How will Humanity die? it's not what we would expect.

Gergar12

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So basically I have been looking around the world, and it seems to me that almost every problem that is happening will not kill everyone on Earth, or even get close.

1. Nuclear War; China and Russia; I don't think this will kill as many people as you think. For one thing, Humanity could survive nuclear winter by growing crops indoors, using GMOs, and using artificial light. But I don't even think it will get that far. The Russians and Chinese don't maintain their submarines, their bombers will get shot down, their hypersonics are too expensive, and their ICBMS I suspect aren't in good shape due to poor maintenance. I think they are buffing somewhat, and while I don't think they will kill 0 Americans, Asians, and Europeans in a war, It will turn out like the Urkaine War where the West will disable lots of Chinese, and Russian Nuclear weapons by nuking them or via cyber warfare, saboteurs, and defenses on US ships.



2. Climate Change; I actually think this will kill lots of people, but it will be limited to 3 degrees. Unless it's 4 degrees, it won't kill everyone. However it will make life harder so we will need more and more climate change policy, and business innovations to counter it. I think that can be done but the damage to South Asia, South America, Africa, and East Asia will be large. However, due to lower population(and thus demand for goods), remote work, and schooling, beyond meat, renewables and nuclear, and so on we are getting closer and closer to 2.5 to 2 degrees C.


3. Asteroid strike, we could literally just fire some SpaceX rockets to alter the course of it. Fire more for larger ones.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160305101217/http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/neo/report2007.html

4. Disease

I don't think so. For one compare the Spanish flu to Covid in its entirely, and you will see it's killed a lot fewer people, and we could just deploy a vaccine for it unless it's a lab-grown super virus, and even then the world's largest superpower, the US under Nixon thinks bio-weapons are weak and destroy its development to gain brownie points with the world.

5. Chemical Weapons of War

Also weak, and are a worse nuclear weapon.

6. Armed conventional conflict that kills every single person: I had a professor who argued that it's possible using statistical software. The problem is that humans will almost always gang up on the aggressor so whoever starts this would need a large alliance with numerical superiority, and why they do so if they had that given that they would have more to lose.

7. AI: No, they may take our jobs, but killing us is hard since we are the apex predators of this planet who have climbed through thousands of years of evolution through the corpses of dead animals. That and any AAI(advanced artificial intelligence would be simulated, then if it does anything bad in said simulation, it gets deleted or gets another simulation.

So what could kill all of humankind?

1. Alien invasion by an alien race that is trying to kill any future potential upstarts, we would be like a caveman trying to stop a carrier battlegroup. And no our resources aren't valuable, oil and coal arse the only thing we produced that can' be found on other planets that we know of due to life creating them, their sun/black holes, or another space-based resource like anti-matter, or black holes would be way more energy-dense.


2. The sun dying/expanding due to humanity not doing anything to get to another viable solar system for a long time. likely won't happen, but I can't rule it out due to human apathy. Also, we could mine the sun, and make it smaller which will prolong its life in the future.


3. Yellowstone; it's literally a supervolcano that will black out the sun. I guess we could try to alter the interior of the volcano, but I don't know if we are doing so right now.

 

Thaluikhain

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Well...yes. Most of the Earth's problems won't totally destroy all of humanity. This is not news.
 

Silvanus

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2. The sun dying/expanding due to humanity not doing anything to get to another viable solar system for a long time. likely won't happen, but I can't rule it out due to human apathy. Also, we could mine the sun, and make it smaller which will prolong its life in the future.
Uhrm, actually the death of the sun will pretty much definitely happen. Probably not for a few billion years, but yeah, it'll happen.

And the idea of us "mining" enough mass from the sun to prolong its lifespan is completely unfeasible.

If humanity is to survive the death of the sun, it will either be by having moved to a different star system, or by creating artificial, sustainable habitats.
 

Thaluikhain

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Uhrm, actually the death of the sun will pretty much definitely happen. Probably not for a few billion years, but yeah, it'll happen.

And the idea of us "mining" enough mass from the sun to prolong its lifespan is completely unfeasible.
Mining mass from the sun does seem absurd, but the humanity living for billions of years is also absurd, and what wonders we could achieve in that time likewise. Can't rule it out, and you'll have to wait quite a while to prove me wrong on this.
 

Agema

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Mining mass from the sun does seem absurd, but the humanity living for billions of years is also absurd, and what wonders we could achieve in that time likewise. Can't rule it out, and you'll have to wait quite a while to prove me wrong on this.
Mining the sun is not practical without some staggeringly exotic technology - the sort with which we'd have simply expanded out to other solar systems anyway.

A typical G class star like our sun should last about 10 billion years on the main sequence before it starts to die, expanding into a red supergiant which might swallow the Earth. It's reckoned to have about half that left - and 5 billion years is, let's face it, plenty. However, if we sucked out a load of its mass to turn into a class K (lifespan ~50 billion years) or class M (100 billion years), it would also provide drastically less heat and light, and the Earth would probably turn into a frozen ice ball.

By that time, we wouldn't really be humans any more, either: we'd have evolved or modified ourselves on to something new.
 

XsjadoBlayde

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You left out the permafrost, solar flares, increasing microplastics in our bloodstream and water, the entropic heat death of the universe and the mysterious underground black-hole creation device I have almost finished work on.
 
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Agema

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You left out the permafrost, solar flares, increasing microplastics in our bloodstream and water, the entropic heat death of the universe and the mysterious underground black-hole creation device I have almost finished work on.
I suspect there's another issue with doomsday scenarios. Humans might survive them in the short term, but would they survive them in the long-term?

In many of these scenarios, some of the population survives. But civilisation is screwed: we're effectively back to the medieval era (or worse) with a heavily compromised environment. Bits of tech can be maintained for a while, but without spare parts, manufacturing capability etc. it gradually degrades and should the environmental stress continue, we're in trouble.There's massive systemic loss of knowledge - medicine, engineering, farming, etc. Sure, there might be books, but books don't teach a lot of know-how and there might be a serious shortage of people capable of learning complex material. No vaccines, no antibiotics? Is the population going to be knocked into small, isolated communities vulnerable to inbreeding?

This is often the pattern with many extinctions. Species don't suddenly go down in a blazing fireball: they take a big hit, and then gradually wither away over subsequent generations.
 
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SilentPony

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I mean bold of you assume us Millenials would get something as comprehensive and free as the end of humanity. That's an eternity of finally getting enough sleep. No way reality would be that kind to us.
 
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Worgen

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Whatever, just wash your hands.
The yellowstone volcano isn't even big enough to destroy all of America, let alone cause global destruction.

Really aside from the sun going in however many billions of years, none of those can destroy humanity, there will always be suvivors and humans are really damn adaptable. Even the sun going probably wouldn't do it since, assuming we have any tech at all, we would have plenty of warning and seeing the looming destruction in the sky, we would get off our asses and get off planet.
 
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Kwak

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Whatever happens, I know I'll die of starvation as soon as the supply of local food infrastructure breaks down because I'm so anti-social, and surviving any significant disaster requires being part of a community of friends and family working together.
 

Agema

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More, would you want to? I don't think I'd be prepared to make that kind of effort.
My wife has made it abundantly clear that if civilisation collapses - global thermonuclear war, zombie apocalypse, etc. - then should she survive the initial collapse she can't be bothered and she's committing suicide.

Honestly, I sympathise, and I might voluntarily depart this mortal coil too. I like being alive, but only because I can do fun things. I'm not so attached to life that I have any interest in trying to eke out every last minute I can through a ton of hardships. When it's not really worth it any more, I'm out (preferably quickly and or painlessly). That said, I might give the post-apocalypse a go before calling it quits.
 

SilentPony

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Whatever happens, I know I'll die of starvation as soon as the supply of local food infrastructure breaks down because I'm so anti-social, and surviving any significant disaster requires being part of a community of friends and family working together.
To be fair...cannibalism. Just sayin', if you're hungry and don't like people, at least raw, there are solutions.
 
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