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It seems hard to imagine that humanity could be completely wiped out. Billions dying in a huge catastrophe? Maybe. Terrible survival conditions for the survivor

by simias 9y ago

It seems hard to imagine that humanity could be completely wiped out. Billions dying in a huge catastrophe? Maybe. Terrible survival conditions for the survivors? Possibly. Complete annihilation? Improbable. We're quite tough at a species and now we have the technology to make even the most terrible environments survivable. That's why I find plans to colonize Mars as a "backup" in case something terrible happens on Earth rather ridiculous. It would be incredibly difficult to make Earth more inhospitable than Mars is right now. Nuclear winter Earth would probably be paradise compared to normal Mars. If you're worried about humanity's survival build underwater cities and bunkers in the arctic, Mars isn't worth it.

300bps 9y ago
If you're worried about humanity's survival build underwater cities and bunkers in the arctic, Mars isn't worth it. We could do both. In fact, the technology for both likely has overlap.
- simias 9y ago
  Oh yeah, it's not an argument against space exploration. I'm just pointing out that if your only objective is survival of the species then building autonomous bunkers on earth is probably massively more cost effective than building autonomous stations on Mars. And once the danger clears out you can start to recolonize right-away.
  - PhasmaFelis 9y ago
    I think the "eggs in one basket" argument is also concerned about asteroid impacts. A large enough rock wouldn't be survivable anywhere on or beneath the Earth.
jacobush 9y ago
True. I wonder though, what the cultural and psychological impact on the Earth survivors would be... if... if the struggling survivors knew there was a population on Mars, living on unscathed by the disasters on Earth.
- MrZongle2 9y ago
  Sounds like the premise of novel.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    Indeed! The plot twist is, that when the Earthers after hundreds of years rebuild their industrial base and go back Mars, the "martians" are long since dead.
jamesrcole 9y ago
> It seems hard to imagine that humanity could be completely wiped out. Billions dying in a huge catastrophe? Maybe. Terrible survival conditions for the survivors? Possibly. Complete annihilation? Improbable. "Maybe" and "Possibly" are pretty vague. You seem to imply the odds are quite low. You list the last case as "Improbable". Do you really have any solid ground for making these judgements? You say it seems hard to imagine. One thing that history clearly shows is that the future is always hard to imagine, and that you always have to expect the unexpected.
thinkfurther 9y ago
Even just "terrible survival conditions" contains such a vast range of possibilities, including humans I might not consider people, and itself is dwarved by terrible political and social conditions. The question isn't so much will there still be some form of two-legged entitites. Technology doesn't help here at all, to the contrary, it can be used to enforce the wiping out of all people as I understand them, and not at all to protect that. That does have to come from people; and it's not. So, the trends remaining as they are, it's curtains.
Houshalter 9y ago
If our civilization falls, it will be difficult to rebuild. We've exhausted many of the easy to get to minerals. The conditions that let us bootstrap the industrial revolution won't exist again. But more than that, technology improves every day. The only reason we aren't extinct now is because nuclear weapons happen to be very difficult to build. Imagine if the materials required to build them were common, and any idiot could do it with some parts from the hardware store. How long do you think the world would last? Well who is to say the next world destroying technology will be the same? Maybe there's a reason the sky is empty.
- njharman 9y ago
  Exhausted all the minerals? Pfft, who cares about minerals when refined alloys and other recyclable materials are all over. The parking lots of one USA town has more metal than the (few) survivors of any civilazation collapsing level event could even use. Also, civilization existed before the industrial revolution. In fact that would be a good point to mark the start of the fall. Giving the rate of increase in pollution, overconsumption, climate and environment destruction since and before then.
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    Ehh, try welding aluminum. I agree with you, but it ain't no walk in the park. Oil and coal seem like the real keys to industrialization. We took most of the easy stuff.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - Houshalter 9y ago
    We've taken concentrated deposits of minerals and scattered them widely. And exposed them to the air where they quickly corrode away into nothing useful. Sure, digging up landfills for a handful of aluminum cans might meet the needs of a small primitive post apocalyptic town. But that's not enough to sustain an industrial revolution. Preindustrial civilizations are nothing to aspire to. By all measurements the quality of life was abysmal and almost not worth living for the majority of the population. I'd rather our species just go extinct than endure that forever.
njharman 9y ago
More than 99% of all species are extinct. And we are currently at an extinction rate 100-1000x the "normal" rate. I.e. we are in a mass extinction event. But, 2000 years is nothing. Humans will be off the planet in that time and it would be really, really hard to wipe us all out in that tiny timescale. Btw, we are not tough as a species. Trilobites are tough. Those fuckers survived 3 mass extinctions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aji2VnQFUCs&index=11&list=LLB_kTi3xelaBehM_Pc8evsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aji2VnQFUCs&index=11&list=LL...

by simias 9y ago

300bps 9y ago

If you're worried about humanity's survival build underwater cities and bunkers in the arctic, Mars isn't worth it. We could do both. In fact, the technology for both likely has overlap.

simias 9y ago
Oh yeah, it's not an argument against space exploration. I'm just pointing out that if your only objective is survival of the species then building autonomous bunkers on earth is probably massively more cost effective than building autonomous stations on Mars. And once the danger clears out you can start to recolonize right-away.
- PhasmaFelis 9y ago
  I think the "eggs in one basket" argument is also concerned about asteroid impacts. A large enough rock wouldn't be survivable anywhere on or beneath the Earth.

jacobush 9y ago

True. I wonder though, what the cultural and psychological impact on the Earth survivors would be... if... if the struggling survivors knew there was a population on Mars, living on unscathed by the disasters on Earth.

MrZongle2 9y ago
Sounds like the premise of novel.
- jacobush 9y ago
  Indeed! The plot twist is, that when the Earthers after hundreds of years rebuild their industrial base and go back Mars, the "martians" are long since dead.

jamesrcole 9y ago

> It seems hard to imagine that humanity could be completely wiped out. Billions dying in a huge catastrophe? Maybe. Terrible survival conditions for the survivors? Possibly. Complete annihilation? Improbable. "Maybe" and "Possibly" are pretty vague. You seem to imply the odds are quite low. You list the last case as "Improbable". Do you really have any solid ground for making these judgements? You say it seems hard to imagine. One thing that history clearly shows is that the future is always hard to imagine, and that you always have to expect the unexpected.

thinkfurther 9y ago

Even just "terrible survival conditions" contains such a vast range of possibilities, including humans I might not consider people, and itself is dwarved by terrible political and social conditions. The question isn't so much will there still be some form of two-legged entitites. Technology doesn't help here at all, to the contrary, it can be used to enforce the wiping out of all people as I understand them, and not at all to protect that. That does have to come from people; and it's not. So, the trends remaining as they are, it's curtains.

Houshalter 9y ago

If our civilization falls, it will be difficult to rebuild. We've exhausted many of the easy to get to minerals. The conditions that let us bootstrap the industrial revolution won't exist again. But more than that, technology improves every day. The only reason we aren't extinct now is because nuclear weapons happen to be very difficult to build. Imagine if the materials required to build them were common, and any idiot could do it with some parts from the hardware store. How long do you think the world would last? Well who is to say the next world destroying technology will be the same? Maybe there's a reason the sky is empty.

njharman 9y ago
Exhausted all the minerals? Pfft, who cares about minerals when refined alloys and other recyclable materials are all over. The parking lots of one USA town has more metal than the (few) survivors of any civilazation collapsing level event could even use. Also, civilization existed before the industrial revolution. In fact that would be a good point to mark the start of the fall. Giving the rate of increase in pollution, overconsumption, climate and environment destruction since and before then.
- jfoutz 9y ago
  Ehh, try welding aluminum. I agree with you, but it ain't no walk in the park. Oil and coal seem like the real keys to industrialization. We took most of the easy stuff.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- Houshalter 9y ago
  We've taken concentrated deposits of minerals and scattered them widely. And exposed them to the air where they quickly corrode away into nothing useful. Sure, digging up landfills for a handful of aluminum cans might meet the needs of a small primitive post apocalyptic town. But that's not enough to sustain an industrial revolution. Preindustrial civilizations are nothing to aspire to. By all measurements the quality of life was abysmal and almost not worth living for the majority of the population. I'd rather our species just go extinct than endure that forever.

njharman 9y ago

More than 99% of all species are extinct. And we are currently at an extinction rate 100-1000x the "normal" rate. I.e. we are in a mass extinction event. But, 2000 years is nothing. Humans will be off the planet in that time and it would be really, really hard to wipe us all out in that tiny timescale. Btw, we are not tough as a species. Trilobites are tough. Those fuckers survived 3 mass extinctions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aji2VnQFUCs&index=11&list=LLB_kTi3xelaBehM_Pc8evsw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aji2VnQFUCs&index=11&list=LL...