8 ways the world could suddenly end | Stephen Petranek | TEDxMidwest

Unintentional "dark futurist" Stephen Petranek re-visits the subject matter of his original eleven-year-old TED Talk and offers the audience an extraordinarily sobering look at the eight critical issues that threaten human life on Earth.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx

So about 11 years ago,

I gave a talk in California
at the TED Conference.

And it went really well.

It was called "10 ways
the world could end tomorrow."

But it also went viral

at a time before
things started going viral,

and it wasn't in a good way.

It ended up on thousands
of nutty websites.

These are the kind of websites for people
who think "Men in Black" is a documentary.

(Laughter)

It's the kind of websites
for people who actually believe

the Mayan calendar does predict doomsday.

So if you'd googled me before this talk,

you would have seen
maybe nine or ten references to me

as a science magazine editor.

Three weeks after the talk,

there were 418 references

linking "moi" to little
green men from Mars.

Now, coincidentally,

I was teaching my mother
how to use a computer at the time,

(Laughter)

long distance,

and I was teaching her about Google.

So guess who she googled first.

(Laughter)

So ...

(Laughter)

['Steve, are you in trouble?']

I started worrying about
my reputation a little.

And I decided to call
Chris Anderson, the TED curator.

I knew Chris would not want TED speakers

to be co-opted
by every nut job on the web,

and maybe he could get his friends
Larry and Serge at Google

to erase all this.

I was a little disappointed.

['Hmmm, sorry about that']

Didn't exactly get the sympathy
I was looking for.

Chris thought it was funny.

But he did ask me to do another TED Talk,

and I jumped at the chance
because I saw it as redemption.

I could do "10 reasons
to be optimistic about the future."

And I did. It was a great talk.

Honestly, my best talk ever.

Full of surprises.
Lots of interesting science.

But it didn't go over so well.

Everybody wanted another 10 ways
the world could end suddenly.

['Why didn't you do 10 more ways
the world could end?

And what about global warming?']

And no one posted the optimistic talk.

So when Mike and Linda asked me
to give a talk at TEDx

these many years later,

I had lots of good ideas.

But guess what they wanted.

[8 Ways the World Could End Tomorrow]

And that's why we're here.
Dr. Doom and Gloom.

So let's begin the 2013 countdown.

[#8 - A pandemic is coming]

Okay, you're looking at N1H1.

It's the original flu virus
that caused the last great pandemic,

the Spanish flu of 1918,

which infected 50%
of the world's population at the time,

which was a billion people,

and probably killed
one out of every 10 people.

[~100 million deaths]

But here's the interesting thing about it,
it came in three waves,

three different waves
pretty much about six months apart.

And the second wave killed
every single person who got the flu.

And that is how bad flu can be.

Now, here we are in 2013,

and in barnyards all over China
there are ducks and pigs and chickens

in close proximity.

And that's actually
where influenza originates.

Now, viruses have gotten
so good at mutating,

and in these barnyards mostly,

that you and I have to get
a flu shot every year

to protect against this.

Although I will tell you
something interesting.

Less than half of the population
of the United States

does get a flu shot every year.

But that is not what keeps the Centers
for Disease Control up at night.

What they worry about
is something called a recombinant flu bug.

And here's how it works.

There are two kinds of viruses.

There are viruses that infect animals,

and animals pass them
easily to other animals.

And then there are viruses
that infect humans,

and they pass them easily to other humans.

When a human has something
like the Hong Kong flu,

or in 2009 that H1N1 that came back,

and they go to the market
and they buy a chicken

that happens to have
one of these animal viruses,

and they take it home
and they don't cook it properly,

and they eat it,
they get the animal virus.

And now inside that person
are two kinds of viruses:

a virus that transmits easily
from human to human

and a virus that transmits easily
from animal to animal.

But in almost all cases,

that animal virus is far more toxic
and far more of a killer.

Now, in just the last few weeks,

a new very deadly animal flu
called H7N9 has popped up.

About 100 people are infected.

A lot of them have died.

And this is one that the CDC
is really worried about,

and we could be looking
at another worldwide pandemic

like the Spanish flu

if a human being
who has a human-type virus,

that transmits easily to people,

happens to eat one of these animals.

Now, there are solutions to this,

but we live in a very
different world from 1918.

There are 80,000 commercial jets

that take off every day
full of passengers.

It would take a flu virus
about two weeks to circle the globe.

Private producers cannot make
enough vaccine fast enough to save us.

The only thing that we can do

is what the Australian
government has done,

which is to create laboratories

that are ready to go on a moment's notice

to create vast quantities
of flu [vaccine].

We should do this.

Second, we need to make
a simple dip stick test.

You go to the drug store, you buy a swab,

you put it in your mouth.

If it turns blue, you have the flu.

How many times
have you gone to the doctor:

"Do I have the flu?
Do I have a bacterial infection?"

Half the time they don't even know.

When a pandemic comes,
you want to know if you have the flu,

and you will not be able to find a doctor.

Thirdly, we need to invest
in a really good public health system.

We've actually been firing
about 50,000 public health workers

in the last three years.

You know, 40-50 years ago,

this country built
thousands of bomb shelters

because we thought nuclear war
was a real threat.

If we can do that,
we can build a public health system

that will take care of us in a pandemic.

Number seven.

(Applause)

Isn't that beautiful?

That's a mass coronal ejection
coming off the sun.

It makes something called a solar flare
look like kindergarten.

[#7 - The sun brightens]

It shoots uncountable numbers of atoms

that have been broken apart
into little particles

and radiation out into space.

Almost all of these blasts
miss the Earth

because the sun is like
this huge yellow beach ball in space,

and we're like this little tiny BB
at the end of the auditorium.

So no matter which direction
the sun sends these out,

it's very unusual
for us to get a direct hit.

However, happened last August,
and it happened a month ago.

And you would not have been wanting
to have been in an airplane at that time.

In 1859, a coronal mass ejection
took the brand new US telegraph system

and basically melted it.

It started fires.
It shocked the operators.

And the wires disppeared.

Most of the time our magnetic field
in our atmosphere

protects us from coronal mass ejections.

But a severe direct hit

would take out the entire
world's power grid at once,

and all the satellites in orbit,

plunging us essentially
into a 19th-century existence.

It would take 20 years
to restore half the grid

because we do not have back-up.

Try to imagine life without electricity.

Almost all cities
would become uninhabitable.

We build sky scrapers
80 stories high and up

and two stories underground.

We need to create safety zones
beneath our buildings.

We should be building down eight stories
for every 80 stories up,

and we should make that
part of our building code.

The state of New Jersey
is rebuilding 20,000 bridges in the state

because they know there will be
a massive earthquake on the East coast

sooner or later.

If we can do that, we can have different
building codes for our buildings.

We should also view transformers and wires
as vulnerable and expendable,

and we should have hardened,
underground power plants

ready to go in an emergency.

[#6 - We develop a new life form]

This is a synthetic genome
invented by the Craig Venter Institute

and inserted into a bacterial cell

to create what I would call
a new life form.

This life form never existed before,
and it can reproduce.

It was done three years ago,

and the goal is noble.

It's to produce
anything we want from a cell.

Takes in certain things,
puts out stuff that we want.

For example, they could make
synthetic vaccines.

Or they could turn carbon dioxide
into usable fuels.

Now, what could be wrong with that?

Our history is littered with examples
of bad things that got out of secure labs

and things that go amok
when we try to tamper with Mother Nature.

And here's a low tech example.

We brought kudzu here from Japan
to control soil erosion.

Didn't work out so well.

And meanwhile, labs around the world
are experimenting with biotech

in ways you cannot imagine.

You can create a perfect
in vitro male baby

with blond hair and blue eyes,

and you can make modified corn
do anything you want.

Now, is genetically modified corn
saving us from famines?

I see it as a threat to the only
purely wild corn genome left in the world

that grows in Mexico.

Look at number one here:
watch closer, regulate more.

Watch closer, regulate more.

No single federal agency or a single law
governs this vast new world.

Instead, there's
a hodge podge of regulations

from the Food and Drug Administration,

the United States
Department of Agriculture

and the EPA.

We need a new single agency
of the government

to bring order to this.

Meanwhile, less watched people
are entering this field all the time,

and amateurs will follow.

Kickstarter just got its first proposal
for a synthetic life form:

a plant that would glow at night

so we can sprinkle
its seeds along roadsides

and eliminate street lights.

Remember, genetically modified crops

are not driven by a need
to produce a better world

and to save people from starvation,

they are driven by money.

And synthetic biology is about money too.

Now, for a little humor.

[#5 - Robots take over]

I'm going to tell you this.
You're not going to believe it.

Computers will be smarter
than us in 20 years.

You know this stuff.

You know that Deep Blue can play chess

better than anyone
on the face of the planet,

and you know that the Google car

can drive itself
better than you can drive it.

[Solutions]

It's hasta la vista time.

Time to wake up and smell the silicon.

If you want to get ahead of this curve,
you are going to have to become a cyborg.

(Laughter)

Number four: A lot of volcanoes go off.

These things are huge trouble.

We do not live on a nice,
stable solid planet.

It is mostly molten rock and iron

and it probably has a nuclear reactor
in the center of it that keeps it hot.

We're, like, on these life rafts

floating over all this molten rock.

Earth's crust is so constantly
folding in on itself

that we cannot find a stone
on the surface of the Earth

that is as old as the planet.

Ninety-eight percent of all the species
on Earth have gone extinct.

And volcanoes are the biggest reason why.

Of the 11 biggest extinctions,
four were caused by volcanoes.

A new study that links
the late Traissic extinction

of volcanic eruptions and outflows -

or a new study links
this amazing extinction of life,

95 percent of life on Earth -

to volcanoes that essentially stretched -
and it all went off at the same time -

essentially stretched
from what is now New Jersey

to what is now Morocco.

In our past, Earth
has opened up many times

and flowed out for centuries.

India is an outflow of volcanism.

Volcanic activity fills the sky
with soot and hot ash

and buries every living thing

and blocks the sun for so many summers,

the plants on land
and plankton in the sea die,

and when they die, we die.

Volcanoes can also produce
so much carbon dioxide

that they will massively warm the planet
and create a runaway greenhouse effect,

which is the opposite
of what we often expect from them.

In Holland, they grow most of their food
in greenhouses with synthetic light

24 hours a day.

We can do that.

When I was putting this talk together,
I just had this weird idea.

I went to Amazon, I looked to see how much
they were and how good they are.

Gas masks are the cheapest
insurance you can buy.

They don't take up much space,

and they get you through
a lot of hard times.

And finally, the ultimate solution
to living on a planet like ours,

which really is unstable
and will not last forever -

in four and a half billion years,
the sun will take us in -

our species will eventually die
if we do not colonize other planets

in other solar systems.

Number three: a runaway greenhouse effect,
I just spoke about that a little,

or an ecosystem collapse.

Okay, no surprise, we're heating up.

In 1990, the mean atmospheric temperature
of Earth was 14 1/2 degrees centigrade.

In 23 years, we've gone up
3/4 of a degree.

Never in the history of this planet -
we know from ice cores -

has carbon dioxide risen so fast.

When we get to 16 1/2 degrees -
that's 1 1/4 degrees from where we are -

we will lose control of our climate.

Or let me put it a different way:

It will become extremely unpredictable.

Every major extinction in Earth's history

has been characterized
by rapid increases in CO2.

And we're now in an unprecedented period
of increases in CO2.

Normally the atmosphere releases

about 10 percent of the heat
we get from the sun.

But as we heat up,
more and more water turns to vapor,

more global warming methane
and other gases

are released from the northern
and southern permafrost,

and at some point
the Earth works like a greenhouse -

gets into a feedback loop

that eventually will turn us into Venus,

where the average daytime temperature
is 900 degrees Fahrenheit.

At the same time we're witnessing
a huge extinction cycle.

In the next 25 years,

we will lose 25 percent of all the species
in the Hawaiian islands alone.

We're devastating our oceans
by overfishing them,

and we're killing
our coral reefs with heat.

Somewhere in the Amazon rainforest
is what I like to call a marginal tree.

We keep cutting down
oxygen-producing trees,

and someday, when we get
to that marginal tree,

we will see the beginning of the collapse
of our oxygen ecosystem.

We are still asleep at the wheel.

Global warming is an emergency.

It's almost incomprehensible

how much CO2 we have to stop
putting in the air in the next 10 years

to stop this process.

And we need to prioritize the animals
and the amount of nature

that we're trying to save.

We can't save it all.

We need to save the species
that help us the most.

[#2 - Nuclear war breaks out]

Now, this is interesting

because 11 years ago,
this wasn't even on my radar screen,

because I don't think nuclear war
was any kind of significant threat.

There's a good reason
every major nation in the world

wants to keep Iran from getting the bomb.

But there's a larger reason
that's really out of our control.

Both India and Pakistan have
more than 100 nuclear weapons each,

far more than enough
to create a nuclear winter,

which will kill us all.

They have fought three wars since 1947.

And India is developing
a nuclear submarine fleet

so it can fire its missiles from anywhere.

President Obama
has spoken about this idea;

it makes tremendous sense.

And there's a huge rap
against anti-missile systems

because if we use it and we knock down
everybody else's missiles,

then we're left
with all the good missiles.

So part of the answer to this problem

may be to develop anti-missle
technology cooperatively

with many, many other nations
and place them where they are needed.

You have to fire an anti-missile

30 seconds after a missile
with a warhead on it is fired

so that it catches it before
it's on the downward curve in space.

Number one: We cross paths
with a really big asteroid.

This is my favorite.

(Laughter)

Now, there's a possibility I've been wrong
about some of these things,

the possibility some of
these things won't happen.

In the best sense of journalism,
that's my disclaimer.

But I am not wrong about this,

and this is what keeps me up at night.

This is my passion.

Right now, somewhere in space,

maybe in the asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter

or farther out in the Kuiper belt,

of large objects
that exist beyond Neptune,

there's a missile with our name on it.

It could break out of its orbit tomorrow,
or not for 100,000 years,

but its fate is sealed.

It will hit Earth.

It has happened before many times.

Get a telescope and look at the moon.

It is covered with asteroid hits.

And you'll see that
in a video in a second.

The Earth is just as pockmarked
with asteroid hits.

It's just that that folding
crust that we have,

that's hidden a lot of them,

and vegetation has covered a lot of it.

A large asteroid took out the dinosaurs
65 million years ago

by creating shock waves
and firestorms across this planet

and created a sky so full of debris

that summer did not return
for at least 100 years

and maybe 1,000 years.

Had humans been alive then,
they would all have been wiped out.

Now, here's some hope.

433 Eros. This is a huge rock -

it's bigger than the one
that took out the dinosaurs -

that orbits in the asteroid belt
between Mars and Jupiter.

At sometime in its future

it will shift from a Mars-crossing orbit

that it's in now

to an Earth-crossing orbit.

It will intersect
with where our planet is.

It is bigger than the asteroid
that killed off the dinosaurs.

But here's where
this thing gets interesing.

We took this photo from a space probe
that left the Earth in the year 2000,

a NASA probe, that was designed
to study asteroids.

And this spaceship settled into orbit
around the asteroid.

You can put a baseball in orbit
around me if you're in space;

there's enough gravity.

Now, when the mission ended,
there was a little leftover fuel,

there was a little leftover electricity,

and the mission controllers -
this wasn't part of the mission -

they landed the spacecraft
on Eros successfully.

And since then, we have
intercepted three comets in deep space

that move at 20 miles per second.

Stop and think about
the implications of those missions.

For the first time in human history,

we have the ability
to fly into an incoming asteroid

and change its orbit,

but only if we know it's there,

and only if we have a rocket ready to go.

Most asteroids are found by amateurs
when it's too late to do anything.

NASA is looking for bad guys
in the asteroid belt,

and there are about
20,000 of them out there.

But they can't look in the Kuiper belt,

it's too far away,

and it has 100,000 objects in it

10 times bigger than the asteroid
that took out the dinosaurs.

In only 20 years,

we have developed the technology
to change our fate.

We can intercept an asteroid,
and we can take it out of play.

One day you or your children,
or their children,

or their children's children

will wake up and this news will be real,

the headline on the front page
of The New York TImes:

Killer Asteroid Found
on Collision Course with Earth.

What happens after that
if we're not prepared

is really beyond horror.

Most humans will not die from the impact,

most will die of starvation.

And the price of insurance
to protect us from this

is what we spend on one B2 bomber.

The asteroid problem is stupidly obvious.

A physicist said almost 100 years ago:

"There are two kinds of civilizations:

those who can protect themselves
from an asteroid impact

and those who can't."

We're the former.

What are we waiting for?

Thank you.

(Applause)