Has Sportsbet gone mad? Bookie offers odds on human extinction

USUALLY the crew at Sportsbet.com.au like to have a laugh, but have they gone too far releasing a market on how the world will end?

We think it’s tongue in cheek, because, you know, if the world ends, how will they pay out? But it’s still just a little macabre, a little dooms day.

Sportsbet.com.au are the masters of the novelty market and have a number of other crazy odds.

Anyway, we thought we’d have a look at what might happen, should the world end:

$11 Another ice age

No, we won’t have talking woolly mammoths running around like the movie, but the prospect of a new ice age is said to be realistic. Predictions are that solar magnetic activity will drop by 60 percent between 2030 and 2040, leaving the very real possibility that could leave the Earth in a frozen tatters. Researchers are calling it a mini ice age. The last time such low solar activity was seen was between 1645 and 1715, when the earth once again regressed into a freezing mass.

$16 Spread of a new incurable disease

The gods have tried and failed with this – several times. Just look at the black death, ebola, SARS, meningitis, dengue fever, cholera, bubonic plague, malaria, small pox and typhoid. Not to mention HIV/aids. These days, super bugs are the buzz word. tiny microbes that can cause devastating effects on people and basically eat our antibiotics alive.

$21 Drowned by a global flood

We all know the story of Noah. God told him to gather two of each animal, male and female, and build an ark because he was basically going to drown every one because of their excess. We humans are pretty good at excess these days. Could another great flood be on the way? As the story goes, the flood wiped out nearly every one. There are genuine fears that our abuse of the environment that has progressively melted the polar ice caps could end up seeing our sea level rise higher than our lands.

$34 Asteroid Armageddon

Here’s the Bruce Willis – Ben Affleck special. We’ll call them into action to avoid Armageddon if an asteroid was headed our way – at least we’ll be inspired, right? More on this further down

$41 Global super storm

Another global warming one. Was Sportsbet reading the Art Bell and Whitley Strieber book “The Coming Global Storm”. We’re talking hurricanes, tornadoes and tsunamis, pretty much ripping through everything. You’ll need a big boat for this one.

$51 World earthquake

The natural disaster is always a blockbuster. Just ask The Rock in San Andreas. But something seriously would have to go wrong in the earth’s core for the whole planet to have an earthquake. Perhaps a series of earthquakes all at the same time could happen, depending on what goes on with the tectonic plates under our surface,

$81 Destroyed by man-made killer robots

If we go out like this, I hope my Terminator is Arnold Schwarzenegger. But seriously, isn’t it a worry that robots are involved in almost every aspect of our lives? They make our lives so much easier at the moment, but can you envisage a world where robots are the rulers and we are the slaves? The writing is on the wall. But hey, at least we will always have John Connor to save us, right? (Except for in that whole Terminator Genisys abomination, but let’s pretend that never happened.)

Which country will be first to plant a bomb on an earthbound asteroid?

If you want to have a bet on something to do with the universe that you might actually be able to collect on, perhaps a punt on which nation will be the first to shoot down an earth-bound asteroid is for you.

We survived the World Killer on the weekend, as Asteroid 86666 missed Earth by something like 24 million kilometres, but chatter about research into ways to deflect or destroy asteroids that might be on course with earth inspired Sportsbet to release the market.

And for patriots, Australia is $21 to be the nation that destroys the first asteroid, well behind the USA as $4 favourites.

And it’s no surprise.

NASA is working with nuclear physicists in a bid to conceive ways to deal with those pesky asteroids that might collide with earth.

Nuclear weapons are a real possibility – just like in the movie Armageddon, when the great man Bruce Willis saved the planet by planting a bomb in the core of an asteroid on the way to wreck the planet.

“Use of a nuclear device to deflect an asteroid is not preposterous,” NASA’s Lindley Johnson said. “But it wouldn’t be used in the way depicted in the movies.

“The most effective way we think to use a nuclear device is to detonate it at a standoff distance from the asteroid’s surface.

“The irradiation will cause a layer of that surface to heat up and blow-off, which in turn imparts a shove of force on the rest of the asteroid in the opposite direction.”

Whatever happens, Sportsbet is even giving Willis a chance to live out his movie role in real life, rating him at $501 to lead the mission and save humanity.

“Good old Bruce Willis is getting on in years but punters will be blown away if they back him and life imitates art,’’ sportsbet.com.au’s Will Byrne said.

How will the world end markets

$11 Another ice age

$16 Spread of a new incurable disease

$21 Drowned by a global flood

$34 Asteroid Armageddon

$41 Global super storm

$51 World earthquake

$81 Destroyed by man-made killer robots

$101 Engulfed in lava

$126 Swallowed by a black hole

$151 Consumed by the sun

$251 Another big bang

$501 Alien invasion

$1001 Eaten alive by zombies

First Country to shoot down an earthbound Asteroid markets

$4 USA

$5 China

$5 Russia

$7.50 India

$8 Japan

$9 Israel

$11 South Korean

$11 Germany

$12 Iran

$16 France

$16 United Kingdom

$21 Australia

$21 Italy

$34 North Korea

Who will earth send to plant a bomb on an earthbound asteroid?

$501 Bruce Willis

Odd provided by sportsbet.com.au