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- May 27, 2014
No species lasts forever. Eventually the time will come when our species will go the way of the dinosaur.
How that will happen though, is unclear.
How that will happen though, is unclear.
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Human Extinction
- Thread starter DNJACK
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- Jun 16, 2014
There was that Mouse population experiment
When we get too overly populated I think we might begin to plateau but because sex is something humans enjoy I don't think it'll actually do much. So I say the sun will probably kill what's left of us before we go extinct.
When we get too overly populated I think we might begin to plateau but because sex is something humans enjoy I don't think it'll actually do much. So I say the sun will probably kill what's left of us before we go extinct.
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This is gonna be the most edgelord answer, but I agree with @Ido. Youre thinking humans are too inherently selfless. Humans have a tendency to put our problems on other people, we are social creatures in a way and self-aware parts-of-a-whole probably become a little more selfish than they otherwise might be. When you have 7 or 8 billion people the average person's response is , "Hey Im just ONE guy, it cant hurt. I mean what do I really mean in the grand scheme of things?" And that adds up in a way. Like the average person may put society first but maybe in a way theyre putting it first because they realize theyre a link in the chain and are sharing their problems with others in a way. Whether it be having a partner to lean on for support or anything else, having kids, I mean no man is an island.
It's kind of a multifaceted, very complex issue. It's called the human condition for a reason. It's like the ouroboros, yin and yang, life and death. If anything happens, it will be a lot further away than anyone can predict, and I feel like if it happens, it will be a self correcting thing or maybe it itself is the self-correction.
It's kind of a multifaceted, very complex issue. It's called the human condition for a reason. It's like the ouroboros, yin and yang, life and death. If anything happens, it will be a lot further away than anyone can predict, and I feel like if it happens, it will be a self correcting thing or maybe it itself is the self-correction.
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- Feb 28, 2015
i await the death of the human species with open arms at this point. we shouldnt have survived into modern times
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- Jul 1, 2017
Venus can be terraformed in 300-350 years using known science, and we have the technology available today. All you need is a giant space mirror/shade (which also solves global warming on Earth), an orbital ring, and some comets.
And we don't even need to settle on a moon or planet when we can just convert 10 billion tons of rock and gas into a big-ass space colony with Earth gravity and weather.
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- May 20, 2016
But if we colonize other worlds, would our souls be weighed down by gravity?
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The thing about human extinction is that it presents problems for several reasons:
1) Humans are one of the most adaptable species on the planet. We live in deserts, the arctic, basically every single piece of land except Antartica, and even now we could probably live there with ease with our tech.
2) Genes do not disappear from the gene pool. Most genes are basically parasites and impossible to eliminate. That's why even when you see a black and white couple, some of the children are white as snow and even have red or blonde hair. Its basically impossible to eliminate a race. Most actually consider other human species disappeared only because of interbreeding, not because of war or extinction.
3) The population to maintain a decent gene pool without genetic damage is incredibly small. For example, to ensure genetic diversity, its estimated you only need 160 to 200 humans to maintain a stable population without genetic defects. That's incredibly small. Not to mention that once a population grows, latent genes will begin to express themselves and you'll still have a diverse population.
4) Our immune system is a highly complex mechanistically. Basically, we've got something called a membrane histocompatibility complex or MHC. This identifies foreign viruses, bacteria and pathogens. Its randomized, and its been proven that people are attracted to others with different MHC. The consequence of this is that we get random immunity to pathogens that don't even exist yet. Evolution hedges her bets. Not to mention that there are mutations that make people immune to certain diseases. About 1% of the population is immune to HIV. Even if HIV became airborne and super killer, 60 million people would survive because they are immune.
The only way I see human extinction is massive nuclear war, a gamma ray burst, comet impact, a virus that renders everyone sterile, AI murdering all of us. Shit like that. If everything goes the way it is, it is incredibly difficult to eliminate us because of our intelligence, problem solving skills and the nature of our genetics.
The mouse experiment has several flaws. 1) There was limited space. 2) Mice don't really do much but eat, fuck and reproduce. There's no culture or anything like that. 3) It is impossible for humanity to completely avoid disease. 4) Humans are creatives, and it doesn't take into account human ingenuity and creating and inventing things to keep us occupied. It can't really be used as a decent example for humans, but it is a warning to not get too complacent. Adversity breeds creativity, and I don't think we'll ever get to that utopian setting.
1) Humans are one of the most adaptable species on the planet. We live in deserts, the arctic, basically every single piece of land except Antartica, and even now we could probably live there with ease with our tech.
2) Genes do not disappear from the gene pool. Most genes are basically parasites and impossible to eliminate. That's why even when you see a black and white couple, some of the children are white as snow and even have red or blonde hair. Its basically impossible to eliminate a race. Most actually consider other human species disappeared only because of interbreeding, not because of war or extinction.
3) The population to maintain a decent gene pool without genetic damage is incredibly small. For example, to ensure genetic diversity, its estimated you only need 160 to 200 humans to maintain a stable population without genetic defects. That's incredibly small. Not to mention that once a population grows, latent genes will begin to express themselves and you'll still have a diverse population.
4) Our immune system is a highly complex mechanistically. Basically, we've got something called a membrane histocompatibility complex or MHC. This identifies foreign viruses, bacteria and pathogens. Its randomized, and its been proven that people are attracted to others with different MHC. The consequence of this is that we get random immunity to pathogens that don't even exist yet. Evolution hedges her bets. Not to mention that there are mutations that make people immune to certain diseases. About 1% of the population is immune to HIV. Even if HIV became airborne and super killer, 60 million people would survive because they are immune.
The only way I see human extinction is massive nuclear war, a gamma ray burst, comet impact, a virus that renders everyone sterile, AI murdering all of us. Shit like that. If everything goes the way it is, it is incredibly difficult to eliminate us because of our intelligence, problem solving skills and the nature of our genetics.
The mouse experiment has several flaws. 1) There was limited space. 2) Mice don't really do much but eat, fuck and reproduce. There's no culture or anything like that. 3) It is impossible for humanity to completely avoid disease. 4) Humans are creatives, and it doesn't take into account human ingenuity and creating and inventing things to keep us occupied. It can't really be used as a decent example for humans, but it is a warning to not get too complacent. Adversity breeds creativity, and I don't think we'll ever get to that utopian setting.
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- Jan 15, 2014
I think it's very unlikely that we'll go extinct, barring an utterly planet-annihilating catastrophe from space. A nuclear war, a pandemic or a natural disaster might wipe a majority of us out, maybe even destroy civilisation as we know it, but people are very good at adapting to circumstances. We might be reduced to a Stone Age existence, but we'd rebuild.
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- Jan 19, 2018
The only the way I can see us going extinct is with another plague, or with what happened in the The Road.
I'm not sure which would be worse honestly. The thought of the sky going black (most likely from a volcanic eruption), all plant and animal life dies, nothing grows, the oceans go empty, humans have only canned food and other humans left as food. It's the realist, most hopeless thing I've ever heard.
I'm not sure which would be worse honestly. The thought of the sky going black (most likely from a volcanic eruption), all plant and animal life dies, nothing grows, the oceans go empty, humans have only canned food and other humans left as food. It's the realist, most hopeless thing I've ever heard.
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- Jan 31, 2018
Every modern human is the descendant of the survivors of massive die-back already probably, judging by some evidence of a huge genetic bottleneck in our recent history. And it's unscientific but my personal feeling is that we've survived lesser, civilization ending events many times before. Mostly because 1. Archaeology is littered with civilizations that got started and then died to some unknown catastrophe, leaving descendants that forgot their ancestors ever lived in cities (Harappans in India, a bunch of nameless peoples in the Amazon, etc) and 2. I personally find it difficult to credit that it took hominids half a million years to realize you could build homes to protect yourself from the weather and that if you stuck a seed in dirt, an edible plant would emerge.
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- Mar 29, 2014
"I have heard many people here saying that humans are going to go extinct in the next few centuries." - @DNJACK
Some argue it'll happen in less than a century. The ongoing 6th mass extinction certainly isn't helping.
I think one possibility is that humans may not go entirely extinct, but say goodbye to industrial civilization, like @Tragi-Chan said.
Some argue it'll happen in less than a century. The ongoing 6th mass extinction certainly isn't helping.
I think one possibility is that humans may not go entirely extinct, but say goodbye to industrial civilization, like @Tragi-Chan said.
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- Sep 18, 2017
as long as we're tied to one planet, as others have said; we're going to die eventually.
And if we connect our planets to closely in the future, with instant travel and all that; we'll risk getting wiped out by a plague.
Even if we tie ourselves to/ become machines they can fail too, it's not like machines are impossible to get ruined.
But yeah it is rather unproductive.
And if we connect our planets to closely in the future, with instant travel and all that; we'll risk getting wiped out by a plague.
Even if we tie ourselves to/ become machines they can fail too, it's not like machines are impossible to get ruined.
But yeah it is rather unproductive.
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- Jan 31, 2018
I always wondered how much of the current mass extinction is because of the simple fact that it's far easier to identify and catalogue currently extant species than species living in the distant past. The fossil record is a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of all organisms alive at the time by necessity. And the more species we know of in total, the more species we can recognize as going extinct.
Anyway, that's a stupid reason to assume humans will go extinct in the practically immediate future. We're not pandas. We're extremely adaptable generalists.
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- Mar 9, 2015
To be honest, I don't mean to sound edgy or greedy, I will pass before this is an issue. I don't worry about it. I don't know if my death will happen one second,one day, one year etc before it. Sure humans may die out, more so I think Homo Sapiens will die off. Perhaps "humans" will die but great great x20 grand kid bassomatic will be a new thing.I don't think the caveman I'm related to is mad they passed to see me.
If we pass as a species we do. I just can't stress much on the topic. I don't think I can do anything about it or it'll be with in my or my great great great grand kids lives.
If we pass as a species we do. I just can't stress much on the topic. I don't think I can do anything about it or it'll be with in my or my great great great grand kids lives.
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The thing is humans are pretty ingenious, we're the only species that can actually prevent our own extinction. The guy that said 'climate change will kill us' is full of shit. The last ice age, only 15,000 humans survived. And that was before technology. 6 billion people come from 15,000. And that was the most extreme thing the planet had for humans. Not to mention our emissions decrease year after year and fossil fuel use has been decreasing. Natural gas is also less polluting than oil, which we have a ton of. 'Extreme Weather' might make some areas uninhabitable and lead to strife, but it will not lead to our extinction. Not to mention advances in agriculture and genetic engineering has allowed us to make massive leaps in farming and food production.
He's also full of shit on overpopulation as well. Once countries modernize, their birthrates decrease, not increase. Even people coming from the third world who have higher birthrates who move to first world countries have the same birth rate after a generation or two. People have been predicting overpopulation killing off humanity for centuries. It's never happened. He's making the same losing arguments that other people have made. Ask Thomas Mathus how overpopulation killing humanity turned out.
The only way humans become extinct:
1) Absolute Ice Age. Everything freezes. In this case, pretty much everything dies except for hardy microbes. All super volcanoes erupt at once.
2) Asteroid Impact, Gamma Ray Burst, anything from space
3) Nuclear Armageddon. In which I mean so many nukes are used to render nearly every piece of land uninhabitable. Even then you'll have people in bunkers and you only really need 200-300 people to repopulate.
4) AI Genocide
5) Plague. Even then, some people will quarantine themselves in bunkers and shit.
6) The sun explodes.
In reality, the only way I see humans becoming extinct is if we do it ourselves, space does it, or an AI does it. Humans are pretty much the most adaptable species on the planet that can live in any environment. There are people living in fucking Greenland, which is basically just a giant block of icy dirt. People live in the fucking Sahara. Don't give me that progtard 'CLIMATE CHANGE WILL KILL US ALL' shit. Fucking hell.
Anyone who says climate change or overpopulation will kill us is full of fucking shit. That being said, there's always the possibility that something makes our lives miserable and civilization collapses, which isn't extinction.
The last ice age nearly killed off humanity. Its estimated as low as 4,000 and as high as 15,000 humans survived it. If primitive humans can survive it, I think we can deal with the changing climate.
EDIT:
Also that Easter Island comparison is fucking re.tarded. You know how big Easter Island is? 63 square miles. The smallest state in the us is 394 square miles (West Virginia). Easter Island died out because it was fucking tiny and too small to support a population. The world is a big place.
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So you think the "Olduvai Theory" is plausible: where industrial civilization collapses, but people survive -- even if it's in a perpetual or indefinite preindustrial-like state?
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How do we know it's never happened before? Not a lot would still be around tens of thousands of years later unless they happened to have invented plastics. Maybe not even then (we're starting to see bacteria that can digest some forms of it).
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Even in the Middle Ages they quarantined cities and protected them from plagues. Imagine how easy it is to quarantine a planet or a space habitat.
Eventually it would happen but it would take several semi-extinctions. People would know too much about how to rebuild industrial civilization, since they have all the manuals and maps right there.
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I don't believe that humanity can be rendered totally extinct by anything that won't instantly sterilize the planet, like some others have said. All the things that people usually consider likely causes of our extinction are totally capable of wiping out civilization, but not eliminating us as a species.
I agree that climate change is very unlikely to result in human extinction, but dismissing it as "progtard shit" probably isn't wise. Unless you don't care about non-apocalyptic levels of suffering (which is a valid position but not one I'd assume you hold), it's worth noting climate change will probably cause more human misery than any event in living memory. I believe somebody earlier in the thread posted a source claiming it will "only" be comparable to several holocausts.
It's also worth noting that rhode island is the smallest state, but it's also massively bigger than Easter island so it doesn't really change your point.
I agree that climate change is very unlikely to result in human extinction, but dismissing it as "progtard shit" probably isn't wise. Unless you don't care about non-apocalyptic levels of suffering (which is a valid position but not one I'd assume you hold), it's worth noting climate change will probably cause more human misery than any event in living memory. I believe somebody earlier in the thread posted a source claiming it will "only" be comparable to several holocausts.
It's also worth noting that rhode island is the smallest state, but it's also massively bigger than Easter island so it doesn't really change your point.
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Pretty much, more likely than human extinction. Civilization is a fragile beast. We're one bad solar flare away from a lot of electronics getting fried. Or just imagine a nuclear apocalypse and only the rich assholes in bunkers survive in the wilderness. Think they know how to build power plants or cities? Nope. But yeah, I think that's a more likely scenario.
Whoops. Oh well. Anyway, people have been making apocalyptic predictions from climate change and they haven't happened. And honestly I trust human ingenuity to overcome that. The problem is most of the casualties from climate change won't be the first world, it'll be the third. They're the most vulnerable, lack the agricultural, scientific, technological and other resources to combat it.
The thing is the developing world hasn't gotten off the ground. The first world is already developing solutions to combat severe weather events while combating climate change. I mean, the biggest killer in the third world is indoor air pollution where they cook with biofuel (aka shit) and fill their homes with soot. Same with wood.
I don't really know how to prevent that as the third world already experiences severe brain drain with their smartest and best going to Western countries and it is simply too huge a problem to take care of the entire third world, especially with the corruption and violence it experiences. Even if you were to implement solutions to make their lives better, there's no guarantee it would last. So I really don't know how to prevent the massive misery thay climate change would inflict on them. And I don't really think anyone else knows either, as the first world cannot take in the third.