[POLL with GA] How will the world end?

All of the above.

Supervolcano eruption perhaps?
Might not kill everything, but would be a bit of a reset button.

Ragnarok, silly.

Change never changes.. :)

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Rick Grimes will wake up from a coma.

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

It's either pollution causing global warming which will kill most of the phytoplankton in the sea (organism that produce ~50%-85% of the oxygen on earth's atmosphere), and many other species on earth, badly affected the food web >> imbalance the nature >> extinction of human
OR there will be a World War 3 which have a high chance of Nuclear War

We can be almost 100% certain that humanity will self-destruct either through nuclear catastrophe or some other technology, and there is pretty solid statistical proof for it. I can't be bothered giving the full explanation/argument, but it goes something like this:

• The universe is teeming with life, bucketloads of it, though most of it is bacteria or small organisms.
• Under the right conditions that life has a small chance of developing into an advanced civilisation such as our own. If you look up the Drake equation, current estimates put it at around 100 advanced civilisations per galaxy.
• So, at some point in the last 10 billion years or so, at least 100 (probably a lot more) advanced civilisations have existed in our galaxy on planets orbiting various main sequence stars.
• If the galaxy is filled with so many advanced civilisations (and I'm sure they would all develop radio transmission technology very rapidly, we went from stone tools to radio in 2000 years, which is tiny) why don't we hear them? Why are the stars silent? (Google: SETI Institute)
• The only conclusion is that we haven't picked up any radio signals from our own galaxy or any other galaxy because, simply, advanced civilisations don't last very long. And they certainly don't last long enough to star populating other stars and expanding. We've never detected higher level Dyson spheres either.
• This means, statistically, all advanced civilisations self destruct once their technology becomes sufficiently powerful/advanced.
• Hence the probability of some technological catastrophe and the end of civilisation is almost certain. The Unibomber wrote a manifesto called "Technological Savagery" which is really interesting and kinda tries to find a solution to this problem.

This conclusion seems kind of obvious anyway. Since we're basically greedy, violent, war-hungry monkeys and yet instead of just having coconuts and sticks, we're playing around with nuclear bombs and worse. Technology is evolving at a rapid pace, but the human brain is remaining in caveman mode. So it's not surprising that advanced civilisations eventually self-destruct. There are interesting studies into places like Easter Island or other south American Civilisations which can be viewed as microcosms of earth, similarly these civilisations eventually self-destructed and collapsed. In fact all civilisations seem to collapse at a certain point once a certain population is reached. Right now we are approaching a point where we will have a greater population of humans than our planet can support, while at the same time jobs are going to dramatically decrease as automation takes hold. Look at superbugs and climate change too. It's almost fated that things are coming to an end, there are about 100 things that are leading towards our destruction and zero things which provide hope for possible continued existence.

TL;DR: Here's an animated diagram which symbolically represents the future of our civilisation:

View attached image.

Had to laugh at Paved over to build a new bypass but from the ones you mentioned an Asteroid impact is probably the most likely, all but guaranteed in the next 4 billion years, before the Sun eventually engulfs us. The Chicxulub event that killed off the dinosaurs was ~66 million years ago and involved an object around 10 kms in diameter. Asteroids with a diameter of 1 kilometer make an impact once every 440,000 years on average. We can probably assume that Earth will be hit by dozens of objects 10km and larger in the next 4 billion years, even if the average frequency is something like 100-150 million years. Any one of these might do it.

After an asteroid impact, I would probably go for environmental degradation or a sudden disease outbreak as the next most likely candidates, and perhaps a combination of the two. As permafrost melts and methane is released into the atmosphere, so are diseases that have laid dormant for an incredibly long period of time. Also, as the recent Ebola outbreak in West Africa proved, surprise are always possible, and when coupled with a shortage of water or ongoing conflicts, for example, such an outbreak could easily spiral out of control.

Of course, that is assuming we do NOT destroy each other in the meantime, which is always a chance, and a very high one at that. Not sure how we can statistically measure it, outside stuff like the Doomsday Clock and such.

this will probably do it

Humanity evolves into something else, assuming we don't kill ourselves first or Mother Nature does it in retribution

I voted for desease, it sounds possible for some sort of pandemic to get out of hand and wipe us all in a couple months/weeks. The other seem either avoidable, too distant for humans (as we understand a human-being today) to even make it there or not likely to kill 100% of humanity... just 99.9%, so it would leave more than enough people to repopulate.

Nuclear war or environmental unsustainability.

Heat death i'd say in other words entropy will do it's thing eventually.

I love you for "Paved over for a new Hyperspace bypass"
gonna vote for any option involving humanity self distructing like the other's
guess this count as a bump and so long and thanks for all the fish

With a wimper.

apocalyptic bump

Fear itself will get out of our bodies, become a powerful being and swallow the world in the most horrific way. It'll sound like metallic killing machines turned on at maximum power and feel like you're looking at a faceless person while having a 42°C fever.

I'm a little high.

If the Yosemite supervolcano blows then mankind might survive but we'll be thrown back centuries. Better play some survival games to prepare...

Edit: I wanted to write Fallout at first and then changed it to survival games. And then I looked at the giveaway... lol

Honestly, I'll be impressed if we manage to get past the next big destabilizing event without someone busting out the nukes in desperation. And that's not even considering some crazy asshole starting a game of Global Thermonuclear War just because they can. So I'm gonna go with that.

North Korea to Japan and the United States.
India-Pakistan Nuclear War.
Russia / China vs. the United States, Britain, Japan, Australia, EU nuclear war.

This will not occur consecutively at once in the near future.
It is fiction. :)

The Japanese manage to create realistic cybersex and humanity dies out due to lack of reproduction.

One degree rise at a time...