But for #notallpeople – only few thousand can be saved. And maybe a few million can survive on Earth. Then the drama will begin.
I think society is much less likely to collapse if everyone is going to die than the alternate scenario where a few will. Not many people are going to be willing to slave away the last few years of their lives setting things up for those who will live on afterwards.
Best case for keeping people onboard is a lottery scenario where everyone works hard now and the survival lottery is held in June of 2051 and that would only work if there was confidence that the lottery was not rigged.
Basically both situations appeal to all of our worst instincts as a herd and only calm reasonable leadership would get us through it. I don’t like the worlds chances overall right now.
Moreover, a war will break out between the Superpowers over the issue of whose citizens should be saved.
Am I the only one who, upon first glance at the thread title, didn’t immediately recognize it as a hypothetical, and got a little worried?
I am 45, childless – thus I did not worry if it was hypothetical.
Fine, you just keep on yellin’ that, if that’s what gets you through the night. 
And, technically, the Grey Goo would produce itself. Y’know, possibly after eating the advanced civilization. ('Hell of an answer to the Fermi Paradox…“they were delicious.”)
Heck, I was *hoping *it wasn’t a hypothetical.
This scenario is played out in various ways in films like Seeking a Friend for the End of the World, On the Beach, Mad Max, Sunshine, Deep Impact, Melancholia and Children of Men.
The general fictional portrayal of such a scenario tends to range from hedonism and indulgence to a sort of overwhelming melancholy permeating everything and an overall sense of society “winding down”. Usually a sharp rise in religious fanaticism as well.
Except that GRBs travel at the speed of light. The first indication that we were going to be hit with a GRB would be getting hit by the burst itself.
Actually, something as small as 60 miles in diameter is speculated to be life ending on earth.
Your link has nothing to back up that assertion. And I’d be surprised if something that small will kill all the bacteria on Earth as well as all the life at various hydrothermal vents on the bottom of the ocean. You’re going to have to pretty much boil the oceans to make sure you get everything.
It can produce itself only after an advanced civilization has produced a few of these self – replicating robots.
WOW – Gamma Ray Bursts do in fact send gamma rays which travel at the speed of light. But astronomers can detect a star which will undergo a Gamma Ray Burst soon.
Definitely. But it could be easily destroyed by modern civilization on its way here.
What are you “wowing” as if you know what you’re talking about? The Swift satellite can detect GRBs as they happen. And maybe scientists can predict what stars might become a supernova in the next century or so. But there is no way scientist can accurately predict that in a certain amount of time, a given star is going to emit a GRB, it will be pointed at Earth at that exact moment and will be of sufficient duration and intensity to actually kill everything.
We have nothing beyond high level speculation with the capability to destroy or alter the trajectory of a 60 mile wide asteroid traveling at orbital velocities.
From what I’ve read, a GRB is hypothesised to have cause an earlier mass extinction but life survived so a GRB won’t actually cut it for this thread.
Unless it’s close enough to vaporize the entire planet, a GRB wouldn’t even kill off all of humanity. One hemisphere of the Earth would be flash-sterilized, but GRBs last for only a few seconds at most, so the other hemisphere would be completely untouched, at least at first. Now, killing off everything on one half of the planet is certainly going to have devastating consequences for the other half in the long run, but those consequences are all things that we know of ways to deal with. And if we somehow had 35 years of advance warning on a GRB, we could probably even arrange to move most people to an extreme enough latitude that nobody would be caught in the initial flash.
Not even that:
Oh good lord.
How many times have I heard things about the world supposedly ending? Wasn’t it supposed to happen back in 2012?
It never happened…
In my humble opinion: the world will not end in 2051. Unless I actually see something spectacular, which is going to destroy everything, this will purely be a myth, and remain a myth.
Scientists can not predict far stars which will become supernovas, but they will see unusual activity if a star a few light years from us will become a Gamma Ray Burst. They will predict the time it explodes.
It can be easily set off course by a nuclear explosion on its surface.