The Little Book of the End of the World (3 page)

Could a massive impact truly ‘kill’ the planet? Probably not.

Could it be the End of the World?

Maybe.

2

THE ELEMENTS AGAINST US: WATER, FIRE, EARTH AND WIND

We humans are pretty sturdy creatures. Well, except for the tendency to break limbs, require a perfectly balanced diet, our general susceptibility to disease, illness, poison, fatal allergies and a tendency to kill each other when we don’t get our own way.

Actually, when you think about it, we’re quite a picky bunch. It’s no wonder that it sometimes seems like the Earth is out to get us.

There are many elements that contribute to the Earth’s ecosystem and its perfect balance for supporting human life. The modern world thinks of these elements in atomic terms, with life – as we know it – requiring a careful balance of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, amongst others, to flourish.

But before mankind became aware of atomic numbers and electron microscopes, most schools of thought accepted that there were four basic elements that formed the world around us: water, fire, earth and wind. These are still referenced in meteorological terms, by fictional superheroes and American funk bands of the 1970s.

With the world around us being made of these classical elements, it should come as no surprise that its inevitable end would involve a significant upset to the balance between all four.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION: THE PERFECT BALANCE

Life on this planet suffers from something of a Goldilocks complex: it just can’t support itself if things are too hot or too cold. This perfect balance operates on both local and global levels: there are extreme temperatures that render some parts of our planet uninhabitable, and if you’ve ever worked or lived with other people, you probably know the difference that a tiny notch on a dial can make, whether it’s the heater or air conditioning.

Earth is at an optimum distance from the sun to support human life, and above all else, keep us comfortable. Our seasons are all relative to the distance from the sun and the axis of the planet at any given time: it’s a predictable method of how we know that our winters will be cold and our summers will be warm. Or at least warmer than it is in winter.

This is all such a fragile balance that even a tiny change in the Earth’s axis or in the composition of the elements in the air or water would change the climate significantly, potentially making it different enough to wipe humans off the face of the planet.

Climate change has become a talking point since the end of the twentieth century and an urgent action point for many organisations and governments, as any man-made changes to the climate could have disastrous effects on the planet’s ability to recover.

It’s unlikely that any change would happen overnight, but small changes could still prove cataclysmic to society and human life.

But even without interference from human inhabitants or a colliding celestial body to knock us off course, the Earth can still undergo these changes on its own.

The Ice Age

‘The Ice Age’ is one of those phrases that rolls off the tongue as if it describes only one period of the planet’s history: there have actually been at least five ice ages in the Earth’s history – there could even have been more, but we only have proof of five. The most recent of these ice ages was in the Quaternary or Pleistocene period, which started around 2.5 million years ago.

Any ice age is caused by – and creates – a significant change in the Earth’s atmosphere and climate, with the predominant activity during this period creating large sheets of ice that cover a significantly large part of the planet: the Pleistocene ice age led to the creation of the ice sheets that currently form a large part of the Arctic and Antarctic areas of the Earth.

But these ice sheets do not need to cover the entire planet in order to be considered an ice age, nor does it mean that the rest of the Earth is uninhabitable. There were plenty of different life forms which survived or evolved through the last ice age.

If another ice age were to suddenly begin, its progress would be slow enough that we’d have time to migrate in the short term, and over a longer period, evolve to deal with the extreme temperatures. Or at least forego some of our more invasive methods of hair removal.

We also have at least a couple of thousand years to prepare, with the next Big Chill estimated to happen in around 150,000 years. Of course, that could end up being significantly sooner if man-made climate change continues at its current rate.

Water

For a planet covered in so much water and ice, you’d think it wouldn’t be as deadly and destructive as it is. But even after all these years, humans still haven’t developed gills or a natural way of dealing with the pressures of the ocean’s depths.

Drowning isn’t the only threat that water carries: the oceans alone have destructive ebbs and flows that cause erosion and flooding, and that’s before you consider rivers and rainfall. Flooding, in particular, is becoming an unfortunately regular occurrence around the British Isles, with the after-effects of storms providing something of a post-Apocalyptic vision on the news headlines at least once a year.

But could there ever be a large, powerful flood, strong enough that it would wipe us off the face of the planet?

There are some religious suggestions that such a flood has already happened at least once in history and we’ll discuss that a little bit later. However, proof is, understandably, a little difficult to come by

But even amongst the stories of Noah and the various myths of Atlantis and other sunken islands, there are plenty of submerged cities and underwater ruins that lend some proof to these stories, while also bearing witness to the mighty destructive power of water.

Heracleion, Egypt

Be careful with the spelling when you’re visiting this ancient city, as you might end up in Heraklion in Crete. Both cities are named after the classical Greek hero and demi-god Hercules, but this city’s ruins lie across the Mediterranean in modern Egypt.

Heracleion was a major Egyptian port and centre of trade for nearly 1,500 years until it sank into the sea around the sixth century
AD
. The city’s destruction was blamed on a massive earthquake and the resulting floods that washed over the area, redefining the coastline.

The city’s ruins are located in Abu Qir Bay, an area that’s also steeped in more-recent history as the site of Nelson’s Battle of the Nile. Despite the proximity of the city of Alexandria, the ruins of the city were lost until the year 2000 when Franck Goddio, a well-known underwater archaeologist, started to investigate the area and discovered that most of Heracleion’s statues and artefacts were still immaculately preserved underwater.

Helike, Greece

The Greek god of the sea Poseidon was supposedly responsible for the destruction of Helike in 373
BC
, but the chances are it might have just been another earthquake.

Helike was located near the Greek city of Patras. With the city located in a densely populated area, there are many contemporary stories about its destruction: supposedly rats, dogs and cats all fled the city prior to its sinking, and afterwards, the site became a tourist attraction to the locals who navigated their boats around the city’s statues and rooftops.

After the seabed settled and Helike’s features were lost in sand and silt, the city was subsequently treated as an urban legend until it was rediscovered in 2001.

Villa Epecuén, Argentina

Helike and Heracleion aren’t the only cities that have fallen into the sea, but you would think we as a species had learned our lesson and would stop building cities in areas that were prone to flooding, earthquakes or right underneath a big dam that could possibly burst and cause a flood.

But as recently as 1920, that lesson still hadn’t sunk in.

Villa Epecuén was a holiday village built near the Atlantic coast of Argentina: the village catered to holidaying citizens from nearby Buenos Aires, somewhat like Butlin’s with more sun and better football players.

In 1985, after a season of persistant heavy rains, the man-made Lake Epecuén overflowed, flooding its banks and destroying the dam that had kept the city safe. The water levels have only started to subside in recent years, with Vila Epecuén experiencing a renaissance befitting the twenty-first century, promising visitors a glimpse at a post-Apocalyptic wasteland.

Fire

We’ve looked at water and ice, so it’s only fair that we continue to look at their opposite: fire. Just as water is necessary for drinking and hygiene, we also have an intrinsic need for fire, whether it’s to keep us warm, to cook our food or to help us crank up the heat so we can stay up all night binge-watching TV box sets.

Heat in itself is something we all crave, especially with some of the local wet summers of the British Isles, but there are still parts of the planet made uninhabitable by hot and arid conditions. In fact, the various deserts dotted around the planet’s surface are just as dangerous as the oceans, with both having equally demanding borders. Like the oceans, these deserts are not devoid of life: the desert has its own unique flora and fauna, and an estimated 40 per cent of the world’s population live in or near these arid areas.

Even in the form of molten lava spewing forth from the bowels of the planet, fire is not a wholly destructive element. In fact islands like Hawaii and the Canary Islands have been formed as a result of volcanic eruptions, with land that has proven to be incredibly fertile.

But there’s still something incredibly terrifying about volcanoes, conjuring mental images of fleeing from clouds of black ash and rivers of lava; they’re almost like something made just to represent the End of the World.

And with good reason.

Pompeii, Italy

The eruption of Mount Vesuvius in
AD
79 destroyed the town of Pompeii and nearby Heracleum, about 300km south of Rome. But contrary to what we might think about volcanoes, Mount Vesuvius didn’t actually burn everything to a crisp: instead, the ash preserved buildings and bodies alike until they were rediscovered in 1599.

Much of the organic matter has long since decayed, but archaeologists have started to use plaster and rubber resin to make casts to preserve the shapes of the bodies as they have lain for nearly 2,000 years.

Pompeii has turned into one of those otherworldly locations where tourists can now visit and see a snapshot of life and death side by side.

Icelandic Volcanoes, or what I
didn’t do on my 2010 Summer Holidays

Volcanoes aren’t always a destructive force: they have given us fertile land, like Lanzarote, Samoa and Hawaii that have been formed as a result of a volcanic eruption. These islands have given us summer holidays, wrestlers and shooting locations for TV and movies.

And then there’s Iceland.

It’s not so much that Iceland is a bad place as it is the location of the most recent large-scale volcanic eruption, and one that is still fresh in our memories.

Eyjafjallajökull erupted multiple times in April 2010, causing no end of heartache to reporters and journalists who had to spell and say the word. It also created an ash cloud that caused widespread disruption to European and transatlantic air travel, which just happened to coincide with many people’s spring and summer holidays.