Doomsday Device

The Cosmos magazine website, on the 9th of January 2009, had an article about five possible catastrophes that could wipe out civilisation. One of them was of a doomsday device.

"The biggest threats to humanity arise from humanity," says Nick Bostrom, a philosopher at Britain's University of Oxford and cofounder of the World Transhumanist Association. "Our species has survived volcanic eruptions, meteoric impacts, and other natural hazards for tens of thousands of years. It seems unlikely that any of these old risks should exterminate us in the near future. By contrast, human civilisation is introducing many novel phenomena into the world, ranging from nuclear weapons to designer pathogens to high-energy particle colliders."

We need only reflect on the notion that the closest humanity has recently come to annihilation – with the possible exception of the Lake Toba supervolcano eruption 70,000 years ago – was during the Cold War, when the U.S. and former Soviet Union engaged in games of nuclear brinkmanship, particularly over Cuba in 1962.

And as technology advances, allowing the development of even more destructive weapons, and time makes it ever more likely they'll fall into even less responsible hands, the 21st century could prove even more dangerous than the 20th.