@farmerman,
farmerman wrote:that too. (I have no idea what that is?) Sounds serious
A vacuum metastability disaster starts at a point and expands outward in space just shy of the speed of light.
Within this expanding zone of doom, normal protons and neutrons are exotic particles that rapidly decay into other (unknown) particles, liberating large amounts of energy.
When the expanding zone of doom encompasses earth, most of earth's mass will convert into energy, causing the planet to explode with a force greater than a supernova. After that, there will no longer be any matter in this part of the universe (matter now being composed of exotic particles that rapidly decay into something else).
Since the vacuum metastability disaster expands just shy of the speed of light, and the energy that it liberates will travel
at the speed of light, some of the huge amounts of energy that are liberated will range ahead of the primary disaster. This means that before the primary disaster arrives, earth will first be baked with lethal radiation and then will be stripped of its atmosphere by an extremely aggressive "solar wind".
Some physicists believe that in the wake of a vacuum metastability disaster the region of space where there is no longer any matter will soon collapse in on itself in a "big crunch", causing that part of the universe to cease to exist altogether.
Presuming that humanity manages to avoid all the avoidable extinction events, this will be the event that one day renders our species extinct.