rate the chances that you will experience a cataclysmic, world-threatening event before you're 70

the continued existence of humanity is a cataclysmic, world-threatening event.

dmac, have you caught up w/ the news of late?

If WW3 is going to match WW2 in terms of the proportion of the total body count to the total human population, it would have to kill 210 million people.

I was going to vote 50% but remembered that I'm going to be 45 next month, so that's only 25 years away. Upped it to 70%. (Of course, I'm diabetic, so I figure my odds of seeing 70 are below 50% anyway.)

80% it just seems really likely but nothing in life is certain

nb that even without climate change as the likely culprit i think a dispassionate reading of history suggests that civilization is tenuous and cataclysms are likely in any time

Atypically for ilx, that's a mere 8 years away for me. I voted 0%, but only because I decided it was nearer to reality than 10% would be.

(the likelihood of any of us experiencing something that wipes out 2-3% of the world's population in our lifetimes is hopefully close to zero)

the number of cataclysmic, world-threatening events that have been averted due to conscientious worrying vs. the total number of years wasted in fear and anxiety by the paranoid over the course of human history

pandemics, man. don't forget pandemics.

someone born in 1946 (yr after ww2 ended) would be 70 now

has that person experienced a cataclysmic / societal shifting event (if so, what) ?

dmac, have you caught up w/ the news of late?

― Supercreditor (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 17:42 (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yep i just dont like to masturbate over it

depends on where they lived. in the US probably no. in the former USSR? or the Middle East or many places in Africa or Southeast Asia, etc. xp

depends on where they lived. in the US probably no. in the former USSR? or the Middle East or many places in Africa or Southeast Asia, etc. xp

― Mordy, Wednesday, 23 November 2016 18:30 (fifty-six seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this poll is on ilx

someone born in 1946 (yr after ww2 ended) would be 70 now

has that person experienced a cataclysmic / societal shifting event (if so, what) ?

the cold war was a thing? constant reminders that the world may be nuked tomorrow? teaching grade school kids to hide under desks in case of an a-bomb?

not easy to quantify, but still, i think it had a major psychic impact on multiple generations the world over.

the threat of a cataclysmic event != a cataclysmic event

deems otm

maybe cataclysm is simply outsourced.

like fractional banking, technology brings us fractional cataclysms

dunno, like 0%?

depends on where they lived. in the US probably no. in the former USSR? or the Middle East or many places in Africa or Southeast Asia, etc. xp

Yeah, this gets closer to it for me. What do we mean by "cataclysmic?" Culturally we always revert to Hollywood post-apoc visions of destroyed societies and wastelands but, as I've read elsewhere, that shit exists for large parts of people existing literally at this second. And they still exist thru it. For whatever reason(human brain wiring, cultural myopia, intestinal problems, et al), the apocalypse is only something we consider happening to us, of when 3rd World conditions happen in the 1st World, to put it broadly.

And I don't think we'll nec have WWIII over more regional insurgencies popping up hither and yon. Even if there was another American Civil War, you wouldn't have massed armies of uniformed troops blasting away at each other rather than smaller, regional insurgent groups fighting it out in the countryside or suburbs.

I am more concerned about a catastrophic incident directly aimed at me or my family than I am about a global cataclysmic event.

Lmao NV

Voted 100%. Not because of masturbating over bad news, but the probability is just very, very high. I believe mankind is unable to learn from history, and that life on this planet is cyclical. It's rather arrogant to think this/our generation will not experience a disastrous global event tbh. 'We're' not exactly showing we learned from past mistakes. There has never not been war, there have never not been loonies in powerful positions etc etc.
That's macro. Micro, closer to home: not sure. But evidently something is changing for the worst, all over the globe. Never before have I been confronted with such virulent racism that hits my everyday life, nor the reality tv politics and fact free/trolling/fake news shit entering the collective consciousness and having such a huge impact.

I'm 2200 people could read history pdf's about this period as a build-up to some sort of catastrophe, and think "ah well, it was only thirty years". But those will be my last thirty years alive. So 100%.

But they'll never take my what.cd flacs away from me

TL;dr: the end of this interbellum is nigh(ish)

" It's rather arrogant to think this/our generation will not experience a disastrous global event tbh. "

i feel quite the opposite tbph. the louder the doommongering the greater the ego kick, albeit by proxy or wev

But there's no precedent. I don't think a generation has lived on earth in the last 2000 years that didn't experience a shock event. Why should we? We're certainly not making an effort.

Why put your head in the sand deems, if LCFC's PL win wasn't a sign the world is ending I don't know what is.

wasnt liverpool tbf

Well there's "cataclysmic events" and complete, nuclear holocaust

one day i'm going to die and everybody i love is going to die and we will never see each other again and there will be nothing for eternity and that's probly cataclysmic enough

17 years away for me -- I figure it's 50/50 or better, but I voted 40% to make myself feel better.

i've got 42 years to go- not surprisingly thinking about this stuff occupies more of my idle brain time than i'd like. i've also mostly mentally settled on 60 as a 'decent old age to get to' instead of 70 :(

Yeah I think about this question way too often.

100%

Voted 0%

honestly the fact that humanity still exists almost makes me want to believe in the existence of a providential god, which these days seems crueler than no god at all. but mostly i think we've just been "lucky" up until now; we haven't had the capacity for self-annihilation for all that long, really.

voted 10%. We're gonna need another poll to determine what "cataclysmic, world-threatening" means. I would say the last thing that fits this definition that happened is ww2. As bad as things get, I just don't see it getting that bad in the next 30-something years. We are very slowly going in the right direction despite all the dumb and irreparable shit we are causing to ourselves and this planet. I mean, things have always been terrible for most people, that is just the human experience.

Ppl lived thru WW2, but it wasn't a great deal of fun. Voted 80%.

we are very slowly going in the right direction

https://openclipart.org/image/2400px/svg_to_png/110257/citaton-needed.png

gotta zoom out pretty far on the ol moral arc these days

longer life spans, generally less world-wide poverty, that kind of stuff. Don't get me wrong, humanity obviously still needs a lot of work to get into any kind of decent shape, and the destruction of the world's ecosystems seems to still be going pretty strong, but you know, not everything is terrible. Things have certainly been way worse.

xp

Things have been way worse before, if you only consider the the general condition of humans everywhere, but never before have the natural systems within which we are embedded been so weakened and unstable as now.

I think that's true, but the "cataclysmic, world-threatening events" that those will cause seem likely to be more than 30 something years away. I won't pretend to be any kind of expert, but human has proven to able to adapt to many extreme situations. People will die, but we will figure it out a way out of this eventually. It's what we do. The only thing that will stop us is the heat death of the universe.

(maybe)

gotta zoom out pretty far on the ol moral arc these days

― difficult listening hour

tough to do because there are all these potential endpoints, and most of them is because humans as a species don't have very good judgment, but i'm really not convinced humanity will recognizably exist in 100 years.

climate change isn't a discrete cataclysmic event but could eventually cause one. went with 30%

one day i'm going to die and everybody i love is going to die and we will never see each other again and there will be nothing for eternity and that's probly cataclysmic enough

― brex yourself before you wrex yourself (Noodle Vague), Wednesday, 23 November 2016 21:31 (two days ago)

Genuine truth-bomb.

Uh tbh most adults get that, surely

Be funny if we're all dead before this poll closes

love the implicit acknowledgement that there will be slaves -- just def not him

typical of these libertarian shitheads that their first and only thought in response to potential civil unrest is 'omg i'd better build a secret bunker' rather than 'omg how can i use my boundless wealth and influence to prevent this?'

lord of the flies is not a fucking instruction manual you dolts

http://s8.postimg.org/4qjmvxc5x/tumblr_ned75nk_LFX1s6efcxo2_500.gif

just for the record, this is the chinless manchild who believes he has the right stuff to go full immortan joe in the nightmarish hellscape world of the future:

http://www.deathmetal.org/wp-content/uploads/Steve-spez-Huffman.jpg

hmm, it appears deathmetal.org doesn't like hotlinking - try this:

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2016/11/29/17/3ADB96D400000578-3982922-image-a-23_1480439368880.jpg

if you want a vision of the future, imagine a flip-flop stamping on a human face - forever.

You can't fool me, that's Liam McPoyle.

Silicon Valley execs who think their leadership skills will transfer seamlessly to the post-apocalyptic economy of tomorrow might just maybe be in for a fun surprise.

Immortan Joe was the CFO at Fruit Ninja devs Halfbrick, iirc?

otoh psychopathy probably v useful

yeah was gonna say, he's got the right eyes at least

Sean Connery may still be alive when ZARDOZ comes true

It just occurred to me that the illusory nightmare world the more extreme factions of the right had been fearing under Obummer is exactly the world that the new GOP administration seems hellbent on ushering in for real. And those same people are probably cheering now. Probably because they'll finally get to use those shelters they spent their life savings on.

love the implicit acknowledgement that there will be slaves -- just def not him

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, January 24, 2017 4:41 PM (fifty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i like the implication that there will be slaves and he'll be in charge off them

i talk to a few chinese people at work and theyve told me its obvious that china will go to war in less than 5 years

they said this about 1.5 years ago

the potential for destruction is there, but how much of it china is willing to risk is another matter

makes sense tho

The Cascadia Subduction Zone rupturing & the Yellowstone Caldera erupting definitely have a greater than 0% of happening within 37 years. Though those would mostly threaten just the Western US and Canada.

What really scares me is when giant asteroids make close pass-by's and NASA's like "oh we didn't see that one coming!" and the fact that even if we knew one was headed on a direct path towards Earth, we really don't have any way to divert it. They're working on that but currently there is no consensus that exploding a big nuclear missle near it/on it would be strong enough to nudge it enough to miss us.

But most likely, IMO, is that the effects of climate change get so severe there's a serious disruption in the global agricultural and energy sectors which would definitely lead to a panic that collapses the global economy. Though, in all likelihood that would happen at least 50 years from now. So, sorry teenagers!

I might just be a naive optimist, but I highly doubt President Trump is going start wars or cause events that are globally destabilizing. Fucking over poor people, minorities and women within the US, however... unfortunately very likely.

a greater than 0% of happening within 37 years

That 37 year window may apply to you, but as the poll was written, every respondent will have a differently sized window. In my case it is somewhat less than 8 years, which reduces the odds considerably closer to 0%. btw, if the Yellowstone Caldera erupts we can kiss our sweet lives of luxury goodbye.

if i dont see my pension and lump sum imma be soooo mad but really i dont see anything like this happening

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170418-how-western-civilisation-could-collapse

Eventually, investment in complexity as a problem-solving strategy reaches a point of diminishing returns, leading to fiscal weakness and vulnerability to collapse. That is, he says “unless we find a way to pay for the complexity[”]

bump

nah

https://media3.giphy.com/media/114YFLTN8BIQDe/giphy.gif

would need to be something much, much worse than this

this is more of a test run

well yes