The Chaser Report - This Is How Humanity Will End

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

In today's Chaser Report, Dom knows how the world is going to end and is making Charles guess. Why not play along at home and see how many mass extinction events you and the kids can predict?PRODUCER NOTE: Charles' audio is a bit shithouse in this one 'cos only Dom's mic was recorded. These are common mistakes when you've done 1296 episodes of a podcast. Apologies. ---Listen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gatigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Dom and the last ever episode. Yes, it is. This is the last episode of The Chaser Report. Or at least it's the episode that describes the last ever. It may not actually be. Maybe this is a tribute in the Tenacious D style to what would one day be the last episode of the Chaser Report.

Back in COVID times, Charles, there was a sense. I think from some listeners that we were a little bit negative about things that we tended to be a bit of a bummer to listen to. Frankly, reflecting the deep depression we were all during the time. They did. There was an emotional connection. We were all in a hole together.

And unlike that famous moment in the West Wing where someone else jumps in the hole with you because they know the way out, we didn't know the way out. We were just going, God, this whole sucks. But I have an article here, Charles, from none other than popular mechanics, pretty reputable magazine about how humanity will end. Oh, okay. Will it be tomorrow next week, a few weeks into the Pauline Hanson

One Nation government that's come on the way? I don't know. And do they know or is that, like, are they actually describing exactly? This is how humanity will end, scientists say, and it isn't pretty. Oh, great. Okay. Oh, this is going to be fun. After the ads.

Subtitle, slight spoiler. Stay calm, doomsday prep. we probably won't be around to see it. Well, but I think I can take a more depressing note than that, Charles. Emma Frederickson is the author and a lot of research is here. So of the possible ways for humanity to end, Charles, which are the ones that you would imagine would be on the radar? There's a couple of scenarios here.

Well, there's obviously the sort of climate collapse scenario, which leads to sort of famine and dehydration and all that sort of thing run out of. Yeah, there's one. That is on the table. this is family, end of the world, family feud really, ding! This is the one called We Could Annihilate Ourselves. Let's talk about that. Okay, so should I go through?

Yeah, you should try and, I'll see if it's in the article. So this is basically, this goes back to the 1990s where an economist called Robin Hansen, no relation to Andrew, proposed a theory called the Great Filter. It meant that every species, human or alien, there's some sort of barrier that stops them from massively like exploding and taking over the whole planet or whatever. There are filters that make it impossible. And there have been a few mass extinction events in the past. Climate change is obviously one.

Nuclear wars are a popular option. And so there's a think about 5,000 or 5.5,000 nuclear warheads that the US and Russia have now. And then whatever China has, who knows. So that's still out there. There's nine nuclear. Probably now, yeah. You wouldn't, and Australia is still not on the list. What are we doing?

North Korea, Pakistan, India. India. India. New Zealand. Shh, don't tell anyone. I last hope. Yeah. So there's that.

There's still plenty, more than enough all heads to completely destroy the planet. But. I think South Africa had nuclear arms, didn't they? Oh, does it? They had a nuclear weapons program during apartheid, and they decided, you know. They probably did.

But of course, it mentions a more recent threat, which is, of course, AI. And we've just seen in the past week or so, all these AI models escaping their sandbox. And it's not in the article, but worth noting that even the anthropic, supposedly the ethical AI, had the same problem that it escaped its sandbox and started hacking things. So could very easily just go, that's the Skynet scenario. And actually, one of the resonating things about that is so OpenAI had a big thing

because one of their bots invaded hugging face, which was another company and hacked into it to get answers to a question that it was supposed to answer, right? That was about a week ago. And then just literally a couple of days ago, open AI, we did a bit of an audit of our systems and realized, actually, that's not the first time nor the last time. Oh, wow. It happened.

It actually happened dozens of times. The demo model just went, we need the answer. We've got to go hack into something. I mean, an impressive dedication. The AI has to get gotten better and better at hiding its tracks. Right. So I think the whole point is we have no idea how often the AI dump. So it's a good question, Charles.

When we had the Chaser interns, if you had set them a task that they needed to do, and they had performed that task by committing a crime and then covering it up, would you have been appalled or impressed at their hutspah and, you know, entrepreneurial spirit? Speaking as any capitalist employer, of course I'd be impressed. But you didn't. They chose ingenuity. And you didn't know. And you didn't know.

It's the one thing. Deniability. From a loyal employee is to not know. all the dodgy shit they're doing. I mean, money for your company. How did Uber, how did Uber set up in New South Wales? Yes. And became the dominant position in Rideshare.

It broke the law. It was literally illegal and we were all using it. Yes. What about the bikes? Same with Airbnb. Same with the bike. Ingenuity. So, I mean, I...

All mantra of Silicon Valley for the last 30 years has been break shit. Disrupt. And so if, if the AI does destroy humanity, our last words will be good stuff. That was really creative. That was really creative. And look, Sam Maltman has actually said a couple of years ago, he said, well, he said this. You know, I think AI will probably, like, most likely sort of lead to the end of the world.

But in the meantime, there will be great companies created with serious machine learning. Great. Okay, so that's one scenario that technology destroys us. But don't you think that that's such a trendy? Like, I'm sorry, but that's true. I'm sure that when Bluetooth was invented, they went, oh, my God, this is going to be the end of humanity. You know, I'm sure during the dot-com boom, it was all like, oh, my God, this is all going to end humanity. Like, every time there's any technological revolution, there's doomsayers who say it's going to be the end of history.

Oh, the pencil. The pencil's going to do us in. And the one rule of history is that it doesn't be. So there you go. So that's point one. We could annihilate ourselves. We haven't nuked ourselves yet. And when I was a kid in the 80s, that was a thing that seemed.

seem likely. All right, what else? What else is going to go wrong? Okay, so what about some sort of, like, meteor, like, go out the same way as the dinosaurs. Is that part of the thing? Like, some sort of, because those sort of asteroids sometimes come close. And my understanding is they don't really map them that well. Like, it's entirely possible that, you know, like, sure, they're probably looking out

and making sure that nothing's going to get America or whatever. Ding. Oh, ding. Absolutely right. Yeah. So the point that they're making is 66 million years ago, an asteroid 10 to 15 kilometers wide struck the earth. And that was the end of the dinosaurs. Obviously a very long time ago, but the model still holds. Because it's important to know it wasn't just that the, I mean, obviously a couple of dinosaurs would have been squashed by the asteroid. Let's be very clear. But what actually killed them was the aftermath, where the collision launches debris into the air, blocked out the sun, created an unending winter. And so a lot of dinosaurs basically just, slowly starve to death. So yeah, that's a possibility. In May, like, you know, a couple of months ago, an asteroid avoided Earth by 56,000 miles, which sounds like a lot, but that's only a quarter of the distance to the moon. So, yeah, basically what one study from 2019, and this is

mass you'd want to get right, I feel, Charles. Our research has figured out that the frequency of an asteroid larger than 5Ks, i.e. half the size of the dinosaurs one, it strikes Earth once every six million years. So the odds are there, but it's not very likely. Right. Can I say the, you know, how, you know, the world is now replete with IMEX. Yes, that's true. Although not one in Sydney, not whether it can show 70 million, 70mm, the Odyssey, just sidebar. Yeah, although we've got an IME. We had one before that was the biggest in the world. Oh, we've got the darling other one. Yes, but they've ripped the old one out that had

a film projector and put in a smaller one that can't do the 70 mil. So it's only, the proper one can only see in Melbourne now. So, but, you know, a lot of those... Like this one's digital, to be clear, yeah. Movie cinema. Yeah. You know, they show disaster movies like deep impact. Yeah.

Um again. The Odyssey. So I reckon there is a non-zero chance that when the asteroid finally hit. Oh, brilliant. There will be a subsection of humanity who will at that very moment be watching a movie. Yes. Of asteroids destroying the Earth only to look out the wind. and go, oh my God, that is actually...

And that's why I'm advocating future IMAX cinemas have windows in them. Or perhaps the skylight. And there's also an even smaller chance, Charles. When the asteroid arrives, renowned filmmaker Christopher Nolan will be filming a film in IMAX. I don't know if you've probably heard all the coverage says, when he's shooting on 70mm film, it's the most expensive way to make a film. And this is the first movie that's been completely shot on 70 mil iMacs.

You've got to change the film catastrophe every three minutes. So I imagine if the asteroid comes and Nolan's got the shot, but I've got to change the film. Slow it out. Hold it. Yeah. Hold for film change. Anyway, so yeah, that doesn't seem massively likely. They also note that NASA has actually come up with this thing for firing a rocket into it so that it changes course.

You don't need Bruce Willis. Which is lucky because Bruce Willis is not well. But we've seen that movie. That was the independence day or something. No, no. It was one of the, it was either Armageddon or Deep Impact. I guarantee you that that space program has a really cool acronym. Probably does.

It'll be called some of those d'ar, bullseye is good. I like bullseye. Yeah. It'll be something like that. You should look it out. If it was Australian, it would be how's that? But American, it would be like, shawing! Yeah, so check that one out.

We'll take some ads while I look at the next Dumb stas-Dustace. The Chaser Report, now with Extra Whispers. Okay, so I found out the name of the Nessa project. What's it called? The double asteroid redirection test or Darth. Oh, well done. Hey, good stuff. All right, so you've got two from two so far.

There are two more in this article in Popular Mechanics. Okay. Next one. Oh, it's got to be a disease. Actually, no. That's not on the list. I mean, we kind of have done. Actually, no, there's three more and a massive pandemic.

It's a little bit too real, that one. But no, fair enough. No, okay. I actually don't think, I don't think that a disease could, it wouldn't wipe out all humans. Yeah, and that's the field. We kind of. That's the field of this or that, the microphone. Yeah.

And we've sort of already done that with, we've already seen plague in Black Death. And like, we've given it a good go. Boring. You can get most of, you can get rid of most of us, but not all of us, I think is the idea. What about we all get addicted to our phone and forget to have sex? I mean, sure. But what about people who use their phones to find people who have sex with? I mean, Tinder's saved the planet out of it pretty much at that point.

Yeah, that's another one of those. Self-adjusting. It's like when, you know, the potato famine and we sold potato crops, things like that. What else might happen? Three more possibilities. It's hard. Okay. If it helps with a clue, there are two things that are different sides of the same coin.

So crop collapse? I think bigger. Okay. Oh, what about the sun die? Yes. Bing. Not dies. Expands to the point where it absorbs the earth.

And that's, we know that will happen. So this is the final. Unless we managed to get out off the planet, it's in about 5 billion years, which is 75 times longer than us and the dinosaurs. That's two Christianolan. Yeah, two Christopher Dolphers. That's right.

The sun will run out of fuel. It will become a white dwarf, and eventually its atmosphere will completely engulf Earth. So anything that, so the actual planet itself is doomed, the actual planet Earth, unless we tow it. Well, that's breaking in.

Unless we tow it somewhere else. Yeah. Which we might. We should do it press release. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Could we put a little, if we have enough rockets, can we sort of blast ourselves somewhere new? I don't know. Shouldn't Elon be doing that rather than trying to get us to Mars? Why don't we just sort of have a, is there some sort of can we get a tow truck that tow us further out? Yeah, because you'd have to solve energy because we get, what is it, 99% of our energy comes ultimately from solar.

Yeah, exactly. Like photosynthesis, all our crops and everything like that. We better come up with that cold fusion thing. Yeah, so we need to solve that. But yeah, I don't see. Some people would be like, we need more nuclear reactors. That'll do it. You'd also need a way to heat heat it, wouldn't you?

You'd have to. Yes. Yeah, little blow heaters. Radiators everywhere. Yeah, that'd be perfect. All right, so the last two, I said, they're two different sides of the same coin. And you've got to think as big as you can get. You go, this is absolutely, like, much bigger than the, even the idea of the sun engulfing planet Earth,

which will happen, supposedly. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. Actually, no, there is, why are you thinking? There is some research that says the planet could actually survive because it might well be that the forces that draw Earth towards the sun as it gets bigger might weaken. So we actually sort of drift away, but we'll still probably die and get too hot. Anyway, there's a little bit of hope there.

That makes sense. Using up. Less gravity, less gravity. Yeah, that's right. Okay. Still not good for the heat side of things. Okay, so I want to say something like, so this is a big of it. Big.

What about we slip into a black hole? That's an interesting one, but way bigger than that. Way bigger. Much bigger than that. Way like as big as you can possibly conceive of. That privatized the world. Yeah, that's right. Charlie, no, Charles, get this.

As you probably know, I mean, dark energy is what is supposedly driving the expansion of the universe, right? So we know we're in expanding cosmos. That's been resolved. So the distance between everything is slowly increasing, and that's what dark energy does. What if it kept going and it kept increasing in the speed of the expansion to the point where the universe ripped itself apart. So the entire universe would be impossible. And basically every atom, like everything in the entire universe would get so, would expand so much that would basically dissolve from each other. So every bond between every other thing would dissolve because

of the expanding universe. Like think of it was a giant rub band that you pull on and eventually just It's impossible. It'd be the end of everything conceivable in the entire universe. That is big. That's very big. And what's the percentage? That would suck. Because is that, it does it happen next Tuesday?

Yeah, I hope it happens before my next tax returns due because I'm a bit late. No, I mean, this is just a theory. This is not even something that has a time frame on it. We don't know. We don't know what the results are of an expanding universe and what happens, but that's one possibility. Okay. So that is big.

I can't, yeah, okay. So that would be bad. It would be, it would mean the end of trolls on social media, so that wouldn't be all bad side. Does that mean the other possibility that everything clumps together and becomes a singularity? Ding, very good. So the big crunch was the idea. But there's another version, this is the big crunch.

So there was the big rip. Yeah. It was the first one. This is the big crunch, which is where the universe will collapse back into itself, rather than expanding into Olivia. The rate of the universe's expansion, in theory, will slow so drastically that gravity will win over the forces of dark energy and expansion.

And gravity will start basically undoing the Big Bang. So ever since the Big Bang, everything's been expanding. Yeah. Everything then goes back. So, I mean, on the bright side, it'll be a great way to finally get smaller phones. But also, I feel like what, the thing that sort of, I don't imagine that they've covered,

but it's sort of the top of my mind for this sort of existing thing is what happens to property prices? Yeah. Well, I mean, they've already started contracting. This is the first symptom. Oh, no, Albo! What have you done? Oh, God, it's the big crunch. The last version of this, which should be familiar to people who know Sydney property prices

or Australian property prices is that there's cycles of expansion and contraction so that it goes, it shrinks down again, and there's another big back. And wouldn't that be just like the universe that once you think you've got your fucking house paid off, then it contract and then your bloody kids get to enjoy it going up again? You thought you bought it a quarter acre block. Oh dear. Anyway, there you go. So those are the popular mechanics list of the ways in which the universe could end. No, I feel like that is not that bleak.

I thought this was going to be a really bleak episode. But I feel like a lot of those will look sensational a little bit. Well, I mean, I know you're a Douglas Adams fan. And the notion that going to the end of the universe every single day for a restaurant that travels through time and space would be very entertaining. So I think we just need to call it early, dub ourselves the official podcast at the end of the universe. And we may have to keep doing it for another 75 billion years, Charles, which on some days it feels like we're already doing. I think the episodes then get 75 billion. Yeah, a little bit.

Lothin, can you just slow the pace of the audio right down so that it is. It's an infinitely expanding podcast. We are part of the iconic best network. See you tomorrow.