Likely fate of human race?

tech77 · 29-05-2008 02:47AM #1

Hi.
Dunno if this is better off in something like humanities but what do you think is the likeliest fate of the human race?

What is the likelihood of the human race still being around in 10000 years time, 1000 years time, 100 years time, even 10 years time.

And what realistically are the most important determinants of its survival/demise:
Global warming, religious fanaticism/terrorism/nuclear holocaust, asteroid hit, "grey goo" nanotechnology, biological warfare etc etc.

I used to think that mankind would inevitably destroy itself somehow relatively soon but now i dunno.

But is indefinite survival even a possibility though.
Evolution is essentially indefinite so maybe it is.

So basically:
1) What are the odds of the survival of mankind
2) What are the odds of that survival/evolution being indefinite
3) What are the likeliest threats to that survival
4) What is the nature of such survival/evolution likely to be in the short, medium and long term (even, say, in the face of seemingly insurmountable things like the death of the sun etc)

OK i'm bored but i'd be interested to hear views on this.

watna · 29-05-2008 03:01AM

We're doomed, definitely. I hate to be pessimistic but really, we can't go on the way we are. The population will get too big eventually and then disasters galore! I'll be long gone by then though, so I don't really care!

I did just have to make an earthquake survival box for my flat, which freaked me out a little. Would a few tins of beans and a torch really help me suvive?!

KnifeWRENCH · 29-05-2008 03:01AM

Humankind has survived 8 years with The Bush Administration.
It'll take something pretty damn powerful to eventually destroy it...
I suppose Global Warming is a possibility, but I don't think it's yet quite as drastic as the Media portray it.
I don't think getting squished by an asteroid will do it: very anti-climatic.
That large hadron-accelerator they're building in CERN may cause a black hole (which would be kinda cool - a human invention killing everyone)

Anyway isn't the world due to end on December 21st 2012? Think there was a thread about it?

Unearthly · 29-05-2008 03:06AM

We will evolve into bigger, stronger, more intelligent creatures:cool:

Xavi6 · 29-05-2008 03:10AM

I think we'll be grand. All this cosmopolitan, multi cultural shizzle means we've all gotten to know each other better and we're all bezzies 4 life.

tech77 · 29-05-2008 03:16AM

Xavi6 wrote: »

I think we'll be grand. All this cosmopolitan, multi cultural shizzle means we've all gotten to know each other better and we're all bezzies 4 life.

LOL
Are you in any chance being sarcastic?

marcsignal · 29-05-2008 04:27AM

im 41 today, i'll be dead by then;)

Nerin · 29-05-2008 04:37AM

tech77 wrote: »

Hi.
Dunno if this is better off in something like humanities but what do you think is the likeliest fate of the human race?

What is the likelihood of the human race still being around in 10000 years time, 1000 years time, 100 years time, even 10 years time.

And what realistically are the most important determinants of its survival/demise:
Global warming, religious fanaticism/terrorism/nuclear holocaust, asteroid hit, "grey goo" nanotechnology, biological warfare etc etc.

I used to think that mankind would inevitably destroy itself somehow relatively soon but now i dunno.

But is indefinite survival even a possibility though.
Evolution is essentially indefinite so maybe it is.

So basically:
1) What are the odds of the survival of mankind
2) What are the odds of that survival/evolution being indefinite
3) What are the likeliest threats to that survival
4) What is the nature of such survival/evolution likely to be in the short, medium and long term (even, say, in the face of seemingly insurmountable things like the death of the sun etc)

OK i'm bored but i'd be interested to hear views on this.

did you watch Life without Humans?
If so watch The Future is Wild.

both documentaries are on google video. theyre pretty good.

ART6 · 29-05-2008 08:05AM

China, India, and Russia will continue with their industrial growth to the point where they become the dominant powers of the world. The EU will gradually strangle itself by excessive over-regulation to the point where it can not even begin to compete with the big three. Eventually China will suck in the world's resources like a black hole and European countries will no longer be able to afford essential commodities. Faced with the collapse of their economies and living standards, the people will revolt and the EU will collapse leaving a complete and disorganised shambles in its wake.

The USA, faced with its export markets declining to zero will withdraw into its own borders with the isolationist policy that it has narrowly avoided in times past. China, meanwhile, faced with a growing shortage of fuels and raw materials, will colonise other countries and will eventually subjugate European ones. Russia will react with military force, possibly aided by India, and that force might well be nuclear since the Chinese have too large a military resource to be defeated by conventional forces. Europe and Asia will become a nuclear battleground, causing oil to dry up completely.

Russia will by then have restricted all of its oil and gas output for its own use, and the loss of the Middle Eastern and Asian oil wells will bring the Chinese war effort to a grinding halt. Russia will occupy Europe which by then will be starving.

The USA, having no supplies of oil from overseas, will then stir its own military muscle but belatedly. It will threaten the resurgent Russia, which will respond in kind. Strategic nuclear weapons will be exchanged freely, and much of the planet's surface will be uninhabitable. A few small human communities will survive in isolated places, and over a few thousand years they will evolve to be more resistant to radiation. They will begin to colonise the uninhabited lands devastated by the wars. In another thousand years they will have formed large nation states and will begin to eye each other with suspicion. One or two such states will become dominant and will claim an excessive share of the world's resources .........

Alternatively, of course, there is that rock that has our name on it orbiting the Sun, and the super volcano slumbering in the Yellowstone National Park. Anyone for Mars?;)

Sherifu · 29-05-2008 09:40AM

We won't be around to see it. So in short, who cares?

BobTheBeat · 29-05-2008 09:54AM

:pac:

ART6 wrote: »

China, India, and Russia will continue with their industrial growth to the point where they become the dominant powers of the world. The EU will gradually strangle itself by excessive over-regulation to the point where it can not even begin to compete with the big three. Eventually China will suck in the world's resources like a black hole and European countries will no longer be able to afford essential commodities. Faced with the collapse of their economies and living standards, the people will revolt and the EU will collapse leaving a complete and disorganised shambles in its wake.

The USA, faced with its export markets declining to zero will withdraw into its own borders with the isolationist policy that it has narrowly avoided in times past. China, meanwhile, faced with a growing shortage of fuels and raw materials, will colonise other countries and will eventually subjugate European ones. Russia will react with military force, possibly aided by India, and that force might well be nuclear since the Chinese have too large a military resource to be defeated by conventional forces. Europe and Asia will become a nuclear battleground, causing oil to dry up completely.

Russia will by then have restricted all of its oil and gas output for its own use, and the loss of the Middle Eastern and Asian oil wells will bring the Chinese war effort to a grinding halt. Russia will occupy Europe which by then will be starving.

The USA, having no supplies of oil from overseas, will then stir its own military muscle but belatedly. It will threaten the resurgent Russia, which will respond in kind. Strategic nuclear weapons will be exchanged freely, and much of the planet's surface will be uninhabitable. A few small human communities will survive in isolated places, and over a few thousand years they will evolve to be more resistant to radiation. They will begin to colonise the uninhabited lands devastated by the wars. In another thousand years they will have formed large nation states and will begin to eye each other with suspicion. One or two such states will become dominant and will claim an excessive share of the world's resources .........

Alternatively, of course, there is that rock that has our name on it orbiting the Sun, and the super volcano slumbering in the Yellowstone National Park. Anyone for Mars?;)

Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia FTW! Come everybody, todays 2 minutes of hate is on soon.

Steve_o · 29-05-2008 10:00AM

Sherifu wrote: »

We won't be around to see it. So in short, who cares?

+1

Maybe by the time Humans f*ck the planet up, we'll have settlements on the Moon and Mars and so on....

29-05-2008 10:16AM

ART6 wrote: »

China, India, and Russia will continue with their industrial growth to the point where they become the dominant powers of the world. The EU will gradually strangle itself by excessive over-regulation to the point where it can not even begin to compete with the big three. Eventually China will suck in the world's resources like a black hole and European countries will no longer be able to afford essential commodities. Faced with the collapse of their economies and living standards, the people will revolt and the EU will collapse leaving a complete and disorganised shambles in its wake.

The USA, faced with its export markets declining to zero will withdraw into its own borders with the isolationist policy that it has narrowly avoided in times past. China, meanwhile, faced with a growing shortage of fuels and raw materials, will colonise other countries and will eventually subjugate European ones. Russia will react with military force, possibly aided by India, and that force might well be nuclear since the Chinese have too large a military resource to be defeated by conventional forces. Europe and Asia will become a nuclear battleground, causing oil to dry up completely.

Russia will by then have restricted all of its oil and gas output for its own use, and the loss of the Middle Eastern and Asian oil wells will bring the Chinese war effort to a grinding halt. Russia will occupy Europe which by then will be starving.

The USA, having no supplies of oil from overseas, will then stir its own military muscle but belatedly. It will threaten the resurgent Russia, which will respond in kind. Strategic nuclear weapons will be exchanged freely, and much of the planet's surface will be uninhabitable. A few small human communities will survive in isolated places, and over a few thousand years they will evolve to be more resistant to radiation. They will begin to colonise the uninhabited lands devastated by the wars. In another thousand years they will have formed large nation states and will begin to eye each other with suspicion. One or two such states will become dominant and will claim an excessive share of the world's resources .........

Alternatively, of course, there is that rock that has our name on it orbiting the Sun, and the super volcano slumbering in the Yellowstone National Park. Anyone for Mars?;)

Enjoyed that read, danke :pac:

Wibbs · 29-05-2008 10:50AM

Every culture that has gotten too specialised and complex in the past has failed. That's how empires go south. The Byzntine empire as an exception survived largely because it got less complex. We are very specialised and complex and many inter related systems are required to make it tick. If as an example all truck drivers decided to go on strike tomorrow, there would be no food on shelves within a few days a week at most. Oil would stop flowing to power stations, water would stop being pumped to your tap, medical supplies would dry up. That's just truck drivers.

We are also reliant on fewer sources for many things. Whereas in the past you may have had 20 factories producing an item, now that's mostly streamlined down to 2 or so due to streamlining of the market for economic and efficiency reasons.

Food production and farmers are another problem. In the past most farms would have different crops, now they specialise due to the demands of the market. If Ireland was cut off tomorrow we would have to restructure our food production and that could take years. In the interim...The older system was more fault tolerant.

The society itself is similar. Look at the black death in the middle ages. Caused a massive culling of people, yet while the societies were rocked, they didn't collapse. Certainly not by comparison if the same thing happened today. Reason? Less complex society. You had maybe 20/30% rich buggers, the rest peasants producing food for themselves and the rich ones. You kill off 50% of both sections of society, but the ratios stays the same. Nowadays that wouldn't happen. We're much more like a house of cards and as individuals and societies are more affected by seemingly unrelated people.

Look at the hurricane in new orleans and look how quickly it went bad. Imagine that on a global scale. It could happen too. If we had another bout of flu like the one in WW1, society as we know may collapse very quickly. It had an effect then but not to the same extent as again complexity was far less than today. Complexity now is far bigger than even 20/30 years ago.

It wouldn't have to be SARS either. A flu that incapacitated or killed 10 or 20% of the population would do it and do it very quickly. Even that low level of fatality would tie up the medical service massively. There wouldn't be enough respirators or supplies of oxygen for a start. Those type of flus tend to kill the ones with stronger immune systems. Younger people basically. The ones that drive the society.(like in the 1918 spanish flu). Plus add in the effect of people avoiding others and self quarantining, which would be really the only defence at first against the virus. Oil doesn't get delivered, food rots in warehouses or on farms, common requirements are not met etc.

While we may reckon that's in the future and our descendants problem, today with global movement, one sneeze in india could travel the world in weeks or months, far too quickly to respond. It could happen tomorrow. It may be happening today. Western civilisation could be felled within weeks or months, not by war or rising temperatures or meteorites, but by a snotty nose.

ScumLord · 29-05-2008 10:50AM

It would take something pretty dramatic to wipe out the human race at this stage, something along the lines of a black hole opening up beside our planet.

We're born survivors, I can see global warming or peak oil wiping out the vast majority of humans but it's likely some would survive most things thrown at us. Apparently we've survived near extinctions before and then there's the the fact an African ape survived an ice age.

All our doomsday fears will go away when we start populating other planets and spreading earths seed.

Wibbs · 29-05-2008 11:10AM

ScumLord wrote: »

It would take something pretty dramatic to wipe out the human race at this stage, something along the lines of a black hole opening up beside our planet.

Wipe out yep, reduce us to the point of being a small band of scavengers, not so much.

We're born survivors, I can see global warming or peak oil wiping out the vast majority of humans but it's likely some would survive most things thrown at us. Apparently we've survived near extinctions before and then there's the the fact an African ape survived an ice age.

Survived several. Modern humans went through a few.

All our doomsday fears will go away when we start populating other planets and spreading earths seed.

Great in theory and in sci fi, but reality? Not so much. It's nearly 40 years since a bloke stood on another world and that was in our back yard. Only 20 humans have gone into "proper" space. Near earth orbit doesn't cut it by comparison. The shuttle can go to about 300 miles out, the moon is 280,000 miles away. It's at least 20 years away before we do that again. Mars? 50 years away at a push. A lot can happen in that time and that's just landing, colonisation? nowhere close.

helimachoptor · 29-05-2008 11:49AM

Wibbs wrote: »

Great in theory and in sci fi, but reality? Not so much. It's nearly 40 years since a bloke stood on another world and that was in our back yard. Only 20 humans have gone into "proper" space. Near earth orbit doesn't cut it by comparison. The shuttle can go to about 300 miles out, the moon is 280,000 miles away. It's at least 20 years away before we do that again. Mars? 50 years away at a push. A lot can happen in that time and that's just landing, colonisation? nowhere close.

Landing on Mars is at least 50 years. An actual colonisation (which means more than just scientist sitting in a biodome doing experiments) I think is 3-400 years away. Thats presuming we last that long in the first place.

There's been some good posts. But if oil runs out in ten years the planet will go crazy...

Glowing · 29-05-2008 11:58AM

Yeah I dread to think what will happen when oil is out of reach of most of us. I can't fathom why houses are still being built with oil-fired central heating, its madness!

It'll cause a few million deaths and that's for sure - be it through war or rioting or whatever.

WEST · 29-05-2008 12:12PM

helimachoptor wrote: »

Landing on Mars is at least 50 years. An actual colonisation (which means more than just scientist sitting in a biodome doing experiments) I think is 3-400 years away. Thats presuming we last that long in the first place.

There's been some good posts. But if oil runs out in ten years the planet will go crazy...

I agree in the next 100 or so years we will get a foot hold in space, once that happens we can mine other planets for resources or maybe we will have developed true alternate sources of energy. 100 or 400 years is nothing compared to the lenght of time humans have been on the planet so we just have a bit more to go. I know it sounds like Sci Fi, but thats where we are heading.

When the oil does run out, things will be crazy but in the long term we will survive. I dont think WW3 will start over it tho, no point invading a country and killing millions for oil when its all going to run out anyway.

Glowing · 29-05-2008 12:17PM

WEST wrote: »

When the oil does run out, things will be crazy but in the long term we will survive. I dont think WW3 will start over it tho, no point invading a country and killing millions for oil when its all going to run out anyway.

Sure, but the remaining oil is going to be worth an absolute fortune!

briantwin · 29-05-2008 12:39PM

Somewhere in Mary Harneys lower intestine i would imagine.

Tar.Aldarion · 29-05-2008 12:43PM

I think that we will we severely reduced in number and eventually wiped out.

Taco Corp · 29-05-2008 01:02PM

Natural disaster and disease will continued to wipe out thousands of people at a time, natural population control.

There will be a nuclear war within the next 100 years. After which the worlds population will be less than 1 billion. Likely start of war will be the detonation of a nuclear bomb in the U.S. They will retaliate hitting Pakistan and Iran. And while they're at it they'll accidently hit China..... and so on.

After all that's done people will continue to fight all kill each other because it is our nature to destroy ourselves

seamus · 29-05-2008 01:18PM

We won't wipe ourselves out. We can't. We just don't have that capability, despite what people may think.

As pointed out, we're very flexible, with the ability to survive in a massive range of environments and climates. This has stood to us in the past. Of course, if every environment becomes in hospitable to us, then we're boned. So the only way we could become extinct would be through an environmental catastrophe, such as a largish asteroid or comet - something that could poison the atmosphere and disrupt the weather system for an extended period, say 15 years. Even a massive volcanic eruption such as yellowstone, wouldn't be sufficient to poison the environment - there would still be vast areas of the planet that would be suitable for us to live.

As Wibbs points out though, the complexity of our societies, is a problem. Nowadays we rely on international markets, logistics, automated systems and communications systems to run our lives.
Imagine one major war, like World War II. Suddenly, there's no fuel being supplied from overseas. There is no food coming from overseas. Businesses are collapsing right, left and centre, and unemployment skyrockets.
Quite quickly, we would all be left sitting in our homes, cooking some rationed morsels over a wood fire, with little or no fuels or electricity to keep us going in the way we're accustomed.

I don't agree with Wibbs's idea that we'd be reduced to roaming bands of scavengers, but a prolonged war would certainly collapse every notion that we have of society. We would probably maintain the knowledge and the technology to rebuild our infrastructures, but in a much more tribal way. Without a government, I would imagine that most countries would split into townships or provinces with their own rules and governance.

MooseJam · 29-05-2008 01:21PM

Rapture is coming that is all

Radharc na Sleibhte · 29-05-2008 01:24PM

We're all goin to heaven lads waheeeeeeeeeyyyyyy.

justcallmetex · 29-05-2008 01:28PM

We're all gonna die so why be concerened if we all go at the same time or not?

Radharc na Sleibhte · 29-05-2008 01:29PM

I want to die when I'm good and ready though, not when some prick of a scientist in Switzerland gets his calculations wrong and I'm turned inside out by some black ****ing hole.

justcallmetex · 29-05-2008 01:33PM

MikeySligo wrote: »

I want to die when I'm good and ready though, not when some prick of a scientist in Switzerland gets his calculations wrong and I'm turned inside out by some black ****ing hole.

Please lets get this straight the cren project will not and cannot create a black hole that will kill us all. Particals collide all over the outer atmosphere and in space and DO NOT cause a self sustaining back holes. What they will create is a micro black hole which will exist for a tiny period of time and the collapse on itself.

Radharc na Sleibhte · 29-05-2008 01:34PM

Meh, I haven't a god damn clue what it means buts its fun to join in the scaremongering.

I wonder are there any protest marches organised. I might mosey along.

29-05-2008 01:39PM

Is that a meteor I see coming? B!ue tucks in dino tail and runs!

Likely fate of human race?

Comments