11 ways humanity could go extinct

What better way to kick off your weekend than considering human extinction?

I'm aware that it's been "kind of a thing" around this blog, but I just happened upon this article.

Yes, yes, it's a "listicle" and the title "11 Extremely Likely Ways Humans Will Go Extinct" is phrased in a most Trumpian manner, but the selected scenarios bear examination.

All the usual culprits are on the list: nuclear war, global pandemic, and asteroid impact, are perennial threats. Overpopulation is yet another serious factor to consider, while alien invasion is most unlikely. 

There are, however, two entries that don't get as much air time on ESE. One is the risk of supervolcano. One sits just underneath Yellowstone park, and when that caldera goes...you can imagine. Last decade, one volcanic eruption in Iceland wreaked havoc with airline travel over the Atlantic. The Yellowstone Caldera would cover the breadbasket of America in ash.

Then there are black holes. They were once thought to be stagnant, but it now seems that those monsters can roam about the universe, consuming whatever comes into their path. Fun, huh?

Who ever said the natural world was a friendly place? Who ever said humanity must last forever?

People always say "I don't want to talk/think about these things", but how much of our popular fiction centers on extinction? Maybe instead of extinction, I should say, "end of the world as we know it"? Writers love it, what with Walking Dead and the entire glut of zombie apocalypse variations of the past decade or more. My writer's mind is actually wandering more towards something like the film Oblivion. The world is over, but aliens use the leftover husk of our planet as a "Botany Bay" for their undesirables. Got a space pirate? Send them here.

Through the prison planet walks a space ninja....seeking enlightenment...

Yeah, I should probably kill any thoughts of writing that. The pure stupidity of such a tale could cause human extinction by sucking away our remaining brain cells. It's not like we have many left at this point.

Many years ago, I might've been all right with any of these extinction scenarios coming to pass. I certainly thought about them in the wake of SJC closing. But since those angsty twenty-something days, I've been lucky enough to fall in with people I love and things are going very well.

Let's see what we can do to put this off for a while, shall we?

Follow me on Twitter: @Jntweets