世論 What Japan Thinks

As today is the last day of my summer holidays, this survey from goo Ranking seems rather appropriate, asking what people think will cause humans to become extinct.

Demographics

From the 6th to the 9th of July 2012 1,016 members of the goo Research monitor group completed a private internet-based questionnaire. 60.0% of the sample were female, 9.9% in their teens, 12.7% in their twenties, 29.0% in their thirties, 27.0% in their forties, 11.0% in their fifties, and 10.3% aged sixty or older. Note that the score in the results refers to the relative number of votes for each option, not a percentage of the total sample.

My younger generation of readers will be disappointed to see that the zombie apocalypse (warning, contains swearing!) does not feature anywhere, and my older ones will note that number 19 is the closest to the truth:

Sorry, I couldn’t find a suitable link to the original series.

Ranking result

Q: What do you think will cause humans to become extinct? (Sample size=1,016)

Rank		Score
1	Collision with asteroid	100
2	Environmental pollution	97.4
3	Global warming	92.8
4	A huge tectonic plate shift causing a giant earthquake	69.2
5	Global nuclear war	65.6
6	Epidemic of a new form of heinous pathogen	62.5
7	Growth of the ozone hole	57.6
8	Climate change causing crop failures	56.3
9	Global cooling	46.3
10	New kinds of weaponry	43.2
11	Running out of disposal space for nuclear waste	43.2
12	Epidemic of a new strain of influenza	39.1
13	Super flare from the sun	34.7
14	Magnetic pole shift, reversal	31.9
15	Human population explosion	30.3
16	Nearby supernova explosion	29.3
17	Moon drifting out of orbit and causing weather pattern shifts	25.7
18	Super volcano eruption	20.1
19	Alien attack	17.5
20	Overrun by robots	13.1
21=	Rise of mutants	9.3
21=	Photon blast	9.3
23	Sudden mutation in algae that makes them excrete poisonous gas	8.7
24	Humans no longer need a body and live on as spirits	4.6
25	Return of the dinosaurs	4.4