Can we?

lost_lad

Is it too late to save the world from its self?

And if not how do we go about saving the world?

aidan_walsh

The world doesn't need saving from itself, it needs saving from us.

seamus

We're no different now than we were 300 years ago, we just have more technology, but we're still here. The chances of us instigating anything that could wipe out the entire population is minimal IMO.

lost_lad

let me be more specific.

Is it to late too save the Human Race from its self?

And if not how do we do it?

ferdi

we're all ****ed IMO.

Lafortezza

lost_lad wrote:

let me be more specific.

Is it to late too save the Human Race from its self?

And if not how do we do it?

What exactly are you asking? What does the Human Race need saving from?

Chad ghostal

i think the majority of humans will wipe out the majority of humans... leaving only a few left to wallow in the ruin.
were waYyy to self destructive.
its not going to happen in my lifetime .. but soon.

lost_lad

lafortezza wrote:

What exactly are you asking? What does the Human Race need saving from?

Ourselves. We are killing, maiming, raping each other. Can we stop this? Before we do the ultimate and wipe ourselves of this little planet we call home.

Fysh

lost_lad wrote:

Ourselves. We are killing, maiming, raping each other. Can we stop this? Before we do the ultimate and wipe ourselves of this little planet we call home.

We're also out there helping each other, working to find cures to disease, donating to charity and contributing to countless good causes. I don't see this discussion going anywhere interesting if the premise is "mankind is inherently self-destructive", because it's far too reductive a point of view to be considered accurate. Expand on your reasons for believing we're doomed sometime in the near future, and maybe we can build from there.

Besides which, the trends you point at have been a part of our various cultures for pretty much the entirety of our documented history, and so far we've flourished. It would be flawed logic to suggest that this makes it the way to continue, but if mental austrian midgets with a fixation on large muscled blonde german lads, roman imperialists or demented Mongol warlords haven't brought about the end of humanity yet then I think we might have a reasonable chance of ongoing survival.

Dades

Carl Sagan used to talk about how we still carry the "R-complex" in our brains from the time we evolved from the swamps. His theory was that this primordial function is what supplies our worst remaining instincts, what we recognise now as territoriality and xenophobia.

He suggested that if we survive long enough, evolution may eventually subdue those urges and allow for a more rational society.

I don't believe a world war will wipe us out, but I also don't believe any one thing will "save" us. Our salvation will me more of a slog, than an event.

simu

This is more suited to humanities...

Wibbs

seamus.

We're no different now than we were 300 years ago, we just have more technology, but we're still here. The chances of us instigating anything that could wipe out the entire population is minimal IMO

Oh I'm not so sure. Far be it from me to walk the streets of Ireland wearing a placard emblazoned with "the end is nigh" on the front and "we're doomed I tells ya Doooooomed"on the back, But it's not so fanciful as it once was.

Some of that very technology may be our undoing(no, I'm not a luddite )

Pollution leading to a possible greenhouse disaster(the jury's still deliberating on that)

Genetic engineering/Nanotechnology going a bit south on us.

Some yahoo creating a runaway black hole in some high powered physics experiment. An area where the word "oops" is not to be taken lightly.

Terrorist nuclear device. After all the fusion bomb is 50's technology.

A force like the Taliban(as an example) taking over could return us to the middle ages


That's just some of the stuff we could be responsible for ourselves. There's also the stuff we have little or no control over such as;

Influenza virus mutating into something like ebola or lassa fever. Imagine an airborne black death(pneumonic plague) with our global culture. It would spread within months to virtually every part of the globe. Could we stop it? Look at the faffin around that attends bird flu at the moment.

Super volcano event. The last really big one 60,000? thousand years ago reduced the human race to around the 10,000 mark(by some estimates) Google that bugger and be a litlle concerned.

The dirty great rock from space scenario. Remember those big lizards all those years ago? A bit thin on the ground today. Mass extinction events seem to be quite regular.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/03/10/MNGFIBN6PO1.DTL

It looks like we may be due one.

Ice ages. Another lump of coal on the fire just won't cut it.

Massive EM pulse from the sun or nearby supernova. Magnetic pole reversal that may leave us open to charged particles. That could blow out most if not all of the microprocessors on the face of the earth. One bang and overnight we're back to the 17th century. It's even (slightly) possible that a wayward computer virus could have a similar if more temporary effect. Instant chaos.

On second thought and reading that back, I've realised that, a) I appear to be more pessimistic than I thought and b) we're Doooooooooooomed! Possibly.

seamus

Black Holes gone awry aside, nothing else could conceivably wipe the entire population out.

Natural disasters are part an parcel of living on a planet. We're lucky to be here at all.

I'm almost 100% sure that when the end comes it'll be of something we neither created nor can stop.

Wibbs

I do agree with you seamus, that it's a long shot. The point I buried(deeply) under the flippancy was that now we do at least have the tools and the know how to pretty much wipe ourselves out.

300 years ago those tools simply didn't exist. Today it's quite conceivable that someone could build a pathogen in a lab with the potential to kill 90% of the world's population. Ebola(Zaire) hemorrhagic fever is fatal in 90% cases. While you would need to engineer the protein coating to resist desiccation, it's not beyond the realms of possiblity. I realise it would take a nutter to do it but it is at least possible. A more likely scenario is where a lab would "make" the mutations required for airborne transmission for the purposes of vaccine development. Any escape would be a bit scary to say the least.

That was the serious idea behind the BS

seamus

Wibbs wrote:

300 years ago those tools simply didn't exist. Today it's quite conceivable that someone could build a pathogen in a lab with the potential to kill 90% of the world's population. Ebola(Zaire) hemorrhagic fever is fatal in 90% cases. While you would need to engineer the protein coating to resist desiccation, it's not beyond the realms of possiblity. I realise it would take a nutter to do it but it is at least possible. A more likely scenario is where a lab would "make" the mutations required for airborne transmission for the purposes of vaccine development. Any escape would be a bit scary to say the least.

So many things have been done with "the best intentions". What's not inconceivable is an ebola-inspired biological weapon, more life outside of an animal, but less contagious. One brief affair with a "wild" ebola, and we're all ****ed.

It's funny to be reminded about how anyone in Western country is blessed. Most of us are the first generation who've never had to experience war, famine, pandemics or fatal poverty. That some of the basic things we take for granted could be thrown out the door in a matter of hours is a sobering thought.

Wibbs

Well put seamus, and how very true it is. I consider myself lucky to have known relations and others who went to war and fought other young men to give us, for better or worse the world we live in today. A world where for some people the biggest worry is the size of their credit card bill. Long may it continue that such "little" things worry us. IMHO, so long as we don't lose sight of that and the fact that it still goes on in faraway places, I think we may be ok. Sobering indeed.

Zombrex

As someone famous, but not famous enought that I would actually remember them, said

Save the World! Kill Yourself!

lost_lad

Wicknight wrote:

Save the World! Kill Yourself!

I promise i'll do it if you go first....