Five global disasters even worse than coronavirus that could happen tomorrow, so stop worrying about this and worry about these instead

UPDATE, DISCLAIMER, AND CONTENT WARNING

Okay, so I dun goofed. Kind of? Everybody deals with anxiety in their own special way, I guess, and I deal with it by making fun of it. Ironically enough, I wrote most of this feature last week in the middle of an existential panic, as a sort of coping mechanism. A dysfunctional coping mechanism, probably, but I’m defective like that.

Some of the responses on social media to this feature have been very negative. I’m sorry about that, and I don’t mean to minimise the no less real prospect of COVID-19. In accordance with NAG’s editorial policies, however, I won’t delete this feature, and instead, keep it published as a monument to my stupidity, forever.

In the meantime, remember the three rules – don’t go out, wash your hands, and play more video games.

CORONAL MASS EJECTION

No relation to the coronavirus despite the spelling, a coronal mass ejection is a launch into space of plasmic matter and radiation that can occur subsequent to a solar flare. Oh, so you think a solar flare is bad? A solar flare is like the elegant hors d’oeuvre before dinner is served, and the coronal mass ejection is the “dinner” is this metaphor, with a side of geomagnetic cataclysm and post-political mob rules.

In 1859, the “Carrington event” coronal mass ejection disabled telegraph lines throughout Europe and North America, and resulted in visible disturbances in the magnetosphere worldwide. It’s not hard to imagine the potential disruption in 2020, which would cause expansive infrastructure failures – from orbital satellites to internet connectivity and other telecommunication systems, GPS, electricity, and, by extension, the flimsy links between technology and a precipitous slip-‘n’-slide into total anarchy. Over about 24 hours or so.

It won’t trash your lungs, perhaps, but it’ll trash everything else.

THERNONUCLEAR HOLOCAUST

Since the 1950s, the world has trembled on the precipice of a nuclear war. The factions have swapped out on a sort of rotating roster of contenders since then – the US, Russia, Cuba, back to the US and Russia, a very awkward Norway, India, Pakistan, North Korea, some guy on Twitter telling Trump “UR MOM IS FAKE NEWS”, next – but extinction-by-nuke is an ever-present expectation for the people of Earth.

The entire Earth.

Because the consequences of a nuclear holocaust are potentially much bigger than the bomb’s immediate blast radius. It’s the secondary problems that count most – atmospheric particles causing environment and climate changes (a “nuclear winter”), social and economic disintegration, and probably not enough toilet paper.

CASCADIA SUBDUCTION EVENT

The other “big one” (the “big one” you don’t know about, I mean), this is the don’t-call-me-back hookup between the Juan de Fuca continental plate and the North American tectonic plate. This fault spans over 1,000 kilometres of the Pacific coastal region from the US to Canada, and the resulting earthquake is going to wipe out most of it. This earthquake is also, according to scientific analysis of previous seismic evidence, about 100 years overdue.

For some perspective, the 2011 earthquake that wrecked Tōhoku, Japan – a country constantly prepped for this kind of thing – clocked at a magnitude of 9.0-9.1 on the Richter scale, killing some 15,000 people and displacing almost 230,000 others, melting the Fukushima power plant, and costing over $20 billion to fix up. Estimates put the Cascadia subduction zone earthquake in excess of 9.0, and with a population of some 100,000 citizens in the “inundation zone” and almost zero building codes and emergency prevention procedures, the 30-plus-metre tsunami will finish off whatever the earthquake doesn’t.

Bye, Apple, Microsoft, and Google. Bye, Netflix. Bye, civilisation.

SOME OTHER VIRUS

In comparison with things like ebola, dengue, and rabies, coronavirus is not exactly a boss. Although tediously inevitable conspiracy theories have dribbled out of the tubes, blaming COVID-19 on a bioweapon lab oopsy-or-was-it and 5G network tech and (((((the jews)))))), the fact is that a virus deliberately engineered to obliterate society would be much more efficient at, you know, obliterating society.

At publish time, the global fatality rate of COVID-19 averages at 2.5% of total confirmed infections. The fatality rate of rabies (remember that one from the previous paragraph?) is close to 100%. You don’t want a rabies pandemic, ever. Although a rabies vaccine is available, it only prevents transmission, and that immunity has an expiry date. If you actually get it, you’re dead.

SPACE ATTACKS!!1

Aliens. Asteroids. A spontaneous black hole, gamma ray burst, or supernova. Who even knows what’s out in space, prepping the obliteration of our entire galaxy with the casual indifference of some cosmic municipal department? We won’t know until it’s too late.

[BONUS] CYBERPUNK 2077 IS CANCELLED

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