# when will the human race become extinct? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [February 3, 2011, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016 "2011-02-03T13:47:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016/21 "2011-02-04T11:28:12Z")
We’re going down with the solar system. I’m pretty cynical about the chances of colonizing or terraforming other planets or moons, but even if we do that we’re stuck here. The sun is supposed to be too hot for liquid water to exist on Earth inside a billion years. Then when it goes red giant anything we have on Mars will be dust. I wonder how long colonies around the outer planets could survive after the death of the sun. > [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](#): > > Stray asteroid besides, we already have enough weapons of mass destruction to doom ourselves if we want to. Even if we took every single nuke and spread 'em out we’d run way short. Humans make it easier by clustering together in giant clumps, but there’s also a lot spread out over large areas. Even allowing for radiation and a hypothetical nuclear winter we’d need like a million nukes, not a couple thousand. Insert Turgidson quote here. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 11:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016/22 "2011-02-04T11:48:29Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > We’re going down with the solar system. I’m pretty cynical about the chances of colonizing or terraforming other planets or moons, but even if we do that we’re stuck here. The sun is supposed to be too hot for liquid water to exist on Earth inside a billion years. Then when it goes red giant anything we have on Mars will be dust. I wonder how long colonies around the outer planets could survive after the death of the sun. With fusion power, billions of years I’d think; the Sun is itself proof of that if you think about it. I’ve also run across the idea of future nomad societies slowly expanding into interstellar space, moving from comet to comet like earthly nomads between oases. > [@Suburban\_Plankton](#): > > Assuming an asteroid doesn’t wipe out everything, I think we’ll be around until we evolve into something that no longer qualifies as Homo Sapiens. > > Of course, in that case we’ll probably have redefined ‘human’ to match whatever we’ve become, so perhaps that doesn’t count… Maybe. However it seems likely to me that assuming we do have descendant species we’ll have more than one. If there are, say, a half dozen post-human species which one would get to call itself “human”? They could easily decide to save arguments and use the term to refer only to us and come up with new names for themselves. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 12:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016/23 "2011-02-04T12:55:13Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > Maybe. However it seems likely to me that assuming we do have descendant species we’ll have more than one. If there are, say, a half dozen post-human species which one would get to call itself “human”? They could easily decide to save arguments and use the term to refer only to us and come up with new names for themselves. In one of his books, S. J. Gould pondered about that aspect, of “human equality”, to which at least lip service is paid as a “truth self-evident” in our societies, being a historical contingency due to there being only one human species at the time that the question of people’s rights becomes addressed. We’ve had a bad enough time getting over the notion that other “races” were either primitive or degenerate and that justified treating them differently; imagine if there were whole other _species_ of human. ---
**Author:** ![MostlyClueless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/ba9def/32.png) [@MostlyClueless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MostlyClueless)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 1:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016/24 "2011-02-04T13:03:52Z")
We’re cockroaches with shoes. We’ve survived ice ages with rocks and our bare hands. ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016/25 "2011-02-04T13:08:16Z")
> [@LonesomePolecat](#): > > Damn. That’s my bowling night. at least you’ll go out doing what you love? i don’t agree with the “evolution” claims. with medicine (not even modern) we’re passing along bad genes as much as ever. with the notion that “beauty is only skin deep” and the concept of “love triumphs all”, the bad genes people aren’t even being forced to only mate with other bad gene people. evolutionarily, i feel like humans are stagnating (not that that’s a bad thing). i think humans will be around for a LOOOONG while, whether nature likes it or not. Long as in, multiple tens of millions of years. ---
**Author:** ![Onomatopoeia](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/onomatopoeia/32/4145_2.png) [@Onomatopoeia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Onomatopoeia)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 3:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016/26 "2011-02-04T15:15:29Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > Yes, but surely at some point the Earth itself is going bye-bye. And I don’t think we humans have the sand to make it in outerspace. Colonizing moons or planets or whatever to support life where it isn’t meant to be supported just has the failure of entropy written all over it. As someone alluded above, humanity has come a long way in a mere 100 years. I have no doubt, barring a worldwide, religion-spurred descent into ignorance, that we will find solutions to many current challenges, allowing us to make significant advances in the fields of space exploration, propulsion, and probably terraforming well within the next 1000 years. Who knows what we’ll have achieved by the next 10,000. ---
**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\ **Post date:** [February 4, 2011, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016/27 "2011-02-04T17:52:42Z")
To be bluntly honest, I’m surprised that some religious fanatic hasn’t biozapped us yet. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-will-the-human-race-become-extinct/570016.md?page=1)