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In the hopefully not too distant future, when humanity grows out of its barbaric infancy and we cease to kill each other over petty disputes a long term global
by willholloway 10y ago
In the hopefully not too distant future, when humanity grows out of its barbaric infancy and we cease to kill each other over petty disputes a long term global renewal project will commence.
We will use all the means at our disposal to clean up and undo the damage we have done to our home.
Swarms of autonomous robots, and possibly nanites will replenish the soil, water and air. We will restore coastlines and replant forests.
Wiser, and ashamed of our primitive past, we will rebuild a pristine paradise fitting of a spacefaring civilization.
- LoSboccacc 10y agobasically, wall-e?
- Practicality 10y agoExcept the nanites will repair us too :)
- bbcbasic 10y agoMakes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
- bbcbasic 10y agoMakes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
- bbcbasic 10y agoMakes me think of the outer limits episode where the suoerhuman man grows gills because he nearly drowns
- lugus35 10y agoAs a french, being enslaved by a german kaiser is not what I call a "petty dispute"
- unchocked 10y agoYeah, it's pretty asinine to imagine that "war is bad" will mean that disputes which lead men to die for the purpose of killing other men will just go away. Doubly asinine to link that old utopian thought to mystical singularity nanobot swarms etc... PS: nanobot swarms would make a terrifyingly effective military weapon.
- random_upvoter 10y agoResponding to violence with violence may have been the right response in 1914 or in 1939. It may no longer be the right response in 2016. I find it disheartening that in the current time the idea of pacifism seems to be dead and buried and replaced by this moral defeatism that man is doomed to behave like an animal for the remainder of history. Even from supposedly liberal politicians like Obama or Hollande we hear nothing but that same old primitive macho-ape language in response to terrorism "we will hunt down... we will destroy... we will eradicate". I look forward to the day that a powerful nation decides that it will no longer kill for any reason whatsoever.
- AnimalMuppet 10y ago"Those who have no swords can still die on them" - Tolkein Responding to violence aimed at destroying or enslaving your society with enough violence to prevent it is kind of required by any society that does not have a death wish. I can choose to respond with pacifism to violence directed at me. I do not have the right to choose that for anyone else, nor for my nation.
- avar 10y agoNone of the actors in WWI were set on destroying or enslaving entire societies within Europe. The losers would have been forced to live under a different political system, not been subjected to genocide. Would it really have mattered to the common man? Maybe not. did it matter to the common man that he or his sons got sent away to war to die? Definitely. Pacifism can be a sensible policy sometimes. Some wars aren't worth fighting, even if you "win" or force a stalemate.
- Houshalter 10y agoWhat would be required to remove heavy metals from the soil? It would take a massive amount of work and I'm not sure if it will ever be worth it economically.
- molsongolden 10y agoMushrooms. I'm on mobile and can't find a source at the moment but there has been some remediation work done using fungi to soak up heavy metal contamination.
- touristtam 10y agoIt isn't just the metal that is polluting the soil. Apparently tones of very toxic compound have been in the mix, like arsenic. And this would be only the depolluting phase, as the devastation has torn the ground so much that its composition has dramatically changed at places.
- new_hackers 10y agoYou mean like the grey goo? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo
- randyrand 10y ago> In the hopefully not too distant future, when humanity grows out of its barbaric infancy and we cease to kill each other over petty disputes a long term global renewal project will commence. What could cause this change? What could be different tomorrow compared to the past many thousands of years of wars that will stop wars from happening? War is pretty simple in the general sense. Limited resources (land being the main one), and selfish people. We have more technology today, yes, but we let the population explode so land resources are still quite limited. If you're expecting people to just 'wake up' I'm afraid that wont happen now for the same reasons it did not happen in the past. Cultures ebb and flow. You cannot expect anti-selfishness culture to be a forever-lasting deterrent to war.
- willholloway 10y agoI think the change will come through total surveillance, mutually assured destruction for nation states and genetic engineering for asymmetric threats. When technology advances such that individuals have the power to cause massive destruction in lone wolf attacks, and science advances to the point where we have the ability, we will have the choice of whether or not we will allow traits such as psychopathy to continue in the gene pool or to be edited out. We will come to a point where we will just not be able to tolerate the destructive power of anti social individuals. I think we will edit out the sadistic, dominating and anti social parts of our nature or we will become extinct.