How the World Will End as We Know It: Global Risk Assessment 2012
We’ve been poring over the impressive Global Risks, 2012 report by the World Economic Forum. This juicy document aggregates the opinions of experts across the globe to determine just how the world as we know it is likely to end this year.
The fascinating report is really worth a look, and if you’re in a hurry, just check out this crazy infographic:
As you can see, it’s really quite simple: Unsustainable population growth increases complexity, risking critical systems failure as chronic fiscal imbalances test our very survival. Global governance failure means there is no apparatus to contain the problem as rising greenhouse gas emissions throw the environment into chaos. The rapidly disintegrating fabric of society might catch fire before it unravels.
OK, so that’s the doomsday scenario — clearly it would only take only one of the above disasters to seriously tilt civilization toward the edge. That’s why it’s helpful to cross-reference the above with this really cool interactive infographic which displays the likelihood of SHTF in economic, environmental, geopolitical, societal and technological contexts. Each risk is also ranked by impact on how band it’s gonna screw up your day… and the days of 7 billion other folks.
So what do the experts say we should be watching out for the most? On a scale of 0-5, with 5 being ‘unavoidable’, “severe income disparity’ and ‘chronic fiscal imbalance’ rank just above a 4. Major systemic financial failure may only rank around 3 in likelihood, but it’s the hardest-hitting disaster at around a 4 impact. Other notable threats include environmental hazards and shortages of food and water, which the survey finds more inevitable than not.
While the report urges action to mitigate these threats, it paints the picture of a dystopia bound for mass casualties, noting that our preparedness has not evolved alongside the threats. World leaders are reading this report to learn how they can exploit these weaknesses. Business leaders are reading this report to see how they can profit. We highly recommend you at least skim the report, as a stakeholder in the survival of the fittest.
So Far, A 2012 Apocalypse Not Out of the Question
You could have picked a worse year for prophecies about the end times. Whatever the debunkers say, the Mayans did predict that 2012 would be a time of great transformation. When you throw all the astrological stuff out the window — the silly Planet X/Niburu tin hat theories, you still have an incredibly advanced ancient civilization who understood the true nature of space and time far before any other. They most definitely predicted a major transformation around 2012. Whether this means end times or great revelations or both (or neither) is a healthy and unresolvable matter of debate.
Do we at News for End Times think the world will end in 2012? We firmly believe and can prove that it’s more likely than it’s ever been, which is to say it’s still not incredibly likely. The
The important thing to remember is that all of these grand disasters operate on grand timescales. Due to different interpretations of the Maya calendar, we don’t know for sure if 2012 marks the end of their timeline… over thousands of years, their advanced methods of time tracking were still somewhat primitive and inaccurate when iterated far into the future. All of the disasters mentioned above happen on timescales in which centuries of inaction are punctured by violent extinction level events. Remember, a 2012 apocalypse would not be the first time all life on the planet was almost wiped out.
The actual outcome will probably exist between extremes — the world will not completely ending, but there will be times when it feels like it is. Even at the hyper-accelerated time scale technology has put us on, the end times will likely happen over decades or centuries, not overnight.