Two different scenarios of the quantum critical point (QCP), a zero-temperature instability of the Landau state, related to the divergence of the effective mass, are investigated. Flaws of the standard scenario of the QCP, where this divergence is attributed to the occurrence of some secondorder phase transition, are demonstrated. Salient features of a different topological scenario of the QCP, associated with the emergence of bifurcation points in equation ǫ(p) = µ that ordinarily determines the Fermi momentum, are analyzed. The topological scenario of the QCP is applied to three-dimensional (3D) Fermi liquids with an attractive current-current interaction.A statement that the Landau quasiparticle picture breaks down at points of second-order phase transitions has become a truism. The violation of this picture is attributed to vanishing of the quasiparticle weight z in the single-particle state since the analysis of a long wavelength instability in the S = 1 particle-hole channel, performed more than forty years ago by Doniach and Engelsberg 1 and refined later by Dyugaev. 2 In nonsuperfluid Fermi systems, the z-factor is determined by the formula z = [1 − (∂Σ(p, ε)/∂ε) 0 ] −1 where the subscript 0 indicates that the respective derivative of the mass operator Σ is evaluated at the Fermi surface. This factor enters a textbook formula M M * = z 1 + ∂Σ(p, ε) ∂ǫ 0 p 0