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I find it extremely hard to believe you could kill every human being on earth at this point. We’ve reached critical mass, we aren’t going anywhere. When we ha

I find it extremely hard to believe you could kill every human being on earth at this point. We’ve reached critical mass, we aren’t going anywhere. When we had that few thousand individuals population bottleneck in the past was when it was dicey. What sort of event could kill every human and end our species? I can only think of planet-wide extinction events like massive asteroid impacts that sterilized the whole earth. And we haven’t ever had one of those in billions of years. Call me too optimistic but I think humans are too resourceful. Some of us would survive anything smaller.

yellowapple 6y ago
> When we had that few thousand individuals population bottleneck in the past was when it was dicey. Yeah, but those individuals were presumably all in pretty close proximity to one another. If we were left with a few thousand individuals across the entire range of the human-inhabited Earth, we'd have one heck of a time continuing as a species. In any case, the risk of an extinction event on Earth is exactly why I believe space colonization needs to be Priority Zero for humanity, from two different angles: 1. Living beyond Earth means that we as a species are that much more resilient against a literal-Earth-shattering catastrophe (and if we can get the bulk of Earth's current/future population off of Earth, then we might very well be able to avoid a couple different plausible extinction events). 2. If we can colonize entirely inhospitable worlds like Mars or the Moon (or my votes, Ceres, Venus, and Enceladus), then "colonizing" Earth is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy even if it does become Venus 2: Greenhouse Boogaloo.
mongol 6y ago
I wonder what a huge Carrington solar storm would do to humanity. If electricity went out everywhere, transformers burned up all over, electronics fried. If this caused transport failures, mass starvation could follow. I really hope a severe solar storm would not be as bad as that and hopefully someone could enlighten me on this.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Killing literally every single human being is not easy. Sure, killing off half of humanity is pretty easy to conceive, but to kill all of humanity it takes a lot more work.
  - xaqfox 6y ago
    Luckily, we have great minds working on this problem: https://www.appliedeschatology.com/ https://www.appliedeschatology.com/
- throwaway0a5e 6y ago
  >I wonder what a huge Carrington solar storm would do to humanity Worst case it sets us back to 1870ish, maybe. Depends on how fast things go to crap vs how fast things can be rebuilt. Likely case you'd basically get a "purge" because society as we know it can't keep on rolling with the kind of economic breakdown something like that would cause so there's be a lot of dying in the interim but if you don't starve or get shot in the first 6mo you're probably good with the very old, very young and unproductive bearing the brunt of it (same as every other disaster) It would be like the black death, but global and all at once. Balance of power globally would definitely be altered in unforeseeable ways but the overall net result is things would bounce back hard.
- yellowapple 6y ago
  > If this caused transport failures, mass starvation could follow. The good news is that a substantial chunk of the world's cargo transportation runs on diesel (or other combustion setups similarly not reliant on electronics), so in a pinch it could probably keep going. Same with agricultural machinery. Might need to replace or refurbish some ECUs, but I'm sure there are enough clever mechanics out there willing and able to bypass those in an emergency that we'd be back up and running pretty quick on that front. ICE 1, electric 0 ;) It's refrigeration that'd have me more concerned, since pretty much all modern refrigeration is electrically powered (last I checked). Diesel generators might come in clutch there, assuming the refrigeration units themselves don't rely on any fancy electronics.
sjy 6y ago
There have been at least five mass extinction events in the last 500 million years. The most recent one wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs, after they had dominated the earth for 100 million years. Tool-using apes with language have been around for less than 5 million. I think it’s far too early to say we’ll survive the next extinction event, or even make it that far before diverging into new species.

yellowapple 6y ago

> When we had that few thousand individuals population bottleneck in the past was when it was dicey. Yeah, but those individuals were presumably all in pretty close proximity to one another. If we were left with a few thousand individuals across the entire range of the human-inhabited Earth, we'd have one heck of a time continuing as a species. In any case, the risk of an extinction event on Earth is exactly why I believe space colonization needs to be Priority Zero for humanity, from two different angles: 1. Living beyond Earth means that we as a species are that much more resilient against a literal-Earth-shattering catastrophe (and if we can get the bulk of Earth's current/future population off of Earth, then we might very well be able to avoid a couple different plausible extinction events). 2. If we can colonize entirely inhospitable worlds like Mars or the Moon (or my votes, Ceres, Venus, and Enceladus), then "colonizing" Earth is easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy even if it does become Venus 2: Greenhouse Boogaloo.

mongol 6y ago

I wonder what a huge Carrington solar storm would do to humanity. If electricity went out everywhere, transformers burned up all over, electronics fried. If this caused transport failures, mass starvation could follow. I really hope a severe solar storm would not be as bad as that and hopefully someone could enlighten me on this.

saagarjha 6y ago
Killing literally every single human being is not easy. Sure, killing off half of humanity is pretty easy to conceive, but to kill all of humanity it takes a lot more work.
- xaqfox 6y ago
  Luckily, we have great minds working on this problem: https://www.appliedeschatology.com/ https://www.appliedeschatology.com/
throwaway0a5e 6y ago
>I wonder what a huge Carrington solar storm would do to humanity Worst case it sets us back to 1870ish, maybe. Depends on how fast things go to crap vs how fast things can be rebuilt. Likely case you'd basically get a "purge" because society as we know it can't keep on rolling with the kind of economic breakdown something like that would cause so there's be a lot of dying in the interim but if you don't starve or get shot in the first 6mo you're probably good with the very old, very young and unproductive bearing the brunt of it (same as every other disaster) It would be like the black death, but global and all at once. Balance of power globally would definitely be altered in unforeseeable ways but the overall net result is things would bounce back hard.
yellowapple 6y ago
> If this caused transport failures, mass starvation could follow. The good news is that a substantial chunk of the world's cargo transportation runs on diesel (or other combustion setups similarly not reliant on electronics), so in a pinch it could probably keep going. Same with agricultural machinery. Might need to replace or refurbish some ECUs, but I'm sure there are enough clever mechanics out there willing and able to bypass those in an emergency that we'd be back up and running pretty quick on that front. ICE 1, electric 0 ;) It's refrigeration that'd have me more concerned, since pretty much all modern refrigeration is electrically powered (last I checked). Diesel generators might come in clutch there, assuming the refrigeration units themselves don't rely on any fancy electronics.

sjy 6y ago

There have been at least five mass extinction events in the last 500 million years. The most recent one wiped out all non-avian dinosaurs, after they had dominated the earth for 100 million years. Tool-using apes with language have been around for less than 5 million. I think it’s far too early to say we’ll survive the next extinction event, or even make it that far before diverging into new species.