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Poll: The End is Nigh (for human life on Earth)

So, which of the following would you bet on as the most likely cause(s)?

  • Nuclear War(s)

    Votes: 5 20.8%
  • Ecological Collapse

    Votes: 10 41.7%
  • Major Asteroid Impact

    Votes: 3 12.5%
  • Super-Volcano (Climate change from such)

    Votes: 2 8.3%
  • Nanotechnology runs amok

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Synthetic Biology (same)

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Artificial Intelligence (uncontrollable)

    Votes: 1 4.2%
  • Global System Collapse/Bad Global Governance.

    Votes: 4 16.7%
  • Something else (explain)

    Votes: 8 33.3%

  • Total voters
    24

shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
The ecological collapse is the best option where global warming and other problems with over population result in a Permian style mass extinction due to CO2 and other atmospheric gases go critical.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
The articles are about the decline of civilization as we know it, not the end of the human species. So is the poll supposed to be about what the articles actually discuss or what?
 

Eddi

Agnostic
Premium Member
I voted nuclear war (it's amazing we haven't already had one) and ecological collapse (which is the way things are going)

I feel the other options are also possible, but that those two are most likely

But I think that when the world ends it will end because of God calling time on humankind. But maybe he will do so through one of the things listed as options? We cannot know...
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
The articles are about the decline of civilization as we know it, not the end of the human species. So is the poll supposed to be about what the articles actually discuss or what?

A study by the Global Challenges Foundation aims on a first approach about potential threats that could actually destroy human civilization. The study claims 12 major threats belonging to four general sectors of current risks, exogenic risks, emerging risks and global policy risks.

Near enough. :D
 

Heyo

Veteran Member
I voted asteroid impact as nothing else is going to eliminate humans in an instant.
But nuclear war and super volcanoes can severely diminish humans and lead to cultural collapse.
Grey Goo, Skynet, the Zombie Apocalypse etc. are nice scenarios for dark scify but not realistically humankind ending. That is not to say that we shouldn't have an eye on those developments, they are dangerous (at least the first two) but manageable.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
A study by the Global Challenges Foundation aims on a first approach about potential threats that could actually destroy human civilization. The study claims 12 major threats belonging to four general sectors of current risks, exogenic risks, emerging risks and global policy risks.

Near enough. :D

If we believe this, it says a lot about attachment to what we call civilization.

I think about this in relation to apocalypse mythologies and why they are popular among some humans. Some like those narratives because the apocalypse implies a definitive ending, after which one doesn't have to worry about anything anymore. It's a form of escapism. Thinking the end of civilization is the same as the end of humanity feeds into that escapist, apocalyptic mythic thinking.

The rub is that the end of civilization definitely does not mean the end of humans. The collapse isn't going to tie itself in a nice neat little bow where we don't have to worry anymore. Humans will still be here. And it may be worth remembering that civilization isn't necessary to our flourishing as a species. We did just fine without it for most of our existence. The rest of the biosphere did better too, come to think of it...
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
If we believe this, it says a lot about attachment to what we call civilization.

I think about this in relation to apocalypse mythologies and why they are popular among some humans. Some like those narratives because the apocalypse implies a definitive ending, after which one doesn't have to worry about anything anymore. It's a form of escapism. Thinking the end of civilization is the same as the end of humanity feeds into that escapist, apocalyptic mythic thinking.

The rub is that the end of civilization definitely does not mean the end of humans. The collapse isn't going to tie itself in a nice neat little bow where we don't have to worry anymore. Humans will still be here. And it may be worth remembering that civilization isn't necessary to our flourishing as a species. We did just fine without it for most of our existence. The rest of the biosphere did better too, come to think of it...

Well it's true we are probably more tenacious now so as to survive many threats, but a large enough asteroid could see us eliminated, and is probably the only one that I could see doing this. Most of the others would probably cause a major dip in numbers and a return to more primitive times. And I don't think this one was looked at, or considered likely, and perhaps it isn't:

How Supernova’s Gamma Ray Burst Would Destroy Earth’s Ozone Layer

PS The title was more poetic licence. :oops:
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
Well it's true we are probably more tenacious now so as to survive many threats, but a large enough asteroid could see us eliminated, and is probably the only one that I could see doing this.

Something to consider in this scenario - it isn't asteroid impacts in of themselves that drive mass extinction events, but how these impacts change global climate. So if an asteroid impact is on your list, climate change needs to be too, since the threat of asteroids is a thing because of how they change climate.
 

Mock Turtle

Oh my, did I say that!
Premium Member
Something to consider in this scenario - it isn't asteroid impacts in of themselves that drive mass extinction events, but how these impacts change global climate. So if an asteroid impact is on your list, climate change needs to be too, since the threat of asteroids is a thing because of how they change climate.

True, but I was thinking really big - like Earth-shaking - and for which we would have no remedy.
 

Notanumber

A Free Man
I am not sure about the rest of the world but if Donald gets re-elected it will give the free world another four years before the sh*t hits the fan.

Once the Democrats take control, life won’t be worth living.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
The sky is always falling according to some.
AOC Countdown to World Destruction
3857 days of life left as of today.
The only real threat I see in the poll is the asteroid.
That could be a human life ender.
The frequency for such events is on the order of every couple hundred million years.
So "nigh" seems overly pessimistic.
 

sun rise

The world is on fire
Premium Member
My answer is something else because "human life" to me is humanity 1.0 and is about to be replaced by humanity 2.01 (after a bug fix).

So humanity as we know it is ending but fully conscious life on Earth is not.
 

Quintessence

Consults with Trees
Staff member
Premium Member
True, but I was thinking really big - like Earth-shaking - and for which we would have no remedy.

Global scale and rapid climate change - whether asteroid-induced or human-induced - is really big, Earth-shaking, and has no remedy. It's why climate scientists, and those paying attention to them, are deeply concerned about our present anthropogenic climate change.
 

Yazata

Active Member
I don't really anticipate the extinction of humanity so much as the collapse of civilization.

Nuclear war -- A full-scale WWIII style scenario such as was anticipated during the Cold War could come close to an extinction level event. Even then, I would expect a few percent of humanity to survive, but civilization would probably collapse into a full-frontal post-apocalyptic scenario. That was then. Today the more likely nuclear war scenario theses days is a smaller regional nuclear war, such as India-Pakistan, Iran-Israel or North Korea nuking Seoul, Hawaii and maybe California and the US responding with nuclear weapons. It would rock the world and cost millions or tens of millions of lives, but it wouldn't be an extinction level event. It might trigger a global scramble as other countries try to reposition their own fortunes, so it might be accompanied by lots of conventional war as the globe rebalances.

Ecological collapse -- I expect many animal species to go extinct in coming years, but humanity will continue to multiply. I don't expect climate change to have a big impact for many years to come.

Major Asteroid Impact -- Huge extinction level impact, but correspondingly low probability. Might conceivably kill all life on Earth, even bacteria.

Supervolcano -- Higher probability but lower impact. Not an extinction level event, but it might trigger big global economic and geopolitical changes.

Nanotechnology -- A bigger danger than many people think, but not something I worry about at night. The end-of-the-world potential would depend on what kind of nanotechnology it was and what it did.

Synthetic biology - Like nanotechnology, but higher probability and greater potential lethality. I can imagine genetically engineered things escaping from labs (or being released by doomsday cultists or by teen-aged zit-faced basement biohackers for LOLs) that spread as easily as the common cold and are 100% fatal. Millions, hundreds of millions, billions of deaths, coronavirus style lockdowns on steroids, martial law, economic and social collapse, radio and TV signing off for the last time... Maybe a few survivors, maybe not. Either way, our world gone for good.

AI -- For some reason I've never seen this one to be as big a threat as many people do. We will need to see AIs that are general cognizers able to think about anything, not just the tasks they were designed for.

Global System Collapse -- I think that this one is probable, and perhaps coming soon. I don't expect industrial civilization to disappear though it will probably shrink. I do expect Western Civilization to collapse. We are already seeing that starting. The future isn't likely to be a place that most of us will find attractive, a place that still values free thought and individual liberty. With the end of free thought, scientific advancement will slow, intellectual life with become rote and formulaic, and the world might slip into a sort of cultural stasis, where culture doesn't change a whole lot from century to century.
 
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shunyadragon

shunyadragon
Premium Member
I am not sure about the rest of the world but if Donald gets re-elected it will give the free world another four years before the sh*t hits the fan.

Once the Democrats take control, life won’t be worth living.
The sh*t has already hit the fan with tRump. It will take 8 or more years to clean things up.
 

Rational Agnostic

Well-Known Member
Extreme Climate Change and Global Pandemics are probably less likely, but Unknown Consequences of any developments might be another.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news.../the-12-threats-to-human-civilization-ranked/

The pdf file that went into all these has vanished (from 2015). More here though:

12 risks that threaten human civilisation
12-Risks-with-infinite-impact-full-report-1.pdf | Global Catastrophic Risk | Risk

Nuclear war hands down. Climate change will be disastrous but it won't kill everyone. Asteroids are a possibility but major impacts are often millions of years apart. Nuclear weapons are the biggest imminent concern IMO.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
Extreme Climate Change and Global Pandemics are probably less likely, but Unknown Consequences of any developments might be another.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news.../the-12-threats-to-human-civilization-ranked/

The pdf file that went into all these has vanished (from 2015). More here though:

12 risks that threaten human civilisation
12-Risks-with-infinite-impact-full-report-1.pdf | Global Catastrophic Risk | Risk
Side note: ecological collapse wouldn't end human life, but would only kill perhaps 99% or some such, and reduce the survivors to something slightly like one of those movies where the a few survivors are scrambling, salvaging, fighting for brief brutal lives in the ruins.

...In some ways similar to how we think human life was like 100,000 and 50,000 years ago.

An asteroid could certainly do it, in contrast. A super volcano might, but is also far more likely than a big enough asteroid or comet.

So, while I acceded 'super volcano' as the most plausible on that level (though still not so likely to get all the way to extinction), the real answer instead is "other", but in a good way: We will be transformed, for the better. (Some, that is; many will not, by their direct, conscious choice to reject the One Who taught "love one another")
 
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