The Next Mass Extinction

The End Of The World, the Next Mass Extinction, Armageddon (or anything that might inconvenience us slightly) are things that the media like to speculate about. I've made an attempt to list the things that might scare us:

'The Big Rip', from continuing expansion of the Universe

Asteroid, comet or interstellar object impact

Near approach by a stellar-mass black hole or neutron star

Solar flare anomaly / Myake Event

Nearby supernova

Gamma ray burster event in the Milky Way galaxy

Proton decay / maximum entropy / Big Crunch (whatever)

Magnetic pole reversal

Yellowstone Park or other magma bubble

Flood basalt vulcanism

Climate change: ice age; global warming

Polar melt / flooding / rising sea levels

Large methane hydrate release from seabed

North Atlantic Conveyor (AMOC/Gulf Stream etc.) dies. Monsoons fail and Northern Europe freezes

Politicians, the military, global corporations and psychopathic billionaires

Nuclear / chemical / biological holocaust or terrorist event

GenEnged cancer plague or other bugs

Chirality SNAFU: pathogenic mirror-image bacteria

Peak Oil (as per Hubbert et al) and the aftermath

Blue-green algae die-off, that contributes to:

Atmospheric oxygen deficiency (remember where you heard this first)

Heat pollution

Small black hole in orbit inside the Earth (chomp chomp)

Alien attack / takeover / adverse cultural effect

Concerned by any of this? Bob Heinlein once said that the human race has all its eggs in one basket: the Earth. Perhaps now is the time to get off-planet.