This is the first in a series of installments dealing with a topic that has received a fair amount of exposure in Hollywood - The End of the World! Okay, you can stop shivering, giggling or praising your deity now. In this series I will be exploring different Armageddon scenarios and covering the what, when, where and how of each event. While I will be presenting scientific evidence, please keep in mind this will mostly be speculation and is in no way a promise or prediction of future events. These installments are purely for entertainment, and any doomsday cult proceedings or other self-destructive activities are not the responsibility of the author or the magazine. Now, having said that, let's get on with it. This first installment is one of the seemingly less likely, and slow, scenarios but it does have some serious extinction possibilities for a great number of species. Let's have a warm round of applause for the Ice Age!


Before I get into what is believed to have been the cause of the Ice Ages, thereby boring you to death with theory, lets talk about what would happen if our modern world were engulfed in ice. Appropriately, first on my agenda is the effects of cold on the human body. On the top of the list is frostbite. Frostbite is damage to skin and underlying tissue caused by subfreezing temperatures. The blood flow in your body varies with the external temperature, the most variance being in your hands, feet, nose and ears. The body's core temperature is protected by vasoconstriction (tightening of the arterioles that leads to a decrease in blood flow). Your body uses this process to keep blood out of its extremities, sacrificing toes and fingers to maintain its core temperature. Neat. However, your body isn't completely heartless, so every 5 or 10 minutes it sends some blood to these outer regions at the expense of heat loss. So what happens when your extremities are freezing? Your skin loses sensation first, then as you continue to cool your blood becomes thicker and your blood vessels constrict and begin to leak plasma. Freezing begins to occur and ice crystals form in the cells, leading to cell death. To make matters worse, thawing actually results in additional injury, and subsequent re-freezing causes even more severe damage. So remember, don't thaw until you get to some place warm. There are differing stages of frostbite, varying from minor frostnip to fourth degree frostbite. In the extreme, all the muscles, tendons, blood vessels and nerves in the extremities are frozen. Frostbite won't necessarily kill you, but it can seriously hamper your ability to remove yourself from the situation and survive. I would imagine it could really wreak havoc on a camping trip or other family outing as well.

Next on our list of cold-temperature follies is hypothermia. The condition indicates an abnormally low body temperature, usually accompanied by a decreased metabolism. Logical enough. Hypothermia becomes life threatening when your body temperature drops below 90-degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn't seem like much does it? Age and gender are two main factors in determining the odds of cold-induced mortality, with the elderly and the very young most at risk. Hypothermia's symptoms include gradual loss of acuity and physical ability, lethargy, confusion, drowsiness, pale cold skin, shock, weakness, loss of coordination, uncontrolled shivering, slow breathing and slurred speech. Interestingly, hypothermia is the body's response to cold and is an attempt to protect the brain and the heart. It kills when the temperature of critical organs remains too low for too long, with death usually coming from heart failure. So when the temperature is dropping bundle up and stay out of the water and wind.


Okay, you say, so I'll stay indoors during this Ice Age thing and dress appropriately. Well, it's a start. Humans are adapted primarily to warm weather and while the colder climate will be a threat, there is another aspect of the cooling climate that will be the real killer: food. With most of the Midwestern United States and everything north of it covered by glaciers, there will be a shortage of grain and plant life in general. Most of these will likely be lost before the glaciers ever move into the area, though, due to changes in weather patterns and extended winters. During this process, the climate of the Southeastern United States will become like that of the Northeast with everything to the north shifting in climate accordingly up to and including arctic conditions. Wild and domesticated animals will have a difficult time surviving this wintry world and the food chain may lose some of its essential species resulting in mass extinction. As the ice sheets move slowly southward and fan out across the plains, most life will be pushed to the south with them. Surviving forests, fields and farms will be crushed and ground away under the giant rivers of ice. The displacement of a hundred million or more people into an area of land a fraction of the size, competition for shelter and warmth, and a reduced food supply would make for some serious bedlam. Martial law is a given. Food riots, looting and general lawlessness would wreak havoc on society. Moreover, not all this would happen at once. It would be a slow, methodical process, like a cancer spreading over the land.

You said glaciers move? They sure do. The sheer weight of all the new snow constantly being piled on top causes glaciers to flow. Compacted snow becomes ice and gravity takes over from there. Because of friction with the ground, movement on the underside of a glacier is slower than movement on top so they sort of roll or cartwheel along. This style of movement causes objects that were once on the bottom of the ice flow to be moved up to the top in time. They move slowly, right? Typically, yes. There are, however, recorded cases of glaciers moving as much as 10 meters a day. In a short time, a glacier moving at that speed can cause some huge environmental changes. Given a month or two, the landscape would be unrecognizable. Aside from the threat of landscapes being ground up, the glaciers bring with them flooding, mudslides and avalanches. These are all particularly hazardous to your health. Some interesting statistics: The last Ice Age covered some 32-percent of the land and an additional 30-percent of the oceans with ice. Currently, glaciers cover 10-percent of the worlds land area. There have been 4 extended-length Ice Ages and some 22 shorter ones. This period of time man has enjoyed on earth is actually a short warm period between Ice Ages.

Ice Age? Are you nuts? What about global warming? Oddly enough, global warming may actually be the trigger for the next Ice Age. Many scientists have acknowledged that with the increase in temperature comes additional melting of glaciers, ice caps and ice shelves, causing sea levels to rise. An increase in sea level means an increase in surface albedo (albedo being the amount of solar radiation, or heat, reflected back away from the planet). More surface water leads to more water in the air through evaporation. More water in the air means more clouds, and more clouds mean more albedo. More albedo means more solar radiation reflected back into space. As more heat is bounced back away from the planet, the temperature starts to lower again, the precipitation becomes snow and the rest is seemingly history repeating itself. Considering this cycle has been going on for countless millennia, the whole Ice Age scenario doesn't seem so farfetched, does it? The modern difference is the speed at which the global temperature is rising due to man's interference. What can I say? If this theory is correct then I guess we're in a hurry to get the upcoming Ice Age started. What do you mean upcoming? This is a 'what if' scenario, right? Nope, Ice Ages are a normal part of the Earth's life cycle. Unless it is triggered by something, it will not happen for a thousand years or so.

In the past, sea levels have been higher than those which scientists predict global warming will cause in the immediate future. The temperature of the Earth has also been higher than global warming is likely to make it. The planet has its own cycles and reacts to these changes in its own way. The Earth is a closed system of actions and reactions. Trying to guess what may happen without solid factual knowledge is fruitless. Is man destroying the Earth? I think you should ask; is the Earth going to destroy man? Speculation is a bitch.

Now that you've read my own conclusions, I'll include some rational and scientific information for your perusal:

The earth, as is generally accepted, revolves around the sun in a somewhat circular orbit. This orbit is not a perfect circle: Sometimes the earth is closer to the sun and other times it's farther away. There are, of course, scientific terms for these distances, but I'll spare you the unnecessary techno-babble (I'm sure a fair number of readers spoke them out loud just now). Anyway, in addition to the orbit of the earth not being perfectly circular, the planet itself is not standing straight up on its axis. This, simply put, is why we have seasons. To complicate all of this even further, the Earth also has a slight wobble. Lets see what we have so far: The earth is sometimes closer to the sun and sometimes farther away, the planet is tilted on its axis (roughly 23.5 degrees) and it wobbles. How does the tilt cause seasons? The Northern Hemisphere is tilted away from the sun during winter and the Southern Hemisphere is tilted towards it. Conversely, the Northern Hemisphere is tilted towards the sun in the summer and the Southern Hemisphere is tilted away. There are two times during the year when the earth is in transition, when neither hemisphere is tilted towards the sun (yeah, smarty, spring and fall equinox). This all occurs because the earth is wobbling as it rotates and orbits around the sun. Conveniently, the Northern Hemisphere is pointing away when the earth is closest to the sun. This may seem like excessive detail, and maybe it is, but it helps to understand the glaciation process. (Yes, that's really a word. The growth and shrinkage of glaciers is the core of the Ice Age, and this process is called, you guessed it, glaciation.)

Okay, so now you know something about the earth and its orbit (if you didn't already). So what does any of this have to do with the Ice Age and "the end of the world?!" Common theory suggests that the Ice Ages occurred because of the following factors:

*Changes in the earth's orbit, like eccentricity (how much of a perfect circle it isn't). This, by the way, varies and is believed to be on a 100,000-year cycle.
*The tilt and the direction the North Pole is facing. The degree of tilt also varies and is on a 22,000-year cycle.
*The change in the position of the continents (plate tectonics). Yeah, they move.
*The uplift of these plates affecting global atmospheric and oceanic circulation patterns. When plates make contact with each other, one can go over the top of another or they can smash together and push upwards.
*The reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere (this one is somewhat questionable, as the reduction in CO2 may actually be an effect of the temperature decrease).

You have already read what I believe is happening, and I am not alone in this speculation. I leave you to draw your own opinion, and suggest you do some research of your own if you're really that interested. More than likely the Ice Age is a good thousand years away, but there is the always the possibility that we're expediting the process.

If this scenario interested you or tickled your funny bone in any way, check back next month for the continuation of the "End of the World."