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

Has there ever been a generation of humans that didn't ruminate about whether they might be the second-to-last?

(and that there was probably nothing they could do about it? woe is us, cursed to roam this etc.)

the people on this board will almost certainly be fine imo

i don't think it'll be so bad for humans who are born after the cataclysm bc this will be the only life they know. it'll be hardest for those of us who remember what it was like now and how great it was.

Like the younger people in this rather good film http://www.gstatic.com/tv/thumb/dvdboxart/75293/p75293_d_v8_aa.jpg

this is how i feel abt the switch from cd -> mp3s xp

i feel lucky to have experienced how good things can be and have been, but it will be especially frustrating to live with this (likely) suffering and misery, just knowing that it didn't *have* to be this way. hopefully can drive and motivate me politically?? (?)

things will be fine.

Has there ever been a generation of humans that didn't ruminate about whether they might be the second-to-last?

Respectfully, this is such a trite dad argument. It's exactly the kind of banal hindsight fallacy that would be taken as received wisdom on places like Reddit. Like others said, other generations weren't facing climate change with denialist resolve. I don't think global climate change will likely reach cataclysmic proportions in the next 30 years, but in the next 80 I'd say odds are approaching fair to middlin'.

I don't know, how many people have to starve before it reaches a cataclysm?

Wow, good job reading a bunch of nonexistent sentiment into my question!

Speaking for myself, I'm defining a "cataclysm" for the purposes of this thread as 2-3% global population loss.

So, roughly 200 million deaths at current global population of roughly 7 billion. Sounds cataclysmic enough to me to qualify.

http://www.livescience.com/14251-200-million-rapture-12.html

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

― Never changed username before (cardamon)

if a punchline lands and nobody is there to hear it, is it still funny?

watched "pale cocoon" last night. touched on a lot of thoughts i've been having lately, particularly wrt this thread.

np: frank zappa, _does humor belong in a post-apocalyptic hellscape?_

just the other day i was wondering which science fiction dystopia seems most plausible from the perspective of 2016 and--if you allow for some imaginative license--it almost seems like it might be The Time Machine.

(not just the extreme inequality or biopolitical schisms, or even the idea that there will be habitable and uninhabitable zones but because it portrays human civilization as just...dwindling away into time and a decaying universe.)

& Orlando Jones rocking a Caesar cut, boggling at our sad descendants who don't take advantage of the vast institutional knowledge that he contains!

http://i.imgur.com/R3T8bih.jpg

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/a-human-extinction-isnt-that-unlikely/480444/

Global Challenge Foundation roughly answers the poll question for ILX:

Across 100 years, that figure would entail a 9.5 percent chance of human extinction.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

i don't think it'll be so bad for humans who are born after the cataclysm bc this will be the only life they know. it'll be hardest for those of us who remember what it was like now and how great it was.

― Mordy, Friday, November 25, 2016 9:44 PM (one month ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

we are legend

still feeling good about this

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

clutch mutch?

16 people leading the revolution

http://i.imgur.com/1eWtMFd.jpg

I'm about to turn 42, and I feel like I am living through one right now.

You are confusing the scaldingly high potential for a cataclysmic event with the actual event, which is scheduled for later this year.

51 and I feel as if everything has gone mad.

You're getting worked up over nothing. Everything is going to be fine. So just relax, okay? You're really overreacting.

http://www.theonion.com/multiblogpost/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mideast-regio-11534

silicon valley hedge fund types certainly think they will

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/01/30/doomsday-prep-for-the-super-rich

“I think people who are particularly attuned to the levers by which society actually works understand that we are skating on really thin cultural ice right now.”

yeah man yr the only one who can tell

i read that piece and my real feeling about it was that there's a certain stripe of rich person that's constantly paranoid that something might bring an end to the lavish, crass lifestyles which they need yet scarcely deserve, the latter fact being something they're probably aware of.

When Marvin Liao, a former Yahoo executive who is now a partner at 500 Startups, a venture-capital firm, considered his preparations, he decided that his caches of water and food were not enough. “What if someone comes and takes this?” he asked me. To protect his wife and daughter, he said, “I don’t have guns, but I have a lot of other weaponry. I took classes in archery.”

...

Huffman has calculated that, in the event of a disaster, he would seek out some form of community: “Being around other people is a good thing. I also have this somewhat egotistical view that I’m a pretty good leader. I will probably be in charge, or at least not a slave, when push comes to shove.”

lol nerds (bolded part submitted for use on species tombstone obv)

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