Mass extinctions, a monumental loss of plant and animal species over short time which remained mysterious and unexplained events that have occurred repeatedly on Earth over millions of years. Overtime these events allows evolutionary changes on earth as new species develop to take the places of those lost or destroyed. Scientists have discovered at least five different mass extinctions happened in our past history with 50-70% lives lost including Dinosaur. But will this extinctions repeat in our time ?? where something happens to make humans go extinct. The possibilities is YES and scientist have identified 12 plausible ways it could happen.
- Catastrophic climate change
- Nuclear war
- Global pandemic
- Ecological catastrophe
- Global system collapse
- Major asteroid impact
- Supervolcano
- Synthetic biology
- Nanotechnology
- Artificial Intelligence
- Future bad governance
- Unknown unknowns --> Perhaps Alien invasion :D
Among the listed possibilities, near miss situation for nuclear Armageddon happened twice during Cold war period that could cause modern-age major extinction. Its was a two unsung heroes, Vasili Arkhipov and Stanislav Petrov where now hailed with title "The Man Who Safe The World" responsible for the prevention of global nuclear holocaust in our modern history.
Vasili Arphipov-Soviet Navy officer credited with casting the single vote that prevented a Soviet nuclear strike during the Cuban Missile Crisis. As flotilla commander and second-in-command of the diesel powered submarine B-59, only Arkhipov refused to authorize the captain's use of nuclear torpedoes against the US Navy, a decision requiring the agreement of all three senior officers aboard. (fuuuuh..)
Stanislav Petrov -A lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces who became known as "the man who single-handedly saved the world from nuclear war" for his role in the 1983 Soviet nuclear false alarm incident.
On 26 September 1983, just three weeks after the Soviet military had shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, Petrov was the duty officer at the command center for the Oko nuclear early-warning system when a malfunctioned soviet satellite triggered an alarm that indicate a missile had been launched from the United States, followed by up to five more. Petrov interpreted the reports to be a false alarm based on his intuition and his decision to disobey orders, against Soviet military protocol is credited with having prevented an erroneous retaliatory nuclear attack between the superpowers that could have resulted in large-scale nuclear war.
It is estimated that current global nuclear warhead stockpiles total roughly 15,000 worldwide, with the United States and Russia holding 90% of the total and rest with China, India, Britain, France, Pakistan and North Korea. However, two nuclear close call incidents happened even after the cold war where in 1995 Russian President Bolris Yeltsen activated nuclear launch briefcase after their radar detected a rocket launch which was misjudged as nuclear missile. In 2010, commanders at a U.S. Air Force base in Wyoming lost most forms of command, control, and security monitoring over 50 nuclear ICBMs for approximately 45 minutes due to hardware failure that could launch nuclear missiles unintentionally.
In conclusion, the doomsday clock still ticks waiting to trigger global annihilation... :O