12 Ways The World Could Be Destroyed
I live and breathe Wall Street. I don't mean that metaphorically, like, "Oh, I love stocks so much I live and breathe Wall Street." No, not at all. I actually live on Wall Street. When I look out my window I see the New York Stock Exchange. And I trade all day. I write articles and books in between trades. And in between writing I try to do various deals. And when I walk outside I'm within feet of guys in machine guns, traders talking on their cell phones, tourists snapping pictures, and the huge US flag that adorns the front of the Exchange.
And I worry. Very wealthy people don't like to worry. They like to focus on the intrigue of their love lives, or they like to play with their new and plentiful toys. So they outsource their worry to me. "James," one of my investors said to me, "I made the money. Now you protect it." We live in a world of nightmares. Every day those nightmares attempt to come to the surface of our reality and stir up some trouble. But understanding these worries, the myriad ways the world could end, and hedging against them (or betting against them) is the way to turn the fear into greed, the nightmare into a dream.
Help me out here. I'm going to list some of the ways the world could end. At least the ways the world could end that people are actually worried about. If you can think of any more, please put them in the comments. Over the next few weeks/months/years I'm going to dissect in this blog the realities of these worries and see how we can make some money because of them.
Some Ways the World Could Be Destroyed
1. Pandemic. We're all mini-experts on Swine Flu now. And here's what we know about flu pandemics: The second wave is much deadlier than the first. And guess what: the second wave is about to start any second.
2. Terrorism on US soil. The other day a coffee cart vendor who used to work on Wall Street got arrested for planning bomb attacks at various locations in NYC. This is really unpleasant for me since I love getting coffee and a donut at the carts. I spoke to a terrorism specialist who works for the government in an undisclosed location (I begged her to tell me where but she refused). She said, "Eventually its going to happen."
3. Financial collapse. In October, 2008 we came really close. Some Nobel Prize winners think that was nothing compared to what's about to hit.
4. The world is running out of oil. The US "peaked" in 1970. Saudi Arabia probably peaked in 2005. What happens when oil hits $20 a gallon?
5. Methane gas is the worst greenhouse gas. What happens when the gas sitting under the continental shelf starts to get released into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to shoot up 10 degrees. Nobody talks about this particular gas because the solutions are much harder to develop.
6. We run out of clean water. Right now over 50% of hospital beds worldwide are filled with people sick from dirty water-related illnesses. The supply of water never changes, but the population is urban areas is going to double and triple in the next few decades. Major metropolitan areas will simply have no clean water.
7. Nuclear terrorism. Its not that hard to make a dirty bomb. I'll show you how in this blog. Its not even hard to make a nuclear bomb. I'll show you that here as well. Stay tuned.
8. Major hurricanes. What happens when a Category 5 hurricane hits New York City? Don't laugh. We might be overdue.
9. Nuclear terrorism, part II (because I can't get enough of it). Warren Buffett once told me (well, he was on CNBC and told many people), "Over the next 100 years there is a virtual certainty of a nuclear warhead exploding on a populated area." How will it happen? What will be the result on the world? On you?
10. Volcano. The largest volcano in the world is at Yellowstone National park. If that erupted it would probably wipe out most of the continent. And its about 30,000 years overdue. Can we detect it and stop it?
11. Nanotechnology gone awry. This isn't science fiction anymore. I don't want someone saying "mistakes were made" when the entire planet is enveloped by gray nano-goo. Who are the players and what are they doing to protect us?
12. The human race is going extinct? Why are all the kids getting peanut allergies? When I was a kid nobody ever dropped dead from eating a peanut. The human race is losing its ability to fight off auto-immune diseases.
Lets start with this list. I have more and I want to hear from other people. Over the next few posts I'll start exploring the realities of the above. Maybe there's a little bit of fear here, but trust me there's also some greed. If the world doesn't end then I think there's some money to be made.
Follow James Altucher on Twitter: www.twitter.com/jaltucher
Stephen Gyllenhaal: The Shock and Awe of a Second Financial Meltdown
I have this nasty feeling that on the right, the big boys are happier than ever -- no reforms, no meddling in the existing structure and the memory fast fading of who actually caused that last meltdown.
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James, you know how to make me laugh!
Did you write any humor books? If so, I would like to know how to get them.
Terrific column.
How about the effects of the unbridled greed that has plagued this country (and the rest of the developed world) for generations? You even state at the end of your piece: "Over the next few weeks/months/years I'm going to dissect in this blog the realities of these worries and see how we can make some money because of them." From where I sit, when the unimaginable strikes the first thought that enters my mind is not, "how can I make money from this?". Perhaps when we finally understand, on a collective level, that we are all in this together and that when we are compassionate with our fellow man we are actually caring for ourselves, this screwed up society in which we live will begin to soften and we can learn to live together as citizens of the Earth. You mention your wealthy clients, and how you get to do their worrying for them. I've often wondered, when you're net worth reaches, let say $100 million, just how much more do you truly need? Collecting wealth at the expense of "the little guy" (i.e. the far-reaching fallout from last September's Wall Street collapse) seems to be the biggest threat to our world. "Turning the fear into greed", as you suggest, doesn't create a dream but, rather, a more frightening nightmare.
@GlenParked, the beauty of capitalism (and perhaps the twin effects of fear and greed that motivate it) is that we don't sit back and let the unimaginable happen to us but there are a myriad of motivations that drive us to prevent the unimaginable. The amount of flu vaccines that will be administered for instance over the next few months (and my kids are getting their flu shots this morning) is a combination of government regulation and the hard work and genius efforts of scientists sitting in corporations. Without capitalism those vaccines never would'v'e been developed.
"Turning the fear into greed" saves lives.
If we're talking world destroying affairs, you'd be remiss to leave out the range of things that might take us out that are astronomical in nature.
Like the sun, which has been acting up like we've never seen before, with hardly any sunspots. Unnatural lows often lead to unnatural highs, and we have to be realistic about the fact that if the Sun sneezes, we're all toast.
This one's definitely a bit more out there, but what if a quasar ever came nearby? A quasar is blackhole as big and bright as a star that's hurtling through the universe at the speed of light. It dawned on me that if a quasar were headed our way, we wouldn't know until the last moment as the light needed for us to see it doesn't arrive any earlier than the object itself. And with the amount of energy in a quasar, we don't need to get hit in the jaw to feel the devastating effects.
Finally, we can't ignore what's going on with the Earth's magnetic field, which flips every so often. We're overdue for a flip and data shows the process is starting. The problem is at some point our currently nicely balanced magnetic field breaks down into lots of smaller fields. During this time we lose our magnetic shield that funnels solar radiation to the poles. This could be an extinction level event on its own, but if combined with sun acting up, we'd be in big big trouble.
Great post, geoff. Humans can do horrible things to each other, but they survive. Mother Earth will take care of herself regardless of what humans do, but she is vulnerable to outside forces of the cosmos. As you point out, any one of the possibilities could be an extinction event.
You spell out horrific scenarios and then wonder how to make money off them. Guess what, it's a bit late for the "pandemic" category. Several vaccine makers are already playing to that fear.
But what strikes me about your list is how important it is that we make life as sustainable and renewable as possible. If any of these disasters, or several, were to hit us the last thing we will be worrying about is money. We already have the technology to provide clean water from the air. We already have the ability to make energy basically free for everyone. In a disaster, the truly important things are highlighted. In a fire, you grab the irreplaceables. In America, it would be wise for us to create a setup where the basics of survival are widely available and dependable. Money can still be made, and creative endevours will still be attempted, but when we focus on the good of the whole we will be much better prepared should any of these scenarios come to pass. And we should be grateful for all the things that haven't happened that could have.
I am of the opinion that no one thing will 'get' us.
It will be death by a thousand little cuts,... Climate change and one large (or several sequential smaller) crop failuer, layered on water limitation or oil crisis, layered on one large or numerous smaller pandemics (H1N1 + antibiotic resistant Cholera + flesh-eating bacteria,.
If we can stop or slow the chain-reaction in some way - Then maybe we can get out the other side of the coming crises with something resembling a vibrant society. But I am hedging my bets.
How about:
The Jets keep winning. There is no scotch in the liquor cabinet. Nebbishy financial analysts can't get a decent table anywhere glamorous. Tom DeLay continues to dance. Life doesn't end but keeps on in its imitable idiosyncratic way.
What oh what will we do?
Actually COPerez, that is something to be proud of. Thats why, for instance, one of our greatest exports is our medical technology. Because we have the intellectual resources, plus the financial motivation as well the motivation to do good deeds, that allows us to continually make new breakthroughs in technologies that save lives. I'm excited to see what new research comes from the ongoing stem cell research now that Obama is President, for instance.
Its also capitalism thats driving all the breakthroughs right now in clean technologies. I've looked at many private clean technology companies looking for investment right now. The innovations are remarkable. I doubt you would find this level of innovation in Cuba, for instance. Or even China, which lags us despite having 4 times the number of people.
I hope you were sincere when you said you were proud but somehow I doubt it. This country and its innovations (financed almost entirely by "Wall Street", I might add) do make me very proud.
American capitalism! Nothing is so horrible, so unimaginable, so terrifying that someone on Wall Street won't figure out a way to make money off of it.
I'm so proud...
Imagine if Pope Benedict gave a speech saying the Catholic Church has had it wrong all these centuries; there is no reason priests shouldn't marry. That might generate the odd headline, no?
When a leading proponent for one point of view suddenly starts batting for the other side, it's usually newsworthy.
So why was a speech last week by Prof. Mojib Latif of Germany's Leibniz Institute not given more prominence?
Latif is one of the leading climate modellers in the world. He is the recipient of several international climate-study prizes and a lead author for the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He has contributed significantly to the IPCC's last two five-year reports that have stated unequivocally that man-made greenhouse emissions are causing the planet to warm dangerously.
Yet last week in Geneva, at the UN's World Climate Conference--an annual gathering of the so-called "scientific consensus" on man-made climate change --Latif conceded the Earth has not warmed for nearly a decade and that we are likely entering "one or even two decades during which temperatures cool."Lati
How about this:
-- Global warming causes widespread desertification of the majority of cropland in the U.S., Europe and Asia. This has occurred when world population reaches 9 billion. Resulting crop shortages bring famine, war, pestilence and eventually cannibalism. Major flooding, fires and wind storms destroy advanced nations' infrastructure. Civilization collapses.
-- new strain of flesh-eating bacteria becomes immune to antibiotics and literally eats mankind.
-- new Ice Age
-- efforts to reverse engineer global warming goes horribly wrong resulting in increase of surface temperature of the Earth to 150 degrees killing all life.
Let the wagering begin...
An interesting chapter in the upcoming book, "Super Freakonomics" points out that if we all simply switch from cow mean to donkey meat it will solve the climate change situation. Much more than if we simply switch to electric cars (there point is that carbon monoxide isn't as serious a threat as methane gas).
RAPIDLY ATTACKING CLIMATE CHANGE WILL REDUCE THE METHANE THREAT!
Radical new technologies will let the love affair with cars change what is currently believed about energy.
Revolutionary new systems make possible electric cars that need no recharge - and hybrid engines that might need to be fueled with only one gallon of water for each thousand miles of driving.
See the article: 4 Steps to Revive the Auto Industry and the Economy on the website: http://www
These breakthroughs lead to cars and trucks that need no fossil fuel or recharge. Later, more advanced versions will become power plants when parked, wirelessly selling electricity to the local utility.
The science is not in the textbooks and will understandably be greeted with widespread skepticism.
However, independent laboratory validation of one remarkable breakthrough has taken place at Rowan University. It produced far more heat than can readily be explained by existing science, clearly suggesting a new source of energy is involved. These experiments can readily be repeated by other laboratories.
The Rowan validation accelerates the process of proving that new technology can allow a barrel of water to replace 200 barrels of oil!
This path to reducing climate change - and the resulting release of Methane in the arctic - allows consumers to literally drive the necessary reductions in fossil fuels.
Who will not buy an electric car that needs no recharge, or a hybrid fueled by a gallon of water each thousand miles?
Sounds like you ripped some of these straight from sci-fi novels and movies. That's not to say they're not worthy of inclusion. As everyone knows good, and even bad, sci-fi is built on a foundation of that which is possible. So, allow me to add a handful of missing, yet plausible, scenarios:
1) An "extiction level event"-sized asteriod colliding with Earth;
2) Plain-old global nuclear war;
3) The rise (and revolt) of artificially intelligent life;
4) Destruction due to an unexpectedly created black hole (via the CERN supercollider in France);
5) and lest we forget ...hostile extraterrestrials!
Call me cynical, but ...the American (and world) movie-going public will happily and eagerly continue pay handsomely to distract themselves with the tripe that comes out of Hollywood. So perhaps the best way to make money with these apocalyptic nightmares is to just keep making movies about them. :)
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