End of the World

Discussion in 'Science and Technology' started by hux, Apr 4, 2015.

?

How will the world end

  1. Alien invasion

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  2. Climate chane

    3 vote(s)
    7.3%
  3. Nuclear war

    6 vote(s)
    14.6%
  4. Death of the sun

    19 vote(s)
    46.3%
  5. Pandemic

    2 vote(s)
    4.9%
  6. Nuclear accident

    0 vote(s)
    0.0%
  7. Asteroids

    2 vote(s)
    4.9%
  8. Super Volcano

    3 vote(s)
    7.3%
  9. AI

    4 vote(s)
    9.8%
  10. Bio Terror

    2 vote(s)
    4.9%
  1. hux

    hux Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Channel 4 (UK) did an interesting End of the World" night where scientists looked at and discussed the various ways humanity might be destroyed. They looked at 10 choices (heavily influenced by movies)

    Professor Stephen Hawking reckons any genuine AI would inevitably and eventually destroy us

    what do you think?
     
  2. RoJoHen

    RoJoHen Awesome Admiral

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    QC, IL, USA
    I'm at optimistic, so I'm going with Death of the Sun.
     
  3. Melakon

    Melakon Admiral In Memoriam

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    Poll missing "with a whimper".
     
  4. Metryq

    Metryq Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jan 23, 2013
    Brawndo's got electrolytes!

    (NSFW)
    [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hL1-340ODCM[/yt]
     
  5. YellowSubmarine

    YellowSubmarine Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Aug 17, 2010
    Weird. Just a few minutes ago I had to contain an unexplainable urge to post a poll asking when the world will end. I was planning to give a wide variety of options: This week, this month, this year, by the end of the decade.

    In light of my unposted troll poll, my answer to this one is obvious: iWatch.


    Technically, the sun will roast us long before that. We are going uninhabitable in a few hundred million years IIRC. That might help explain the lack of aliens – we developed spaceflight and radio near the planned end of life of our planet. Maybe the other multicellular lifeforms didn't invent the wheel before their planet got too hot.

    Aside from that, a pandemic and bio terror are the only two that can take out the entire human race. Asteroid collisions are also capable, but we will be able to deflect them, and nothing big enough is expected to come our way. It is likely that no asteroid impact that will happen will wipe us out.

    Maybe the aliens too... But only because they are so unpredictable that we don't even know if they exist.

    ETA: And if a pandemic kills us, the civilization might get a second chance. People living with little or no contact with the rest of it will survive and will be able to restart it. I think there are enough of them to expect finds of the empty cities to follow at some point. That will drive them to repeat what was there. If that fails, I am counting on elephants.
     
  6. T'Girl

    T'Girl Vice Admiral Admiral

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    T'Girl
    When "Keeping up with the Kardashians" goes off the air, the world will end.



    :)
     
  7. Iamnotspock

    Iamnotspock Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    Bristol, England
    I'm rather hoping it'll run at least until we get to see them annex Bajor.
     
  8. Spider

    Spider Dirty Old Man Premium Member

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    Lost in time
    "End of the World" and a human extinction event are two different things. Out of all your options, only the Sun option has any relevance to the planet's destruction. As to the end of man, it will be his ignorance, not his intelligence, that's kills him.
     
  9. sojourner

    sojourner Admiral In Memoriam

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    Just around the bend.
    Actually, it'll be his ignorance combined with his intelligence.
     
  10. Gov Kodos

    Gov Kodos Admiral Admiral

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    Gov Kodos on Mohammed's Radio, WZVN Boston
    Evolution will take care of man. No reason the sophisticated neural system can't be thrown off over a million or so years for something less destructive to the species.
     
  11. Robert D. Robot

    Robert D. Robot Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    As Frank Zappa once said (in "Dumb All Over") regarding the fate of the Earth vs. Humanity's possible fate at their (our?) own hands:
    "I mean it won't blow up
    'n disappear
    It'll just look ugly
    For a thousand years..."
     
  12. Silvercrest

    Silvercrest Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Oct 4, 2003
    This.

    And I feel fine.
     
  13. Mary Ann

    Mary Ann Knitting is honourable Admiral

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    Location:
    A Canuck in southwest England
    Seconded.
     
  14. teacake

    teacake Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Location:
    inside teacake
    I voted for Super Volcano because it sounds cool.
     
  15. hux

    hux Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Hard Sassenach in Moist Aberdeen
    Thanks for taking part. Don't forget to pick up your...."i'm a fun person who doesn't take things too seriously"....goody bag on the way out

    I prefer to think that there will be a combination of events. Super volcano followed by asteroids then super awesome AI will enslave us (before finally being destroyed themselves by an alien invasion)
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2015
  16. RAMA

    RAMA Admiral Admiral

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    Dec 13, 1999
    Location:
    USA
    Depends on how you look at it. The end of the world might be inevitable in one way or another or it could also be seen as a transition..transition into space and away from the Earth for example, or from fossil fuels to fusion and renewables, or instead of an AI apocalypse it could be an AI transformation of the human race if done correctly. Everyone seems keen on thinking in the box. Humanity has little room to expand it's thinking but it'll have to eventually.

    RAMA
     
  17. Metryq

    Metryq Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

    Joined:
    Jan 23, 2013
    Wow, I had a flash to one of those dream sequences from the comic strip CALVIN AND HOBBES.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]
     
  18. Mary Ann

    Mary Ann Knitting is honourable Admiral

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    Oh, Calvin and Hobbies, how I love thee. :lol:
     
  19. HIjol

    HIjol Vice Admiral Admiral

    Joined:
    Feb 13, 2014
    Location:
    Midwest, USA
    "Calvin and Hobbs" reign supreme!

    Man and Woman will survive.
    The World will end when the Sun blows up.
    We will be long gone to other places in the cosmos by then.

    Did I hear something about "Goodie Bags" for participating?...
     
  20. Hatshepsut

    Hatshepsut Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

    Joined:
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    Utah, USA
    Interesting to find someone who is aware that current astrophysical models of stellar evolution do in fact predict that a star gets steadily brighter long before it leaves the main sequence. Of course that leaves the reasonable amount of doubt regarding how well our models portray whatever is actually taking place in the sky. Despite the heavy mathematization of physics and Stephen Hawking's assurances of the arrival of "precision cosmology," I see little reason to think we've heard the last word on this subject.

    But "a few hundred million years" is quite a while. We have an extremely foreshortened view of natural history because the recent past is seen at higher temporal resolution than the remote past is. This motivates us to attach way too much importance to the human species and its civilizations in the overall scheme of things. It has also led us to assume that human beings, and life as we understand it today, are the final stage in evolution: Otherwise we wouldn't ask about how we will respond to the impending asteroid impact or the sun's death, while simultaneously overrating the lethality of pandemics.

    Pandemics are hardly fun. But they don't destroy a widespread species too easily. Even if a lightning airborne disease killed 99% of today's population; some 70 million survivors would be left behind, more people than our planet hosted during the reign of Egypt's Amenemhat I. And these survivors would likely have natural resistance to the pathogen. Real pandemics such as the Black Death and Spanish Flu killed only a small fraction of the world population, never coming close to threatening an extinction.

    Meanwhile, huge asteroid impacts of the sort that ended the dinosaurs occur so infrequently we will likely have disappeared or evolved into something unrecognizable by the time the next one comes. Of course there's always the risk. But even if it happened right now, would humanity die out? Many types of advanced life, including crocodiles, survived the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. We are considerably more adaptable than any reptile. I would bet not only on species survival, but that we might rebuild civilization after an impact unless it's big enough to extinguish all multicellular life.

    Extinction itself can be somewhat illusory. After all, some dinosaur lineages still have living descendants: We call them birds.