Here’s a fun and cheery blog post for you. Just for fun, let’s run down all of the ways in which the world might come to an end in the next 12 months, and assign probabilities to each one. I’m not sure what qualifies as “the end of the world,” but for our purposes let’s say it involves (1) a massive loss of human life, and (2) a permanent and irreversible change to global living standards and our way of life. Ready? Let’s go!
Global Nuclear War: 1%
This is the one that everyone is talking about right now, what with the Russia-Ukraine war and the recklessness of Western powers in their support for it. Putin has formally annexed four occupied territories that are still under partial Ukrainian control, and now says that he will defend sovereign Russian territory with his country’s nuclear arsenal. With every possible offramp to the war now closed, it seems like it’s only a matter of time before someone uses a tactical nuke on the battlefield, and after that kind of an escalation, who knows what will happen next?
However, I actually think the probability of a nuclear armageddon in the next 12 months is actually quite low—not totally nonexistent, but still quite low. Putin is not the kind of politician to make tactical blunders, and that’s exactly what a nuclear strike would entail, especially given the current situation on the ground.
In a war of attrition between Russia and Ukraine, Russia wins. That’s true even with all of the weapons and material that we’re supplying to Ukraine. Furthermore, I suspect that Russia has a much stronger will to win this war than we do. With the energy crisis in Europe and all of the political discontent here in the US, I don’t see us continuing to write the Ukrainians a blank check for much longer. Also, Russia just destroyed a good chunk of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure in response to the Crimean bridge attack, which means that the average Ukrainian citizen is going to be in a world of hurt come winter.
It’s been very interesting to watch the progression of this war. In the runup to the war, the West mostly prepared Ukraine with cheap anti-air missiles, assuming that Russia would launch a shock-and-awe campaign, not a ground invasion. But Putin defied those expectations with the Special Military Operation, which consisted of a lightning strike on Kiev with his armored forces. However, once the Ukrainian resistance got going, it proved massively effective, thanks to the way the Javelin missile and other anti-tank weapons have altered the balance of war to favor defense over offense.
So Putin pulled back from Kiev, hunkered down in the occupied territories, and opted for a WWI-style artillery slugfest—in other words, a war of attrition. It’s unclear to me whether this has favored Russia or Ukraine. Most of the news that we hear comes from pro-Ukrainian sources, and claims that Russia is losing badly. But even though they’ve been able to retake some territory, they haven’t retaken any major occupied cities yet, and the figures on Ukrainian casualties are wildly different, depending on which source you check. I don’t think we’re getting the full story.
Now Putin has annexed the occupied territories, changing this from a Special Military Operation to something else entirely. At every step of the way, he’s been very gradual and methodical in his escalation, making sure that he has the legal justification first (even if it’s no more than a fig leaf) before taking the next step. Whether you support him or think he’s the anti-Christ, there is definitely a method to his madness.
In response to the destruction of the Nord Stream pipelines and the attack on the Crimean bridge, he’s been using cheap Iranian drones to destroy Ukraine’s critical energy infrastructure—and once again, we see how the nature of war has changed. Those drones are relatively cheap, but the anti-air defenses are hideously expensive, and they haven’t been able to stop every drone. Just like the Javelin missile favored the defenders, these drones appear to favor the invaders.
Putin’s best move at this point is to wait out his enemies, since they’re already showing signs of cracking. Europe is in a major energy crisis now, and the Prime Minister of the UK just resigned after less than two months. Biden isn’t doing much better, with the midterms shaping up to be a major red wave, and inflation is running dangerously hot across the entire West. For all of Biden’s talk about a “dark winter” last year, it appears that this year we’re actually going to get it—and a lot of that can be traced directly back to the Russia-Ukraine war.
So no, I don’t think there’s a very high chance that this war is going to escalate to a global nuclear conflict in the next twelve months.
Major Cyberattack on Critical Infrastructure: 3%
But a major global cyberwar is a much different story. Putin is on record saying that the next global war will be fought with 1s and 0s, and it would be foolish not to believe he hasn’t prepared for that. Same with us here in the West.
In fact, we may already be witnessing the beginnings of such a cyberwar. A week ago, a Russian jet slammed into a large residential building shortly after takeoff, and just this morning an F35 crashed out here in Utah. Could just be coincidence, as well as human error and/or mechanical failure—but it could also be true that these systems got hacked by hostile nation-state actors. If it is, I suppose we’ll never know for sure.
It makes a lot of sense to me that this conflict would escalate to a global cyberwar before it escalates to a global kinetic conflict. And if/when it does, energy infrastructure will be a major target. If so, it could get really, really ugly. The sources I follow estimate that we could see a 90% death rate after just two months of no power.
But again, I think Putin’s best move is to wait out his enemies and not show all his cards yet. We will amost certainly see limited cyberattacks, but a major global free-for-all? In my estimation, that’s unlikely, at least in the next twelve months. And even if it did happen, our power grid is so convoluted and Byzantine that I doubt that any nation state could knock it out 100% for a long period of time. It’s not a great defense against this sort of thing, but it does tend to work in our favor.
Global Famine: 5%
This is a big one. We’re already seeing a lot of warning signs pointing to major food shortages, with major droughts in North America, Europe, and Asia, energy and fertilizer costs at unthinkable levels, green public policies in places like The Netherlands that are just insane, and supply chains that are still incredibly bungled from the last pandemic. Global food prices are already going parabolic, and countries like Sri Lanka and Haiti are collapsing as a result.
I think this is a much greater immediate threat than some sort of global war. Every civilization is only three meals away from collapse. With that said, I’m not so sure it will be world-ending, at least in the immediate term. World-shattering? Yes. But the collapse is always distributed unevenly, and there’s still a lot of ruin left in the developed portions of the world, so I’m still pretty sanguine that we’ll find some way to muddle through this crisis, at least for the next twelve months.
Revolutionary Uprisings: 5%
As I mentioned above, the emerging global famine is already leading to popular uprisings in places like Sri Lanka and Haiti. I definitely think that trend is going to continue. But a lot of the unrest in the developed world is due to political instability that was already evident before the pandemic. Just look at the Yellow Vest movement in France, or the BLM and MAGA movements in the United States. Since the pandemic, those movements have only become more brazen, more entrenched, and more resolved.
Could we see an actual revolution in a major developed country, like the Bolshevik revolution in 20th century Russia, or the French revolution in 18th century France? I don’t think that’s beyond the realm of possibility. However, will we see such a revolution in the next 12 months? That’s a different story. Personally, I think the likelihood of such a thing is low, but that may just be my ignorance and normalacy bias speaking.
Here in the US, I think that the ruling Democratic party is going to get a truly historic spanking in November, which will go a long way to appeasing the popular discontent—at least in the short term. But I don’t think the Republicans are going to do any of the things that the people expect them to do, and long-term that will make the unrest that much worse. I doubt that it’s going to boil over in the next twelve months, but it could.
Hyperinflationary Collapse: 10%
There are a lot of reasons to think that we’re on the verge of experiencing a hyperinflationary event here in the US. The Fed exploded the money supply during the pandemic, which is we we’re currently experiencing such high inflation, and when you consider that velocity is at or near record lows, there is a lot of room for inflation to get much worse. Moreover, our glorious leaders seem determined to spend their way out of this problem, in much the same way that an alcoholic drinks himself out of a hangover.
But by far, the biggest and most dangerous factor is the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. If/when that happens, I frankly would be shocked if we didn’t experience a hyperinflationary collapse. Right now, the dollar is still the fastest fat man in the zombie apocalypse, but the Russia-Ukraine war is bringing a lot of countries together that would love to negotiate their trade deals in something other than US dollars. Not just minor countries either, but countries like China and Russia. Youch.
This isn’t something that came on us suddenly. In the past couple of decades, there have been a lot of red flags pointing to the end of the US dollar as the world’s reserve currency. The pandemic and subsequent events have accelerated those trends, and probably shortened the timeline of the collapse considerably.
But will we see a hyperinflationary collapse in the next twelve months? I’m skeptical of that. Right now, the dollar is strengthening against most other currencies, and I don’t see any other currency challenging ours for reserve currency status in the immediate future. Like I said above, we’re still the fastest fat man in the zombie apocalypse.
Global Unrest and Uncontrolled Mass Migration: 15%
If the coming global famine is going to be Earth-shattering, the secondary effects of that famine are going to be even worse. Like I mentioned above, Haiti and Sri Lanka are already in a state of collapse due to civil unrest, and global food prices have already exceeded the levels that gave us the Arab Spring. We’re probably not all going to starve, but enough of us very well might that the ensuring chaos will make the European refugee crisis of the 2010s and the current situation on the US southern border look like a dress rehearsal.
Again, the main reason I place this one at 15% is because I think it’s going to take some time for this one to really get going, and I’m skeptical that a twelve-month timeline is long enough for it to bring about the end of the world. But once this crisis does get going, it’s going to be ugly.
A Second (and Much Deadlier) Pandemic: 35%
Until last week, I placed the likelihood of this event happening at about the same level as a global nuclear war. But then I learned about the research at Boston University that was totally not gain of function, and managed to create a new strain of covid that was more transmissable than the Omicron variant and has a 80% fatality rate in experimental mice.
What the hell, you lab coat freaks? Do you WANT to kill us all? (No… please don’t answer that question.)
From what I understand, it wasn’t difficult to creat this new strain either. All they did was take the original alpha variant of covid-19 and splice it with the spike protein from the omicron variant. The alpha variant is now all but extinct in the wild, but if BU had managed to keep a sample, I’m sure that many others have too.
And exactly what is keeping some black hat actor from replicating this research and launching a second pandemic?
Even if the death rate in humans is only a fraction of what it was in the mice, that’s still a virus with an R0 at or near the omicron variant AND A MORTALITY RATE COMPARABLE TO THE BLACK DEATH. And now anyone with a halfway decent microbiology lab and a couple of covid samples can now create this insanely dangerous plague.
Given that this is a thing now, I would be extremely surprised if there isn’t another covid (or other artificially engineered) pandemic within my lifetime. Except that the next pandemic is going to be real, in a way that 2020 wasn’t. Seriously, when historians look back on this era, they probably won’t even look at 2020 as an historically significant year.
The only reason I’m putting this at 35% is because of timing. Will the black hat actor who concocts this plague decide to release it in the next year, or wait until conditions are more favorable for whatever agenda they want to push? Difficult to say. The likelihood is far greater than I would like, but I hope it’s no greater than 35%.
Global Debt Crisis and Financial Collapse: 80%
But of all the possible calamaties that could bring about the end of the world, the one that I most expect to see within the next 12 months is the collapse of the global debt market and a major financial crisis, even bigger than 2008. Much bigger, in fact, because we never actually solved any of the problems that gave us the GFC: we just papered over them and kicked the can down the road.
Well, it looks like we’ve just reached the end of the road. I can’t pretend to understand the financial markets in any sort of depth, but all of my sources—including folks who correctly called several false alarms in the past few years—are now saying that the big one is imminent. And when you look at what the US10Y is doing, or at how insanely inverted the yield curve is inverted, and realize that the debt bubble is orders of magnitude worse than 2008… yeah, that’s a big deal.
But would it truly bring about the end of the world as we know it? Well, consider this: what would you do if all of the banks closed, all of their websites went down, and you couldn’t use your debit or credit cards, or transfer cash into or out of your account, or even log into your account, or any financial account for that matter? What would happen if everyone on welfare suddenly found that their EBT cards didn’t work? If every employer suddenly found that they couldn’t make payroll? If the only thing left was cash, but none of the banks were open to disburse it?
That’s the sort of thing that would happen under this scenario. It might sound far-fetched, until you realize that it’s happened before. This exact thing played out in Cyprus a few years ago, and when the banks opened again, people were only allowed to withdraw something like a hundred Euros a day. It paralyzed everything.
Whenever there’s a major financial collapse, all of the big players get together in a smoke-filled room, lock the doors so no one can get out, and fight amongst themselves until they come up with a solution. “You bail out these institutions, I’ll bail out these ones, we’ll all take a 20% haircut, and the markets reopen at the end of the week.” Something like that. The last time this happened was 2008, and we were only hours away from a global banking holiday like the one I just described.
What happens if they can’t find a solution in time?
And even if they do, it’s not like there isn’t going to be any pain. Remember how bad the 2008 collapse was? That’s what happens when they find a solution—except this time, the underlying crisis has grown orders of magnitude larger, because we never actually solved it. We just papered over the problem instead.
I’m not an expert on this sort of thing, so the reason I’m pegging this one at 80% is because I’m a firm believer in the Pareto principle, and I don’t see any way that the status quo endures for another 12 months without a major catastrophe. Maybe the next financial collapse won’t be the end of the world, but given how unstable everything is right now, I don’t see it.
Climate Change: 0%
There is, however, one potential catastrophe that I can confidently peg at a 0% chance of ending the world in the next twelve months: climate change. It’s not a coincidence that this is also the one that’s probably eliciting the most panic right now. When the herd is all running mindlessly in one direction, it’s probably a good idea to stop and make sure there isn’t an abattoir up ahead.
Is the climate changing? Yes, as it always has. Is climate change man-made? Unclear. Is it changing catastrophically? Also unclear. Will we experience a catastrophic collapse of the global climate in the next twelve months? Let’s put it this way: climate activists have been warning us about an imminent catastrophe for 50+ years now, and the only people with a worse prediction track record are the ones who say “Jesus is coming on [insert date here].”
I would be a lot more inclined to listen to the activists if they didn’t all categorically reject the market-based solutions that have the best historical track record to reducing emissions and cleaning the environment. I would also be more inclined to listen to them if they weren’t so dead set against nuclear power, or if they were honest about the fact that drastic cuts to global energy production will lead directly to the deaths of many millions of people, especially in poor and developing countries.
When you combine that with how the all of the people who are most outspoken about climate change also fly to their conferences on private jets, have massive carbon footprints, and are buying beachfront property across the world, their hypocrisy speaks louder than their words. And as if that’s not enough, you have Project Veritas catching a major CNN executive on hidden camera confessing to how they plan to push climate change as the Next Big Thing after the pandemic is done.
So no, I don’t ascribe any credibility to the climate change hysteria that seems to have gripped the science fiction field. Twelve months from now, I guarantee that we will still have a human-habitable climate on this planet—unless the meteor finally kills us all.
Of course, I’m just a guy on the internet who follows this stuff for fun and uses it to write science fiction. I also have a political science degree, but don’t hold that against me, as I’ve been doing my best to unlearn all of that crap. But yeah: if the world does end in the next twelve months, I think the most likely scenario is a total collapse of the entire global financial system, followed by a second pandemic. It’s not as bright or as flashy as a nuclear war, but that’s where I’d put my money if I were a betting man.
