4 ms·

I'm pretty sure that year that the global population of homo sapiens dwindled to about 5,000 members was worse than this...

• notimetorelax 6y ago
  Your comment got me curious: https://text.npr.org/163397584 https://text.npr.org/163397584
• vanderZwan 6y ago
  On a similar note: "to be alive" made me think this wasn't limited to Homo Sapiens, so my money was on the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_e...
  • jhgb 6y ago
    Isn't the Permian extinction considered to be generally worse?
    • vanderZwan 6y ago
      Yeah, as a mass extinction event it is. However, I figured that took longer to escalate than one year, so it wouldn't quite work when answering the question of worst year to be alive
      • jhgb 6y ago
        Ah, yes, the timescales may differ. I've always wondered how the estimates of those work for these geological events, as in, how do we estimate the "one-year-damage" curve or something like that. You're most likely right that the K-T may have had a higher peak in this respect.
        • vanderZwan 6y ago
          It's so weird to try to reason about deep time, isn't it? It just goes beyond human intuition due to it's scale. Also, thanks to your comment I double-check out the wiki page for the Permian-Triassic Extinction Event[0], and meteors being the cause hasn't been ruled out yet as a potential cause, in which case it might still win out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extinction_event https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian%E2%80%93Triassic_extin...
• sb057 6y ago
  To be fair, the ones that died weren't alive.