Human history has a lot of fascinating highs and lows. It has had many great achievements that no other species on our planet has been able to accomplish. At the same time, there were way too many times when humanity came very close to self-destruction, usually due to someone's unreasonable actions. In fact, when someone asked online to provide examples of these "way too close" moments in history, the netizens did not hold back and provided an extensive list of them. Today, let's take a look at some of them.
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#21
The British almost colonized the Philippines, as part of the seven year's war from 1756-1763, a British expeditionary force led by Admiral Samuel Cornish and General William Draper attacked Manila in 1762 hoping to gain a strategic foothold in the region and establish their dominance over the Pacific trade. The Spanish forces offered little resistance, and after a fierce battle, the British took control of Manila for 2 years. During this period, the British attempted to establish a colonial government and negotiate a permanent settlement with Spain . However, the Treaty of Paris in 1763 ended the Seven Year's War, and as a part of peace settlement, the British was forced to return Manila to Spain.
18points
#22
The Toba Catastrophe reduced the human population to somewhere between 3,000-10,000 in number.
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16points
#24
The times in the 20th century when Russia, America and England were **directly ordered** to start WWIII, but someone chose to willingly disobey the order.
James Blunt was ordered to do it when he was serving in Kosovo, and US Secretary Colin Powell even got on the radio to tell him that he would face a court martial if he refused to comply. He said that the whole experience is what made him want to retire from the military in order to pursue a career in music instead.
There were also quite a few instances where glitches in the defense AI had detected a missile had already been launched, and it was the human operators who refused to launch a "counter attack". This is really what stuff like The Terminator, and the song 99 Red Balloons were inspired by; it was meant to show us what would happen if we didn't have human cooperation and communication too.
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-1point
