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It would Advent! Also, Lyrhawn; the laser missile thing is starting to get some back and get going. or at least, missile protection from space is.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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We could be pretty screwed (and I mean SERIOUSLY screwed) if a really deadly and incurable disease like AIDS or ebola mutated into an airborne strain. Theoretically, such a thing is possible. However, the human race probably wouldn't go extinct. For any given infection there's some small percentage of the population who are immune just because they're lucky enough to have a random mutation in their genes. Those people would survive and repopulate the planet, and the new human race would inherit their immunity to the disease that wiped out the old.
Really, it could happen any time. It could begin tomorrow... But probably not.
Posts: 1569 | Registered: Dec 2004
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AIDS will eventually be cured. Ebola, would eventually be isolated. Notice anything similar about these diseases? Yes, they come from Africa; the hub for bad diseases.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Reticulum: Are there any stars that will go supernova soon? Negatory according to what I've read.
Well, that settles that, then.
quote:How do you create a black hole without destroying the Earth first? That kind of technology won't be around for a very long time.
Excuse me, but thou speakest nonsense. The LHC will create perfectly good black holes, they'll just be so small that they'll disappear in a flash of Hawking radiation. You just need to scale that technology up a bit.
quote:An asteroid would have to be so unimaginably gigantic to destroy the sun, or even make a change, I think we would detect it.
Wrong. It just needs to be going rather fast. A few million tons should do it, if you fling it at something close to c. You'd be able to see the flare on Alpha Centauri; it would wipe out anything on Earth with a central nervous system. So you'd be ok.
quote:Knock the moon out of orbit with a rocket? That would have to be a VERY powerful rocket.
Gosh, do you really think so? I notice you didn't mention the Really Big Bomb.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Neo, that was one of the funniest things I have heard in a very long time.
Ah yes, and King. As for the Black hole, thatis really what I meant. It really will be quite a while before we can create a sizeable black hole. First we could not put it on Earth, as it would destroy it; second, it would take a time to get the instruments to where you would vreate it.
About the Asteroids, you are absolutley right there.
As for the rocket, well, I don't think a rocket that big and powerful COULD be constructed.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Reticulum: It would Advent! Also, Lyrhawn; the laser missile thing is starting to get some back and get going. or at least, missile protection from space is.
To what are you referring?
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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quote:First we could not put it on Earth, as it would destroy it
Yes. And the thread was about how you could destroy the human race. So your point is...?
quote:As for the rocket, well, I don't think a rocket that big and powerful COULD be constructed.
That is because you are not thinking clearly. You just need to accelerate stuff to the Moon's escape velocity, which is not so much as all that - 1.47 miles per second, which indeed is within the range of high-end rifles. Then you just shoot bits of Moon in the right direction. It doesn't have to be done all at once.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
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It's " 'bout that time, eh, chaps?" for a start.
Reticulum, your age is really, really, really showing in this thread. Really. Why don't you just tell everyone?
Posts: 1138 | Registered: Nov 2005
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Hawking once noted that the odds of an asteroid large enough to destroy the human race, actually striking the earth is small, but not miniscule. We can develop destructive technologies that would be able to destroy such inbound asteroids. However the odds that some human would abuse that system, and turn it down upon earth, is much greater than the odds that we would be hit by an asteroid. Hence Not building space defences is actually better for our survival.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:However the odds that some human would abuse that system, and turn it down upon earth, is much greater than the odds that we would be hit by an asteroid.
Brought to you by the Comittee of Pulling Numbers Out Of Our ****/Ear.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Right, but we can deflect asteroids instead of destroying them. I suspect that turning the solar sail method of deflection against another group of humans would be inconvenient. Sure, we could aim an asteroid at earth, but I doubt our control is good enough to hit the countries we don't like and avoid countries we do.
Posts: 3546 | Registered: Jul 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Shigosei: Right, but we can deflect asteroids instead of destroying them. I suspect that turning the solar sail method of deflection against another group of humans would be inconvenient. Sure, we could aim an asteroid at earth, but I doubt our control is good enough to hit the countries we don't like and avoid countries we do.
Assuming we ever could get such a system in place, that is, attaching solar sails to an asteroid, it would have to be done very, very far away from the planet for it to have any actual impact on the asteroid's path.
Also keep in mind that for an asteroid to be small enough to destroy a city or country and NOT be big enough to have globally devastating effects is a tricky equation. Anything bigger than something that could blow up Orange County is going to have lasting effects on the world at large. But anything that small is going to be extremely hard to land solar sails on, and to control, as, being that small it will move much more dramatically than an asteroid seven miles wide would.
But assuming we COULD land solar sails on a tiny asteroid way out in the middle of nowhere and direct it towards a specific city or country, we could defintely tell you where it was going to hit, or at least with a fair degree of accuracy. The problem would be refining some sort of guidance system that would translate commands into movements of the solar sail that would direct the course of the asteroid along a desired path.
Posts: 21898 | Registered: Nov 2004
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The notion that we are at any level approaching the ability to even detect incoming asteroids is actually ludicrous.
The truth is that there are millions of asteroids in the sky, and all move in unpredictable ways. There are countless asteroids passing near the Earth, which we never see or hear about. The common perception of modern astronomy treats the everyday life of the astronomer like it does the photographer for National Geographic, finely dileniated and backlit stereo imaged views of glistening comets and rudy asteroids, with helpfully intuitive computer mapping software that can exactly predict the movements of extraterestrial objects over long spans of time, ala "Deep Impact."
The real world is hardly so exciting, and in fact for all the know large asteroids in the solar system, astronomers predict the existance of millions more, numbers impossible to gauge, with lives impossible to track.
So anyway, all these gaget ideas are nice, but the actual likelihood of even detecting the asteroid is pretty small, despite what you'd like to believe.
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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This thread reminded me: I felt my Very First Earthquake this Friday.
It felt like a subway train going underneath me, but it wasn't because I was home in Suburbia where there are no subways.
I think I like my earthquakes small and rumbly, and they can stay that way, if you don't mind.
And I think the world can be destroyed in a number of ways, but I think that if it happens it's going to be a numerous factors combined, such as war + environment + disease that do us in.
Barring the "asplosion" of the sun and a major asteroid, we're not going to go out in one fell swoop, rather in increments, like slices of salami.
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I haven't read the whole thread, but has there been a differentiation between a disaster which would destroy Earth (thereby wiping out the human race) and a disaster which would simply wipe out the human race and leave Earth inhabitable?
Posts: 2827 | Registered: Jul 2005
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Just leave Humans gone. Asertoids could probably do it, though I bet they couldn't destroy us COMPLETELY.
Posts: 2121 | Registered: Oct 2005
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I definitely agree that a single calamity would have to be inconceivable awful to do the trick. However, that would then imply humans would live inifinitely (unless we can't in 5 billion years figure out a way to get away from the Sun, but I have faith in us. we're wily creatures).
If humans live infinitely, then there is the possibility, which is practically zero, yet still exists, of all forms of catastrophes occuring at once: a deadly disease, a nuclear war, a few asteroids, a major volcano, a drastic climate shift.
Funny how easy it is for me to think morbidly when I have overdue work...
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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1) A population of humans could evolve into a more advanced species that would then systematically eradicate us inferior homo sapiens sapiens.
1a) Or, more happily, we could just evolve, live peacefully, and Humans would quietly fade away.
2) The hole in the ozone layer could widen dramatically, allowing in far more radiation and dramatically increasing mutation rates in viruses. The fall of man, and animal life on this planet, is heralded in by a disease with unprecedented adaptive ability.
3) Vogons, the Empire, Martians, the Machines, take your pick. Oh, or all the clowns finally get together and decide they've been laughed at too long, and the bastards are going down. Some kind of massive murder-suicide pact.
quote:Originally posted by String: The only danger to the human race is global warming. We should start to counter it now by sending the world into nuclear winter to balance things out.
*edited because i forgot how to spell to
Umm, you do know that would kill almost all Earthly life. Right?
Yeah, i thought this was a joke thread I heard on CNN today that the ninja were going to attack the lumberjacks. Bad enough by itself, I got really scared when i found out the pirates were helping the ninja, and the long time allies of the lumberjacks, the vikings, are sitting this one out.
I don't think I need to tell you that if the lumberjacks are taken out of the game, our economy will collapse. Plus, we ww'll have o clean up after ourselves with leaves and pine-cones.
posted
Everyone knows the all human life will end in the year 2147, when Steve, a failed genetic engineer turned exterminator creates a virus that wipes out all cockroaches. The surprising offshoot we find out; cockroach dung had actually been keeping mildew in check for millions of years and without it we can find no way to stop the mildew, which promptly wipes out the entire food supply. Posts: 555 | Registered: Jun 2005
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Well, to their credit, they are the only culture I know of with the long-sightedness/gumption/arrogance to actually pick a date, although they did not choose to enlighten us on the specifics.
That being said, I don't forsee myself hanging out in a bunker in the middle of a deserted corn field come 6 years from now...;-)
Posts: 484 | Registered: Feb 2006
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In all seriousness, a few scenarios have been posited in which the entire galaxy could be destroyed.
Possibly the more famous is the scenario posited by Larry Niven 30 years ago: that we're living in a Seyfert Galaxy, and when the core explodes, that's it for life in the Milky Way.
More recent speculation has centered around the idea of Gamma Ray Burst, which have been blamed for the Ordovician mass extinction.
Either way I wouldn't worry about it too much. You'll never get out of this life alive. Posts: 196 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:More recent speculation has centered around the idea of Gamma Ray Burst, which have been blamed for the Ordovician mass extinction.
As I read that article, the posited cause of extinction was the depletion of the ozone layer due to the GRB. So we would probably be ok - we might have to grow our food in greenhouses, and spend much of our lives indoors or slathered with SPF 500 sunblock, and would probably lose a lot of people to starvation, but the human race would survive.
As for a core explosion, we could always eject the solar system from the milky way, and send it through intergalactic space.
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