8 Ways the World Might End

Did anyone else see the CNN piece on potential doomsday scenarios? If not, here's a summary.

Scientists conducted a two-year study to determine the most likely ways that human civilization will end. Here are eight of those ways:

1) Nuclear War: The odds of this occurring have gone down since the Cold War, but I guess it's still a possible scenario. I still don't think anyone is stupid enough to start a fight where both sides lose. But maybe I'm wrong...

2) Climate Change: Although this will be a huge headache for human civilization due to mass migration, food and water insecurity, and extreme weather, I don't think it will be the end of us.

3) Global Pandemic: Yes, sanitation and medicine have improved dramatically, but population density and increased global connectivity (airplanes) mean diseases will have an easier time spreading.

4) Asteroids: Will the human race come to an end the same way the dinosaurs did 65 million years ago? Who knows. I'll leave this question to the astronomers and cosmologists.

5) Super Volcanoes: This has happened before too... and there is one under our feet in Yellowstone National Park just waiting to blow. The eruption/explosion would kill a lot of people instantly, then the ash would block out the sun and poison the food supply for the rest of us. Yay.

6) Aliens: Or what the scientists in the study refer to as the "unknown unknown." Use your imagination.

7) Artificial Intelligence (AI): I remember hearing Bill Gates at one point saying he thinks computers and robots will be a threat in the future.

8) Bad Global Governance: I think this is the most likely scenario. We are seeing it right now all over the world. Leaders continue to cause problems and/or fail to resolve them.

Good luck to us all.