Great news this week for fans of the Apocalypse.
First, my old favorite, Peak Oil, throws a little more evidence our way:
Fears Emerge Over Russia’s Oil Output
Russian oil production has peaked and may never return to current levels, one of the country’s top energy executives has warned, fuelling concerns that the world’s biggest oil producers cannot keep up with rampant Asian demand.
The warning helped on Tuesday to push crude oil prices to a fresh all-time high above $112 a barrel, threatening to stoke inflation in many countries.
But wait, we have a new contender. There’s also a chance that the whole planet will disappear into a man-made black hole:
Today we require more than prayers that a scientific experiment will not lead to the end of the world. We demand hard-headed calculations. But whom can we trust to do them?
That question has been raised by the impending startup of the Large Hadron Collider. It starts smashing protons together this summer at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or Cern, outside Geneva, in hopes of grabbing a piece of the primordial fire, forces and particles that may have existed a trillionth of a second after the Big Bang.
Critics have contended that the machine could produce a black hole that could eat the Earth or something equally catastrophic.
Then, there’s the somewhat old-fashioned fear that California is going to break off and sink into the ocean.
Southern California stands a much greater chance of a huge temblor in the next 30 years than Northern California, according to a statewide earthquake forecast released Monday.
The report, which brought together experts from the U.S. Geological Survey, USC’s Southern California Earthquake Center and the State Geological Survey, also found that California is virtually certain to experience at least one major temblor by 2028.
You have to admit, option number two is definitely the coolest. Like Patton Oswalt once said, imagine the bragging rights in the afterlife:
“Hey, how did you die?”
“Coronary. You?”
“Me? Oh, some scientist built a machine THAT ATE THE WHOLE PLANET.”
Yeah. Top that.
1 Comment
April 25, 2008 at 8:35 pm
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