A few Speculated Potential Future Extinction Causes
or “extinction risks”
These are events that are being evaluated for potential outcomes that may end all living humans everywhere.
The following is by no means a complete list of potential causes, nor even necessarily any likely causes that will actually occur.
In addition to natural causes, now humanity itself is a potential cause of its own extinction.
Each risk is listed with its magnitude which is also called "Risk Priority Number" and is abbreviated as "RPN". The higher the risk number, the greater is our concern for the risk:
Environmental: human and natural causes
Greenhouse heating (a)
Extreme drop in oxygen (b) RPN: 6
Extreme sea level rise (c) RPN: 32
Oxygenated ice age (d) RPN: 6
Ecological collapse (e) RPN: 120
Cosmic and Stellar: natural causes
Asteroid or meteor strike (f) RPN: 14
Novas & Gamma Ray Bursts (g) RPN: 90
Lethal solar mass ejections (h) RPN: 21
Increasing solar heat from aging sun (i) RPN: 10
Passing mass perturbs planets’ orbits (j) RPN: 100
Andromeda merger early disruption by distant outliers (k) RPN: 40
Aliens attempt to destroy mankind (l) RPN: 5
Human Ignorance: human causes
Nuclear bomb winter and radiation (m) RPN: 180
Uncontrolled human overpopulation (n)RPN: 60
Unfriendly artificial intelligence (o) RPN: 27
Lethal self-replicating nanobots (p) RPN: 18
LHC at CERN generates permanent black hole (x) RPN: 10
Biological: human and natural causes
Incurable lethal global pandemic (q) RPN: 128
Geological: human and natural causes
Large scale volcanic eruptions (r) RPN: 24
Loss of Earth’s magnetic field (s) RPN: 3
Loss of UV radiation ozone shield (t) RPN: 3
Human Genetic: human and natural causes
Sub-replacement reproduction (u) RPN: 2
Mankind hasn’t spread from zones that become destroyed (v) RPN: 100
Degradation of the human genome (w) RPN: 20
Info: HERE webmaster: HERE copyright © 2023 IPHE Revision: February 10, 2024