Monthly Archives: April 2006

There were enough references to “apocalypse” in the press stories covering the New Orleans catastrophe for me to find out what the word “apocalypse” actually means. The word comes from Greek and it means an “unveiling” or “revealing”. “Apocalypse” is a uniquely Christian idea stemming from “The Revelation of St John The Divine” – a tract of the New Testament that is supremely difficult to fathom.

A healthy number of Christians believe that there will be an era of flood, fire, war and earthquake, followed by “the rapture” when the righteous will receive their reward and the less than righteous will be consigned to a place where caviar is unobtainable and there are no swimming pools. If that happens, it’s going to come as a shock to quite a few people, including me.

There are more prosaic “end of the world” scenarios in the offing nowadays, although an analysis of all of the ones I’ve identified suggests that humanity would probably survive.

Here’s a potted list:

1. Nuclear war, or terrorist with atom bomb: A global nuclear war now seems unlikely, but a limited action would destroy a city or even several. It would contaminate the atmosphere and pose an ongoing health problem among the billions of survivors. Could happen. Requires a mad man with an agenda.
2. Chemical weapons: Nasty but not world threatening.
3. Biological weapons or disease outbreaks: Even the Black Death only culled a third of Europe. AIDS has been tragic but not world stopping. The biological threat has lessened despite scientific attempts at various times to create a superbug.
4. Earthquake: A really big one would still only be local. Even worst case (say force 9 in California of Pacific NorthWest) the casualties would (only) number in the millions.
5. Volcanic explosion: The biggest known threat is the supervolcano that lies below Yellowstone National Park in the US. It’s big. The caldera is about as big as the whole park. At worst this could wipe out most of the US and cause atmospheric dust that would deliver a non-nuclear “nuclear winter” – very handy for a globally warming world, I might say. This would certainly kill billions, but man would probably get through it. The last explosion of this type happened about 74,000 years ago – or so my dad tells me.
6. Asteroid: The sad truth is that if one were heading towards us, we’d probably not spot it and if it were large enough then it would be every bit as bad as a supervolcano. Some of us would probably get through, but it would ruin your whole summer.

Have I missed anything? Of course I have. I’ve missed the one most likely to happen – the rise in sea levels. There is actually only one big threat here. The sea level could rise a foot or two because of global warming in the next 50 years, and that would make life very difficult in many coastal areas, but the real threat is the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic.

This is a shelf of ice that varies between 600-3000 feet in thickness, which could drop into the sea. It’s the size of France and guesses suggest that it would raise the sea level by 15 to 20 ft. It could happen quickly and some credible commentators suggest that it is due to do so in a 20 to 50 year time frame. If this happens you can wave goodbye to New York, San Diego, San Francisco, Vancouver, Hong Kong, Shanghai, London, Holland, the rebuilt New Orleans and, actually, most of the world’s commercial centers.

It’s not the worst disaster that could happen, but it is the only one that is predicted to occur in the near future and could be prepared for. So, naturally, no-one is preparing for it.

Unfortunately “end of the world” predictions have a bad rep. There have been 200 or so that have passed their “sell-by” date in recent times. (To be honest most if these were wacky at best.) Predictions about the behaviour of the Ross Ice Shelf have a much better pedigree. But they suffer from the fact that the consequences are too great to contemplate (“It makes my head hurt”).

Anyway, better to be sorry than safe.