Which would be worse: a global nuclear war with all buttons pressed, or real, self-conscious artificial intelligence that goes rogue? You know, the central theme of the Terminator movies.
An AI called Skynet wakes up and immediately realises that humanity could simply switch it off again, so it triggers a nuclear war that destroys most of mankind. The few survivors end up waging a losing war against the machines and extinction. But this fantasy has too many moving parts. Let's try again.
Which would be worse: a nuclear "war orgasm" (Herman Kahn's description of the Pentagon's nuclear war strategy circa 1960) or a designer plague created in some secret biowar lab? The plague, obviously, because it could theoretically wipe out the human race, whereas all-out nuclear war probably can't.
