What are the scenarios?

When considering how the world may be suddenly and profoundly changed, we need to look at the scenarios of what catastrophic events could be potential causes. When looking at any prepping site, we usually have a list something like this:

• Large/Nationwide power outage
• Killer Pandemic
• Economic collapse
• Natural Disaster (Flood, earthquake, atmospheric change)
• Asteroid impact
• Solar Storm
• Terrorism
• World War III
• EMP attack
• Alien Invasion
• Zombie Apocalypse

That’s quite a list and probably not even complete, but at first glance what are the likelihoods of these events? My initial thoughts and scores for how high a concern they are below:

    Large/Nationwide Power Outage

A large power outage is possible within any complex power transmission system. Depending upon the cause of the initial damage, a localised event could cascade through the system and bring down large areas. Whether such an outage is a world-changing event or simply something that should be prepared for in your plans depends on the scale of the event, the initial cause and the duration. A week long, area-wide outage is a prepping issue. A nationwide event where major damage occurs with potentially months to repair would have massively more serious consequences.

    Killer Pandemic

The Ebola outbreak in Africa highlighted how quickly a pandemic might take hold. Ebola is a relatively difficult disease to transfer, requiring contact with bodily fluids but it is not difficult to imagine an airborne and/or mutated virus propagating through large populations very quickly. Containment in a world with such easy transport links would be the stuff of nightmares. Crucially, how does a survival scenario work? Is this a case of bugging-out to the remotest place you can find and hope the virus never makes its way there? From a UK point of view, bugging-out seems more difficult than, say, the USA, due to the density of our population. Does survival depend on being immune to the virus or the virus mutating to a safer form?

    Economic collapse

Having just experienced the worst economic downturn in living memory, the world has seen how easily money could become worthless, lost in a system of investments and institutions, themselves propped up by other investments and institutions. The recovery has been slow and hard and those economic institutions have been strengthened in the process, but the poor have been hit hard due to austerity measures and there is little room for a further onslaught of cuts in the event of another, more catastrophic collapse. Civil disorder would not be far away and could start a cycle of events deepening the crisis.

    Natural Disaster

This covers a lot of ground including floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, tornados, volcanoes, tsunamis, environmental accidents etc. Of course in the UK we can rule ourselves out of the direct effect of most of these because we simply don’t experience them routinely so are less likely to experience them spectacularly! However, any preparation needs to take into account the bigger picture where something happens on the other side of the world and the knock on effects to the rest of the world is significant (refugees, weather changes etc)

    Asteroid impact

That tiny chance, cosmically negligible, that an asteroid hits the earth is the stuff of science fiction lore. But the chance is still there and, depending on the size, would at the very least make a large area of the planet uninhabitable with massive consequences to everyone not wiped out by the initial impact.

    Solar Storm

The sun is a volatile entity, frequently sending out solar flares and material into space. Solar flares rarely reach the surface of Earth as its magnetic field prevents it. They still have some effect on satellites in orbit but it is not a major concern. The only likelihood of damage to anything on the surface comes from geomagnetic storms, the largest of which are caused by Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).

The largest CME recorded on Earth was the Carrington event in 1859 which overloaded the telegraph system which was obviously in its infancy compared to the electronics, power and communications networks we use today. Another large CMR took place in July 2012 which missed earth but had it been a week earlier would have been directed straight at us. The largest concern in such an event would be loss of power over a wide region. The best known case of this occurred in Quebec in 1989 when a CME knocked out the power grid for 9 hours. End of the world? Not exactly.

    Terrorism

There are extremists across the globe that have a fundamental hatred of anyone who does not share their views on how we should live and what we should believe. The current threat is from IS (or ISIS or whatever else they might decide to call themselves!) who are having some success in taking advantage of general unrest in the Middle East brought about by the Arab Spring, a wave of demonstrations and uprisings which we in the west naively thought would be a change for good. It worked out well didn’t it? Previously controlled minority interests now run amuck with in-fighting, unexpected alliances and growing unease by observers. The expectation of terrorist attacks on our communities is almost 100% and whilst isolated and infrequent at the moment, the potential catastrophe should these groups obtain any kind of WMD is frightening.

    World War III

The only significant threat of this still comes from Russia. After years of reforms and moves towards inclusion they are now back to sabre-rattling, provocation and ‘annexing’ under Putin. He is determined to show the world that Russia is once again a super-power. No encroachment onto what it sees as its territory (even when it’s not) will be tolerated. Is there a chance of war? I think there is, but it is small and I don’t believe there would be any nuclear involvement. Even Putin doesn’t seem that crazy! I do see the potential for a conventional war between Russia and the west, possibly over Ukraine. If not, it will be over the next country to decide it wants to move its traditional alliance.

    EMP attack

This, at the moment at least, is the most intriguing of the scenarios. The idea that a device can be exploded in the atmosphere and the resulting electro-magnetic pulse would knock out all electronics and power circuits is fascinating. There is of course, great debate about what would be affected and for how long. The version of events used in science fiction may not be the most plausible, but it still ranks highly as a possible scenario.

A major question, apart from the technicalities, is of course is who would do it? Any nation launching an EMP attack using a nuclear device would surely be wiped out by the submarine or allied nation launches of retaliatory nuclear weapons unaffected by the attack. The ability of terrorists to carry out such an attack would require a magnitude leap in their abilities and technology. For the time being, whilst it’s an intriguing concept, it does not strike me as a such a plausible scenario.

    Alien Invasion

Are they out there? Of course they are. Are they coming anytime soon? I seriously doubt it! The higher risk would be of an alien microbe being brought back by future probes or manned missions. This is still, however, unlikely.

    Zombie Apocalypse

You’re joking right?

Have I have missed anything?  Do you disagree with the risk assessments or any of the scenarios? Please let me know in the comments.