Quote:
Even if H5N1 turns out to be infectious among humans, it's only going to depopulate the planet by between 25% and 50%.

You got that right. Even the nasty flu thing that wiped out so much of the population back in 19whatever, only managed to do about that much damage. Fast forward a several decades, and we have much, much better scientific and medical technology capable of solving/reducing the problem before it can even do that much. I went with global warming, as well, but in retrospect, I should have gone with pollution, since pollution is one of the main causes of global warming, but pollution also accounts for destruction of so much of our fresh water sources, heavy metal contaminants in our food supply, and etc.

The real meltdown scenario is the greedy politicians that don't avert course when any of the choices on the list are on the forseeable horizon.