Trust me.

You don’t want to be on Earth in about 250 million years when the continents come back together and a new supercontinent forms. And do you know why? Because 250 million years ago, the last time a supercontinent, called Pangaea, formed, Earth had experienced what is pretty much the worst mass extinction in its entire history, the Permo-Triassic Extinction Event, where 90% of all life died. Turns out that the supercontinent itself was responsible for causing the Great Dying, because of the continental configuration’s effect on the climate.

Because when all of the Earth’s land is gathered on one hemisphere, leaving the other hemisphere completely covered with water, it pretty much cuts off all existing ocean currents, making the oceans stagnant and starved of oxygen, turning the water black. And the continents themselves, they became almost completely covered with desert and bubbling tar pits as there is no way for any moisture to reach inland, with most of the moisture coming from the oceans, and the supercontinent preventing atmospheric circulation from bring this moisture to the land.

But those volcanoes! The supercontinent would also result in more severe volcanic activity which would lead to huge amounts of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane and covering the whole atmosphere with ash and soot and acid rain, resulting in sunlight being blocked out for a really long time, and once this clears up, would result in really rapid global warming.

Pretty scary stuff, isn’t it? And the worst part? Since Earth’s continents are one day going to drift away and form another supercontinent again, the Great Dying may eventually be repeated in the future in approximately another 250 million years, when the continents come back together again.

And this will pretty much spell the beginning of the end of all life on Earth that will be caused by the gradual warming and expansion of the Sun 250 million years after that (half a billion years from now). That’s what paleontologist Peter Ward says.