Humanity has danced on the edge of extinction multiple times throughout history. From nuclear close calls to devastating pandemics, natural disasters, and scientific experiments, we've narrowly escaped total annihilation. Join us as we explore the most terrifying near-death experiences of our species.
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00:00The supervolcano that caused all this is ancient history, but could it happen again?
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we're looking at scientific discoveries, experiments, and historical events that could have destroyed humanity.
00:15In the month of September, some 12,000 people died of influenza in America.
00:21But those numbers would be dwarfed, for the full horror now began.
00:28Kola Superdeep Borehole
00:30With their equipment failing rapidly as they encountered staggeringly high temperatures at these depths,
00:36the engineers at Kola have no option but to stop further drilling.
00:41In the 1970s, Soviet scientists embarked on a straightforward mission to drill as deep into the Earth as possible.
00:48The Kola Superdeep Borehole, a 7.6-mile-deep chasm, remains the deepest artificial point on Earth.
00:55The experiments conducted there told us a great deal about both life on Earth and the planet's makeup.
01:01But what if they'd gone deeper? Experts at the time worried about drilling into the Earth's mantle.
01:06They drill into the crust using a 200-ton, 200-foot-high drilling machine, housed in a huge yellow tower in the center of the borehole site.
01:16Could such an experiment have triggered volcanic activity or seismic shifts?
01:21Luckily, the mantle remains unbreached. The project stalled in 1995 due to both skyrocketing temperatures and costs.
01:29Let's just hope it wasn't also a case of humanity dodging a geological bullet.
01:49Nuclear War Games
01:50Sir, this is the current world intelligence situation, and you might pay particular note to the nuclear submarines off the east and west coast.
01:59Okay.
02:00In 1979, a training tape meant to simulate a Soviet nuclear attack was accidentally fed into NORAD's live warning system.
02:08The resultant scare nearly led to a nuclear Armageddon.
02:11Alarms blared as screens lit up with what appeared to be an incoming missile barrage.
02:16Military commanders scrambled to respond, alerting nuclear forces and bringing the world to the brink of catastrophe.
02:22You taking everything you've got?
02:24Damn it, Maureen, it's an alert!
02:27Thankfully, cool heads noted that nothing was coming up on radar or seismic sensors.
02:32Fortunately, the error was caught before any retaliation orders were issued.
02:36Still, the incident exposed just how close humanity could come to accidental annihilation thanks to human error.
02:43It was a stark reminder that in the nuclear age, even a single man's accident could have deadly consequences.
02:53All stations, this is Crystal Palace. Initiating emergency conference. Stand by.
02:57The eruption of Mount Thera.
02:59Exploding pumice is piling up piece by piece.
03:04This accumulates at a tremendous rate, probably about this much an hour.
03:08Piles up, but then suddenly it changes.
03:12Volcanoes have shaped civilizations, thanks to the fertile soils left in their fiery wake.
03:17But their destructive power also holds civilization-ending potential.
03:21Krakatoa's 1883 eruption unleashed energy equivalent to 200 megatons of TNT, devastating Java and Sumatra.
03:29In 1815, Tambora's eruption brought the year without a summer.
03:33Ash in the atmosphere sent global temperatures plunging, sparking worldwide famines.
03:38But Mount Thera, which erupted around 1600 BCE, takes center stage in volcanic history.
03:44A superheated column of gas, ash, and rock blasted six miles into the stratosphere.
03:51Its eruption obliterated much of the Minoan civilization, the real-life inspiration for Atlantis.
03:57The shock of the explosion sent tsunamis cascading through the Mediterranean Sea, devastating many early human settlements.
04:04Had the after-effects been more widespread, humanity might have been set back centuries or worse.
04:10The annihilation of the Minoan culture was so fantastically catastrophic,
04:15that the event may have planted the seed for one of history's most enduring myths.
04:20The Carrington Event.
04:22The super-fire in our own solar system.
04:26In 1859, the sun unleashed a geomagnetic storm so powerful, it electrified telegraph lines,
04:33sparked fires, and created auroras visible near the equator.
04:37Known as the Carrington Event, it was a cosmic warning shot to the future of electronic age humanity.
04:43At the time, the world ran on steam, coal, and oil.
04:46Electricity was both rare and simple, with the effects of the solar storm localized and minimal.
04:52Today, our interconnected digital infrastructure is far more vulnerable.
04:56A modern equivalent could fry satellites, disable power grids, and plunge modern society into utter chaos.
05:03Estimates suggest such an event would cost trillions in damage.
05:07It would take modern society years to recover from a repeat of the Carrington Event.
05:18Cuban Missile Crisis.
05:20Our government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet military buildup on the island of Cuba.
05:29The Cuban Missile Crisis brought humanity to the very brink of nuclear annihilation.
05:34As the United States discovered Soviet missile installations in Cuba, tensions escalated into a 13-day standoff.
05:41Behind the scenes, military leaders on both sides advocated for war.
05:46U.S. generals proposed an invasion of Cuba.
05:49Commanders in Cuba were authorized to launch tactical nuclear strikes if attacked.
05:54In a field near the village of San Cristobal, the photographs clearly showed 30-foot-long medium-range Soviet nuclear missiles.
06:03President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev ultimately chose diplomacy over devastation.
06:09They negotiated a secret deal that removed missiles from both Cuba and eventually Turkey.
06:15The Cuban Missile Crisis was a stark reminder of how human decision-making narrowly averted catastrophe.
06:21Had cooler heads not prevailed, civilization as we know it could have ended in nuclear fire.
06:26You see, we and the Russians should not play games of chicken with each other
06:30to see how far one might go in a particular adventure without crossing that lethal line into nuclear war.
06:37The Chicxulub Impact.
06:39The KT Impact wiped out 70% of all species on Earth.
06:44But despite the death and destruction, life persisted.
06:48Near misses with asteroids remind us how precarious life on Earth can be.
06:52In 1989, the asteroid 4581 Asclepius skimmed past our planet at a cosmic hair's breadth.
07:00Now imagine an asteroid not missing, like the Chicxulub Impact,
07:04a space rock the size of Mount Everest slammed into what is now Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula more than 66 million years ago.
07:12Scientific instruments show the structure of the underlying rock has been deformed,
07:18revealing the boundaries of a colossal meteorite impact crater.
07:23The collision released a level of energy that is difficult to comprehend.
07:26Firestorms and acid rain ensued.
07:29The impact also triggered a nuclear winter that blocked sunlight.
07:33This instant ice age collapsed most ecosystems, wiping out 75% of life on Earth, including most dinosaurs.
07:41A similar impact in the future would almost certainly deliver equally deadly results.
07:54Spanish Flu.
07:55No one has any idea that the disease will soon steal across the United States,
08:01and that what is happening on an army base in Kansas is about to bring the nation and the rest of the globe to its knees.
08:10In an increasingly globalized world, pandemics reveal the vulnerable underbelly of human civilization.
08:16COVID-19 paralyzed the planet, killing millions and exposing the fragility of our interconnected systems.
08:22But even this pales in comparison to the Spanish Flu of 1918.
08:27Emerging in the shadow of World War One, the influenza virus infected one-third of the global population.
08:33The death toll of the Spanish Flu was estimated by many as 50 million people.
08:38You can't barrier yourself from being exposed because the person who looks healthy may be spreading the disease.
08:45This far eclipsed the death toll of the war itself.
08:49With no antibiotics to treat secondary infections and limited medical knowledge, it spread with terrifying speed.
08:56It devastated urban centers and remote villages alike.
08:59Infrastructure crumbled, economies stalled, and communities were pushed to the brink.
09:04A deadlier communicable virus could ostensibly destroy humanity outright.
09:09Everybody was living in deadly fear because it was so quick, so sudden, and so terrifying.
09:17It destroyed the intimacy that existed amongst people.
09:22Ice Age and the Toba Supervolcano.
09:25As we dug and as we started to realize that the bones were very concentrated in these layers that looked like they were debris flows,
09:31slumps coming off the side of the lake, we said, wait a minute, maybe there is something here.
09:34Maybe there is something that's actually killing these animals and then burying them.
09:39During the devastating glacial periods, humanity teetered on the brink of extinction.
09:44As ice sheets expanded across vast swaths of the planet, the climate grew colder and drier.
09:49In this era before agriculture, food sources were decimated.
09:53Early humans were left with a choice, migrate or perish.
09:57They knew that soon the wind spirits would bring snow, and snow would bring death.
10:04Many did both.
10:05Through the millennia and centuries, Homo sapiens struggled to survive.
10:09The eruption of Toba the Supervolcano further affected global temperatures around 70,000 years ago.
10:15Genetic evidence suggests that Homo sapiens dwindled to as few as 1,000 individuals.
10:20The population bottleneck was so severe, it could have ended our species entirely.
10:25Survival demanded ingenuity, as small bands clung to life near Africa's coasts, relying on marine resources for sustenance.
10:33Particles in the clouds scattered sunlight, causing the sky to appear blindingly bright, but blocking the warming rays of the sun.
10:42The Black Plague
10:43The Black Plague was one of the deadliest diseases in human history, killing an estimated 50 million people worldwide.
10:50It destroyed nearly half of Europe's population alone.
10:53The disease tore through towns and cities with terrifying speed.
10:56It spread along trade routes, leaving devastation in its wake.
11:00Societies crumbled as fear and superstition gripped survivors.
11:03Labour shortages reshaped both the economy and social hierarchies.
11:07But the plague wasn't just a natural disaster, it was also an early example of biological warfare.
11:13In 1347, Mongols besieging the city of Kaffa allegedly launched plague-ridden corpses over the walls,
11:20likely accelerating its spread into Europe.
11:23This dark precedent highlights the risk of weaponised diseases today,
11:27as advancements in biotechnology make pathogens like plague or smallpox potential weapons.
11:33They suffered agonising lumps in their necks.
11:36Just days later, 60% of them were dead.
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11:56Trinity Test
11:57The test was set at midnight.
11:59The prediction was there'd be 60 mile visibility and a certain wind pattern.
12:05Well, at midnight, it was raining cats and dogs.
12:08The Trinity Test marked the birth of the nuclear age.
12:11It was an age born in fire with the potential to end just as quickly.
12:15As the first ever detonation of a nuclear device, it was an experiment shrouded in uncertainty.
12:21Some Trinity scientists even feared the explosion would ignite the Earth's atmosphere.
12:26Such a chain reaction could consume the planet in fire.
12:29While those fears proved unfounded, the test confirmed humanity's ability to unleash catastrophic destruction.
12:35I have to admit I didn't feel much of anything except great joy that it was a success.
12:43It was really later that we all began to think more about it.
12:48Since then, nuclear weapons have brought us perilously close to annihilation.
12:52Near misses from misinterpreted radar signals to mistaken drills remind us how easily things could spiral out of control.
13:00The haunting specter of Trinity Test's hypothetical conflagration mirrors the real ongoing threat of nuclear war.
13:07Three, two, one.
13:20Both the Earth and humanity have faced a heap of close calls and near misses.
13:24Are there any missing from our list? Let us know in the comments below.
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