Humanity's Future

[Tiffashy]

Hmmm we might not fear expinction cause we are one of the most common animals on this planet. It would take something pretty strong to wipe us out.

[vegetariancannibal]

I want Star Trek. I want Star Trek so badly. And I feel that it's within our reach, just people are too selfish to see it.

 

If we could all just pull out and see the bigger picture, see what would benefit everyone, and choose that route... Who am I kidding. Parents teach their children that sharing is better than greed, and then say things like "I don't want my hard-earned money to be taken away to pay for somebody else's health insurance!" etc..

 

Why must humans be so hypocritical? *sighs*

[Wookieinmashoo]

Not to quote a well loved movie but nature will find a way. That way will probably to kill us all off.

[Princess Artemis]

We'll all die because nothing is forever, but I don't think things will go so badly getting there.

[miladyz]

At the current rate we're going, I feel like humans will destroy the Earth and consequently ourselves.

 

Either that, or a zombie apocalypse.

[Lythiaren]

Hmmm we might not fear expinction cause we are one of the most common animals on this planet. It would take something pretty strong to wipe us out.

Like ourselves?

[Shienvien]

One day, we'll all die anyway.

 

'When?' is the main question of this debate. Shall we make our habitat unsuitable for ourselves (which, in my opinion, is far from equaling destroying it - someone else might yet thrive in it), shall the sun 'die' before we make it properly out of the solar system, or shall the entire universe undergo heat-death or collapse upon itself...

[olympe]

Oh, I think we'll probably go through most of the issues stated in the poll. Pollution will cause many deaths, probably millions or even billions if the consequences - like global warming - are taken into account. Atomic pollution will probably add to that. Super germs of any kind - either evolving naturally, through the over-use of antibiotics or developoed by some military power - will sure kill countless people. Warmongering will decrease the population significantly.

 

Still, there are billions of humans, on all continents of the world. No matter how bad things get, somewhere some people will survive, and with them the human race. After all, our ancestors survived ice ages, warm interglacials, the pest, famine and I don't know how many other perils. And somehow, some people always managed. Some modern humans even develop immunity to HIV, and there are people who survived the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (There is at least one acknowledged case of a man who was close to the epicenter of both explosion - and he survived both.)

 

Also, humanity learns to cope with many issues. Clean power plants are being developed at an ever increasing rate, and crops altered to allow them to thrive where they couldn't grow before. (Ever heard of triticale? genetically altered crops?)

 

 

Of course, in roughly 4 billion years, the sun will turn into a red giant and probably swallow Earth. But that's a very long time from now, about as much time as Earth has been in existence. (Okay, a little less than that, but still a very long time.)

 

 

[StraVir]

I think that we are way over due for another ice age. Or any other huge natural phenomenon that will wipe out large populations that can't survive the harsh conditions. In other words I think that mother nature has some redecorating ideas in mind and not many will survive to see the end of it.

[Keriel]

Well if a super volcano blows it top (we are over due by a few thousand years i believe) it could drastically alter the world climate in a matter of days. people near said volcano are in deep dodo but at least death should be quick. the rest of us face an ice age anew and breathing in toxic ash....

 

super volcano FUN

lol i used to watch documentaries on super volcano. yellowstone has some very scary history

 

EDIT: from one of the documentaries i watched

Supervolcano

The world's biggest bang

Considering their destructive potential, it's a good thing super-eruptions are so rare – the last one happened in Toba, Indonesia, about 74,000 years ago. Geologists think these eruptions take place about every 50,000 years, which suggests one is overdue.

 

key being in bold. that's comforting that they only think...

 

EDIT AGAIN:

same place

Three super-eruptions at Yellowstone appear to have occurred on a 600,000-700,000 year cycle starting 2.1 million years ago. The most recent took place 640,000 years ago – suggesting Yellowstone is overdue for an eruption.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Keriel

[Sesshomaru]

We need more optimists and dreamers.

Here I am! Bright outlook on life is my middle name.

[Tiffashy]

Like ourselves?

Pretty much, ourselfs are our biggest enemies. Maybe we could die from something like a disesce, pehaps anther black death? (poor at spelling)

Or maybe we go all violent and kill each other? Well it would have to be something really strong, since there is so much of us

[Keriel]

still on super Volcanoes and starting to scare myself. dang i shouldn't have thought of them!

 

Brink of extinction?! i hope this is false and a unreliable site DX i think i have shot myself in the foot i was half joking when i said super volcanoes!

Edited November 26, 2011 by Keriel

[Lilithiana]

I think Earth is (statistically) overdue for an impact of a big meteorite, too.

Edited November 26, 2011 by Lilithiana

[Keriel]

I think Earth is (statistically) overdue for an impact of a big meteorite, too.

that scares me more than volcanoes..... maybe because there are no volcanoes in Australia so i stand a chance of surviving that. but who knows where a meteor will strike eep

[Tiffashy]

about more then 10million meteors hit earth but most of them are so small that they burn up in astophere. I also live in Austrailia but still, super volcanos give me the shivers.

I read a book and it says that you have a 50% of surving one and you have to be at least 100 kilometres (60miles) away from one to have a chance of survining. They cause heavy ashes that would covver thousands of kilometres in every direction.

[Maiden]

Not to quote a well loved movie but nature will find a way. That way will probably to kill us all off.

Bwahahahaha! I see what you did thar!!

 

Seriously, humanity isn't going to make it. And I don't think it's going to take the sun exploding or a full-on nuclear war to do us in. In the end, it will probably be one of two things: famine/hunger or zombies.

 

I hope it's zombies, really I do. I'm not very fast as far as running, since I have a bum knee, but I'm a pretty good urban survivalist and I already have a Zombie plan. I'm also a pretty good shot and I do have a shotgun and a pistol here. So long as the virus isn't airborne, I think I'll be all right... at least until I run out of bullets, but I'm hoping they'll starve off first.

 

Realistically, I think humanity will come crashing down over a very basic element that a majority of people in first-world countries take for granted: food. If you look at the world population and consider how much food it takes to sustain that many people, our ratios aren't that great. With the climate changing and the population always growing, it won't be long before we can't feed all the humans on Earth. Once we hit that point, it's all downhill.

 

My younger sister has told me that she believes a Solar Storm will wipe out the planet's electronics and power grids, and that a good many people will simply starve to death because humans just aren't capable of hunting and gathering food like we used to be.

 

Sure, there are dreamers who hope that mankind will see the error of their ways before it's too late. It's not going to happen. We're all going to die, and it will be our own fault.

[Tiffashy]

Your younger sister might be right. But I don't think that we would actully "tranform" into zombies. Maybe something like Left4dead when we get affected by this sicknes and we will kind of act like zombies and kill each other for food. ((left4dead is a zombie game))

 

Also, what would happen to earth when humans are wiped out?

Edited November 26, 2011 by Tiffashy

[TikindiDragon]

Thinking about it I can't help but wonder wether we'll run out of coal/oil/gas before we managed to completely destroy ourselves in a pollution/war based way. If one looks at the Reserves-to-Production figured for each of the three major non-renewables it becomes quite frightening. Calculations made between 2004 and 2006 suggest that we have:

 

40-80 years of oil remaining

59 years of natural gas remaining

164 years of coal remaining

 

Bear in mind that these figures are based on currently known scources of fossil fules, and current rates of consumption. Increasing rates of consumption would shorten the times, discovery of new reserves would lengthen them. And any pattern would follow a bell curve, which means production would start to drop off a long while before reserved actualy completely ran out.

 

Given how much of our current lifestyle is completely dependant on hydrocarbons (for fuel, electricity and, in the case of oil, all our plastics) I can see there being a crisis for civilisation in the not too distant.

 

Edited to add: It may also interest some of you to note that we have *already* passed the peak-oil-per-capita point. Meaning that there is now less oil produced per year, per person living on the planet now than there was in 1980.

Edited November 26, 2011 by TikindiDragon

[Maiden]

@ Tiffashy: When I say Zombies, I don't mean exactly dead people who have become reanimated and risen from the ground. I've done more than a little research on virus zombies. There are several scientific theories floating around wherein viruses like Rabies and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (aka Mad Cow Disease) could be mutated or weaponized into diseases that would produce some very zombie-like humans. I don't think it's exactly likely, but if the end of the world is coming... zombies please.

 

I also do know what L4D is. Totally.

 

@ Tiki: That's another good point, and one that would further contribute to a worldwide famine. If there was no fuel for the planes, trains and automobiles which deliver food around the globe, the disruption in the food chain would be catastrophic even if we found alternate methods to heat and light our homes. (Like solar or wind power.) We're still too many years away from having methods of transport that can be powered by such technologies. An oil crisis would be very dangerous, and not just for our cars.

[Tiffashy]

@ Tiffashy: When I say Zombies, I don't mean exactly dead people who have become reanimated and risen from the ground. I've done more than a little research on virus zombies. There are several scientific theories floating around wherein viruses like Rabies and Variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (aka Mad Cow Disease) could be mutated or weaponized into diseases that would produce some very zombie-like humans. I don't think it's exactly likely, but if the end of the world is coming... zombies please.

 

I also do know what L4D is. Totally.

 

@ Tiki: That's another good point, and one that would further contribute to a worldwide famine. If there was no fuel for the planes, trains and automobiles which deliver food around the globe, the disruption in the food chain would be catastrophic even if we found alternate methods to heat and light our homes. (Like solar or wind power.) We're still too many years away from having methods of transport that can be powered by such technologies. An oil crisis would be very dangerous, and not just for our cars.

Ahh lol, thought so

[Keriel]

Also, what would happen to earth when humans are wiped out?

it would recover and continue to spin as nature resumes as if we never existed -shrug- as much damage as humans have done in the scheme of things our existence is hardly a blip compared to how long the earth has been around and how much longer it probably has left.

 

in geographical times a few thousand years is literally nothing. so even though super volcanoes are over due by a few thousand years... in the scheme of things it isn't really that much. just sounds a lot because our lives are so darn short

[MathiasTolerain]

The "we're running out of fossil fuel" arguments never really got to me.

 

Mostly it sounds like a modern malthusian crisis. Heck, in just a few years after the US began bumping the $5.00 per gallon (or roughly 1 euro per liter) we see better and better hybrids combined with purely electric cars. Heck, the entire truck fleet for Office Depot (or Staples... One of the big office supply stores) in Portland OR uses electric trucks.

 

Then there are all sorts of energy production methods that don't need fossil fuel, not the least of which is nuclear - safe nuclear, not the old designs that blow up when the controls fail.

 

What worries me more are the fronts on which we've made little or no meaningful scientific development since the dawn of recorded history: Hate and Group Think.

[Nine]

On the topic of what would happen if humans disappeared (just ceased to exist, no tangible reason), this right here is kind of an interesting summary of some of the more notable events. Naturally, it's all speculation but still pretty realistic.

 

I remember a chart that described how long it would take for human existence to be completely wiped out, but I can't find it for the life of me. It listed things like how it would take 48 hours for light pollution to dissipate completely, 2 years for gum on sidewalk to be disintegrated, some 400 years for buildings to begin to erode... infinity years for radioactive material to die. Was a really cool link, why'd I have to lose it =/

[TikindiDragon]

@ Matthias - we've been at around $8.50 for a gallon of petrol here in England for a good number of years now. Plus you do need to bear in mind that a large number of the hybrid vehicles aren't being developed in the US, or specificaly for the US market, and have therefore got very, very little to do with the price of petrol in the USA. We've had *much* more economical cars in Europe for many, many years - it's just that you've only now started to feel like you need them in the States.

 

There are, indeed, various way of producing electricity that do not require fossil fuels. To be fair nuclear is the only one that's practical on a large scale, and I'm a great proponant of it. But nuclear cannot create plastics. Plastics require oil to create, and geologists will happily tell you that oil reserves are finite. Not only that but as we use up the more easily acessed oil and have to move on to the stuff that's more difficult to extract the price will skyrocket.

 

"We're running out of fossil fuels" is something pretty much every big institution - from oil companies, to governments - wants to play down. No one wants to create panic. But I've studied Geology, and I've seen the reports from quite a nmber of leading geologists. Fact is we cannot create *more* fossil fuels, and we're using up the ones we've got. At an ever increasing rate, I might add.