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It would require an extremely extraordinary death rate to kill all humans. It would require that three diseases with a 90% kill rate strike in quick succession

It would require an extremely extraordinary death rate to kill all humans. It would require that three diseases with a 90% kill rate strike in quick succession to drive humanity down to a few million survivors. Not even the current outbreak of ebola is up to that kill rate, nevermind where the other two plagues would come from.

serge2k 12y ago
The more likely scenario is that an extremely contagious and deadly virus would wipe out enough people to start to destabilize our society, then we would wipe out more of ourselves.
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  Okay, substitute crazed survivors for the second of the three plagues, and famine for the third. Assume that both of these kill 90% of the people at the time. That still leaves 7 million humans on the planet, and the ones most likely to be left at the end of that are also those most likely to have already dealt with basic security and food. My point wasn't that it would be a good thing, just that killing ALL humans is a much harder task than it sounds.
TeMPOraL 12y ago
It's enough for a virus to seriously disturb energy infrastructure. The cities will depopulate themselves. Civilization will fall as famine sweeps the nations.
- ObviousScience 12y ago
  So what? My point wasn't that lots of people wouldn't die, it's that it's remarkably hard to kill all humans. Even if 90% of people died to a disease, people fighting killed 90% of the ebola survivors, and famine killed 90% of the fighting survivors, we'd still have 7 million humans left on Earth. Nothing you've outlined even pushes us out of the millions of people alive range - not by a longshot, considering none of those things mentioned above would actually be 90% deadly. My point was entirely that it's not an existential threat to humanity, and the only things that can actually pose such a threat are environmental (eg, the planet enters a new ice age, but even this might not be existential) or astronomical scale (meteors, gamma ray bursts, etc). Ed: Using slightly more reasonable numbers of disease killing 60%, fighting after killing 60% of the disease survivors, and famine killing 60% of the fighting survivors, over one billion people would be left on the planet. A catastrophe bigger than anything we've faced before, for sure, but not an existential threat to the species.

serge2k 12y ago

The more likely scenario is that an extremely contagious and deadly virus would wipe out enough people to start to destabilize our society, then we would wipe out more of ourselves.

ObviousScience 12y ago
Okay, substitute crazed survivors for the second of the three plagues, and famine for the third. Assume that both of these kill 90% of the people at the time. That still leaves 7 million humans on the planet, and the ones most likely to be left at the end of that are also those most likely to have already dealt with basic security and food. My point wasn't that it would be a good thing, just that killing ALL humans is a much harder task than it sounds.

TeMPOraL 12y ago

It's enough for a virus to seriously disturb energy infrastructure. The cities will depopulate themselves. Civilization will fall as famine sweeps the nations.

ObviousScience 12y ago
So what? My point wasn't that lots of people wouldn't die, it's that it's remarkably hard to kill all humans. Even if 90% of people died to a disease, people fighting killed 90% of the ebola survivors, and famine killed 90% of the fighting survivors, we'd still have 7 million humans left on Earth. Nothing you've outlined even pushes us out of the millions of people alive range - not by a longshot, considering none of those things mentioned above would actually be 90% deadly. My point was entirely that it's not an existential threat to humanity, and the only things that can actually pose such a threat are environmental (eg, the planet enters a new ice age, but even this might not be existential) or astronomical scale (meteors, gamma ray bursts, etc). Ed: Using slightly more reasonable numbers of disease killing 60%, fighting after killing 60% of the disease survivors, and famine killing 60% of the fighting survivors, over one billion people would be left on the planet. A catastrophe bigger than anything we've faced before, for sure, but not an existential threat to the species.