earth the force of  this explosion in the remote wilderness  was so massive that it flattened 80  million  trees in an area of 830 square miles  in 1908 it suspected that a huge  asteroid broke through the earth's  atmosphere and thankfully disintegrated  a mere  three miles before it would have made  impact even so the shock shockwave is  thought to have been equivalent to a  thousand times the blast detonated over  hiroshima  although no one was killed nearby  villagers reported an intense blue flash  of light in the sky  followed by a shock wave that broke  windows hundreds of miles away  and even knocked them off their feet  number two  manic volcanic volcanoes are the huge  swollen  zits that sit on the face of the earth  and when one pops it can change the  world  in 1983 a volcanic fissure of titanic  proportions  ripped through southern iceland that  spewed 2 500 kilometers of toxic gas and  ash into the atmosphere  the toxic cloud killed half of iceland's  livestock population and crops  burnt alive by acid rain it's estimated  over 6 million people died across europe  and as far away as india  similarly the mount tambora eruption in  1815 in indonesia pumped out an ash  filled cloud that circled the earth  with acidic rain sizzling the skin of  people caught out in it as far away as  south america  it became known as the year without  summer and plunged the world into a mini  ice age number one whoopsie daisy that  was close doesn't even begin to describe  what happened in goldsboro north  carolina back in 1961.  a b-52 bomber carrying not one but two  nuclear bombs  experienced catastrophic failure and  broke up in mid-air  at the time the u.s government  downplayed the danger by the bombs  exploding  however declassified information now  shows that one of the bombs did come  perilously close to detonating each of  the eight megaton payloads would have  been roughly 250 times as destructive as  the hiroshima bomb  nuclear catastrophe on home soil came  down to the function of  one simple low voltage switch we're  lucky those close shapes didn't cause  the end of the world because we're  pretty fond of our tiny pale dime  but if you're an apocalypse enthusiast  i've got some good news  if you just wait around for about 5  billion years our sun will run out of  hydrogen and expand  destroying the earth in its fiery  conclusion can't wait  please hit that like subscribe and  notification button if you like what you  see  and don't forget to check out some of  the other amazing articles from fact  nominal