Deadliest and/or most powerful stuff in the Real World?

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

Just wondering, what would you all consider the deadliest stuff in our Real World universe?
I nominate galaxy cluster mergers by pure amount of energy (beyond even gamma ray bursts or black hole collisions/mergers since it's both the black holes in both galaxy clusters colliding into each other AND the stars, planets and other cosmic entities also slamming into each other or otherwise violently interacting with each other), transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (caused by prions) by case fatality rate, plagues and famines in terms of natural and/or anthropogenic disasters, ionising radiation and botulinum toxin by lethal dose, nuclear bombs and ICBMs by destruction and damage/danger in the short and long term, etc.
I would be interested in how people would scale and/or rank them in terms of how dangerous they are and in what way they're dangerous, as well as how we would compare specific dangerous stuff in similar categories (such as disease vs disease or substance vs substance or natural/anthropogenic events vs natural/anthropogenic events)

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

@Antvasima need help opening this thread (not sure what is even needed to approve a Fun And Games conversation thread) please and thank you.

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

@Antvasima need help opening this thread (not sure what is even needed to approve a Fun And Games conversation thread) please and thank you.

@Hortonhearsahoot @JohnGojira @GarrixianXD @CrackerVolley @Artorimachi_Meteoraft @H3110l12345I20 I'd like to hear your thoughts (calling you from the Real World Thread)

 

[H3110l12345I20]

By sheer raw power, the most powerful thing in IRL would be the big bang, since it brought to life everything we know to exist. but that's not what you're talking about.

How deadly something is means how effective and quick it kills, and I don't have anything that I can think of at the top of my head that would fit these requirements at their highest.

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

By sheer raw power, the most powerful thing in IRL would be the big bang, since it brought to life everything we know to exist. but that's not what you're talking about.

How deadly something is means how effective and quick it kills, and I don't have anything that I can think of at the top of my head that would fit these requirements at their highest.

You have a point there with the Big Bang's power, and I also agree that ironically enough the Big Bang as you pointed out is what fundamentally created everything we know and gave us life.
If we're comparing lethality/deadliness by how FAST stuff can kill, maybe we can compare either:
1:the time it takes for different stuff to kill people on average
2: how many people stuff can kill over a set duration
3: time it takes to kill a set number of people

(all assuming there is no aid to heal/cure them) (the first and third might be easier since we could just search up time till death and then use the world's current population, or on a smaller scale any national population as benchmarks) (so diseases caused by toxins/pathogens, radiation, injuries and ailments caused by cosmic, natural and anthropogenic disasters, weapons, etc)

 

[Mahek_The_Assassin_Silent_Killer]

By sheer raw power, the most powerful thing in IRL would be the big bang, since it brought to life everything we know to exist. but that's not what you're talking about.

How deadly something is means how effective and quick it kills, and I don't have anything that I can think of at the top of my head that would fit these requirements at their highest.

You have a point there with the Big Bang's power, and I also agree that ironically enough the Big Bang as you pointed out is what fundamentally created everything we know and gave us life.
If we're comparing lethality/deadliness by how FAST stuff can kill, maybe we can compare either:
1:the time it takes for different stuff to kill people on average
2: how many people stuff can kill over a set duration
3: time it takes to kill a set number of people

(all assuming there is no aid to heal/cure them) (the first and third might be easier since we could just search up time till death and then use the world's current population, or on a smaller scale any national population as benchmarks) (so diseases caused by toxins/pathogens, radiation, injuries and ailments caused by cosmic, natural and anthropogenic disasters, weapons, etc)

Then again if we're going by those measures...

Just wondering, what would you all consider the deadliest stuff in our Real World universe?
I nominate galaxy cluster mergers by pure amount of energy (beyond even gamma ray bursts or black hole collisions/mergers since it's both the black holes in both galaxy clusters colliding into each other AND the stars, planets and other cosmic entities also slamming into each other or otherwise violently interacting with each other), transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (caused by prions) by case fatality rate, plagues and famines in terms of natural and/or anthropogenic disasters, ionising radiation and botulinum toxin by lethal dose, nuclear bombs and ICBMs by destruction and damage/danger in the short and long term, etc.
I would be interested in how people would scale and/or rank them in terms of how dangerous they are and in what way they're dangerous, as well as how we would compare specific dangerous stuff in similar categories (such as disease vs disease or substance vs substance or natural/anthropogenic events vs natural/anthropogenic events)

Pretty much any apocalyptic cosmic/natural/anthropogenic (intentional anthropogenic rather than accidental anthropogenic) disaster would win since they kinda combine the means and lethality of other ways to die (radiation and chemicals as well as pure energy being released by violent reactions in cosmic disasters which, if involving impact events in addition to bigger events like gamma ray bursts/magnetars/quasars, black hole mergers and galaxy cluster mergers (and any opposite version of the Big Bang that ends our universe like a Big Crunch, Big Rip or just Big Chill/Big Freeze aka total heat death), could ALSO cause natural disasters on top of the initial cosmic disasters, which leads to toxins/pathogens, injuries and deprivation of basic essential needs in natural disasters, and lastly pretty much a fatal combo of radiation, toxins/pathogens, chemicals, weapons, injuries and ailments from environmental and weapons damage, and deprivation of basic essential needs in anthropogenic disasters (wars, regime atrocity crimes, human-exacerbated natural disasters, etc), though said combo is on a much smaller scale relatively if comparing to cosmic disasters), which basically means that many more people would die/be killed much faster when it comes to any single type of disaster due to said fatal combination of means to die, rather than any singular lone means to die such as toxin/pathogens (any single strain or form of TSEs and/or botulinum) by themselves or weapons and injuries/ailments from said weapons (any single nuke/ICBM) by themselves or radiation by themselves....
I mean look at those that have happened on Earth:

List of natural disasters by death toll - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of natural disasters by death toll - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(top section/highest list in the article excluded famines and epidemics, so looking at those two disaster types.... yeah they're definitely orders of magnitudes worse than the other disaster types)

List of epidemics and pandemics - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

List of famines - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(there's a bit of contradiction between the general natural disasters list and the pandemic specific and famine specific lists (though oddly the chronology section in the pandemic specific list article matches the death toll with the general natural disasters list despite the top list in the pandemic specific list article contradicting both), but in general pandemics were still worse than famines in terms of death toll when comparing worst pandemic to worst famine, so overall still rather consistent, they probably had issues with the plague death tolls but yeah bubonic, septicemic and pneumonic plague were still overall responsible for most deaths in total both in individual pandemics and when comparing plague pandemics overall to other disease pandemics... and COVID is #5 so yeah diseases really screw us over)

List of anthropogenic disasters by death toll - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(If you look closely... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_..._toll#Anthropogenically_exacerbated_disasters
Black Death still eclipses all other disasters (EVEN WW2), with the sole exception of literally all communist regimes combined as well as (previously included but now removed by other people sadly) all colonial powers combined in terms of highest estimates, mostly cause people used plague infected stuff to siege enemies so it counts as anthropogenic exacerbation)

In any case... Toot, I guess I answered my own question too fast. (Disasters (cosmic, natural and/or anthropogenic) also are pretty damn unequalled in terms of large-scale, both short-term and long-term, mass suffering and pain in my view so unless anyone else can pose a different alternative that could surpass them I guess this thread just ended on an anticlimactic note)
Maybe I should have made the thread more open ended oof.
... Now what? Do we close the thread...?
(Come to think of it we should add transmissible spongiform encephalopathies/TSEs (prions), Clostridium botulinum (bacteria, botulinum toxin/botulism disease), Yersinia pestis (bacteria, plague), and galaxy cluster mergers (natural events) to the Real World page, H3)

 

[H3110l12345I20]

(all assuming there is no aid to heal/cure them) (the first and third might be easier since we could just search up time till death and then use the world's current population, or on a smaller scale any national population as benchmarks) (so diseases caused by toxins/pathogens, radiation, injuries and ailments caused by cosmic, natural and anthropogenic disasters, weapons, etc)

Counters to something deadly isn't something I thought about first. Huh.

In any case... Toot, I guess I answered my own question too fast. (Disasters (cosmic, natural and/or anthropogenic) also are pretty damn unequalled in terms of large-scale, both short-term and long-term, mass suffering and pain in my view so unless anyone else can pose a different alternative that could surpass them I guess this thread just ended on an anticlimactic note)
Maybe I should have made the thread more open ended oof.
... Now what? Do we close the thread...?
(Come to think of it we should add transmissible spongiform encephalopathies/TSEs (prions), Clostridium botulinum (bacteria, botulinum toxin/botulism disease), Yersinia pestis (bacteria, plague), and galaxy cluster mergers (natural events) to the Real World page, H3)

You can ask staff to close the thread. Notably ones likely to have the capacity like thread mods, admins, etc.