How will the world (or maybe just civilization) end in the next 50 years? (Poll)

ZyyzYzzy_sl said:

I highly doubt a pandemic will wipe out all humans (unless you are including a weaponized biological agents in that).

There is too much genetic diversity for a naturally occurring virus or bacteria to completely wipe out 7ish billion humans. There will be those who are immune.

I voted other because it will hopefully be something we have no idea that is coming and is so fast we can't react.

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Kinkle_sl said:

Getting hit by a species-ending asteroid is a statistical certainty at some point. Not 50 years from now, but likely not as far out as we'd like to think either. That doesn't mean we'll see it coming though. Thus far in Earth's history, we've discovered a single object that ended up entering the atmosphere. Taking that further, objects coming from the direction of the Sun are significantly less likely to be discovered, creating an even greater chance that we won't see our end before it arrives. Meh. Happens happens. Just more reason why we should revamp the space program and stop holding all our eggs in 1 basket.

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--For the largest asteroids, larger than 1,000 meters (3,300 feet), NEOWISE data revises the total population down to 981 from a prior estimate of about 1,000. While this is not a dramatic difference, the findings show that NASA has met an initial near-Earth asteroid goal agreed to with Congress in 1998, calling for at least 90 percent of the largest objects to be found. There are an estimated 911 objects of this size range known, which means that NASA has found 93 percent. That leaves roughly 70 of these bodies left to find.

--The NEOWISE data reveals an approximately 44 percent decline in the estimated numbers of medium-sized asteroids, which are defined as those objects between 100 meters and 1,000 meters (330 and 3,300 feet). Estimates now indicate about 19,500, where as 35,000 were thought to exist before.

--The study does not apply to objects smaller than 100 meters (330 feet), but it is estimated that there are more than a million in this size range based on previous studies.

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Asteroids with a 1 km (0.62 mi) diameter strike Earth every 500,000 years on average.[3] Large collisions - with 5 km (3 mi) objects - happen approximately once every twenty million years.[4] The last known impact of an object of 10 km (6 mi) or more in diameter was at the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event 66 million years ago.[5]

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Eomer_sl said:

The objects large enough to fuck us up that badly and that could hit us on fairly short notice are 90% found already, I thought? Yes for smaller ones the size of the one that hit Russia awhile back it's going to take awhile to get them all cataloged, but the big planet killers are nearly all discovered and soon will be.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/WI.../pia14734.html



So I guess there's still a fair amount of work to do on the medium sized ones, but only the very biggest of those would qualify as "world ending" I would think. Chelyabinsk was somewhere around 20 meters, Tunguska estimates are 60-190 meters.

As far as the rate of collisions go:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_event



I'm not even sure if a 1 km object strike would "END THE WORLD", but regardless it would be pretty calamitous. The odds of that happening are extremely low by all indications. So no, from a human civilization perspective I don't think that an asteroid impact is all that much to be concerned about as opposed to a whole shitload of other doomsday scenarios that are far more likely.

I still think it would be awesome to witness though!

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Pancreas_sl said:

It doesn't need to kill everyone. It just has to be incredible infectious, hard to treat and very lethal. Civilization will have a hell of a time getting it under control. If it can't be brought under control, then yeah civilization goes out the window. People may survive it, but how many and how spread out they are will determine what kind of a world is left over.

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Iannis_sl said:

Well yeah, but the idea is that nature is not going to produce a species annihilator in virus form. If nature were going to do that it would have already. 50,000 years may not be much on a geological timescale, and it's nothing on a cosmic one, but on a biological timescale 50,000 years is still 50,000 years.

Bird Flu might very well kill a lot of people but it's not gonna kill all the people or even enough of them. If nothing else wars show us that a society can lose a significant part of their population and still retain enough integrity to advance the idea of civilization. A plague might set things back 2-20 generations, but it's hard to imagine a naturally occurring one efficient enough to set the civ.ini file to -1.

That sort of efficiency is designed. If that happens naturally through a series of plague you might as well say, "God could no longer suffer our insolence". It amounts to the same thing, really.

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ZyyzYzzy_sl said:

The Justinian Plague, the on in the late middle ages, and the influenza epidemic in 1918 all did serious damage but civilization survived.

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Firewater Burns_sl said:

You forgot the most probable end: Total global financial collapse from endlessly printing money. Leading to hyperinflation as the global reserve currency (US dollar) starts to look like the Zimbabwean Dollar.

Thus leading to the bankruptcy of the welfare state, where as, the poor and by now the total lack of middle class, having nothing left to lose, unleash massive civil unrest. Bringing the modern industrial world to it's knees!

Or

Thus leading the world powers, with rising discontent, and a glut of young, unemployed, draftable, citizens, to initiate hard line stances on foreign policy issues. Leading to a conventional World War on an unprecedented scale.

Or

You know, Aliens, from Mexico, now classified as invaders, using all those great guns we sold them in fast and furious...

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