What will end mankind? (1 Viewer)

[Homer J Simpson]

Wrath of God down?

 

[Sinn Fein]

Unzipping of the universe.

nope. that was my pants.

 

[TripItUp]

Wrath of God down?

No worries here, the Ark is safe brohan.

 

[Mjolnirs]

It is clearly the meteorite event...it's happened several times before, and it will happen again.(unless we find a way to change their path, which from a physics perspective is very difficult to do.

I do believe that global warming(man made or not), has the potential to result in massive food shortages, which would result in world wars and significant reduction in population, but not total human extinction. Habitats have always adjusted populations down when necessary.

Agreed.

I think a large asteroid hit or some type of solar event will take us out before we have the knowledge to protect ourselves, or the technology to leave the planet and colonize.

Regarding the second part. I think global overpopulation will either choke us back to the stone age or fuel scientific discoveries to save us. Dan Brown's book Inferno centers around one scientist's belief that mankind must reduce its numbers to survive.

For those saying a virus or disease, read Frank Herbert's The White Plague.

The White Plague, a marvelous and terrifyingly plausible blend of fiction and visionary theme, tells of one man who is pushed over the edge of sanity by the senseless murder of his family and who, reappearing several months later as the so-called Madman, unleashes a terrible plague upon the human race---one that zeros in, unerringly and fatally, on women.

 

[Ditka Butkus]

Toe-nail fungus.

 

[jandyt]

Chuck Norris

 

[Moobers]

Whatever it is, it'll probably be the same thing that wiped out life on all the other planets in our solar system

 

[TheIronSheik]

Whatever it is, it'll probably be the same thing that wiped out life on all the other planets in our solar system

Radical Islam?

 

[jandyt]

Whatever it is, it'll probably be the same thing that wiped out life on all the other planets in our solar system

That would be Chuck Norris. He decides what lives.

 

[Uwe Blab]

Interesting, long form blog post: The AI Revolution: Our Immortality or Extinction

Thanks for that link. An incredibly interesting and terrifying read. My brain hurts, but in a good way.

 

[Del Griffith]

Democrats

 

[tonydead]

I am thinking some sort cosmic event such as an asteroid or huge gamma ray pulse. Something that is well beyond our control. There is always that thing about the sun going super nova which will end life here eventually.

Odds of a supernova are unlikely but in about 5 billion years it will go through its Red Giant phase which has a high likely hood of engulfing the Earth or at least evaportaing all the water.

Should be a pole option, imo, since this is inevitable. But, 5 billion, yeah we'll eat ourselves like trapped rats way before then.

 

[tonydead]

I actually voted never ends. I think science trumps in the end with space travel being developed in the private sector we finally learn how to harness gravity and part of the 1% escapes to other inhabitable planets that we they can adapt to.

 

[Keith R]

Imagine there is an abandoned house near your block. Cockroaches have moved in and are able to live in the attic unnoticed and undisturbed for generations. But someday, someone will enter and fumigate them all, or someone will just have the house torn down and rebuild.

Now imagine we are the cockroaches, living a blissfully ignorant life until greater beings show up and fumigate us or just tear our solar system apart.

 

[Homer J Simpson]

Imagine there is an abandoned house near your block. Cockroaches have moved in and are able to live in the attic unnoticed and undisturbed for generations. But someday, someone will enter and fumigate them all, or someone will just have the house torn down and rebuild.

Now imagine we are the cockroaches, living a blissfully ignorant life until greater beings show up and fumigate us or just tear our solar system apart.

We should hang out.

 

[Sand]

Meteor FTL

Something of this size is a once a billion year event and you think this is the thing?

I'm much more worried about what humans can do to each other over meteors, aliens, supervolcanos, and global warming/cooling change into oblivion events.

 

[PlasmaDogPlasma]

I actually voted never ends. I think science trumps in the end with space travel being developed in the private sector we finally learn how to harness gravity and part of the 1% escapes to other inhabitable planets that we they can adapt to.

And then the millionaires will wait tables for the billionaires.

 

[Uwe Blab]

Read that breakdown on the coming future of Artificial Intelligence article. It's that. There's little chance that is managed properly. We're likely screwed.

 

[Arizona Ron]

Read that breakdown on the coming future of Artificial Intelligence article. It's that. There's little chance that is managed properly. We're likely screwed.

This is why I think the robots will do us in.

 

[bakes]

Greed and stupidity. We are a notoriously shortsighted and stubborn species, as a whole. Imagine if we would have taken the amount of time, money, and effort that we have put in to offing each other (mostly based directly or indirectly around either control of the supply of fermented dinosaurs or which invisible guy in the sky is superior) and instead put those resources into developing a sustainable planet for all creatures.

 

[skol asylum]

Reality TV and guys like Trump ushering in Idiocracy. Water those crops with Gatorade people. Electrolytes!

 

[chauncey]

A virus. The earth will get rid of us when it feels it can't sustain with us on the planet.

Simple as that.

Aside from an astronomical event, this is probably the best answer.

People won't be the end of people...simply because at some point, there aren't enough of us to kill us. You need someone with a nuke to kill people. After you blow up all the big cities with all the nukes, you can't make more, and there's nobody else left to push the button...but there's still millions of folks in the boonies to rebuild the world, albeit slowly.

It's got to be something beyond our control...and if it's not a big "boom" from a meteor or something, it's going to be a disease that kills fast and is hard to cure.

This sounds great. The sooner the better.

 

[kentric]

Whatever it is, it'll probably be the same thing that wiped out life on all the other planets in our solar system

That would be Chuck Norris. He decides what lives.

I thought it was Morgan Freeman who makes that decision.

 

[bcdjr1]

I don't think population/starvation, running out of fossil fuels, or a natural disease would kill off the species. The population would just reset to a lower number and start building again. A man-made disease/virus has potential, but I doubt even that could reach everyone.

The thought behind some of those first causes this would be that we would drain these resources (food/fuel/whatever) to beyond the point where they could recover in time to even support a lower population number.

The example I've heard made before is with algae in a pond. At first there's a little bit, but soon it grows to the point that it's completely covering the surface of the pond, blocking sunlight from getting to the plants and whatever that need it to produce the nutrients that the algae subsist upon. The algae keep consuming the nutrients until they are all gone, then start dying out. The entire population of algae in the pond end up dying from the lack of these nutrients before the mechanisms that replenish the nutrients have a chance to recover.