how are we still standing welcome to
watchmojo.com and today we’re counting
down our picks for the top ten times the
world almost ended before we begin we
publish new videos every day so be sure
to subscribe for more great content for
this list we’re looking at a handful of
times the world was on the verge of
making a huge mistake
thankfully the moment passed number 10
nuclear war games
wait Matthew Broderick’s 1983 film
wargames was based on reality in 1979 a
NORAD programmer nearly kick-started the
next world war by running a simulation
that was then detected as a real threat
by the same organization the program
envisioned a scenario where the Soviet
Union launched 250 missiles towards the
United States the information was passed
along to zbigniew brzezinski President
Carter’s national security adviser who
planned to take the Soviets down with
America thankfully NORAD realized it was
a false alarm
before a simulation ruined the world
number nine Spanish flu
you know that old saying that things can
always get worse
well here is Exhibit A with World War
Ones conclusion finally on the horizon
peace was derailed in 1918 by the sudden
appearance of a horrifying iteration of
Influenza known as the Spanish flu
during a single year an estimated 50 to
100 million people died from the flu
with scientists having no clue where it
came from and why it was so deadly the
war spread the disease around the world
resulting in multiple pandemic waves the
worst part the flu mostly killed people
in the prime of their lives
number eight modified soil bacteria
feared to eliminate plant life from the
looks of things the world might be more
likely to end due to incompetence or
unexpected side effects than the
machinations of some evil genius
Klebsiella plant Accola was a
genetically engineered soil bacteria
that was meant to efficiently turn plant
waste into ethanol
instead after an American scientist
named dr. Elaine Ingham went public with
a study published by one of her graduate
students
GMO was flagged as a hazard organism
that would eradicate most plant life on
the planet while dr. Ingham stance was
later revealed to be unfounded
extrapolation without data this remains
a very cautionary tale number seven
blown fuse causes nuclear panic
here’s another nuclear war scare the
Cold War was an extended staring contest
with countries constantly on edge and
the United States reacted accordingly in
1961 when they lost contact with both
their early warning radar station in
Greenland and NORAD headquarters fearing
the worst troops were set to launch a
counter strike against the Soviet Union
obviously World War three never came to
pass since the communication problem was
due to a single faulty telecommunication
switch that went down in Colorado yep a
power outage almost triggered global
warfare number six NORAD computer almost
starts nuclear war noticing a trend
during the Cold War false alarms were a
common and terrifying occurrence a year
after the war games incident Sevigny F
Brzezinski’s beauty-sleep was once again
disrupted by the news that the Soviets
had launched 220 missiles towards the
United States things quickly took a turn
for the terrifying when a follow-up
phone call confirmed that the figure was
actually an error in reality 2,200
missiles were launched by the Soviets
but then a third call confirmed that it
was all actually a system error caused
by a faulty computer chip – number 5 the
Black Plague call it the bubonic plague
or the Black Death this disease outbreak
brought humanity to its knees during the
14th century Europe saw its population
reduced by an estimated 30 to 60 percent
the Black Plague caused by the bacterium
Yersinia pestis was transferred to
humans from fleas found on rats although
some scientists now theorized the
culprits were human hosted fleas and
lice at the time populations were
vulnerable and recovering from a period
of great famine which combined with
terrible standards of living and a lack
of medical science and intervention
ensured that humanity
was not able to cope with the
unforgiving pandemic number four the
Bonilla comet back in the nineteenth
century
Jose Bonilla a Mexican astronomer
witnessed close to 500 rock fragments
passing by the face of the Sun his
observation was later published in a
scientific journal and was largely
dismissed but some modern astronomers
believe that these large fragments were
the d’être tiss of a much larger comet
that had broken up on its trajectory to
impact earth if these interpretations
are correct a massive comet of around 1
billion tons barely missed our planet
now known as the Bonilla comet the
impact could have seen humans go out the
same way as the dinosaurs number 3 the
solar storm no this has nothing to do
with the Mayan calendar solar storms are
when an eruption happens on the sun’s
surface resulting in a stream of
electrical charges being sent towards
Earth they happen often but July 2012
storm known as a coronal mass ejection
was a doozy dr. Daniel Baker of the
University of Colorado analyzed the data
from the Solar Observatory stereo-a and
determined that the direct impact of the
solar storm which we narrowly avoided
would have resulted in global blackouts
anything that requires electricity would
have been disabled plunging the modern
world into a bygone age number two
science rocket nearly prompts nuclear
launch why does this keep happening in
1995 after the end of the Cold War
Norwegian and American scientists
launched a four stage sounding rocket to
study the aurora borealis while the
Kremlin was notified about the study
nobody knew that the Rockets radar
signature was identical to a u.s. sub
launched Trident missile Russian
president Boris Yeltsin was notified and
the nuclear briefcase was prepared to
launch a counter-attack had this been a
real attack Yeltsin would have had only
five minutes before Moscow was hit since
we’re all still here
the truth came out on top but it was a
nail-biter number one the Cuban Missile
Crisis by the early 60s the United
States had most
dominated the Cold War by installing
missile sites in European countries
close to the Soviet Union the balance of
power shifted when Fidel Castro took
over Cuba and sided with the Soviets
providing a missile launch site just 90
miles from Florida for 13 days both
countries prepared for a nuclear war
while John F Kennedy and Nikita
Khrushchev tried to reach a peaceful
solution eventually the Soviet Union
agreed to remove the missiles if the US
promised to not invade Cuba and also to
remove their Jupiter missiles from Turkey but it was close to close