Its the end of the world as we know it... and we feel fine! Until we watched Lars Von Triers gloomy planet collision flick 'Melancholia' that is (out this week).

Its not the first film to wipe out the human race of course but how likely it is that Hollywoods doomsday fantasies could come true? We investigated...

Alien Invasion
In movie land space-dwelling civilisations love invading our dainty little planet to kill and/or enslave us all. See Roland Emmerichs so-bad-its-brilliant Independence Day and the many adaptations of both H.G Wells War of the Worlds and Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

In the real world, or should that be universe, its generally thought that Earth is unlikely to be the only life-bearing planet in existence - we are indeed (probably) not alone. But what if we ever do meet little green men?

Super-nerd Stephen Hawking doesnt rate our chances of surviving such an encounter particularly highly, saying in 2010: "If aliens visit us, the outcome would be much as when Columbus landed in America, which didn't turn out well for the Native Americans. Indeed.

Likelihood Rating: Apocalypse Maybe


Lack of sunshine
Solar flares were the inspiration behind the apocalypses (or is that apocali?) in awful Nicolas Cage film Knowing and the equally bad but much more popular 2012. They occur when the sun releases a massive amount of magnetic energy, which sometimes happens several times a day, but will they kill us all?

Nasa scientist David Morrison thinks not. In 2009 he said: Solar flares pose no danger to us on Earth. The worst that can happen is some damage to electronics in satellites. In very rare instances there can also be an effect on power grids on the ground.

None of these are big enough to fry our planet but having studied distant stars boffins have foudn that super-flares (nothing to do with the 70s) do occur, and theyre a million times more powerful than the common flare. But these are incredibly unlikely.

More likely is the possibility of the sun cooling down and throwing us into another Ice Age. How much does the sun have to cool down for that to happen? Just 1%. And it could happen at any time...

Likelihood Rating: Apocalypse Now (Maybe)


Infertility
The idea that men are useless might not be too foreign to the worlds population (lets say, about half) but what if us chaps became genuinely useless and were unable to populate the Earth? Or for that matter, what if women couldnt either? Those were the questions posed by Alfonso Cuarns chilling 2006 film Children of Men.

Is it possible though? Our Stolen Future is a book that draws from over 4,000 scientific publications investgating future scenarios, one of which being the infertility of mankind.

The book concludes by saying: The simple truth is that the way we allow chemicals to be used in society today means we are performing a vast experiment, not in the lab, but in the real world, not just on wildlife but on people.

Likelihood Rating: Avoid sitting on microwaves


Technology
James Camerons films all (pretty much) concern the perils of technology. The inhabitants of Pandora in Avatar werent happy about our Navi-killing, tree-burning hardware, while in Titanic the wondrous technological marvel that was the biggest ship ever made didnt do Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio any favours.

Most famously it was the Terminator series that tackled the issue, telling a literal man versus machine tale. Military computer Skynet became self-aware and dropped the bombs - a foreboding, ominous warning of what might come to pass as humanity becomes increasingly reliant on tech.

Science website Popsci asked Werner Dahm, the chief scientist of the US Air Force about the idea behind Terminator. The biggest danger is not the Terminator scenario everyone imagines - thats not how things fail, Dahm said.

He fears that powerful computers would take over the large key functions that are done exclusively by humans [in the military], only for us to one day find out that they just arent up the task. We blink and 10 years later we find out the technology wasnt far enough along.

Likelihood Rating: Only if were stupid enough to let it happen (so probably)


Nuclear War
Ask anyone born before the mid-80s and theyll tell you how terrifying the Cold War was. Perfect material for a comedy then!

Stanley Kubricks 1964 effort Dr Strangelove or: How I Learnt to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was that comedy and despite all-time classic lines, like You cant fight in here, this is the war room! and several perfect Peter Sellers performances, it was dark stuff.

All out atomic warfare was a distinct possibility back then (see the Cuban missile crisis), but thankfully not so much today. The biggest nuclear threat in 2011 is Iran, according to the US anyway. Back in 2006 then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said: "We may face no greater challenge from a single country than from Iran. This is a country that is determined, it seems, to develop a nuclear weapon in defiance of the international community..."

Another thing to lose sleep over: with so many nuclear bombs hidden away in silos and submarines, a war could technically happen the next time two foreign leaders look at each other funny. Dont have nightmares.

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