Posts tagged apocalypse
The premise for the the world I'm building is that the Superpowers of Earth lost an interplanetary war with the Colonies of Mars. As a result, most of Earth's governments have either collapsed or h...
In the case of a world-wide plague epidemic that'll trigger the near extinction of humanity, is it possible that a virus/disease has inconsistent symptoms so that people aren't aware that it's real...
Building on Josh King's answer to this question concerning the feasibility of a disease which dies with its host, can a disease be contagious by airborne means while not being contagious by fluid e...
How believable is a touch or fluid vectored bacteria which is so dependent on its host that the remains of a terminated victim become non-contageous within minutes of the host's death? I'm postula...
So I had an idea earlier today and was wondering. Most sources you consult about the supposed "vacuum metastability event" say that the bubble would begin expanding at NEARLY the speed of light, no...
First, a little background information. For the purpose of my story, I'm making the Earth uninhabitable, similar to this question. This is to cause a mass exodus from the solar system through a bit...
Adhering to natural laws and physics as much as possible[1], what could cause Venus to go from a habitable planet to its current state, and how long would it take from the apocalyptic event to achi...
Some Background Details In 1908, the Siberian region of Tunguska made headline news when an explosion knocked down 80 million trees in an area of only 770 square miles. The mystery was that there ...
Imagine a space cataclysm, where the Earth is hit by a deadly wave sterilizing all life of the bright side, but the dark side is more or less intact (at least the atmosphere and life are still in p...
Okay, so the heat death of the universe is approaching. You can't stop it. You can't dodge it. What do you do? You wait it out. According to wikipedia, about $10^{{10}^{56}}$ years after the heat ...
There are plenty of threats out there that could terminate all life on our little planet in varying amounts of time (Solar flares, meteors and supernovas to name a few). Are there any disasters th...
How can the atmosphere rapidly change composition? Around ~2.3 Billion Years ago, the Atmosphere changed radically: Cyanobacteria started pumping out Oxygen and the atmosphere gradually became Oxy...
How dark would it be living in an impact winter? Where would an asteroid have to hit earth to cause an impact winter? gives a great breakdown of the effects of an impact winter, but I'd like to k...
I have a planet in a solar system that is for all intents and purposes identical to ours that I want to play like a bongo drum with asteroids or other extra terrestrial rocks to destroy most of the...
For the sake of convenience, this happens on Earth. However, in this scenario only the American continent (all of it) is inhabited. One of the countries is experimenting with extremely advanced an...
In our understanding of mass extinction and adaptive radiation, we have found that life can't and doesn't bounce back right away. They take time. It took life eight to ten million years to recove...
In one of the Worlds I am building, there are zombies. Sadly the zombie genre is dead(sorry), this is mainly due to the overwhelming domination in the genre and lack of new creative zombie types (w...
My story (same world as here) take place in a future Earth between 3 and 5 million years in the future. What kind of artifacts, if any, would civilizations from this era find from the now extinct h...
This is for a project where the electromagnetic pulse (EMP) from early US atomic bomb tests is somehow much more magnified than the destructive blast- so much so that it destroys electrical devices...
If we remove all the ferns and horsetails from the ecological equation would grass be the only candidate to fill the void? If not, then what else?
I need a meteor to deliver an extraterrestrial algae-like cellular life form to an urban environment/city. The meteor needs to be far enough that it will not impact the Earth and will not cause ...
Meaning, cause a seemingly normal winter to suddenly take a turn within hours or a day/two into a completely frozen territory? From what I've read, abrupt climate change happens from ocean currents...
This post-apocalyptic environment, as narrated in the book, depicts a world where most if not all animal life has been abruptly killed, and similarly most vegetation burned out. After the disaster,...
The sun inexplicably ceases to give light. It's still there and continues to have a gravitational pull keeping us in orbit. The solar system continues to operate as normal, but the sun has gone dar...
I need an event man-made or not on Earth that can generate consistent earthquake that never grow weak, sky is the limit meaning any astronomical events will be ruled out. My story can take place du...
The worlds biggest problem is population growth. All that goes in bad way crime, corruption, assassination, robbery, murders everything is at increasing rate in world. And basic reason for all this...
How do I create a societal collapse with ruins, survivors, and the weaponry is back to pre-gunpowder technology (swords, shields, bows, etc.), while the Pre-Collapse tech can make Ridiculously Huma...
What single chemical element (get out your periodic tables) could most efficiently destroy all life on the planet. Restrictions: Natural elements only, and no anti-matter...nice try. Looking for...
This is inspired by What single element could destroy the world?. Injecting sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere has been proposed as a mechanism to relieve the symptoms of global warming by creatin...
Suppose that there are 2 interstellar empires at war with one another, both armed with FTL drives which cannot be used within a certain radius of huge gravity fields, stars, gas giants, etc. Anothe...
Suppose, through some fantastical mechanism, all macroscopic (i.e. reasonably massive) objects in the universe were instantly made at rest. In other words, the relative velocity between every two ...
Imagine that one day in the not-too-distant future, our scientists discover that our world is dying. It doesn't matter how this is happening, maybe magic or unstable core or Gaia herself has finall...
Okay, I will make a little premise/context to give the question a decent background. I know that the scenario could look rather "handwavy", but take it as the framework on which the answer should b...
The Biblical story of the Flood describes how over a period of 40 days the earth is flooded so that the peak of the highest mountain is 15 cubits/22.5ft/6.858m below the new mean sea level. The fl...
One of the theories behind the extinction of the dinosaurs is the eruption of one or a series of volcanoes. Supposedly the ash expelled by these eruptions blocked out the sun, killing plants and th...
What would happen a volcano the size of Australia were to erupt? How high on the extinction-list would it rank? Would it be above the asteroid that hit Earth and killed the dinosaurs? Which known...
Back home, the phylum Cnidaria (jellyfish, coral, anemone) and the class Amphibia are two of the most ancient groups of animals on the planet. But let's say that, on an alternate Earth, many milli...
NASA's Project Orion created the concept of a spacecraft that detonated nuclear bombs behind it, and rid the shockwaves as a form of propulsion, but the project was abandoned because nuclear bombs ...
So let's say that an alien civilization that we have made enemies with decides to use an advanced non-lethal biological weapon on the Earth as a warning. The aliens, while not infamous for any tec...
Is it possible to manipulate all artificial satellites(including ISS) and space junks currently in orbit to fall into Earth's atmosphere in one go? (Tech level is late 22nd century science) Note: ...
The inspiration for my question comes from The Great C by Philip K Dick. To summarize, the Great C is a computer that has taken over a large portion of the planet. It uses proxy agents to keep co...
Imagine aliens dropped a small black hole (say, 1% of the moon's mass, so you wouldn't notice the difference in gravitation) into the sun (from the far side of the sun, so nobody on earth can see i...
Imagine the entire ocean becomes extremely corrosive due to ocean acidification over a couple of decades, all nations have agreed to erect a permanent barrier along all shorelines to seperate land ...
Variations of this question have been asked and answered previously but I am looking for something specific. Situation: Earth's body (mantel and crust) rotate at different rates than it's core (I ...
So, I've been considering the Norse legend of Ragnarök, I'm considering how the legend could come true in a purely scientific setting. In other words what science-based explanation would best fit ...
I'm wondering what types of firearms would be impacted if explosives and combustion in general were to have a random chance of being more potent or less potent. Could new firearms and/or ammunition...
Aliens steal all our trees. Nothing else happened, just all the trees are gone. Everything not part of the tree was left where it was (apples are stolen, termites are not.) What would be the short...
So some aliens come, put everyone in space suits, and drop us one the moon. The aliens are super smart, and the space suits have enough air for a year, and can't be damaged easily, and only upon fr...
In the terrible movie LA Apocalypse the planet's core destabilized causing the fault lines to erupt, magma spilled out, earthquakes going every 5 minutes. Eventfully things were resolved by detonat...
Similar, but a bit more broad, to Would a zombie apocalypse be possible if a zombie existed? A secret lab (owned by a private company) near Chicago creates a virus strain called 'ZB01' (to be so...