Humanity is playing “Russian roulette” with its own survival, with experts warning that the odds of a total societal breakdown or even extinction within the next century are shockingly high.
Oxford University futurologist Toby Ord, an authority on existential threats, estimates there is a one-in-six chance that civilization will collapse within the next 75 years.
Notably, these are the same odds as putting a single bullet in a six-chamber revolver, spinning the cylinder, and pulling the trigger.
His colleague Nick Bostrom is even more dire, pegging the odds of human extinction within 100 years at one in four.
Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Jared Diamond suggests humanity’s survival beyond 2050 is no better than a coin toss.
These aren’t doomsday cult predictions.
They’re warnings from respected scientists and historians who point to nuclear weapons, engineered viruses, artificial intelligence, and other catastrophic risks as potential triggers for collapse.
In his new book, Cambridge researcher Luke Kemp lays out a grim pattern: every civilization in history has eventually collapsed.
He calls them “Goliaths,” powerful societies that appear indestructible but always fall.
The downfall, Kemp argues, begins with inequality as elites hoard wealth and power, rewriting rules for their own benefit while ordinary people suffer.
Over time, corruption, infighting, overexpansion, and the decay of public institutions hollow out the system until even routine shocks, including war, famine, or natural disaster, become fatal blows.
“The harder they fight, the harder they fall,” Kemp warns, pointing to examples from ancient empires to modern states.
Unlike past collapses, today’s risks are global and interconnected.
Nuclear weapons: With more than 10,000 warheads in stockpiles controlled not just by the U.S., China, and Russia, but also India, Pakistan, North Korea, Israel, France, and the U.K., the possibility of nuclear war remains the single most devastating threat.
Iran was reportedly close to developing a nuclear device until U.S. strikes set back its program earlier this year.
Engineered viruses: Advances in biowarfare technology mean novel viruses could spread globally at jetliner speed.
Covid showed how fragile global supply chains are, and another deliberately engineered pathogen could be even worse.
Artificial Intelligence: Hundreds of AI scientists, including executives at Google DeepMind, have warned about the possibility of malevolent AI capable of developing its own weapons and turning hostile against humanity.
Electromagnetic storms: Events like the 1859 Carrington Event, a massive solar flare that disrupted telegraphs, could today wipe out satellites, the internet, banking, and even vehicles.
Researchers estimate the chance of such an event at 20.3% per decade, roughly 50/50 by mid-century.
Meanwhile, the world’s wealthiest are quietly preparing for the worst.
PayPal founder Peter Thiel purchased a 477-acre property in New Zealand as a doomsday refuge and arranged fast-track citizenship despite barely visiting the country.
Thiel and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reportedly have a pact to flee there by private jet if a collapse looms.
An entire industry of luxury underground bunkers has emerged, complete with pools, artificial sunlight, and hydroponic farms.
But even billionaires worry about how to maintain authority over armed security forces in a post-collapse world.
Sam Bankman-Fried, the disgraced crypto tycoon, even explored buying the island of Nauru as a survival colony for the elite before his fraud conviction.
Kemp stresses that while isolated collapses in the past sometimes paved the way for new societies, a global collapse would leave nothing behind.
The poor may actually have better odds of surviving than the rich, since subsistence farmers are less reliant on global supply chains.
Developed nations, dependent on imports and chemical-dependent agriculture, could face catastrophic famine if trade and fertilizer supplies collapsed.
Even proposed “solutions” like geoengineering come with existential risks of their own, raising the possibility of rapid and uncontrollable fallout if they fail.
In short, humanity faces a loaded revolver with multiple bullets in the chamber — nuclear war, pandemics, AI, geomagnetic storms, and bioweapons.
The only uncertainty is how many chambers we spin before the hammer falls.
READ MORE – Bill Gates’ ‘Vaccine’ Scientist Warns Covid-Vaxxed Face ‘Spectacular Wave’ of Mass Death
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