How will humanity end?

[tomBitonti]

One should probably put some parameters on the failure.

A flare which fried all electronics but left the world otherwise about the same is different than an asteroid driven nuclear winter is different than a plague which kills 90-99.99% of folks but leaves the rest, which is different than all out nuclear war.

Thx!

TomB

 

[Homicidal_Squirrel]

There are many things which might decimate humanity or worse. But what do you think will be the thing to actually end us? The point where we go extinct?

Your poll conveniently left out the choice "When Homicidal_Squirrel, and his legion of squirrels, decides it." I'm sure you'll argue that can fit under "Other," but such an obvious choice deserves it's own sport, preferably the first sport, on this poll.

 

[delericho]

You know the bit in Firefly where it says "we used up the Earth, so we found a new one"?

Well, that... except without the "finding a new one" bit. As Umbran says, we seem to be charting a path to our own destruction.

(That said, I do have my doubts - an asteroid might get us first.)

 

[Hand of Evil]

I went with WAR but kind of think, we will just stop, that our DNA will just say; hey you had a good run, time to die. A lot of things to be blamed for this but it is just we reach our evolutionary end, which we have not improved on in the last 10000 odd years.

Now with Asteroid 2013.TV135 (one in 48,000 chance of hitting Earth in 2032), just don't think it is big enough to take all of our out.

 

[Janx]

One should probably put some parameters on the failure.

A flare which fried all electronics but left the world otherwise about the same is different than an asteroid driven nuclear winter is different than a plague which kills 90-99.99% of folks but leaves the rest, which is different than all out nuclear war.

Thx!

TomB

Which is why I figure that many of the listed catastrophes won't wipe us out 100%, and thus won't be the thing that kills us.

War and disease are certainly bad things, but humans are slippery critters and it is darn hard to get them all. Heck, we can't even perform a human vs. human genocide to 100% efficiency. There are always people getting away with the clothes on their back to warn others.

It's gonna take a planet killer event to wipe out all life on earth to do us in.

Even climate change (as in the real world stuff, not the sci fi stuff where the temperature rises +100 degrees and we all die) isn't sufficient. So what if the earth gets hotter and the oceans rise. Africa's been like that forever, and people still live there. There are going to places that remain habitable (ex. northern canada), and lots of people will suffer and die. But that's not the same as EVERYBODY being wiped out. The most adapting the Canadians will need to do is to buy a swimsuit and mothball their parkas.

 

[Morrus]

I went with WAR but kind of think, we will just stop, that our DNA will just say; hey you had a good run, time to die. A lot of things to be blamed for this but it is just we reach our evolutionary end, which we have not improved on in the last 10000 odd years.
/QUOTE]

Is there any evidence this has ever happened to any species, or that it can happen?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I went with WAR but kind of think, we will just stop, that our DNA will just say; hey you had a good run, time to die. A lot of things to be blamed for this but it is just we reach our evolutionary end, which we have not improved on in the last 10000 odd years.
/QUOTE]

Is there any evidence this has ever happened to any species, or that it can happen?

The only thing of the type that happens is a species generally adapting to too specific conditions and unable to handle the change, I think.

But humanity's evolution has moved in a more of a "generalist" solution - instead of forcing us to "wait" for genetic mutation, we can build tools. if it gets a bit colder, you don't need a "grow-thick-body-hair" mutation - you just need thicker clothes.

What certainly doesn't happen is evolution stopping. Yes, some animals have "ancient" DNA, basically unchanged from ancestors thousands or millions of years ago. But they didn't need to change, so mutations are mostly irrelevant to survival, at worst harmful. And humanity certainly hasn't developed a special mutation-proof DNA copying mechanism yet. (Cancer might be the best example how we don't.)

Our environment must change too an extreme we cannot handle so we can just go extinct.

 

[Alzrius]

Regardless of how humanity goes extinct, some conservative guesses indicate that there's a 95% chance that humans will be gone in just over 9,100 years.

I find that thought oddly comforting.

 

[Hand of Evil]

I went with WAR but kind of think, we will just stop, that our DNA will just say; hey you had a good run, time to die. A lot of things to be blamed for this but it is just we reach our evolutionary end, which we have not improved on in the last 10000 odd years.

Is there any evidence this has ever happened to any species, or that it can happen?

I do not think so, but 90% of all life on earth in the history of the earth has become extinct, some we know of as being climate, floods, volcanic, etc but a number seem to have just ended. If we become another species are we still humans or do we need up like the Neanderthal and just fade away.

 

[Nellisir]

I do not think so, but 90% of all life on earth in the history of the earth has become extinct, some we know of as being climate, floods, volcanic, etc but a number seem to have just ended. If we become another species are we still humans or do we need up like the Neanderthal and just fade away.

As mustrum points out, a lot of that can be attributed to over-specialization. That is...not really a problem for us.

Humans have one special adaptation. We have big brains that let us talk to one another. We use that talking to transmit knowledge on how to make things. The things we make either adapt us to an environment, or adapt an environment to us.

Humans and closely related species (Homo erectus, Homo neanderthalensis, Homo sapiens idaltu, Homo heidelbergensis, Homo floresiensis, Homo denisovan) were all capable of surviving outside of Africa, sometimes in extremely adverse environments. Homo erectus likely used fire as long as 1 million years ago. Sapiens, neandertals, denisovans, and floresiens almost certainly all used clothing. Homo erectus as a species lasted more than 1.5 million years.

I think more often what happens is a generalized species (ie homo erectus) eventually becomes either a more advanced generalized species (heidelbergensis) and/or more specialized species (neandertals, denisovans?). Specialized species are vulnerable to habitat loss & competition; generalized species are not optimal at utilizing their environments and, while having a wider range, lack the numbers of more specialized species (ie herds of bison, antelope, etc, etc.) The original species is seen to have "gone extinct", but that's only true in the sense that your great-great-grandparents have "gone extinct".