6 ms·

IMO the only thing that could extinguish humanity is AI (possibly extra-terrestrial AI). Other events (if in the next decades) that might kill billions of hum

• jon_smark 9y ago
  What about pandemics? (Either natural or engineered.)
  • gepi79 9y ago
    Possible in theory but IMO too unlikely; especially for a natural disease. With regard to climate change: We know the danger is real and thus humanity adapts to prevent the worst.
  • mseebach 9y ago
    We're pretty good at disease control, see eg. the recent ebola outbreak. An outbreak of anything dangerous would be quickly contained. There are no organizations with the capacity to surreptitiously produce, distribute and release an infection agent broadly enough that it might kill in the billions before being contained. That basically leaves the US or Russia (the only countries with the capacity to do so) arbitrarily deciding to nuke most cities in south Asia.
    • eru 9y ago
      I'd give China more of a chance than Russia, actually. They have more resources. (But perhaps less willingness than Russia: China is doing very well with the status quo.)
      • mseebach 9y ago
        I don't think China has the nuclear warhead stockpile to kill 1 billion+ people. Wikipedia says "Current stockpile (usable and not): ~260" which means each would have to kill 3.8 million, which basically means delivering each perfectly into a major city. That's a non-trivial operation to put it mildly. That said, I don't see any objective (rational or otherwise) of either country that would be advanced by such an attack. And again, we're talking about an attack that will kill 1B+ people, not just any nuclear attack -- that's a different story. Still low probability, but at least there are semi-rational objectives that could motivate it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...
        • eru 9y ago
          Oh, I didn't mean to imply the Chinese had enough stockpiles. I meant they have a big enough economy to rapidly build up their nukes (or invest in bioweapons etc), should they decide to.
• grondilu 9y ago
  > Other events (if in the next decades) that might kill billions of humans: > > - meteorites. No asteroid large enough to kill billions of humans is likely to impact Earth in this century. After that, it's likely that humanity will be so advanced that it'll be able to either mitigate or deter an impact of any magnitude. An overlooked possibility imho would be a catastrophic population decline[1]. Basically women not having children anymore. Japanese style, only worse. It's difficult to imagine it leading to extinction, since there will always be groups, at the very least religious groups, who will keep having babies. But still, it wouldn't take much of a cultural change for it to expand to all women. Not saying it's plausible, but to me in terms of population dynamics it's at least as much of a concern as climate change (by this I mean that I believe reproductive behavior will have more impact on demography than climate change). 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_decline
  • gepi79 9y ago
    IMO the problem today is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation. I can not imagine that lack of babies could ever become a problem for humanity until humans decide to build humans so that the "natural human species" dies out. The solution for the aging population: - Automation. - Biochemical solutions and genetic engineering to remain/become capable. Replacement of natural body parts by machine body parts.
    • grondilu 9y ago
      > IMO the problem today is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_overpopulation. Worrying about overpopulation is short-sighted. Also, no matter what kind of problems overpopulation brings, it's hard to imagine how that could lead to extinction, which is what we were discussing.
      • gepi79 9y ago
        Overpopulation is a problem right now. I mentioned overpopulation as reply to the fear of too few babies. I hope that poverty and the culture to have as many children as possible will not exist anymore after 2030 CE.
• marcosdumay 9y ago
  Grey goo and engineered bio-weapons? At space there are some pan-galatic killers, nearby supernovas (no idea where is the closest candidate), and a black hole could always cross our path without any warning.
  • kijin 9y ago
    A black hole crossing our path would give plenty of warning, assuming it approaches significantly slower than the speed of light. The effect of a black hole's gravity on distant objects is exactly the same as the effect of any other object with the same mass. It would disturb Kuiper belt objects that everyone's watching very carefully these days, affect the orbits of the outer planets as it moves closer, and bend light around its event horizon in a very obvious way. Whether we can do anything about it, of course, is a different problem.