These include ancient stalwarts like super volcanoes far more recent threats like nuclear war and catastrophic climate change cosmic threats like asteroids and collapsing stars terrestrial threats like widespread societal collapse and extra-terrestrial threats like hostile aliens….Īt the top of the graph, at the limit of “high likelihood,” there lies the “already happening zone,” including, of course, COVID-19, climate change, and volatile extreme weather events like hurricanes and tsunamis.
Not content to just collect disasters (and draw them as if they were all happening at the same time), Walliman also wanted to find out which ones pose the biggest threat, “using some real data.” After the Map of Doom comes the Chart of Doom, an XY grid plotting the likelihood and severity of various crises. “Crikey,” says the New Zealander upon the first reveal of his Map of Doom, “there’s quite a lot aren’t there?” Are we focusing on the wrong kinds of doom, to the exclusion of more pressing threats? Instead of panicking when the coronavirus hit, Walliman cooly wondered what else might be lurking around the corner. When the pandemic hit last winter, “we as a society were completely unprepared for it,” despite the fact that experts had been warning us for decades that exactly such a threat was high on the scale of likelihood. Walliman surveyed and analyzed, as he says in his introduction, “all of the different threats to humanity that exist.”
Is ranking apocalypses a scientific field of study, you might wonder? Yes, when it is a data-driven threat assessment.
Which one is most likely, and how can we understand them in relation to each other?įor this level of analysis, we might turn to Dominic Walliman, physicist and proprietor of Domain of Science, the YouTube channel and website that has brought us entertaining and comprehensive maps of several scientific fields, such as biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer science, and quantum physics. To check the news even once a day is to encounter headline after headline announcing DOOM IS COMING! Say that we’re all desensitized, and rather than react, we evaluate: In what way will doom arrive? How bad will the doom be? There are many competing theories of doom. But one must stay at least minimally informed. It’s impossible to function on high alert all of the time. Surely you’ve learned, as I have, to filter out the constant threats of doom.
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