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You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live

You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live completely off grid, tribes with no contact, etc.

aqme28 3y ago
That's not meaningfully any better. Besides, now you have an AI empire against the Sentinel Island tribe, and I know who I'd bet on.
- moralestapia 3y ago
  The Sentinel Island tribe ofc. I've watched plenty too many movies about it.
XorNot 3y ago
Also we population bottlenecked in our evolutionary history before: so recovering from that is possible.
Qem 3y ago
If 99.999% of humans die, the remaining 0.001% probably will be killed by unmaintained infrastructure failing. Imagine every nuclear reactor melting down, dams failing one after another and flooding large areas, dangerous chemicals leaking from unmaintained tanks, et cetera. We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things.
- cratermoon 3y ago
  > We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things. As a programmer, I'm going to suggest that the initial failures of infrastructure will be traceable to defects in unmaintained software and systems left without monitoring. Most prominent current example: Twitter
someplaceguy 3y ago
> You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live completely off grid, tribes with no contact, etc. Perhaps that is true for a natural virus, but you have no idea what an actually engineered virus can do (engineered by a superintelligence, no less), so I wouldn't speak so confidently if I were you. Entire animals can fly from one side of the globe to the other. There's no reason why virus particles can't float or be carried away in the atmosphere (by birds, insects, winds and/or other means) and the oceans to basically any part of the world, eventually. Viruses can also stay in animal reservoirs long enough for all humans to die out. Perhaps an engineered virus could even use plants as reservoirs. Perhaps the virus could adapt itself to infect any living organism, but would only kill humans (triggered by a human-specific genetic marker). Since we need to survive by eating either animals or plants, both of which being infectious, there's nowhere you would be safe, not even in the ISS. Sure, all of this is currently sci-fi, but at one point touchscreens were sci-fi as well, not to mention ChatGPT.

aqme28 3y ago

That's not meaningfully any better. Besides, now you have an AI empire against the Sentinel Island tribe, and I know who I'd bet on.

moralestapia 3y ago
The Sentinel Island tribe ofc. I've watched plenty too many movies about it.

XorNot 3y ago

Also we population bottlenecked in our evolutionary history before: so recovering from that is possible.

Qem 3y ago

If 99.999% of humans die, the remaining 0.001% probably will be killed by unmaintained infrastructure failing. Imagine every nuclear reactor melting down, dams failing one after another and flooding large areas, dangerous chemicals leaking from unmaintained tanks, et cetera. We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things.

cratermoon 3y ago
> We avoid a lot of disasters daily because people are actively maintaining things. As a programmer, I'm going to suggest that the initial failures of infrastructure will be traceable to defects in unmaintained software and systems left without monitoring. Most prominent current example: Twitter

someplaceguy 3y ago

> You might get 99.999%+ of humans like that. But there's always going to be some people that are immune to it, that didn't catch it, a few crazy blokes that live completely off grid, tribes with no contact, etc. Perhaps that is true for a natural virus, but you have no idea what an actually engineered virus can do (engineered by a superintelligence, no less), so I wouldn't speak so confidently if I were you. Entire animals can fly from one side of the globe to the other. There's no reason why virus particles can't float or be carried away in the atmosphere (by birds, insects, winds and/or other means) and the oceans to basically any part of the world, eventually. Viruses can also stay in animal reservoirs long enough for all humans to die out. Perhaps an engineered virus could even use plants as reservoirs. Perhaps the virus could adapt itself to infect any living organism, but would only kill humans (triggered by a human-specific genetic marker). Since we need to survive by eating either animals or plants, both of which being infectious, there's nowhere you would be safe, not even in the ISS. Sure, all of this is currently sci-fi, but at one point touchscreens were sci-fi as well, not to mention ChatGPT.