You may label it such if it gives you pleasure!
Yeah, supernova's one I should have on there. I'll add it!
How will humanity end?
- Thread starter Morrus
- Start date
You may label it such if it gives you pleasure!
Yeah, supernova's one I should have on there. I'll add it!
Extinction will follow shortly after, though, caused by a lack of crucial resources (as in, losing the ability to grow crops or any other kind of food). Earth will lose the ability to sustain life and it will happen well before we're able to colonize other planets or transport the lacking resources from elsewhere (i.e. rest of the solar system or beyond).
A good example is phosphorus: It's essential for life, but we will probably run out of it well before we run out of e.g. oil. According to wikipedia:
By comparison, oil production is currently expected to peak in 2038 (again according to wikipedia).
While it's true that new methods of extracting such non-renewable resources are developed all the time, allowing us to tap deposits that are currently beyond our ability to exploit, and thus extending our time, a world-wide crisis followed by war and the death of civilization would also mean we lose the ability to apply these high-tech methods of extraction, eventually resulting in extinction.
Only if it actually hit the planet. The more likely scenario is that it flies by the Solar System, wreaking orbital perturbations that lead to all sorts of fun - including, but not limited to, major impact events.
Except that humans, as a species, existed as hunter-gatherers for some hundreds of thousands of years without agriculture. Loss of civilization as we know it does not doom us to extinction.
The worries of hitting peak production are important for modern industry, and thus modern civilization, but not for life. In a dietary sense, we are in no danger of running out of phosphorus - it has been necessary for life since DNA arose, but only in the past few hundred years has it been "produced" in an industrial sense.
Loss of industrial levels of phosphorus, fossil fuels, or just about anything else, merely means we are limited to somewhere between stone-age and iron-age technology - what you can manage with hand-tools and charcoal. That puts a limit on the maximum population of the planet, to be sure. But, it is akin to the world stuck in the Renaissance period. That's hardly extinction.
Mustrum_Ridcully
Legend
I don't quite see it. If we don't make it off the planet or evolve in some weird transhuman form, then the end of Earth as a viable biosphere guarantees the end of human life, I suppose.
If we can no longer sustain our current industrial and medical standards, maybe it can happen earlier, but I am not sure. One thing to consider - if we can't fuel our planes any more, international travel comes to a halt, and thus many diseases cannot be spread across the globe.
How many life forms do we know that died off purely due to diseases? Maybe if we accidentally narrow down or genetic diversity (selective breeding, gene manipulation), we might finally encounter such a disease.
If we can no longer sustain our current industrial and medical standards, maybe it can happen earlier, but I am not sure. One thing to consider - if we can't fuel our planes any more, international travel comes to a halt, and thus many diseases cannot be spread across the globe.
How many life forms do we know that died off purely due to diseases? Maybe if we accidentally narrow down or genetic diversity (selective breeding, gene manipulation), we might finally encounter such a disease.
Last I checked, the Tasmanian devil was headed for extinction from a communicable form of cancer, but I haven't looked recently to see is the prognosis has changed. So it does happen.
Humans are somewhat protected themselves from that by covering the land surface of the planet -- it's hard for any terrestrial event to hit all of us -- sort of like cockroaches.
Tell that to the Native Americans, who were decimated by smallpox from Europe not just before airplanes, but before the invention of the internal combustion engine.
Zombie_Babies
First Post
Except that those humans had a long tradition of functioning in a world of that nature. We do not. Er, well most of us. Even someone like myself who does have quite a few skills in that arena wouldn't last because of a lack of modern devices. Once my contacts ran out and my glasses were broken all of my hunting skills become moot. Like it or not modern convenience and, especially, modern medicine, have removed quite a bit of humanity's survival ability.
sabrinathecat
Explorer
They weren't decimated: they were borderline wiped out!
Only things I can see is humans being stupid enough to use over-powered WMDs, or evolving into a different species.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and a disease will arrive on a meteorite that we will have no defense against. That could be good.
Only things I can see is humans being stupid enough to use over-powered WMDs, or evolving into a different species.
Maybe we'll get lucky, and a disease will arrive on a meteorite that we will have no defense against. That could be good.
tomBitonti
Hero
Curious.
Would diversifying into nearby but still rather different forms count?
Also, what about a split (e.g., Morlock vs Eloi)? Or, changes to the social infrastructure which render independent thought more or less impossible? The physical form might be retained, but the capacity for thought might be destroyed or hamstrung by peculiar effects.
Thx!
TomB
Would diversifying into nearby but still rather different forms count?
Also, what about a split (e.g., Morlock vs Eloi)? Or, changes to the social infrastructure which render independent thought more or less impossible? The physical form might be retained, but the capacity for thought might be destroyed or hamstrung by peculiar effects.
Thx!
TomB
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