You know, even when I rule out the possibility of nuclear war, I have a hard time imagining the human race lasting another 10,000 years, let alone another million. It seems like we’re the candle that burns twice as bright, but lasts half as long. If there isn’t an apocalyptic event like nuclear war or The Second Coming, what will probably happen to the human race?
“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way…”
–Jessica Rabbit,Who Framed Roger Rabbit
Good question, personally I don’t think we will last more than 100 years.
If we do last longer one of two things must happen.
The human race faces the fact that the planet can’t support 6 billion people, and starts using massive amounts of birth control (not likely).
War or famine (probably both) reduces our population to a size that can be sustained by the environment.
Either way massive changes are going to occure.
Scoobysnax
Save water drink beer!
Ok, interesting topic. Nostradamus implied in one of his quatrains that in July of this year (yes, that right only 12 shopping days left) that there would be a huge war in Northern Africa - presumably WWIII. If that does happen that may take care of some percentage of the population.
There is yet another prediction - don’t remember the source exactly - that on May 5, 2000 the crust of the earth will rotate around its liquid inner mantle and that what had been the tropics would, as a result, be situated at the poles. This could take care of the remaining population - and all of this within the next year. Imagine that!
Still, even if these events don’t transpire I’ve always believed that the Earth to be a living being and as such will simply rid herself of the infesting vermin. Volcanic or tectonic activities may play a part here as would the demise of polar ice regions. Still I’m banking on a massive invasion of Aliens who would enslave us and utilize humans as their own personal slaves - or pets - or food - or all of the above. Personally I can’t wait - I think I’d like to have a nice food bowl / water dish set with my name on it.
There are two kinds of people in the world -
those who think that there are two kinds of
people in the world and those who don’t.
Interesting question. Aside from preventable causes like nuclear war, we can ask if there is any necessary material for human survival that is in finite, nonrenewable supply? Obviously sunlight fills the bill, but that gives us…how long? A billion years? How much longer does the sun have exactly?
Is there anyhting else? I recall reading once that phosphorous was being run through pretty fast. A lot of it is used in fertilizer in the form of phosphates, which then runs into the oceans, from which there is no efficient recovery process. But I don’t have a source for that.
Oil will run out, of course, but that shouldn’t kill off all of humanity even if civilization collapsed as a result.
Abstracting the problem a little, genetic diversity is a resource that seems to be constricting for many many species, and humans clearly depend on the world’s biological ecosystems. Unfortunately, little is known about how to treat this problem quantitatively. It’s just not clear how much longer we can go on as we are.
In the previous post APB9999 (if that IS your real name) talks a bit about renewable resources. Seems to me that simply running out of a resource or two would most likely not cause the demise of the Human Race as such. Might make us a bit uncomfortable until someone comes up with an alternative to, say, phosphorus but unless we run out of something along the lines of potable water, oxygen or some similar can’t-do-without substance we’ll probably still get by.
Now given that, as someone had stated in the past, human intelligence has shown no practical benefit in terms of survival (witness all of those critters who were here before us and will no doubt exist far after we’ve jumped from this mortal coil with little more in the way of intellect than Dan Quayle) I submit to you that our vast powers of cognition will, in fact, have quite the opposite effect. That being the destruction of humanity. For what other creature as the capability of completely destroying itself? It seems that we can only hope that our capacity for understanding and compassion will at some point catch up with our infinite abilities for destruction. I, however, harbour no such allusions.
But even if we manage to somehow keep from snuffing ourselves in one mighty Gang Bang, we have yet another formidable enemy. That being bacteria, viruses and similar microscopic vermin. These sorts of life forms (and yes I know that viruses are not life forms as such) have been around since the beginning - perhaps even before that - and have developed the unique ability to transform themselves into all sorts of new and unrecognizable forms. They - even a single strain of “them” - could certainly have the ability to wipe us clean off the map.
Have a great day!
There are three kinds of people in the world - those who can count and those who can’t.
Of course it’s my real name. Ask my brother APB9998; or my little sister HGT2333. She’d never lie, the little darling.
I wasn’t clear about the phosphorous. I just meant it is a chemical requirement for life, and is being locked up in inorganic form. There is no substitute, though there may be untapped sources. Again, I can’t support this, except with my fallible memory.
Oooo, a chance to be pessimistic. I’ll play!
Actually, this isn’t quite true. If we raise the carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere enough, we could all die from carbon dioxide poisoning. We don’t just need enough of the stuff we need, we need smaller amounts of the stuff we don’t need.
That didn’t make much sense at all, I’m sure.
Anyway… Humans will probably survive, but we won’t have much fun doing it. We’re like stubborn little weeds growing though cracks in the sidewalk. We might end up with a diminished, mutated population, but we’ll probably survive. We’ll just wish we hadn’t.
How’s that for dismal and depressing?
Wow, Cinco De Mayo is going to be really exciting next year! I thought Corona’s “Change your whole latitude” slogan was just speaking figuratively.
Very good answers, but I say that there will only be one race of humans. Since there is very little racial discrimination, there will be only one color of skin: a splatter of white, a splash of black, a couple drops of mexican, and pour of asian. coming out with the race known as Whiblamexasian.
In other news: haven’t you seen the movies 2001: A Space Oddyssey? the people are living in space, and on the moon! And the movie Total Recall? People are mining and living on Mars!
As for Nostradamus? Who knows?
Mankind will last only until our warrenty runs out>
About pathogenic micro-organisms.
Well, as much as it might be fun to twit humanity and say that we could all be wiped out by some “Coming Plague,” (ooh! He used part of a book title!) it’s probably not the case. The fact of the matter is that the same evolutionary forces that work on bacteria work on human beings (at least, so I believe). Hence, there’s as likely to be a sub-population of humanity (possibly small, but still there) with a natural resistance to a deadly pathogen that forms a sub-population of some existing organism. Why? Just chance. There’s a whole lot of people. Actually, humans “win the war” on microbes all the time… penicillin might for example kill 99% of the bacteria invading your body. We would just notice it much more if 99% of the human population were killed off by some pathogen.
-Alex Kennedy
A good point, Alex.
Even Ebola, pretty much the nastiest little virus around, “only” has a 90% kill rate.
Of course, one question might be whether the surviving 10%, if Ebola should somehow become an airborne pathogen, would be equipped to survive with most of the world dead around them.
Two possibilities.
We will get a significant portion of the population off-planet. If this occurs there is a good chance the human race could last forever (*).
We will not get a space colony going and we will be wiped out here on Earth probably by could old fashioned disease. (It would be ironic that considering the actual odds of an asteroid hitting the Earth if it were to actually happen … I can imagine all those nay-sayers collectively crying out “Oops”).
(*) By forever, I mean a very very very very very very long time. I.e. into the hundreds of thousands of years. By then you would have to wonder if you could still call whatever was out there human due to evolution.
It’s a race? Wait a minute, hold up, will ya?
I don’t even have my shoes on yet…
I don’t have the reference handy, so I can’t give the name of the scientist, but Timothy Ferris wrote a profile in the New Yorker a few weeks ago of this very interesting scientist.
He makes the following argument: No particular instant in time is special, therefore, for anything that has a beginning and an ending, there is a x% chance that the thing is currently existing in the middle x% of its lifespan (or the last x%, or the first x%, or any interval of the same size).
A few years ago, he called up every theater in NYC and asked how long the current play at the theater had been open. Then he predicted 95% confidence intervals for how long it would be before each play closed. There was a 95% chance that the play had been open between 2.5% and 97.5% of its ultimate run. Therefore, the remaining time is between 1/39 of the elapsed time and 39 times the elapsed time, with 95% confidence. Granted, the range is rather broad, so this has little predictive power, but so far he’s been 100% right (which worries him–he should have been only 95% right :)).
So, assuming the human species has been around for about 200,000 years, we have between about 5000 and 7.8 million years, with 95% confidence. Now, Western civilization is a different matter. If we assume it’s been around for about 3000 years, then it has between 77 and 117000 years, with 95% confidence.
I think the interesting thing about his approach is that is shines light on the assumption made by all people at all times that we live in a special period of history. Maybe we happen to be right this time, but why is this time in history more special than any other?
Rick
Because this time in history has Cecil.
But seriously, I think everybody has a tendency to think of their own lifetime as somewhat “special.” How many times have you heard people say, “I don’t know how they lived before X was invented!” We are living in the “modern” world. Of course, in the future people will say the same thing, except here we are living just fine without whatever “X” they will be talking about.
Speak for yourself! Sometimes I wonder how we live without all the future conveniences they’ll have!
Powers
I remember that Isaac Asimov wrote on this topic in one of his collections of essays from Fantasy and Science Fiction. The point he made was that phosphorous is one of the essential elements for all carbon-based life forms, and is also the one in the shortest supply. Since it tends to be excreted easily, humanity is literally flushing its phosphorous supply down the tubes.
Given the prolific nature of the late Doctor’s writings, I’m afraid this doesn’t really narrow the field much in trying to track down the citation.
Wow, you people certainly are pessimistic. I’ve noticed lately (ever since I started watching for it) that a lot of people have a tendency toward believing society, and sometimes the human race as a whole, are in a downward spiral. This is pretty fatalistic, and not really very well reasoned, IMHO. People have been saying since time immemorial that the world is about to end, and it never did… at least not yet. We have only to look back a couple of decades to see predictions that we should all be dead by now.
Personally, I think that the biggest reason for this is the tendency of the human mind to focus on the bad and take the good for granted. That can make it seem like there’s a whole lot of bad vs. a little bit of good looking back in our own memories. When we take something for granted, we don’t remember it so well.
Anyway, enough phycho-babble (as if I’m qualified). I believe that we have as long as we’re willing to spend. In other words, as long as we hold onto our strong wills to survive, which almost everyone has on a very basic level, we’ll always be here. Sure, we have problems, but we’re natural problem solvers. A lot of the time our solutions cause other problems, but we’ll eventually solve those too. At least we have a pretty good track record so far.
I just don’t see any particular reason to think that the earth can’t support 6 billion humans, or even 10 billion. I don’t see any way in hell that a single pathogen could wipe out a globally significant portion of people. Even the great plague didn’t do much outside of Europe (and no, I’m not saying that the 1/3rd of Europe it did kill was insignificant).
I know it’s more interesting to talk about the various ways we could concievably kill ourselves off, but when it comes right down to it, I’d like to see us try.
the humans haven’t done the Earth , right! don’t deserve it.
the earth will heal , after the humans go.