Vanishing oxygen

So here's the premise:

We have an Earth-like planet, with a civilisation at roughly the same state as ours today. Scientists have been monitoring the atmosphere for centuries, what with forecasting the weather and the whole debate about greenhouse gasses, and all that. So far nothing unusual.

But now they have suddenly noticed something strange, and quite scary: The levels of oxygen in the atmosphere are dropping.

At first the scientists don't make a fuss about it, just trying to work out what's going on, but as the levels continue to drop, the news becomes public and the population starts to panic. We're not at a stage yet where everyone's suffering breathing difficulties, but if things continue it will start getting serious within about a year.

Nobody knows what's causing this or how to fix it. It's only oxygen that's affected, no other gasses. There's no obvious changes in global plant activity, no unusual volcanism, no unexpected melting of the tundras... what can be going on?

So, what is causing it? My favoured cause is that the planet is passing through a belt of hydrogen gas in space. This is being collected by the planet as it moves through space and is reacting with the oxygen in the atmosphere to form water.

Is this plausible? If so how will civilisation save itself?

posted about 8 years ago

Simba‭

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