Hell on Earth, unless radical changes in Human nature take place.
Witness the, oh, rocket launcher.
1st, rockets were toys.
Then, crude projectiles, more meant to frighten than harm. (Congreve rockets)
Then, ww2, & the bazooka or the Panzerfaust. Lethal.
By Vietnam, we have the L.A.W. Rocket, a disposable one-short rocket that can fit in a large briefcase, & destroy an APC. It is so simple to use, the directions are printed on the side. The RPG is contemporary, & arguably more versatile, with antipersonnel rockets available.
Then, guided missiles like the Stinger. One shot, & plane go bye-bye.
An ultraportable rocket–one that can level a skyscraper, yet fit in a lunchbox?
Yes, & a lot sooner than 3007.
And then, the social countermeasures against them. Patriot Act 9,000…called the “kill every other person” bill. :smack:
Why do you think that msmith537 my old friend? The U.S. is fully nuclear ready at this moment even though the Cold War has been over since 1990. All it takes is one. We have already had a few extremely close calls and, as more nations become nuclear capable, the risk increases. The only known defense against nuclear attacks is MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) and the U.S. has plans in place to launch nuclear attacks within minutes from now given appropriate threats. That is why George Bush is followed around every single second by a military officer that carries the nuclear football that contains the launch plans for that day. That is why we have nuclear subs on ready alert in the oceans at all times.
At some point, that idea will fail somewhere whether it is Iran, Pakistan, or more likely Israel. The U.S will have to commit to something even if we don’t launch and that will take us instantly to WWIII. It has come too close before to assume that we can go 100 more years without someone going nuclear.
It’s just a guess. My theory is as valid as anyone else’s.
And if it’s not a nuclear war that’s responsible, as Shagnasty suggested, it will apparently be inevitable, unavoidable, and all-consuming human-induced climate change that will be the ultimate destructor, or so the media is leading us to believe.
Either one of those, or both, could be our downfall.
The most controversial position that will be stated here- Christ’s Millenial Reign will be manifest on Earth, either by His actual return or by humanity actually getting with His program.
I expect life in 3007 to look a lot like life in 1007. All the low-hanging fruit (fossil fuels, high-grade ore deposits, high-quality topsoil) will be gone. Scientific knowledge will be taboo. Everything in electronic form will be gone. Perhaps most paper versions will have been burnt. Somewhere, there will be a society that keeps some things alive, as the Arabs did in 1007. But our civilization will never rise again because we have used up the material basis for it.
The continental seaboards will have flooded and, as CO2 recedes and the ice returns, reappeared. The oceans will be full of fish again. Life expectancy will be 30 years, but this will be a combination of half the people born dying within a year and the other half living to 60 years. Perhaps some knowledge of antibiotics will be retained. But the global population will be below a billion, maybe well below.
Space is a non-starter. Fifty years after Sputnik, the only thing that has come out of it are comm-sats and a fair bit of scientific knowledge. There is simply no reason to settle the moon and certainly no reason to go further. I could, of course, be wrong, but I think that if there were reasons, we could expect to see their shape fifty years later.
Read the sci-fi of 1957. I did (and still enjoy sci-fi). Has any prediction of 1957 come true? Yes, Astounding in 1940 or so made a prediction of nuclear bombs, but that came true within a few years, so was a short-term prediction. But where are the helicopters in every garage? Where are the moving sidewalks (airports, that’s where) that Heinlein predicted. The farms in the sky? Did anyone predict the PC? (Asimov came closest with his idea of a world computer with public access terminals.) Did any sci-fi writer predict global warming? Did any predict that most of us would spend 2 or more hours a day in traffic jams? Or any of the other dystopic features of modern life? Don’t look to sci-fi for predictions of the future.
Well I could stick to just Heinlein and say he predicted Water Beds, the Internet as a giant educational and news gathering tool and even predicted the behavior we would consider surfing. Computers running a significant portion of our banking, infrastructure and commerce. A North American leader who consulted an astrologer, the re-rising of fundamentalism in America after decades of it slowly dying off.
Those were off the top of my head. I promise you there is much more. Much of what you are referring are his juveniles and should not be treated in the same light as the hard Science Fiction of his Future History.
Things that may still come true, is facts like Government will not be the source of our true entry into space but rather a commercial enterpriser. Let’s keep an eye on Richard Branson in the next decade.
BTW: I don’t think Sci-Fi writers were suppose to be Nostradamus, but rather entertaining writers that engaged our interest in potential futures.
What makes you think this is even remotely true? Anyone in their time could have made the same statement, and been just as wrong. All our “laws” are allegories, and will remain forever so.
Simply because there are a shitload of us out there (6 billion at last count) and we humans are surprisingly adaptable. That is not to say that we couldn’t majorly fuck up our civilization. Between global warming, disease, or nuclear war, we have the potential to kill off a whole lot of us. We could destroy our civilization and set ourselves back a couple of centuries. But to wipe out ALL of us would simply be impossible or at the very least, improbable. Cities might be destroyed but people scattered around living in self-sustaining farms will probably be fine. There would probably be a lot of social upheaval, but eventually things would stabalize and reach a new equalibrium.
Isn’t the standard answer: To us, it’ll be like magic. That’s how I’m answering the question. By 2200, I’m willing to bet nanotechnology becomes ubiquitous, even in the air, leaving 807 more years of development. People won’t have electrical components in them simply because they’re ugly and nanotechnology will be able to produce amazing abilities on its own.
So I’m thinking it’ll be something like out of Harry Potter. You say key words in say, Latinish, those tiny machines in your brain compute the idea in your head. The communicate with the nanobots in the environment and things coalesce, get moved or get transported right in front of you. Like magic.
Plus I’m hoping for Zombie Armageddon in about 2537.
First, that humanity will be extinct, or nearly so, replaced either by it’s creations or by it’s transformed beyond recognition descendants. Any humans that exist will exist at the sufferance of these far more powerful and intelligent beings, and will likely be the descendants of Luddites that refused to improve themselves, or the few survivors of a human-machine war ( which I expect humans would lose, badly ).
I expect that the Solar System will be heavily colonized/industrialized, although most or all of the colonizers will be nonbiological; they may have begun doing so to the nearest stars as well. Earth’s biosphere may well be completely gone and replaced by an artificial “technosphere”, or full of heavily modified life, or restored to a preindustrial state; which depends on the desires of the people of that time.
The second likely future is that we smash ourselves back to pre-industrial times, and will have a far harder time climbing back up.
The third likely future is that we manage to destroy ourselves and possibly the biosphere, with nothing to replace us. A screw up moving an asteroid, some super bio/nano weapon, a runaway greenhouse leading to a Venuslike Earth, someone’s replicating robot army gone wrong ( smart enough to kill us, but not smart enough to do anything once it’s won ), or something we haven’t thought of.
Nuclear war sometime in the next 20-30 years, likely but not necessarily starting between Russia and China. Whatever’s left in a thousand years will have mutated beyond recognition.
