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In the past year alone, humans have seen fires in Australia, California, and the Amazon forest. Worldwide carbon emissions from various types of businesses, human activity, and burning fossil fuels have also made a dent in our year, and not exactly for the better.
On top of COVID19, a contagious disease spread by the novel coronavirus, countries such as Saudi Arabia have seen swarms of locusts, and Zagreb, Croatia experienced an earthquake.
Naturally, Reddit commenters had something to say about realistic doomsday scenarios that could make 2020’s first quarter hold its beer. They’re not pretty, so let’s hope for the best while giving these some thought.
20. California Gets an Epic Quake
“The ‘Big One’ finally happens in California that we’ve been warned about our entire lives.”
19. Hurricanes Are Coming
“Hurricane season is coming up!”
18. Grocery Store Closures
“Grocery stores are forced to close due to employees being infected by the Corona virus.”
17. Revenge Of The Coronavirus
“The Coronavirus could mutate to become deadlier. Or we could just realize it is deadlier or has long term effects we didn’t know about.”
16. Solar Flare-Related Power Outage
“Unexpected solar flare completely shuts down all electronics & internet for a long period; would be HORRIBLE for the quarantined (am in there 🙁 )”
15. A Geyser Eruption
“If Yellow Stone erupted, you might as well grab a good bottle of your choice and kick back.”
14. Getting Rid of All Privacy
“The EARN-IT Bill being passed by Congress.
It effectively ends internet encryption and any perceived internet privacy we still have: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/earn-it-bill-governments-not-so-secret-plan-scan-every-message-online”
13. *Any* Possible Disasters
“Any disasters during this pandemic. Imagine if this is still spreading rapidly in April with mass quarantines, and a tornado outbreak on the likes of 2011 super outbreak hits. Injured normally have medical to go to, but if it’s all filled up by sick patients, well…let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that.
Everyone in the states, count yourselves lucky that this outbreak didn’t hit in july-september and hope it gets cleared before then. Imagine if this was widespread during a Category 5 hurricane impact, when they normally tell an entire region to scram to other parts of the country.”
12. Past Disasters Are Tough Too
“I live in Nashville and we’d pretty much just come out of a pretty bad tornado that wrecked a good chunk of the city.
Then this corona virus garbage. And most of us are service industry or freelancers (musicians, photographers, videographers) so we’re really getting hit hard with all this quarantine mess.”
11. Success Of The Sinister Kind
“North Korea “successfully” launching a nuclear warhead that lands either in South Korea or Japan, then sparking an international incident.
Or Russia invading the Baltic states.”
10. Big Brother Happens For Real
“This virus doesn’t just clear up on its own, the vaccine takes longer than estimated to develop but it’s not a cure for those that already have it anyway and then the virus mutates.
International borders are closed, the military begins patrolling to make sure people are not sneaking in. Whole towns and cities are now closing to outsiders, people begin to stop trusting their neighbors or people they don’t know.
Governments stop behaving democratically and urge the population to report their own family, friends and neighbors to the authorities if they look sick.
Nobody has a job, money doesn’t matter because it has no use, violence is a feature of life, the government has gone to ground and then reports that the military has started shooting civilians at the borders begin to circulate…”
9. An AI Takeover
“Either IBM’s Watson or Google’s quantum computer becomes self-aware, humanity fails the vibe-check.”
8. Instability in Iran
“The most likely if Iran collapses, the nation is being destroyed by the virus and their have been mass protests for months on the end, them shooting down the jet liner only added to it and the virus is just making things worse.
Iran collapsing will lead to possibly America going to try to “create stability” but it definitely won’t and will cause even more problems, a whole new wave of terror groups would likely form, think of it if isis was actually an effective military force with the equipment, training and financial support to back it up and you have what parts of the Iran military could become, add to that nuclear material, not even weapons grade, just the ability to have it and make some kind of dirty bomb.
The collapse will also lead to an even bigger refuge crisis as well as other terrorist groups moving in to carve up the land, in short when Iran collapses and it probably will, its gonna cause the whole middle east to get worse.”
7. Revenge of The Extroverts
“Many people leave this obligatory quarantine also leaving behind their sanity (except the introverts and anti-socials) and potentially making things worse such as the economy and stuff.”
6. A Postponed Election
“A postponed election.
This is obviously a US issue and I’m not taking political sides. But postponing the election because of things like caps on how many people can be in the same area seems possible.
Edit: People are mentioning the Constitution as if crazier shit hasn’t happened in the past four years.”
5. No More Coffee!
“Coronavirus runs rampant in Brazil, taking out the majority of the worlds coffee production.”
4. This Nightmare Scenario
“You get fired, after your company gets bailed out to keep jobs. And your firer or boss collects a massive bonus at the end of the year to boot. Plus he poured sugar in your gas tank, and impregnated your daughter.”
3. Space Construction Projects
“Demolition of our planet to make way for an interstellar expressway, I guess.”
2. Queen Elizabeth’s Passing
“Queen Elizabeth dies.
Economies would go crazy.”
1. And, The Unthinkable!
“Cats 2: 2 Cats 2 Curious.”
They say it’s best to hope for the best while preparing for the worst. Is there anything you think should’ve been added to this list?
We look forward to hearing these scenarios (while also knocking on wood).
