Wild cards are highly improbable events but if they do happen, their effects will have severe consequences. Human history has always een punctuated by wild card events, Here's a list of some of the ones I've see discussed lately
-wild card global cooling caused by a prolonged drop in sun spots (vs global warming)
-wild card peak oil and peak gas leading to shortages and resource wars (could include water and other base metals -copper, coal, uranium, as we shift to mining lower grade ores from highly concentrated grades etc)
-wild card 10-20 year mega drought like Australia is now experiencing and North America saw 250 years ago
-wild card increased risks of wild fires due to extreme weather swings or supervolcano causes volcano winter, ash covered fields, crop failures, hunger and death
-wild card wealth collapse-individual savings + government pensions less then what's needed to support retiring baby boomers
-wild card-scarcity of strategic raw materials in 10-20 years halts smart technology boom, and leads to resource wars; According to Armin Reller at the University of Augsburg and Tom Graedel Yale University we may be running out of key strategic metals and materials within a few decades if we don’t find substitutes (Antimony 15-20 years to depletion at current rates, Hafnium 10 years; Indium 5-10 years; Platinum 15 years; Silver 15-20 years; Tantalum 20-30 years; Uranium 30-40 years; Zinc 20-30 years
-wild cardBio terrorist attack in next 5 years
-wild card Risk of bird flu pandemic or other pandemics as climate shifts and pathogens migrate into new population areas.
-wild card Shutdown of the ocean conveyor belt, dropping Europe and North America into a deep freeze like in the little ice age in the 17 century.
-wild card Planned population genocide to rightsize the global population back to the limits of earth's carrying capacity-300 to 500 million people vs 6-9 billion
© 2005-2009
Walter Derzko -"Changing the world, one idea at a time"©
Expert, Consultant and Keynote Speaker on Emerging Smart Technologies, Innovation, Strategic Foresight, Business Development, Lateral Creative Thinking and author of an upcoming book on the Smart Economy "
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".....Strategy without action is a day-dream; action without strategy is a nightmare"-old Japanese proverb
- ".......Ours is the age that is proud of machines that think and suspicious of men who try to." -- H. Mumford Jones
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".......Without changing our patterns of thought, we will not be able to solve the problems we created with our current pattern of thought." --A. Einstein
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".......Change is difficult, but complacency and stagnation are surefire showstoppers..." --Walter Derzko
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".......Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." -- Margaret Mead
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".......Small minds discuss people; Average minds discuss events; Great minds discuss ideas; --Anon
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