What will destroy us?

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what will cause the destruction of the human race?

Poll Results

Option	Votes
War	9
Global warming	5
Asteroid or meteorite	5
Other (pls specify)	2
Vulcanicity	1
Sun going nova	1

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Other: arrogance

― nathalie, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:15 (seventeen years ago) link

War. Global warming won't destroy us, we'll just adapt to it as we've always done. The others are all silly/statistically ridiculously unlikely.

― CharlieNo4, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:16 (seventeen years ago) link

sun going nova not unlikely! it's inevitable! happens to all stars. question is: will there be humans around when it happens....

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Nathalie: explain.

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:19 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh, we'll just carrying on evolving I reckon. War won't destroy us - that shit's been peddled for nigh on 100 years now and we're not all dead. By the time the sun goes nova we'll have evolved into some right weird creatures and will be living on some other planets somewhere else.

― The Wayward Johnny B, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:22 (seventeen years ago) link

Thinking we will survive all this. It won't be one specific thing, certainly not global warming, but our arrogance (and laziness) to do anything about it. We refuse to believe that we could not be here one day.

I'm trying to be deep and meaningful. Of course now that you ask to explain myelf, I am rumbled.

― nathalie, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:22 (seventeen years ago) link

will we keep on evolving? doesn't evolution occur only when there is selection pressure, which we have been able to cheat?

― Grandpont Genie, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:23 (seventeen years ago) link

war's been peddling along a lot longer than a hundred years Johnny, but yer right.

― Ste, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:35 (seventeen years ago) link

Most likely scenario in the next hundred years or so: a combination of war and ecosystem collapse as a result of climate change.

― NickB, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 09:45 (seventeen years ago) link

War's been going on for more than 100 years, but "weapons of mass destruction" have only been around for about that - the phrase was first used in 1937 to describe mass bombing of cities and chemical warfare.

Maybe evolving is the wrong word, but certainly we'll keep changing as a species. And if the world does warm up or cool down or whatever pop science tells us this week, we'll evolve to adapt to it, no biggie.

― The Wayward Johnny B, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:27 (seventeen years ago) link

The sun is fine for the next 2 billion years at least - I'm not sure anyone could suggest we'll live that long.

My bet is disease, btw.

― Mark C, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:33 (seventeen years ago) link

Way back in the middle ages, the Catholic Chuch was preaching that longbow would bring about the end of civilisation as we know it, because it could pierce armour! Human beings have been warring as long as there have been primates on the face of this earth.

I'm going with environmental disasters/fucking up the earth/climate change - the human race has stopped evolving. Evolution is slow change to fit your environment. We now just change the environment to fit us. Which is just asking for trouble.

Either that or volcanoes. I've always been terrified of volcanoes, earthquakes, tidal waves, etc.

― Masonic Boom, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:36 (seventeen years ago) link

The rate at which global warming is happening tho, does it suggest that we won't have time to adapt?

On second thoughts, I'm not opening *that* box.

I voted "Asteroid" fwiw. The only thing that bothers me about this way is if we were told well in advance and everyone went potty and started going around buggering people. I live in constant fear of this.

― Ste, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:38 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't think disease will totally wipe us out - see the Black Death etc. - it's a poor parasite that kills its host. The history of most diseases is that they quite quickly (in the grand scheme of things) evolve to forms with lower mortality. Viruses and bacteria and the like have a much faster adaptation time, because their lives are so short compared with ours.

A major pandemic could easily take out a third to a half of the world's population, but the human race would survive.

― Masonic Boom, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:41 (seventeen years ago) link

Alien invasion AND/OR robots

― Tom D., Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:41 (seventeen years ago) link

.. what can I say, I'm a 50s kinda cat

― Tom D., Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:42 (seventeen years ago) link

And if the world does warm up or cool down or whatever pop science tells us this week, we'll evolve to adapt to it, no biggie.

Lots of the other organisms that we're dependant on for food, oxygen, fresh water, nutrient cycling, pollination etc need to evolve just as rapidly too though.

― NickB, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:46 (seventeen years ago) link

extreme banality

― 600, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 10:46 (seventeen years ago) link

Galactus. Or possibly Darkseid if he's busy.

― chap, Wednesday, 28 March 2007 12:24 (seventeen years ago) link

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