End of the world

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The end of the world is a naturally occurring, supernatural or artificially brought about event that destroys humanity , planet Earth or the universe as a whole or at least massively changes the prevailing living and accompanying circumstances.

Ambiguity of the term

The idea of ​​the end of the world aims at a temporal, future event, while the term end of the world can also mean a geographical end point. In the context of religious expectations of salvation, the end of the world can be part of the end times . A mythological representation of the fear of the end of the world is the apocalypse .

In a broader sense, doomsday scenarios are also those that “only” describe the “extinction” of most of humanity and its living environment, for example through wars with weapons of mass destruction , the increased occurrence of epidemics in the form of pandemics , or environmental destruction with the result of global famine and wars of distribution . Such scenarios are based on real dangers, often inspired by mythological lore; but sometimes these are simply expressions of conspiracy theories , and often they require deeper scrutiny.

history

Prophecies of the end of the world already existed in antiquity . The end of the world was predicted by philosophers and religious groups , among others . Astrological predictions were also taken into account, in particular a conjunction of the year 1524 in the zodiac sign of Pisces triggered a much-discussed fear of dramatic floods.

Martin Luther , the founder of the Protestant Church, is ascribed the following sentence: And if I knew that tomorrow the world would end, I would plant an apple tree today .

The non-fiction book "So let's plant an apple tree - the time has come" was published in 1985 by the German science journalist Hoimar von Ditfurth . It describes global threats to humanity and became a bestseller; Favored, among other things, by the Chernobyl catastrophe from April 1986, the then still increasing forest death , the arms race between West and East that was still ongoing during the Cold War (see also the SDI program of US President Ronald Reagan ) in connection with economic and political agony of the Eastern bloc .

Today ideas about the end of the world are mainly associated with religious groups. They are discussed by economists and philosophers ( eschatology ).

December 21, 2012

A wide variety of speculations about December 21, 2012 were circulating on the Internet in particular. For some people, this date was considered a possible doomsday day, others suspected an ascent of the earth into a "higher dimension". This was mainly based on the alleged end of the Maya calendar ( see: "Doomsday" in the Maya calendar ). Various astronomical events that were supposed to occur in 2012 were cited as a further cause. However, these turn out to be a mixture of different real and fictitious numbers or as recurring constellations without any particular influence on the earth.

The scenario of the downfall in 2012 was taken up by Roland Emmerich , among others, for his film 2012 from 2009.

Probabilities and calculations

Scientists and other people try to quantify the probabilities of the end of mankind by analyzing the risks they know. Many of these estimates are controversial, such as Martin Rees' popular science figures .

According to a consideration by the astronomer J. Richard Gott and others, the calculation of probability speaks against the long-term survival of mankind at a level / a world population of several billion individuals even without analyzing the risks . This very controversial consideration is known as the " doomsday argument ".

Doomsday scenarios

→ Main article: Existential risk

Scientifically describable scenarios

  • Shortage of crude oil: resource wars and loss of fertilizers.
  • Habitat destruction or contamination of biological systems: Climate changes such as global warming or environmental pollution e.g. B. by radioactive substances and the related effects on biological systems and their equilibrium, such as species extinction z. B. bees .
  • Self-destruction of mankind through war , for example in a " nuclear holocaust ".
  • Self-destruction of mankind through technical developments, for example in the " gray smear scenario " or through catastrophic genetic engineering experiments.
  • A shift in the geo-ecological balance in the course of climate change towards the parameters of a hostile planet, caused for example by the irreparable destruction of layers of the earth's atmosphere .
  • One or more major pandemics that kill a significant portion of humanity.
  • Volcanic eruption with VEI starch 7 or 8.
    The Yellowstone is considered super volcano and erupts every 600 thousand to 700 thousand years. Due to the large amounts of smoke and ash in the atmosphere, the temperature of the earth drops sharply and a large part of the animal and plant world perishes.
  • Impact of a sufficiently large comet or asteroid .
    The aim here is to be able to take countermeasures in a few decades.
The distances of the stars closest to the Sun over a period of 20,000 years in the past to 80,000 years in the future
  • A pole shift of the earth's magnetic field could weaken the latter very strongly for a long time and possibly lead to a collapse of the technical infrastructure and thus also to great losses of people, but this is speculative.
  • Collision with or at least significant orbital disruption caused by another celestial body flying close by .
    The solar system appears to be moving in a fairly stable orbit around the center of the Milky Way . However, there are now and then individual outliers, which in turn can be thrown out of their path by external effects. The red dwarf Gliese 710 is said to move towards the solar system and to pass very close to the sun in about 1.3 million years. For example, it could cause so much unrest in the Oort cloud that a comet bombardment of the inner solar system could occur.
  • Supernova in close proximity.
    A nova emits high-energy radiation in enormous quantities ( intensity ), which can be quite destructive up to a certain distance. Due to the different Nova mechanisms, there is no fixed numerical value for a safe distance.
  • GRB (Gamma Ray Burst) that hits the earth directly.
    Such an event near the solar system (less than 3000 light years away) could lead to a mass extinction on Earth. However, this is subject to the restriction that the energy is radiated in a narrow cone and that it happens to be directed directly towards the earth. Due to the short duration of a gamma-ray burst (usually a few seconds to a few minutes), only one side of the earth would be affected by direct radiation.
  • Mathematical models give the possibility that "a bubble of real vacuum rolls through the cosmos and destroys everything"

In the very distant future, which from the point of view of mankind can hardly be assessed as the "end of the world", the following scenarios arise:

  • The probability of stellar collisions increases if the Andromeda Nebula collides with the Milky Way in two to ten billion years.
  • The evolution of the sun into a red giant .
    So far it has been estimated that it would take about four billion years for the sun to reach such a stage. However, more recent calculations suggest that the sun will slowly and continuously increase its radiance beforehand, so that in approx. 900 million years no (higher) life will be possible on earth due to the heat.
  • Earth's entry into the region of attraction of a black hole or neutron star of sufficient size.
  • After a phase of expansion, if certain conditions for the relationship between dark energy and dark matter are met, the universe could contract again due to gravitational influences and end in a big crunch , the counterpart of the big bang , in which everything ultimately becomes one Singularity contracts.
  • Another possibility is the Big Rip . According to this theory, due to the constant expansion caused by dark energy, space-time will eventually tear apart, which would also mean the end of the universe known today.
  • The third possibility for an end of the world that affects the whole universe is the big chill . The universe would expand monotonously for all eternity. The suns in it would ultimately burn the last of the fusible material. Even black holes would “evaporate” at some point. What would be left is a cold, dark universe in which each particle has a multiple of the current volume of the universe available. In the absence of events in such a universe, even time would lose importance and disappear.

Science fiction scenarios

Religious scenarios

Processing in art

music

In 1954, the Golgowsky Quartet's song "On May 30th is the end of the world" became a number 1 hit in Germany (melody: Karl Erpel (pseudonym of Will Glahé ), text: Bert Roda (pseudonym of Karl Golgowsky ) ). It was a parodic tribute to a prophecy that caused quite a bit of media hype at the time.

The song The End of the World by the songwriter Franz Hohler describes how the extinction of a single species of beetle in our world today could be enough to bring about the end of the world; namely, because the proverbial drop is enough on several levels to make the barrel overflow. Holer's conclusion was: "... I myself have changed my mind, I'm sure the end of the world, ladies and gentlemen, has already begun." This song, which he had already published in 1974, was chosen in 1997 as the song of the best songs . Countless contemporary death , thrash and black metal bands deal with the end of the world in various ways.

In the 1980s there were many hits that dealt with a doomsday scenario caused by a nuclear war. In 1981 Udo Lindenberg published the song Grande Finale . Similar topics deal with the song Fireworks by Stefan Remmler and Visit Europe while it is still standing by Geier Swoop . The Puhdys published the song Das Buch in 1984 , which was written against the backdrop of the Cold War and the arms race between the USA and the USSR. It tells of a possible nuclear war that could lead to the end of the world, which means that at some point on another planet with intelligent living beings there might be a book called "The Fall of the Earth", whose publication must be prevented. Jean Gabilou performed a similar text for France at the 1982 Song Contest.

In the song, Ice Age of Peter Maffay in 1982 is about the last person who needs to watch the end of the world. It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) by REM , published in 1987, is vaguely based on various end-time scenarios. The title has become a catchphrase in German and has been taken up in various articles, books and films.

In 2012 the Swiss DJ Mike Candys released the song 2012 (If the World Would End) together with the singer Evelyn and the rapper Patrick Miller . The song is based on the myth that the earth should go under on December 21, 2012, among other things because of the end of the Mayan calendar , as Müller sings about in the first verse. Overall, the song is about the fact that the trio want to have another big party the day before the downfall, they plan to use the last night and not want to worry about the losses. The title developed into a top 10 success across Europe and was able to enter the charts on the day before the supposed end of the world occurred.

The German comedy trio Y-Titty also celebrated the supposed downfall of 2012 with their second single, Der last Sommer, and told how they would break all the laws over the past few days and do everything that can be done again. The song ends with just a small comet falling from the sky and the Maya apologizing for having miscalculated a year. This track also achieved high chart placements in Germany, Austria and Switzerland.

literature

  • End of the World (1911), the best-known poem by the expressionist Jakob van Hoddis , ironically dealt with a scenario of doom.
  • The last chapter , a poem by Erich Kästner from 1930, deals with the end of the world, in which a world government orders the murder of all people in order to “finally bring about peace”.
  • In The End of the World or Die Welt , a drama by the Austrian writer Jura Soyfer from 1936, the world is destroyed by a comet.
  • In The Seven Last Days of the Earth , Jörg Zink described a doomsday scenario in 1970, which is complementary to the creation story of the Old Testament .

Visual arts

In 2001, Johannes Schreiter designed a large glass window on the subject of “World Endangerment” in Ulm Minster . This "world endangerment window" addresses the modern option of the end of the world by the fact that people have endangered the future existence of the earth.

Movie

Entire film genres - especially from science fiction and end-of-time films (e.g. " 2012 ") - deal with impending apocalypses, their fight (for example with nuclear missiles against approaching comets) and the time afterwards, in which typically few People wander through a destroyed world and only the lowest instincts rule, as in Mad Max or Waterworld . The apocalypse is partly brought about by aliens .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gwynne Dyer: Battlefield Earth: Climate Wars in the 21st Century. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2010, ISBN 978-3-608-94611-6
  2. ↑ See the chapter “Pralaya - Ragnarök” in Claus Dettelbacher (2008), Im Maulbeerhain: The Doctrine of the Four World Ages: Introduction to the Traces of Cyclical Time. Reception, interfaces, philosophy of history - with constant consideration for Julius Evola . BoD, Norderstedt, ISBN 978-3-8370-6253-3 , pp. 61–68 (extended diploma thesis at the University of Vienna).
  3. ↑ Alex Reichmuth : Again and again the end of the world: questioning ecological scenarios. LIT-Verlag, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-80075-6
  4. ^ Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer : Humanism between court and university. Georg Tannstetter (Collimitius) and his scientific environment in Vienna in the early 16th century . Vienna 1996, pp. 135-140.
  5. ↑ Florian Freistetter : Everything turns, everything moves: 2012, the sun and the Milky Way ScienceBlogs Internet portal, section "Astrodicticum Simplex", October 1st, 2009
  6. ↑ Wikipedia, Peakoil, Resource Wars
  7. ↑ Wikipedia, peak oil, agriculture and food supply
  8. ^ Wikipedia, Global Warming, Effects on the Biosphere
  9. ↑ Wikipedia, Pollution, Important Environmentally Polluting Substances
  10. ↑ The white horse, bees ensure survival ( Memento from April 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Gliese 710 flies towards the solar system?
  12. ↑ New measurement: higher risk of collision for the Milky Way. SPIEGEL online, January 6, 2009
  13. ↑ C. Bounama, W. v. Bloh, S. Franck: The end of the spaceship earth. In: Spektrum der Wissenschaft ISSN  0170-2971 , Vol. 27, Issue 10/2004 (October 2004), pp. 52-59.
  14. ↑ Song Prize. Retrieved April 19, 2020 .
  15. ↑ Franz Hohler: A song about the end of the world . In: Förderverein natural economic order eV (Hrsg.): Humane Wirtschaft . No. 06/2017 ( humane-wirtschaft.de [PDF]).
  16. ↑ Poem The Last Chapter by Erich Kästner
  17. ↑ The seven last days of the earth , text by Jörg Zink, accessed on March 21, 2020.