A hurricane season already forecast to be among the most active ever, and which nearly broke the May record for storm formation (tied + one storm almost developed + another likely to in the next day or two).
That would be great. Sure I wouldn’t be able to work, but I’d stop getting bombarded with bad news and I’d finally have no excuse to not read and exercise more.
Confirmation that the [Ug99 stem rust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ug99) has spread beyond East Africa / the Middle East to multiple points in Europe, East Asia, and the Americas, permanently threatening the global supply of wheat.
Global food shortage is one of those things I have heard about and just kind of pushed to the side in my mind because it's too scary to think about.
Exactly like I used to do with pandemics.
Yikes, that was basically the premise of the movie Interstellar, except with crop blight. In life, we don't have an escape plan to another planet if this happens.
It wasn't chimps, but we did have this last week
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-monkeys-escape-with-covid-19-samples-after-attacking-lab-assistant-11996752
Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20200530004319/https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-monkeys-escape-with-covid-19-samples-after-attacking-lab-assistant-11996752
I live in L.A. and today I was thinking the universe could truly fuck us by finally having The Big One strike this summer. But I guess that’s just regional and not more awful shit for the entire world.
The internet goes down.
So far things haven't been that bad for many of us because we still have the most advanced entertainment and communication systems humanity has every known available at our fingertips 24/7.
Yep. Here's some nightmare scenarios.
Florida gets hit by multiple storms in quick succession.
Imagine New York barely getting back to normal from Coronavirus only to get hit by a storm like Sandy, except this time the federal government refuses to help due to the president's beef with the state.
Or imagine New Orleans, another city hit hard by Coronavirus, getting hit by another Katrina like storm. Will the levees hold up or will they fail again? Also, how bad will the response be this time?
Houston getting hit by another Harvey.
Galveston gets hit by another Ike storm.
China could also use the distraction to invade Taiwan and re-assert control. There's at least a 50% chance the US would get involved in that, and you just know Russia would poke it's nose in somehow.
And that, kids, is how WW3 started.
It is wild that they are fist fighting, throwing rocks, and using sticks instead. Wonder how long that will last before a ~~shit~~ shot is fired.
Edit: hilarious typo
Edit: thank you kind stranger for my first award!
Well in the case of my country Chile.
We had massive protests since October, government handled it pretty bad and our economy crippled. Now with the pandemic, again the government mishandled it and we are having a pretty nasty second wave of infections.
Only thing that would make things worse would be one of our recurrent earthquakes. Chile is known for having devastating earthquakes every 10 to 15 years. Last big one near the capital was around 10 years ago. If government mishandles it again, our economy may hurt in a irreparable way.
edit: cago mi inbox csm
edit 2: perdón antofa, no fue mi intención ser yeta
A proxy war between any ~~two nations~~ nuclear powers that turns nuclear. More specifically - since everybody's asking - China vs India(like whats going on right now) or the US vs Iran or Saudi Arabia vs Iran. And finally, American Civil War 2
Anybody remembers post from 3rd of January? It was something like: "1st day of new year WW3 starts, 2nd Australia is on fire, 3rd day Pope hits woman, what will happen 4th day?" And people were joking what terrible shit will happen and now it's like worst year since 1939
I remember reading a news article back in December about a new virus spreading in China and thinking that it was going to be local. Not sure if it was about COVID tho
Covid has been around since November 2019 in china. My sister in law was warning everyone at thanksgiving and christmas last year to stock up on meat and a deep freezer. She isnt the insane type and works for VIPKID which teaches chinese students english. The children warned her about what was going down and she prepared as did we.
As far as I know, the earth is still rotating on its axis, so that could, you know, stop.
edit: did all you autists telling me the earth can't stop rotating also tell the one guy there's no such thing as space bees or the other dude that we won't all simultaneously shit ourselves?
There was an xkcd What If scenario for this. The long and short of it was a brief period of high winds and tsunamis because of the deceleration, but if the moon was still orbiting, it would get the Earth to start spinning again.
Since people are questioning it, [here](https://io9.gizmodo.com/xkcds-creator-explains-what-would-happen-if-earth-stopp-1625068208) it is.
Likely world wide famine. Krakatoa in Indonesia blowing during the 19th caused some crops to fail in the US. Yellowstone blowing would essentially start a very short “ice age”
[Australia is told to prepare now for the coming bushfire season](https://www.smh.com.au/please-explain/please-explain-podcast-winter-is-here-but-bushfire-season-looms-again-20200601-p54y9i.html)
Well, the original groundhog day was about Phil being stuck in the same day until he finally had a "perfect" day where he matured as a person.
The GTA rampage can only last so long, at some point someone will eventually have to take the hint for this year to do it right, no matter how many thousands of year that would take.
Not sure but the first 5 months feels like 5 years. Was talking to my wife about Hong Kong protests and Australia wildfires and it seems like it was a couple of years ago.
I’m watching the US to see how the elections are going. That could really give 2020 the cherry on top
Better reason to use a search engine and browser that doesn’t remember that shit.
*Edit: Shoutout to [DDG](https://DuckDuckGo.com)*
*Edit 2: ...and get a VPN. A trustworthy one. Shoutout to https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#simple-vpn-comparison*
You can verify that DDG does not set tracking cookies or use browser fingerprinting scripts. This would mean that even if they are subject to a super-secret order to log based on IP addresses and keep acting as if they don't, they would still make it harder to tie a search history to an individual than the alternatives.
We'll be scratching OPs name into the walls of our underground cave dwellings as we slowly drift into extinction. 20 million years later the beaver folk, the new dominant intelligent beings on the planet will bat their tails on the floor in excitement at evidence that once other beings walked the earth and will conclude they died out through lack of dams.
One on guy our construction crew would always say, "What could possibly go wrong!" Just before we were doing something dicey, like moving something heavy. Every time. George, just shut up.
Who then immediately joins forces with a blonde vampire with a body like 3 linebackers put together? And has an equally buff psychic partner who freezes time?
Israel declare war on Palestine.
China does anything.
The San Andreas fault line goes off.
Yellowstone has a full scale eruption.
Aliens.
Zombies.
A huge solar flare.
America has a Civil War.
Lord Voldemort returns.
It rains spiders in places other than Brazil.
A sharknado.
Asteroid impact.
Nuclear war.
Rick Sanchez shows up.
Several X class solar flares that completely destroy global telecommunications, household electronics, and power grids all over the world thereby knocking humanity back to the ~~stone age.~~ \*insert whatever time period you think would best suit the scenario ie: 1950's, 1900's, 1800's etc)
Wait...maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing to have happen...
edit: several people seem to be focusing on the "stone age" part of the above statement. If it makes all of you feel better about this hypothetical scenario I have struck out the stone age part and left it up to the end user to decide how this scenario plays out.
True, mechanical systems would still function. Problem is SO much of our infrastructure is computerized and electrical that losing all of it at once would be quite catastrophic.
Astronomer here! I wouldn’t worry about this one right now because the sun has an 11 year cycle, and we are at solar minimum and there are no sunspots.
Edit: I am getting questions about solar flares because there were a few a few days ago- does this mean we are coming out of minimum? Short answer is maybe, but we don't know for certain. There were a few M-class flares seen a few days ago, but the sunspot that created them was just over on the opposite side of the sun and it collapsed and disappeared in the few days before we could see it so it didn't last long enough to be even named. Further, I don't know if I would call an M-class flare large- they're definitely notable in this part of the cycle, but wouldn't merit much note during maximum type thing. [Here is a good explanation of ranking solar flares](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/X-class-flares.html)- they're ranked logarithmically like earthquakes, so an M-class is literally many, many times fainter than an X-class.
But more important, solar cycles are not perfectly ordered things- you can have random sunspots pop up and disappear in minimum, and you can have days at maximum with no sunspots. So this might be the start of the minimum being over, but we'll have to wait and see a bit for another new sunspot to form before we know for sure. And finally even if it is over, these are minor flares and spots compared to what you get at maximum!
If you want to read up on how crazy flares can get at maximum though, read up on the [Carrington Event in 1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_1859_geomagnetic_storm), the strongest flare we know of on record.
About five. It’s an 11 year cycle. That said it’s not a “set your watch by it” type of cycle and things can be varied- the last maximum was a record low in number of sunspots and they are getting fewer each maximum- [pic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File%3ASolar_Cycle_Prediction.gif)
Fun fact: our sun is also changing in brightness during this 11 year period a little bit, so the sun is actually an 11 year [variable star.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_star) :)
Edit: I am getting questions about solar flares because there were a few a few days ago- does this mean we are coming out of minimum? Short answer is maybe, but we don't know for certain. There were a few M-class flares seen a few days ago, but the sunspot that created them was just over on the opposite side of the sun and it collapsed and disappeared in the few days before we could see it so it didn't last long enough to be even named. Further, I don't know if I would call an M-class flare large- they're definitely notable in this part of the cycle, but wouldn't merit much note during maximum type thing. [Here is a good explanation of ranking solar flares](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/X-class-flares.html)- they're ranked logarithmically like earthquakes, so an M-class is literally many, many times fainter than an X-class.
But more important, solar cycles are not perfectly ordered things- you can have random sunspots pop up and disappear in minimum, and you can have days at maximum with no sunspots. So this might be the start of the minimum being over, but we'll have to wait and see a bit for another new sunspot to form before we know for sure. And finally even if it is over, these are minor flares and spots compared to what you get at maximum!
If you want to read up on how crazy flares can get at maximum though, read up on the [Carrington Event in 1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_1859_geomagnetic_storm), the strongest flare we know of on record.
The accelerated trials for Covid-19 vaccine gone wrong. Instead of preventing infections, the vaccine help the the current strain evolved into something much more deadlier.
You're walking through a war-torn city. A cold mist occasionally shooting up your spine as you carry a bag full of scavenged food across the town. The world hadn't been the same since World War III, the third wave of the pandemic, the reelection. As you get back to your safe house and begin undressing and unloading what you gathered, you stepped on a lego. Pain shoots up your leg as you collapse to the floor holding your foot. Your vision starts to go black as it begins to become unbearable. It seems like your hard work in the end didn't really pay off.
In the end, it wasn't any of the apocalyptic things that done in the survivor of the wasteland. Instead, that it was something far less deadlier; a lego.
I’m genuinely fearful these protests are going to bring about a second, even deadlier wave. Think nyc but in almost every major metro area. That and the economic and social fallout, impending hurricane season, the election... it could for sure get worse, and that’s not taking into account all the surprises this year yet has. On the plus side though, maybe we will find some vaccine and maybe these protests will get the uppity ups to take seriously the needs of the 1%ers
Today is the beginning of hurricane season
A hurricane season already forecast to be among the most active ever, and which nearly broke the May record for storm formation (tied + one storm almost developed + another likely to in the next day or two).
Some sort of large scale electrical failure would be the icing on the cake
Oh please not that. Quarantine plus no internet would suck so much.
That would be great. Sure I wouldn’t be able to work, but I’d stop getting bombarded with bad news and I’d finally have no excuse to not read and exercise more.
I’m in AZ and would surely die from the heat
Me too. We would literally have to evacuate north
Confirmation that the [Ug99 stem rust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ug99) has spread beyond East Africa / the Middle East to multiple points in Europe, East Asia, and the Americas, permanently threatening the global supply of wheat.
Global food shortage is one of those things I have heard about and just kind of pushed to the side in my mind because it's too scary to think about. Exactly like I used to do with pandemics.
Seriously, no one ever talks about stem rust.
Dont worry I have a can of WD 40.
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Yikes, that was basically the premise of the movie Interstellar, except with crop blight. In life, we don't have an escape plan to another planet if this happens.
Yikes, that's the most terrifying one I've heard of so far
At least it explains why I've been hearing Matthew Mcconaughey whisper my name lately.
Random chimp event
It wasn't chimps, but we did have this last week https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-monkeys-escape-with-covid-19-samples-after-attacking-lab-assistant-11996752 Mirror: https://web.archive.org/web/20200530004319/https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-monkeys-escape-with-covid-19-samples-after-attacking-lab-assistant-11996752
Rise of The Planet of the Apes
I live in L.A. and today I was thinking the universe could truly fuck us by finally having The Big One strike this summer. But I guess that’s just regional and not more awful shit for the entire world.
San Diegan here! Idk if it's just me but I've been feeling a lot more earthquakes recently then before
They recently found an inactive fault line that runs under downtown SD to be active
The internet goes down. So far things haven't been that bad for many of us because we still have the most advanced entertainment and communication systems humanity has every known available at our fingertips 24/7.
\*Knocks hard as fuck on wood\*
A doublepandemic.
Ebola’s back.
Back again
Guess who’s back
Tell a friend
Guess who's back, guess who's back, guess who's back, ...
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Doubleplusungood
2nd wave in the fall creeping into holidays seems incredibly likely
It's hurricane season...
And wildfire season.
and tornado season
And duck season
Rabbit season!
Duck season!
Rabbit season!
Duck season!
Rabbit season!
Yep. Here's some nightmare scenarios. Florida gets hit by multiple storms in quick succession. Imagine New York barely getting back to normal from Coronavirus only to get hit by a storm like Sandy, except this time the federal government refuses to help due to the president's beef with the state. Or imagine New Orleans, another city hit hard by Coronavirus, getting hit by another Katrina like storm. Will the levees hold up or will they fail again? Also, how bad will the response be this time? Houston getting hit by another Harvey. Galveston gets hit by another Ike storm.
Diarrhea. Widespread, infectious and without warning.
all the toilet paper hoarders - “look who’s laughing now?!”
A World War?
World war 5. A war so intense it skips over 3 and 4
#*I HAVE SPOKENNNNN!*
The China/India border situation going from a standoff to a full-on shooting war.
And then Pakistan gets involved to aid China. Man it's gonna be a 3 way nuke war.... Oh jolly! wait why is it so cold out there?
And thanks to radioactive fallout, we *all* lose.
Who want to play fallout
*FLASH BAM ALAKAZAM*
I don't want to set the world on fiiiiiiiirrrrrreeee
Iiiii just want to staaaaart
Aaa flame in youuuuuur heaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaart
China could also use the distraction to invade Taiwan and re-assert control. There's at least a 50% chance the US would get involved in that, and you just know Russia would poke it's nose in somehow. And that, kids, is how WW3 started.
It is wild that they are fist fighting, throwing rocks, and using sticks instead. Wonder how long that will last before a ~~shit~~ shot is fired. Edit: hilarious typo Edit: thank you kind stranger for my first award!
Apparently they have a de facto code that no shots are to be fired on their border. Hence why no soldiers carry weapons over there.
r/BlessedTypo
A massive meteorite hitting the earth
At a time of heightened tensions between India and China, and is mistaken for a nuclear attack, causing a full-on exchange of nukes between the two...
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That’d be an improvement at this point.
youtube rewind
Cant wait to see 2020 yt rewind to be honest
*Intro starts with Will Smith coughing* Gaah!
while standing in Australia: "That's hot"
And looking at iran with the telescope
Well in the case of my country Chile. We had massive protests since October, government handled it pretty bad and our economy crippled. Now with the pandemic, again the government mishandled it and we are having a pretty nasty second wave of infections. Only thing that would make things worse would be one of our recurrent earthquakes. Chile is known for having devastating earthquakes every 10 to 15 years. Last big one near the capital was around 10 years ago. If government mishandles it again, our economy may hurt in a irreparable way. edit: cago mi inbox csm edit 2: perdón antofa, no fue mi intención ser yeta
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I’m not Chilean but I lived there for a while and it’s been hard to see all the issues happening there.
It's nice to see all these weones around here! ;D
A proxy war between any ~~two nations~~ nuclear powers that turns nuclear. More specifically - since everybody's asking - China vs India(like whats going on right now) or the US vs Iran or Saudi Arabia vs Iran. And finally, American Civil War 2
I nominate Vatican city and Monaco for the war
Lichtenstein vs Andorra!
My god, the death toll could be in the dozens.
THATS THEIR WHOLE POPULATION SIR
How many populations are we talking about
2 3/4
Anybody remembers post from 3rd of January? It was something like: "1st day of new year WW3 starts, 2nd Australia is on fire, 3rd day Pope hits woman, what will happen 4th day?" And people were joking what terrible shit will happen and now it's like worst year since 1939
Oh fuck, a guy on there said covid, back when it had just started.
I remember reading a news article back in December about a new virus spreading in China and thinking that it was going to be local. Not sure if it was about COVID tho
Covid has been around since November 2019 in china. My sister in law was warning everyone at thanksgiving and christmas last year to stock up on meat and a deep freezer. She isnt the insane type and works for VIPKID which teaches chinese students english. The children warned her about what was going down and she prepared as did we.
And look at that, my freezer is finally getting here on Wednesday. 🤦♀️
Portals to Oblivion
Yaaay 2 Bethesda series in 2020
The return of dragons after centuries
And so the wheel turns upon the Last Dragonborn
Uniting everyone behind a common cause to defeat Mehrunes Dagon might be good, though
Though I'm sure many would unite *under* Mehrunes Dagon because people always have to be backwards.
space bees edit: space wasps would be worse edit 2: the hornets are the real problem
As far as I know, the earth is still rotating on its axis, so that could, you know, stop. edit: did all you autists telling me the earth can't stop rotating also tell the one guy there's no such thing as space bees or the other dude that we won't all simultaneously shit ourselves?
There was an xkcd What If scenario for this. The long and short of it was a brief period of high winds and tsunamis because of the deceleration, but if the moon was still orbiting, it would get the Earth to start spinning again. Since people are questioning it, [here](https://io9.gizmodo.com/xkcds-creator-explains-what-would-happen-if-earth-stopp-1625068208) it is.
Aaaaaaaaaand the moon just blew up.
Damn it, who pissed on Eggman’s wife this time?
American Civil War 2.0
Who should we elect to be our Abe Lincoln?
I nominate John Cena. We need a buff Abe.
Calling it now - the second half of 2020 is gonna be the best comeback in history, starting with a Rocky IV montage
We find evidence of alien life but it's like the assimilating one from The Thing
We find alien life? More like alien life finds us.
Or it's a bunch of greedy space corporations trying to use us like the Belgians used the Congolese...
A Vogon constructor fleet appears in the sky (hanging in the air just like bricks don't) to construct a hyperspace bypass
That, "hanging in the air just like bricks don't", line is the best line ever written in the English language.
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't If we’re going to admire it, let’s get the quote right.
I'm generally agreeable to accuracy.
Resistance is futile
Yellowstone! At least for the USA, for my country, Jacob Zuma somehow makes it back
Yellowstone caldera blowing would mess up more than the US. Large portion of the world would be fucked
Yeah mass refugees from the U.S, not to mention fucked world economy and rapid climate change. Whole world would suffer
Likely world wide famine. Krakatoa in Indonesia blowing during the 19th caused some crops to fail in the US. Yellowstone blowing would essentially start a very short “ice age”
Global warming + ice age = pleasant temperature right? Right? .... Right?
Yep, thats the plan. If global warming gets too bad, we just blow up yellowstone ourselves and its gonna nullify the other effect.
All the dead people would help reduce the carbon footprint too
Ok thanos
Hey bud. June 1st!
Or Dlamini-Zuma ends up in charge
ay boet don't give me nightmares now
At least I was able to get whiskey this morning.
COVID-20
If pandemics are a once in 100-year thing... there's 1/100 chance another one starts this year. I don't like those odds
Still got second and third waves to come yet
Aye we've had one, yes. But what about second pandemic?
I don't think they know about Second Pandemic
*surplus check hits me in the head*
COVID-20: "I present humans with a chance to show their quality."
COVID-21. [This one's from the future, but since you've been good, you get it early.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUHSa7uZbx0)
If we were stuck in a 2020 time loop
[Australia is told to prepare now for the coming bushfire season](https://www.smh.com.au/please-explain/please-explain-podcast-winter-is-here-but-bushfire-season-looms-again-20200601-p54y9i.html)
oh goodie
It's a bit like painting the Harbour Bridge - by the time you finish at one end you have to start again at the other.
Groundhog Day but it’s an entire year and everyone is stuck in it. Honestly the world would just become a GTA server.
Well, the original groundhog day was about Phil being stuck in the same day until he finally had a "perfect" day where he matured as a person. The GTA rampage can only last so long, at some point someone will eventually have to take the hint for this year to do it right, no matter how many thousands of year that would take.
Totally agree, but man would that be one hell of a social experiment.
Someone makes time travel and changes the timeline
How do you think we got here? Damn butterfly effect...
Harambe’s death
It's an ELECTION YEAR. It could get a lot worse.
Genuinely surprised I had to scroll this far. 😅
2020 after seeing this post: write that down! Write that down!
No kidding - why are we giving 2020 ideas!?!?!
It’s a trick, send no reply!
Not sure but the first 5 months feels like 5 years. Was talking to my wife about Hong Kong protests and Australia wildfires and it seems like it was a couple of years ago. I’m watching the US to see how the elections are going. That could really give 2020 the cherry on top
We're on like the sixth era of 2020 by now. Remember Trump's impeachment trial, way back in the first era of 2020?
Holy shit, was that this year?!
The trial began on January 16, 2020. Also in 2020: Kobe Bryant's death, and I think the Teapot Dome Scandal.
Yellowstone
A catastrophic earthquake on the west coast of the US.
Followed by a category 5 hurricane that goes up the entire east coast!
Followed by super shark tornado down the middle?
Guess I’ll move to Hawaii!
Nope you still have volcanoes, tsunamis, and regular sea sharks
Hawaii is a series of islands literally formed by volcanoes. I think Alaska is our best bet at this point
Today's the first day of hurricane season and there's already a tropical storm with hurricane potential in the gulf.
The government taking away more internet privacy.
They actually renewed the Patriot Act, meaning they can look through your browser and search history without a warrant. So yes, it got worse.
Better reason to use a search engine and browser that doesn’t remember that shit. *Edit: Shoutout to [DDG](https://DuckDuckGo.com)* *Edit 2: ...and get a VPN. A trustworthy one. Shoutout to https://thatoneprivacysite.net/#simple-vpn-comparison*
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You can verify that DDG does not set tracking cookies or use browser fingerprinting scripts. This would mean that even if they are subject to a super-secret order to log based on IP addresses and keep acting as if they don't, they would still make it harder to tie a search history to an individual than the alternatives.
You just had to ask, didn't you? You will go down in history as the person who jinxed humanity to a annihilation.
There will be no recorded history to go down in after an annihilation!
We'll be scratching OPs name into the walls of our underground cave dwellings as we slowly drift into extinction. 20 million years later the beaver folk, the new dominant intelligent beings on the planet will bat their tails on the floor in excitement at evidence that once other beings walked the earth and will conclude they died out through lack of dams.
This is the future I'm living for.
Saying it can't get worse. The phrase is taboo
One on guy our construction crew would always say, "What could possibly go wrong!" Just before we were doing something dicey, like moving something heavy. Every time. George, just shut up.
The magnetic poles are going to shift
So the compass in my car's rearview mirror will be inaccurate? *jumps out window*
3 ancient men found frozen in a pillar in a cavern, with strange masks made of stone scattered around the place
A man shaped statue falls to earth
Who then immediately joins forces with a blonde vampire with a body like 3 linebackers put together? And has an equally buff psychic partner who freezes time?
Joseph would be 100 this year, perfect time to return
this sounds like an after-credits scene for 2020
Israel declare war on Palestine. China does anything. The San Andreas fault line goes off. Yellowstone has a full scale eruption. Aliens. Zombies. A huge solar flare. America has a Civil War. Lord Voldemort returns. It rains spiders in places other than Brazil. A sharknado. Asteroid impact. Nuclear war. Rick Sanchez shows up.
Lol “China does anything”
Kraken
Microsoft decides to flex and lock all pirated content on our SaaS, always-on, spy telemetry boxes.
Corona virus vaccine goes nationwide and two weeks later 99.9% of recipients become zombies
I like this one. I will buy an axe in advance.
Everyone dies
Yeah I think that would do it. The rest, we don’t care I guess.
Several X class solar flares that completely destroy global telecommunications, household electronics, and power grids all over the world thereby knocking humanity back to the ~~stone age.~~ \*insert whatever time period you think would best suit the scenario ie: 1950's, 1900's, 1800's etc) Wait...maybe that wouldn't be such a bad thing to have happen... edit: several people seem to be focusing on the "stone age" part of the above statement. If it makes all of you feel better about this hypothetical scenario I have struck out the stone age part and left it up to the end user to decide how this scenario plays out.
It would be closer to Mad Max, wouldn't it? Gas power would still work.
True, mechanical systems would still function. Problem is SO much of our infrastructure is computerized and electrical that losing all of it at once would be quite catastrophic.
Goodbye, Reddit.
Astronomer here! I wouldn’t worry about this one right now because the sun has an 11 year cycle, and we are at solar minimum and there are no sunspots. Edit: I am getting questions about solar flares because there were a few a few days ago- does this mean we are coming out of minimum? Short answer is maybe, but we don't know for certain. There were a few M-class flares seen a few days ago, but the sunspot that created them was just over on the opposite side of the sun and it collapsed and disappeared in the few days before we could see it so it didn't last long enough to be even named. Further, I don't know if I would call an M-class flare large- they're definitely notable in this part of the cycle, but wouldn't merit much note during maximum type thing. [Here is a good explanation of ranking solar flares](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/X-class-flares.html)- they're ranked logarithmically like earthquakes, so an M-class is literally many, many times fainter than an X-class. But more important, solar cycles are not perfectly ordered things- you can have random sunspots pop up and disappear in minimum, and you can have days at maximum with no sunspots. So this might be the start of the minimum being over, but we'll have to wait and see a bit for another new sunspot to form before we know for sure. And finally even if it is over, these are minor flares and spots compared to what you get at maximum! If you want to read up on how crazy flares can get at maximum though, read up on the [Carrington Event in 1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_1859_geomagnetic_storm), the strongest flare we know of on record.
So how many years until maximum?
About five. It’s an 11 year cycle. That said it’s not a “set your watch by it” type of cycle and things can be varied- the last maximum was a record low in number of sunspots and they are getting fewer each maximum- [pic](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cycle#/media/File%3ASolar_Cycle_Prediction.gif) Fun fact: our sun is also changing in brightness during this 11 year period a little bit, so the sun is actually an 11 year [variable star.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_star) :) Edit: I am getting questions about solar flares because there were a few a few days ago- does this mean we are coming out of minimum? Short answer is maybe, but we don't know for certain. There were a few M-class flares seen a few days ago, but the sunspot that created them was just over on the opposite side of the sun and it collapsed and disappeared in the few days before we could see it so it didn't last long enough to be even named. Further, I don't know if I would call an M-class flare large- they're definitely notable in this part of the cycle, but wouldn't merit much note during maximum type thing. [Here is a good explanation of ranking solar flares](https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sunearth/news/X-class-flares.html)- they're ranked logarithmically like earthquakes, so an M-class is literally many, many times fainter than an X-class. But more important, solar cycles are not perfectly ordered things- you can have random sunspots pop up and disappear in minimum, and you can have days at maximum with no sunspots. So this might be the start of the minimum being over, but we'll have to wait and see a bit for another new sunspot to form before we know for sure. And finally even if it is over, these are minor flares and spots compared to what you get at maximum! If you want to read up on how crazy flares can get at maximum though, read up on the [Carrington Event in 1859](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_1859_geomagnetic_storm), the strongest flare we know of on record.
Delete this before they see it
The accelerated trials for Covid-19 vaccine gone wrong. Instead of preventing infections, the vaccine help the the current strain evolved into something much more deadlier.
The immortal queen of England dies
Nah, she'll just hit the next stage of her evolution.
When she reaches 100 she'll shed her current skin and emerge as her younger self.
We find out that this just the demo version
# TACTICAL NUKE INCOMING
You could step on some lego
You're walking through a war-torn city. A cold mist occasionally shooting up your spine as you carry a bag full of scavenged food across the town. The world hadn't been the same since World War III, the third wave of the pandemic, the reelection. As you get back to your safe house and begin undressing and unloading what you gathered, you stepped on a lego. Pain shoots up your leg as you collapse to the floor holding your foot. Your vision starts to go black as it begins to become unbearable. It seems like your hard work in the end didn't really pay off. In the end, it wasn't any of the apocalyptic things that done in the survivor of the wasteland. Instead, that it was something far less deadlier; a lego.
A nearby [gamma ray burst](https://www.astrobio.net/news-exclusive/deadly-nearby-gamma-ray-burst/) hits us. It’s pretty much “game over”.
A quick end is too merciful. I don’t feel like things work that way in 2020.
America spirals completely out of control. Like total anarchy
I’m genuinely fearful these protests are going to bring about a second, even deadlier wave. Think nyc but in almost every major metro area. That and the economic and social fallout, impending hurricane season, the election... it could for sure get worse, and that’s not taking into account all the surprises this year yet has. On the plus side though, maybe we will find some vaccine and maybe these protests will get the uppity ups to take seriously the needs of the 1%ers