h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The scientist Ilya Prigogine, who won the Nobel Prize, for his work on the second law of thermodynamics, also helped to define the theory of indeterminancy. Determinism is really about absolute probabilities and predicting events accurately in an either or fashion. Indeterminancy does not reject that but amends it, via Chaos theory, that what with all the random, incalculable or non-linear variables in action at any moment, all calculations have a certain precision of inaccuracy. In a mathematical equation inaccuracies in prediction can rapidly expand, causing unpredictable behavior. The compromise, was Prigogine's call for an End to Certainty (also a title of a book he wrote) to understand that probability is not a bastard child to certainty, but is in a real sense, more accurate.
I admit that this has little to do with fate or free will, but to insert a question into your argument. It is equally feasible to think of the behavior of the organisms on the doomed planet as deterministic, or purely chaotic. Probability is a nice way of solving this, it makes predictions based on available data which is of course the only type of data we use.

..................... eh?