Listen to Episode 9 here

PETER BRANNEN 

Peter Brannen is an award-winning science journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, Wired, Aeon, The Boston Globe, Slate and The Guardian among other publications. He is currently writing a book about the five major mass extinctions in Earth's history to be published by Ecco, an imprint of Harper-Collins. Peter was a 2015 journalist-in-residence at Duke University's National Evolutionary Synthesis Center and a 2011 Ocean Science Journalism Fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Woods Hole, MA. Peter got his start as a reporter for the Vineyard Gazette in Edgartown, MA. Peter is particularly interested in ocean science, deep time, astrobiology, the carbon cycle and the Boston Celtics.

SETH BAUM 

Dr. Seth Baum is Executive Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, a nonprofit think tank that Baum co-founded in 2011. His research focuses on risk and policy analysis of catastrophes that could destroy human civilization, such as global warming, nuclear war, and runaway artificial intelligence. Baum received a Ph.D. in Geography from Pennsylvania State University and completed a post-doctoral fellowship with the Columbia University Center for Research on Environmental Decisions. His writing has appeared in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the Guardian, Scientific American, and a wide range of peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Follow him on Twitter @SethBaum and Facebook @sdbaum 

MUSIC ATTRIBUTIONS

transcript

MUSIC: ARM_Spanish

D.S. MOSS

So there I was, in Peru, robotically flipping through the channels as I lie on the tiny hotel bed recovering from a red eye flight and I come across one of my favorite movies I love to hate.

D.S. MOSS

Written by JJ Abrams, directed by Michael Bay, and arguably Steve Buscemi's best role, outside of Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs, of course.

D.S. MOSS

That's right, I'm talking about Armageddon.

D.S. MOSS

And it's actually even better dubbed in Spanish.

D.S. MOSS

The movie, if you don't know, is about a Texas-sized asteroid on a crash course to earth and it's up to Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck to save humanity.

D.S. MOSS

If you don't speak Spanish, what you just heard was the film's opening Voice Over narration describing the extinction event that may have killed the dinosaurs: An asteroid, just six miles long, crashed into Mexico.

His last lines are: It happened before and it will happen again.

Now, it's still hotly debated in the scientific community whether or not it was the asteroid or a volcano that killed the dinosaurs, but nevertheless... there was a mass extinction. In fact, there have been 5 mass extinctions in the earth's history,

...and yes, it will happen again. 

Dr. Seth Baum

My name is Seth Baum. I am Executive Director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute.

We specifically focus on the risk of catastrophes that could cause major permanent harm to human civilization. Think, the collapse of the civilization, the world as we know it.

MUSIC: "Sun Session" by Josh Spacek

D.S. MOSS

Naturally, as I was lying there in my Peruvian hotel room watching Ben Afleck save the world, my mind drifted to philosophical and ethical questions about human extinction.   

For example, if the near earth asteroid of 2029 changes course slightly and heads straight at us

Would I have kids knowing the world would end in 12 years?

Would I kill myself before it hit or wait for impact?

Would the world just say fuck it, and love up on each other for the time we have left or would it be utter chaos? And so on...

But, then, I thought...what could we actually do to stop an asteroid from hitting?

And then came the ultimate question...What is the most likely cause of the next mass extinction? Humanity's extinction? 

DR. SETH BAUM

This would include things like, nuclear war. ...Large pandemic disease outbreaks. We do some work on climate change. We do some work on threats from future technologies, biotechnology, artificial intelligence among them. Then we have some natural threats. Asteroids, super volcano eruptions, things like that.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

You've hit everything on my list except for, number eight which was, and I think, number seven, which is an alien attack but ...

DR. SETH BAUM

I can talk about alien attacks.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Can you?

DR. SETH BAUM

Yeah

MUSIC: "Am Trans" by podington bear

D.S. MOSS

Yep. In this two part episode we talk about all of those things including Alien Attack.

And by mass extinction, I'm talking about an event that kills the 7+ billion earth-inhabiting humans, or does so much damage the future of humanity as we know it will end.

Why even entertain about such a dismal proposition, you may ask?

Well, it's incredibly important topic, because for the majority of the possible catastrophes

we have the capacity to prevent them, but do we have the willingness or the foresight to do so? 

This adventure takes us on a scientific journey into the past, present, and the future of humanity. Please join me for episode 9 of The Adventures of Memento Mori: Part 1 of Mass Extinction.

OPENING BUMPER

MUSIC:  "Memento mori" by Mikey ballou

Female announcer

From The Jones Story Company, this is: THE ADVENTURES OF MEMENTO MORI, A Cynic's Guide for Learning to Live by Remembering to Die - the podcast that explores mortality. Here's your host D.S. Moss.

CHAPTER 1: THE HISTORY

MUSIC: "History explains itself" by The Losers (josh spacek)

D.S. MOSS

In part 1 of this episode we dive into Super volcanoes, Asteroids, Extra-terrestrials, and the Wrath of God.

The anthropogenic, aka man made extinction threats such as Climate Change, Nuclear War, and Artificial Intelligence are in part 2. 

To kick things off - a history of the earth's previous 5 mass extinctions starting from the beginning. 

PETER BRANNeN

Okay. It's hard because the dinosaur one is the sexiest one because the dinosaurs are the coolest animals in Earth History and they died for totally insane reasons. 

D.S. MOSS

That's science journalist Peter Brannen.  

PETER BRANNEN

I loved dinosaurs growing up and I never really grew up. I'm still like a 6 year old kid who likes to learn about dinosaurs.

D.S. MOSS

Peter likes dinosaurs. And this affection has shaped his career as one of the prominent writers on ecological crises in deep time.

His work can be seen in the NY Times, The Atlantic, Wired and his new book, The Ends of the World comes out June of 2017.

Over some 114 proof Navy rum, Peter gives me an earth history lesson of the 5 mass extinctions. I suggest you start drinking now too because it turns out there are a lot of lessons from the earth's history that are pretty relevant given how things are going in the 21st century. 

(see if we can make 'History Explains Itself' song last to this point)

PETER BRANNEN

Starting at the beginning, the first one is the Ordovician mass extinction. This was around 445 million years ago. 

There was nothing on land. The continents looked about as barren as the surface of Mars. All the actions were in the oceans.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

...were the oceans frozen?

PETER BRANNEN

No it was very warm. You had these ... It's basically, I've heard it described as the bug world. There are trilobites.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Trilobites?

PETER BRANNEN

Yeah. They look like the horseshoe crabs, that makes it look like an accordion...

...and then you have these enormous squid relatives that have these giant 30 foot long cone shells and stuff. It's a really weird world of invertebrates.

D.S. MOSS

Most of these invertebrates lived in shallow seas and either an extra-terrestrial or volcanic event happened that changed the climate dramatically and drastically lowered sea levels that caused the majority of life to die. 

PETER BRANNEN

It went from very hot to very cold very quickly...

It seems like there's a big drop in CO2 and it got super cold glaciers form, sea level drops and everything in the shallow seas goes extinct.

I call that the hipster extinction. If you said that's your favorite extinction, you're just trying to be deliberately obscure.

D.S. MOSS

Hipsters, Am I right? always talkin about the Ordovician. 

PETER BRANNEN

The second one is the Devonian extinction and it is... this long protracted era of stress with pulses of extinctions that lasted for maybe 25 million years and there's...2 major extinctions in it.  

... At this time, fish have established themselves. You have these really big armored tank fish that were really scary called placoderms. 

D.S. MOSS_MONO

...I have a question.

...You have an extinction event. Is there a birthing event?

PETER BRANNEN

There's usually really huge radiations that are called where you have cleared up all this room in the environment that no one is ... there. Some little intrepid group of animals will come in and start to take over all the space that's been cleared out.

D.S. MOSS

Nature abhors a vacuum. It is the will of nature to fill up all available space. 

So in the case of the Ordovician extinction - once the weird bug and shelled squids die, the obscure survivor - the armored tank fish, sees an opportunity to spread out into new habitats until something stops it or it rules the planet.

Ok. Back to the Devonian extinction 335 million years ago.

PETER BRANNEN

One of the leading ideas is that the evolution of trees and land plants and forests actually...

...caused these mass extinctions.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

You're saying the trees were the culprit in the 2nd ...

PETER BRANNEN

Yeah... The idea behind that is trees do a couple of things. One is they suck up a ton of Carbon Dioxide...

...You get glaciations that kill all these cool ass fish.

D.S. MOSS

Besides dramatically disrupting the CO2 levels, the new epidemic of trees sweep nutrients into the ocean that cause big allergy booms that rob the ocean of oxygen and the fish suffocate. 

That's the Devonian, the trees kill the fish. 

PETER BRANNEN

(00:12:00) The third is the worst thing that's ever happened to planet Earth. It was much worse than the extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. It's as close the planets ever were to just being totally sterilized basically.

D.S. MOSS

It's called the Permian extinction and was a gigantic volcanic event that caused what is known as a continental flood basalt. 

PETER BRANNEN

Basically all of Siberia turned inside out and just covered in lava. There's this massive injection of CO2...

...Enough lava came out of this volcanic event in Siberia to cover the continent of US in a kilometer of lava deep.

D.S. MOSS

Lava covered pretty much the entire planet.

PETER BRANNEN

The worst part was that it went through the biggest coal basin in the world. You basically burned a few 100 million years of coal all at once, when all this lava comes out. You inject an absurd amount of CO2 in the air. It gets unbelievably hot.

D.S. MOSS

It's so hot that only bacteria can survive. The ocean acidifies and Complex life goes extinct. The volcanoes also release halo carbons that destroy the planet's ozone layer.

For about ten million years there's almost nothing to find in the fossil record after the Permian Mass Extinction.

PETER BRANNEN

)Actually another name for it is the Great Dying.

The reason why people study ... I mean it's not just pure curiosity, intellectual curiosity that people study the Permian. They study it because it is the worst case scenario.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Our current worst case scenario?

PETER BRANNEN

Yeah. Probably worse than we could ever do, which is I guess encouraging.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I guess, yeah. Okay so the Great Dying was number 3.

PETER BRANNEN

Basically the planet reboots after that... 

the Permian might be the best thing that's ever happened because 20 million years later, you all of a sudden have this flourishing of life where it's true mammals, dinosaurs and crocodiles. These 3 lineages set the stage for everything that follows after that. It's actually a weird group of crocodile reptiles that run the planet for 25 million years or so. Dinosaurs are little and waiting in the wings.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Little in size or little in number?

PETER BRANNEN

Yeah they're small. These crocodiles, some of them...Some would run around on 2 legs and they're really vicious and fast and athletic. Some have big spiky armor.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Crocodiles that would walk on 2 legs?

PETER BRANNEN

They rule and then a mini Permian happens where you have another huge massive volcanic event which does the basically the same thing all over again...

D.S. MOSS

This is called the Triassic extinction.

PETER BRANNEN

...The crocodilians get knocked off their perch. Dinosaurs take over...for the next 135 million years, until they get messed up.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Was it or was it not a volcanic event or was it a meteor or asteroid?

It's funny you should ask because for the last 30 years people have been arguing about this. There's this bizarre coincidence where dinosaurs and not just dinosaurs...

...Most things in the ocean die, and most things on land die. The moment all this happens, 2 things are happening. One the biggest asteroid that we know to have hit Earth in the last billion years hits at about the same time that one of the biggest volcanic events ever is also going on.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

It was a double whammy.

PETER BRANNEN

Yeah. You had these two teams. One's at Berkeley and one's at Princeton, who're saying no it's an asteroid, no it's volcanoes, for the last 30 years and people all across the paleontology world have chosen sides...

I interviewed one guy who ... He explicitly said, "Can we not talk about the dinosaur extinction it's too political. I don't want to lose friends."

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Wow.

PETER BRANNEN

That's pretty raw...

Recently, in last year only, this paper came out from Berkeley actually, including Walter Alvarez who was the first person to prove that an asteroid hit, saying that the asteroid might have actually ...

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Caused the vol ...

PETER BRANNEN

Yeah. Caused the worst period of Volcanism and then it was probably this double whammy.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

How long does it take for the ash or the lava to actually then spread and start covering things?

MUSIC: "Landscape" by Evgeny teilor

PETER BRANNEN

It's not the ash or the lava that actually would be the kill mechanism. It would be just the injection of CO2 and other horrible things.

D.S. MOSS

And that was the 5th and last extinction. The Cretaceous event. The end of the dinosaurs that lead to the dominance of mankind.  

PETER BRANNEN

...it seems like the moral of Earth's history is that when you mess with the carbon cycle, things tend to go wrong. What we're doing right now is a major experiment just injecting Carbon into the atmosphere.

D.S. MOSS

That experiment being human civilization purposefully injecting lots of CO2 in the atmosphere. It's as though we're tempting fate. But we'll get into that during the climate change segment in part 2. 

But First, what are the risks of super volcanoes or asteroids? Or an alien attack? After this.

CALL TO ACTION 1

MUSIC: Emergency exit by Dr. frankenstein 

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

Ever wonder what Elvis's last words were or the most outrageous methods of living forever? Discover titillating titbits about mortality by visiting "The Adventures of Memento Mori" YouTube channel and be the slightly odd yet endlessly fascinating conversationalist at your next party.

And be sure to stay up to date with the quest for enlightenment on Instagram and Twitter by following @remembertodie.

All of this, and more, can be found on our site remembertodie.com. And now, back to show...

CHAPTER 2: SUPER VOLCANOES

MUSIC: "Way out of this" by evgeny teilor

(I'm not sure where the best end to the intro song would be, use your best judgement, but the effect we're looking for is Micheal Bay film overtness coupled with real 'oh shit'. It's a thin line between parody and "this shit is actually seriously'' dramatic)

D.S. MOSS

Before the break science journalist, Peter Brannen gave us a historical run down of the previous 5 mass extinctions. The common factor among all of them is fluctuating CO2 levels most likely caused by volcanoes. 

If you find yourself wondering, "Are there currently any super volcanoes that could possibly blow?"

Well, the answer is yes, and it's smack dab in the United States of America. 

The Yellowstone Park Caldera - A thin cork of earth between Wyoming and Idaho that sits on top of a massive cache of boiling magma.

PETER BRANNEN

It definitely has the potential to be the most disruptive volcano on the planet.

If it went off, it would basically kill everything in the states nearby and it would make the Northern Hemisphere cold for ... Basically there wouldn't be a summer for a couple of years. 

D.S. MOSS

So there you go, if you're a Prepper and moved to Idaho in preparation for the end of days, well, you picked the wrong spot. 

I asked Seth Baum from the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute how far in advance we'd know before Yellowstone blew? 

DR. SETH BAUM

Forecasting volcano eruptions is not something that we've nailed down very well yet...

...and so could this happen at any time ... I mean, potentially. 

D.S. MOSS_MONO

There's really nothing that we can do to prevent it from happening, as opposed to some of these others, like ...

DR. SETH BAUM

Asteroids we've got options. Volcanoes, not so much...

...what we do for volcanoes basically, we can prepare to try surviving, and the most aggressive preparation we can make is set up outposts on other planets.

MUSIC: Way out of this" by evgeny teilor

(you can move this up a bit if needed.)

(I'd love it if we could find a spot to re-enter into the song that can hit a tone that counters that I say everything is going to be fine. And, that can carry us into Larry's asteroid bit. This song gets super dramatic quickly so if it doesn't work please call it out.)

(Again, we want an "on the nose" film score, but not too distracting. It has to work.)

D.S. MOSS

So, if you're a Prepper and you really want to be safe when shit hits the fan here on earth, consider moving to Mars.

The consensus, however, is that Yellowstone won't blow anytime soon. But, just like the dinosaurs, we're only just one Manhattan-sized asteroid away.

CHAPTER 3: ASTEROIDS

LARRY

My name is Larry Denneau. I'm a software engineer and astronomer for the ATLAS Telescope Project.

...We are a survey telescope that's looking for what we call Death Plunge Asteroid.

...The kinds of things we're looking for are things that are screaming at us and we're only seeing them basically at the last minute. Days or weeks before they hit the earth or zip by the earth.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Is Death Plunge a real term that you use to categorize these things?

LARRY

It is. It means an asteroid that's on his final trajectory before it hits whatever it's going to hit...

...Any asteroid could have a Death Plunge trajectory, which just means it's on its terminal trajectory.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Let's back up a little bit to get some basic science knowledge. What is the difference between a comet, a meteor or an asteroid?

(if there's any section that can be cut to save time, this is it. Personally, I wanted to know the difference because I sincerely didn't really know. But, if it's not necessary we should cut. However, I'm okay with this episode being a bit longer than the others as long as it doesn't drag.)

LARRY

Let's start from farther out and work our way in. A comet is a kind of primordial body that formed back in the beginning of the solar system. It's made of dust and ice over billions of years...

...and eventually they formed enough self-gravity to attract more and so you got a big clump hundreds of meters or even miles across...

...Comets tend to have orbits that take them way, way out in the far reach of the solar system and then come back close to the sun and back out again. 

...Asteroids tend to be rockier things that have more circular regular orbits. They tend to be closer in the solar systems...

...For reasons having to do with the way the solar system evolves and where orbits are stable, mostly are clamped in this region between Mars and Jupiter but they can be kind of gravitationally kicked into the inner solar system or out of the solar system entirely by Jupiter when they come close to Jupiter's orbit because Jupiter is this huge gravitational bully in the solar system.

That's comets and asteroids. Meteors are asteroids or pieces of asteroids that have made it into the atmosphere and they're still on the air on their way to becoming a meteorite, which is what we call them after they hit the ground.

D.S. MOSS

Ok. So in Armageddon, the asteroid was the size of Texas which would completely obliterate the planet. 

The asteroid that led to the dinosaur extinction was the size of Manhattan.

What are the sizes of asteroids and what are their associated risks?

LARRY

The way to think about what we call the size frequency threat of asteroids, so the bigger an asteroid you have, the fewer of them are and as you go smaller in size there are more and more of them. 

D.S. MOSS

So what are the chances we get hit by one that could end civilization?

LARRY

Well for now the threat of the civilization ending asteroids impact is probably not high enough to worry about. 

D.S. MOSS

Larry goes on to say that everyday something from space hits the earth. Something about the size of a basketball, hits once a day, something the size of a car hits about once a year and as they get larger they become less and less frequent. And, for the bigger guys, they know where most of them are. 

LARRY

The trajectory of these things in the solar system are really, really well determined and we know their masses pretty precisely.

We are able to say pretty accurately where some of these things are going to be decades into the future.

D.S. MOSS

Larry was actually being a bit modest here. The positions of the hazardous asteroids can be predicted going up to 100 years in the future. 

So it's highly unlikely that one will sneak up on us.  

LARRY

If it's big that's right...

The big guys with pretty much big meaning a kilometer and bigger, there is about 1000 of those that are believed to be out there in the solar system, that come close to the earth and we have cataloged about 950 of them, so like 95%.

D.S. MOSS

So the good news is that they can see the dinosaur killers about a 100 years into the future and earth is ok. 

LARRY

We've got most of the asteroids accounted for but there's still always the possibility that...

The one in a million comet that comes out of nowhere and takes 10 years to come from the distant outer solar system towards the sun is something that is very difficult or impossible to catalog with our current survey technology.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

I have one more hypothetical question...

MUSIC: "Landscape" by Evgeny teilor

D.S. MOSS_MONO

If you can track small asteroids then you'd be able to then see other space ships if they were to actually exist right...?

LARRY

Yes if whoever was in the space ship was careless enough to keep it really shiny reflective stuff would be very easy to see...

...A spaceship made out of some shiny material like all space ships are made of right, those things are blazingly bright we could see them from millions and millions of miles away.

CHAPTER 3: ALIEN INVASION

D.S. MOSS

It sounds a bit ridiculous, I know. But the threat of extra-terrestrial life is still tracked as an existential risk. 

And, if they do exist, however, either they are far far away and do not have the capability or desire of space travel or they have the sophistication to remain hidden from us and thus equally capable of killing, enslaving, or taking over the earth at their leisure.

Extra-terrestrial contamination, on the other hand, is far more plausible.  

DR. SETH BAUM

It's actually something that a lot of people worry about. NASA and where the coolest job titles you will ever find at NASA, there is a person whose job title is Planetary Protection Officer.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Do they get a badge?

DR. SETH BAUM

I hope so. They really should. Planetary protection is both protecting other planets from what we might bring there...

...the other half of it is potential life that we could bring back here to Earth.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

It's great for movie plots but could it be legitimate?

DR. SETH BAUM

It's a serious concern, yeah.

MUSIC: "Octagon pt.2" by polyrhythmics

D.S. MOSS

It is a serious concern, however, one that we can ultimately control. But what about God's wrath? Can we control that? Is it too late? Are the natural disasters a sign of the end of days? The next existential risk we explore is very personal to me, because as a 5-year-old kid my family belonged to a church who thought 1980 was going to be the year of the Rapture. 

CALL TO ACTION 2

MUSIC: "O Cerebro do Morto" by Dr. Frankenstein 

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

The Adventures of Memento Mori is an independent podcast and we could use your support. Shop with us. Go to remembertodie.com/shop and buy some merchandise. Get your entire family a "This could be my last cup of coffee" mug or be the first one on your block to sport a Mori "Death! Yo." baby tee.   

CHAPTER 6: THE RAPTURE

MUSIC: "Shadow Lines" BY Polyrhythmics

D.S. MOSS

In the late 70s, my family moved from one small Idaho town to another. From Weiser to Hailey. The difference between the two being that Hailey was ten miles outside of Sun Valley making it a bit more worldly - in Idaho terms.  

At this time in America, a Christian renaissance was happening. The rise of the Pentecostals and Evangelicals was in full swing and the Rapture was a popular topic in the movement.  

Everybody was really getting back in touch with the Lord and stuff like that and the rapture was one of the main focuses about getting yourself ready for when the Lord comes that you would actually really go.

D.S. MOSS

That is my father, Richard Moss.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

What does that mean "get yourself ready"? What do you have to do to get yourself ready of the rapture?

RICHARD MOSS

Well, I guess get yourself ready with God and get yourself straight...That type of thing.

D.S. MOSS

This Pentecostal movement did not miss Hailey Idaho and once they got wind of a new young family in town it was only a matter of time before we were invited to visit the church.   

RICHARD MOSS

You know, we go in there and there was really, to me, it was really wild that day and I don't know if you remember Bob Rogers...All of the sudden, he gets up and he starts speaking in tongues, and starts doing all this stuff and people just... and that whole atmosphere,it just scared the ... I mean I'd never seen anything like this before...

D.S. MOSS

Because in Weiser you were either Lutheran, Nazarene, or Presbyterian.

RICHARD MOSS

...Nothing about what they were doing was right or according to the Bible so then that got me into the Bible and just to prove them wrong. Then down at the store, the rest of the church came in and this guy, I can't remember his name is now...

I told him, "You guys are crazy. Nothing's right," and he listened to me and what my complaints were and he said, "Well, give me a chance to talk to you about it," and I said okay so I talked to him...

I talked to your mom and so him and his wife came over and we sat down and actually he pretty much convinced me. He changed my way of thinking. He was actually pretty nice about it. So then we started going and one thing leads to another.

D.S. MOSS

Well one thing it led to was that my brother and I were enrolled into the Assemblies of Gods church's school where we were bombarded with Rapture mania. Movies, songs, rapture drills, people could not wait to get sucked up into the sky in all of God's glory.  

It scared the shit out of me. I remember being paranoid and looking up at the sky and thinking - those clouds look a lot like rapture clouds. yep. Today's the day.

I would even hide under my covers at night hoping Jesus wouldn't come visit. I was 5. I wanted to make mud pies. I saw absolutely no joy in being sucked up into the sky.

Anyway, after 35 years, I asked my father to explain to me what the rapture is.

RICHARD MOSS

Basically, there's two raptures... The first one is when Christ comes and he doesn't come to Earth. He just comes into the heavens, he just comes standing up there in the heavens. That's when he comes to get the saints, the sinners, the dead in Christ rise. That's all the people of Christ come up out of the ground and the ones that are still alive here, they all leave. Then they go back up to heaven. Then Satan still, I guess, still kind of controls the Earth here. That's where you get the ... Whatever you call him, the Beast, the Anti-Christ. Is still here until then, then they come in having the big battle and Christ defeats him. Then we come back. Then He starts the new kingdom here.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Jesus does.

RICHARD MOSS

Yeah. He starts the new kingdom where basically, you...

Everybody dies because once he starts this new kingdom, nobody ages, nobody dies, nobody gets sick.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

This is on Earth or is this just somewhere else?

RICHARD MOSS

No, it's here on Earth.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

So let me just repeat this back to you to see if I got this straight. So there's a second coming of Jesus but he doesn't really come to Earth, he just kind of comes into the stratosphere, like the heavens. Then everybody that believes ..

RICHARD MOSS

That's when the dead in Christ rises.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

The dead in Christ rises.

RICHARD MOSS

Yeah. That's like when you're saved from like Abel, you know, all the way up until today. All the saints, all the Christians who have died. You know.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

So people come out of the ground?

RICHARD MOSS

Yes they do.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Oh, but aren't they in heaven anyway?

RICHARD MOSS

No, their souls go to heaven.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

So the body, okay so the bodies physically come out of the ground.

RICHARD MOSS

The bodies, supposedly. Yeah. 

D.S. MOSS_MONO

This is very, this is very technical...So when does the Revelation, when does the beast come and we all get 666 tattoos?

RICHARD MOSS

The beast comes before all of that. You have the antiChrist which basically is the beast and that's what their mark is, 666 is...

...Back then, I think too, ...there was a lot of people in the Christian community thought that the anti-Christ was Henry Kissinger.

D.S. MOSS

Well, that just added a whole lotta validity to the Rapture because as we all know Henry Kissinger is the antichrist. 

pastor reggie

I'm Pastor Reggie Stutzman, founding pastor of Real Life Church here in the South Bronx at Hunts Point...

D.S. MOSS

Real Life Church is an Assemblies of God church.

PASTOR REGGIE

The Assembly of God is a Pentecostal Evangelical denomination, one of the largest in the country...

Basically a full gospel, spirit filled denomination.

D.S. MOSS

And since it's the same denomination as my childhood rapture experience, I asked Pastor Reggie if he could help add some clarity to the Rapture. 

PASTOR REGGIE

I had the same experience...I remember having a magnet on the refrigerator that said closer to heaven in '77. There was the same thinking, mentality, philosophy in our Christian home that 1977 we were closer to heaven. We're 2016 and we're still here.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

This happens every once in a while that there is a large, or somebody is like the rapture is going to happen on this date. Does that conflict with actually what the Bible says? 

PASTOR REGGIE

It certainly conflicts...

Jesus clearly says nobody knows it. I don't understand why people who say they know the Bible, but then somehow throw that verse out of the Bible and they can pinpoint the exact date, month, year, etc. We've lost track.

D.S. MOSS

Ok, Pastor Reggie, what is the Rapture?

PASTOR REGGIE

It is a scripturally anchored event...

This event will be something that has never, ever been done before, never seen before, never experienced before, where a mass exodus if you will of God's people, that has to be defined, but God's people will be taken, will be removed from this Earth, and brought into a different place. A lot to be defined. At a moment, at a time that no one knows about, the church, God's people, will disappear.

D.S. MOSS

He goes on to say that the Rapture is actually the precursor of the more cataclysmic events that will happen.

PASTOR REGGIE

For example, the mark of the beast...the one world order, the vials that Revelation talks about of all the different horses, all the angels, and all the pouring out of things that will happen.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Very violent things!

PASTOR REGGIE

Very violent things. In essence, God's wrath will be poured out on the world...

The Bible just says ... It describes the certain angels and horses that are my understanding after the rapture that pour out different bowls of wrath.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Bowls of wrath.

PASTOR REGGIE

Bowls of wrath.

D.S. MOSS_MONO

Wrath bowls.

PASTOR REGGIE

Hallelujah.

MUSIC:"am-trans" By Podington bear

D.S. MOSS

Hallelujah, indeed. 

CHAPTER 7: PART 1 CONCLUSION

D.S. MOSS

Is the Rapture a possible mass extinction event? It's possible, but only because it can't be proven to be impossible. The same can be said about extraterrestrial attack. 

Existential risk of Asteroids and super volcanoes, on the other hand, can be measured. Yellowstone will blow and earth will most likely be hit by another dinosaur killer asteroid. But not to worry, for the foreseeable future the probability of either of these happening is extremely low. 

Much lower than the threats we talk about next is part 2 of Mass Extinction. The man made threats. Nuclear war, artificial intelligence, and climate change.

That's right, humans are the greatest risk of human extinction. 

You're not really surprised, are you?

MUSIC: "3 in raw" by jazzafari

D.S. MOSS

Thanks for joining me on yet another episode of The Adventures of Memento Mori. Many thanks to Pastor Reggie from the Real Life Church up in the Bronx. Check out all the positive work he's doing at www.reallifechurchnyc.com

Thanks Larry Denneau of the ATLAS program for keeping an eye on the Death Plunge Asteroids.  

Peter Brannen and Dr. Seth Baum, we'll be hearing more from you in the second half. And of course thank you dad.

Please visit our website remembertodie.com and follow us on social media @remembertodie. I'm D.S. Moss. Back again shortly for part 2 of Mass Extinction in The Adventures of Memento Mori. 

CLOSING BUMPER

MUSIC: End with our theme music

FEMALE ANNOUNCER

The episode was produced by Josh Heilbronner and D.S. Moss Theme music composed by Mikey Ballou. This has been a production of The Jones Story Company. Until the next time... remember to die.