
How are humans going to become extinct? - draegtun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22002530
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gnosis
A much better and more in-depth article along the same lines:

[http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/ross-andersen-
human-...](http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/ross-andersen-human-
extinction/)

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martinkallstrom
I find it strange that they seem to rule out asteroid impacts as a threat just
because it is unlikely to happen within this century. They are unlikely to
happen in any century but still do happen from time to time on a universe-
scale timeline, and have been responsible for mass-extinction events in the
past.

~~~
guard-of-terra
It's very hard to kill every single human with an asteroid. It should be a
really huge, planet-busting asteroid. A planetoid, really.

Those are rare. And even if you have 1000 humans surviving, it didn't happen.

What helps humans over dinosaurs: humans can live in extreme conditions
(dinosaurs are very picky), and humans can conserve food outside of their
bodies and live on it for a long time.

Humans are small and adaptable, dinosaurs are large and very fragile, as all
big animals are.

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bambax
Everything eventually comes to an end: civilizations, stars, individuals,
species.

Dinosaurs ruled the earth for a longer time than elapsed since they've been
extinct. Almost double, in fact.

Humanity is extremely recent; at the most, homo sapiens sapiens is 200,000
years old -- and history goes back 10,000 years. There is no special reason
why humanity would (or should!) survive indefinitely.

~~~
Carwajalca
Disagree about the "should". Why would we not want to survive indefinitely?
And when it comes to species, humans are clear outliers. I'm not sure how well
one can extrapolate human future from what happened to the dinosaurs.

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robbiep
Perhaps OP is being a bit more philosophical. Not suggesting that it is a
failure of will or a straw poll of our future direction but instead because we
are/arent worthy of continuing...?

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yen223
My take: Humanity will survive for a good long time, but it turns out that the
laws of physics means there's no practical way to leave our solar system. We
die out once the Sun extinguishes.

I'd like to be proven wrong.

~~~
Udo
If we put the financial resources behind it, we (meaning: a very few of us)
could leave the solar system right now. It's just that we lack the technology
to do it right, with minimal risk and a lot of comfort. This is an engineering
problem which we could solve, but choose not to. Putting together a generation
ship to leave the system would probably succeed, but it would also utterly
consume all our resources. The reason for this is that we choose to suck at
space. For all our achievements in other areas, our space program is basically
still in the sixties.

The main thing that is missing which would allow for us to even colonize the
solar system, and potentially other star systems, is a good way to get lots of
energy, such as nuclear fusion. There is nothing physically preventing us from
developing a fusion reactor, we just haven't done it yet. Leaving the solar
system will get even easier once we master the process of changing the
substrate our minds run on from biological matter to something more
appropriate, but again, this is not strictly required.

FTL travel is not really needed for us to colonize the galaxy either. It would
be nice to have, but at this point it's just beyond our means to think about
it. The other stuff isn't, though.

~~~
yen223
Energy is possibly the biggest barrier towards future space colonization. It
is entirely possible that we discover some new source of energy that allows us
to:

1\. Send a sustainable human population out of the solar system;

2\. Travel to an inhabitable planet which may be millions of light-years away;

3\. Geo-engineer that planet to the extent that it can self-sustain a moderate
human population.

None of these steps is trivial. The pessimistic side of me thinks that we may
actually never overcome any of these challenges.

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PavlovsCat
shoe shops.

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LatvjuAvs
One man lives to reach the end. One man lives to experience the change.

Everyone is so concerned with survival and living in bubble, but yet accepting
seasons, sun rising and leaves falling. Yet they fail to realize that the
biggest fear for them is change, nothing else.

I must fight something I do not accept and I am fine with something i am
familiar with.

Not too sure if this thinking will change soon. Or changing this thinking
would mean end to humanity.

