About How The World Ends

A live leaderboard of the apocalypse, ranked by evidence rather than vibes.

How The World Ends tracks every well-known doomsday scenario, from nuclear war and runaway AI to asteroid strikes, zombie outbreaks and the Sun swelling into a red giant. It ranks them on a single board. The idea is half serious and half not. The serious half is that some risks are much more pressing than others, and the news cycle rarely helps people tell which ones those are. The other half is that alien invasions and kaiju deserve a place on the list too, even if the honest score is zero.

How the scores work

Each scenario starts from an evidence baseline: a 0–100 threat index set from current reporting, published research and expert estimates such as those in Toby Ord's The Precipice. The live board then adjusts that baseline in your browser using public data: Polymarket odds on precursor events, Wikipedia pageview spikes, Hacker News chatter, and physical sensors from NOAA, NASA and USGS. Attention can only nudge a score in proportion to its evidence. Scenarios with no evidence stay at zero, no matter how good the movie was.

Every scenario has an explainer page with the reasoning and sources behind its number.

What this site isn't

It's not a forecasting service, and the numbers aren't actuarial probabilities. They're a way to compare dangers. Nothing here is financial, medical or emergency advice. If you're worried about a real emergency, follow your local authorities.

Corrections and contact

Spotted an error or an outdated source? We update baselines when the evidence changes. Reach the site owner at hello@howtheworldends.org.