What is a Polar Shift?

Question

Can someone explain to an 11 year old boy what a polar shift is and how we'd die if a polar shift happened?

Answer 1

polar shift, not to be confused with magnetic shift is a theory that an over accumulation of ice at one or both polar caps would be enough weight to cause the earths axial tilt to move. this might happen over a period of thousands or millions of years. chances of wide spread death and destruction are minimal. but temperate zones would move into arctic zones and equatorial zones into temperate and so forth. not to worry.

Answer 2

A polar shift is when the earths magnetic field reverses polarity, so the magnetic north pole becomes the magnetic south pole. Just the magnetism switches, not the whole planet, and when it occurs, which could be anytime in the next 100,000 years, there's no reason to believe everyone would die, assuming we're still here when it happens.