Terrifying Close Calls in History

From the spread of the Spanish Flu to the Cuban Missile Crisis, there have been numerous moments when civilization as we know it nearly ended. You might be surprised at just how lucky we are to have made it this far, and that these events didn't cause mass extinction despite how close they came. It's a reminder of just how fragile life on Earth can be. Curious how close humanity came to disaster? Here are 20 times the world almost ended.

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1. Eruption of Mount Thera

The eruption of Mount Thera in Greece—known today as Santorini—emitted a blast so powerful, geologists believe the blast was equivalent to hundreds of atomic bombs exploding in a fraction of a second. It wiped out the Minoan civilization and caused a large series of tsunamis that swallowed nearby islands. 

Hartmut Inerle on Wikimedia

2. The Spanish Flu

In 1918, the Spanish flu swept over mankind, infecting over 500 million people—nearly one-third of the world's total population at the time. Even now, it's still regarded as one of the deadliest natural disasters in history, and is estimated to have killed 50-100 million people.

Otis Historical Archives, National Museum of Health and Medicine on Wikimedia

3. Comet Hyakutake

The Hyakutake comet was discovered just a few months earlier in January of 1996 by astronomer Yuji Hyakutake before it passed Earth in March, just 9.3 million miles away. To put that in perspective, the distance between Earth and the Sun is 93 million miles. Not only was it one of the brightest comets to approach our planet, it also had the longest tail of any known comet, stretching 350 million miles.

E. Kolmhofer, H. Raab; Johannes-Kepler-Observatory, Linz, Austria (http://www.sternwarte.at) on Wikimedia

4. Eruption of Mount Tambora

The eruption of Mount Tambora is recorded as the biggest volcanic explosion in history. Its blast was so violent that 1896 became known as "the Year Without a Summer," due to all the ash that spewed into the Earth's atmosphere, darkening the sky and obscuring the sun from view. It caused widespread drought, famine, and cold weather as a result, and killed an estimated 70,000-100,000 people.

This image was taken by the NASA Expedition 20 crew. on Wikimedia

5. The Black Plague

The Black Plague, also known as the Black Death, was one of the deadliest and most devastating pandemics in history. It killed between 75,000,000 and 200,000,000 people, and nearly cut 14th-century Europe's total population in half.

Edward Howell on Unsplash

6. The Carrington Event

Named after British astronomer Richard Carrington, the Carrington event was a massive solar storm in 1859 that would have devastated the world had it happened today. The flare was so intense that people thought it was daytime at night, and it destroyed telegraph communications across the globe.

NASA on Wikimedia

7. The Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 25, 1962, the world came the closest it has ever been to a nuclear annihilation—and it was due to an American air base guard sounding the wrong alarm. The crisis, however, had been escalating for days, a 13-day confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union. Fortunately, things were resolved before it turned into a full-blown catastrophe.

Cecil Stoughton. White House Photographs. John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, Boston on Wikimedia

8. Simulated War Game

On November 9, 1979, a simulated war game by a US Air Force officer was connected to the mainframe in the control room of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), painting a scenario where 1,000 Soviet nuclear missiles were headed straight for the US. Thinking it was real, NORAD almost responded to the possible nuclear attack—but thankfully realized it was a fluke.

Paweł L. on Pexels

9. Chernobyl Disaster

In April of 1986, an accident at a power plant in Ukraine nearly caused a widespread, deadly disaster. The incident happened due to a reactor exploding, releasing massive amounts of radiation into the air, rendering the surrounding areas uninhabitable and causing locals in nearby cities to immediately evacuate. 

Ingmar Runge on Wikimedia

10. Fragments from the Bonilla Comet

In 1883, just over a century before the Hyakutake comet blazed past Earth, thousands of fragments of another comet narrowly missed the planet as well—by only 400 miles. Named after astronomer James Bonilla, who discovered the nearly catastrophic event, the Bonilla comet had broken up in front of the sun and (luckily) flew past Earth.

Justin Wolff on Unsplash

11. July 2012 Solar Storm

The Carrington event wasn't the only time Earth was hit with a massive solar storm. In 2012, when people were already convinced the world was going to end based on the misinterpretation of a calendar, another solar superstorm—a powerful expulsion of plasma, called a coronal mass ejection (CME), from the sun—had occurred and just narrowly missed Earth by roughly nine days. Had the planet orbited more slowly, the CME would have directly hit Earth and caused a catastrophic blackout.

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center on Wikimedia

12. Permian Extinction

The Permian extinction is the closest Earth ever came to mass extinction, which happened around 250 million years ago. Nearly 90% of all species on the planet were wiped out, including 95% of marine species and 70% of the terrestrial species. The most likely cause points to warming of the planet and other environmental changes.

Arti Polyakov on Unsplash

13. Chicxulub Impact

Roughly 66 million years ago, an asteroid hit Earth and decimated the planet, causing a mass extinction of all dinosaurs. Traveling 40,000 miles an hour, it struck what's now the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico, leaving a massive crater—120 miles wide and 19 miles deep—buried underneath the peninsula.

MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA GSFC on Wikimedia

14. Windscale Fire

The Windscale fire was England's Chernobyl, when flames broke out at the facility in the fall of 1957. As the fire raged, it released large amounts of radiation into the atmosphere for three days, spreading throughout the country. It caused hundreds of cancer deaths, and was luckily extinguished before the fallout dispersed farther to other regions.

Chris Eaton on Wikimedia

15. False Nuclear Alarm

The US wasn't the only one treated to a frightening scene when a simulation went awry. On September 26, 1983, a false alarm sounded, indicating that five US missiles were heading straight toward the Soviet Union. Thankfully, a lieutenant colonel of the Soviet Air Defence Forces, Stanislav Petrov, assumed correctly that this wasn't true. What had happened instead was that the warning system had malfunctioned, leading to an erroneous display.

Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

16. The Y2K Bug

In hindsight, it might be considered hilarious that the turn of the century was considered a world-ending event, but for those who lived through that era, the threat was very much real. But what really happened? A coding shorthand programmers used (where years were condensed to two digits, such as "98" for 1998) made people fear that when the clock struck midnight on December 31, 1999, widespread system failures would wreak havoc across the world.

Alan W on Unsplash

17. Toba Eruption

Roughly 74,000 years ago, the Toba eruption nearly caused mass extinction for all of humanity. The volcano, located in present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia, was 10 times more powerful than the Tambora explosion and at least two magnitudes larger. 

Robin Canfield on Unsplash

18. Tunguska Event

On June 30, 1908, an asteroid struck Earth's atmosphere, exploding over the skies of Siberia. Though the impact was massive and widespread, flattening 830 square miles of dense forest and 80 million trees, the area was luckily sparsely populated, resulting in very few casualties. The blast was reported as having the energy equivalent of 1,000 Hiroshima bombs.

Leonid Kulik, the expedition to the Tunguska event on Wikimedia

19. The Mayan Long Count Calendar

The world almost ended in 2012, and it wasn't because of the solar storm mentioned previously that had happened that same summer. In fact, it was due to a misinterpretation of the Mayan calendar, where many believed that December 21, 2012 (when the cycle ended) was a doomsday prediction.

Julia Taubitz on Unsplash

20. COVID-19 Pandemic

The abrupt spread of an unknown flu-like virus toward the end of 2019 caused massive lockdowns across the globe, sending many into a frenzy. In 2020, people were temporarily banned from traveling unless they had a proper reason, and a two-week quarantine was required upon landing to ensure no symptoms developed. As of 2025, over 7 million people have died from the COVID-19 outbreak.

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