How much longer does humanity have?

• justincredible

  

  Ironman92;1339956 wrote:Teh Cubs win the WS.

  Painful. DO NOT WANT.
• gerb131

  

  Hopefully long enough for my kids, kids to put him thru hell too.
• Sonofanump

  tk421;1339952 wrote:as pessimistic as I am, humans will be on this planet a long long time yet still. The Earth, no matter what we think we are doing to it, will survive for another 5 billion years and die in a fiery death inside our expanding sun. Some greenhouse gases and plastic aren't going to damage this planet at all, the cycle of the sun has more impact on temperature on this planet than we do.
  
  Lest anyone forget, this planet has gone through countless cycles of ice ages and warming up periods, all without any kind of heavy industry to effect the climate. The idea that we have more impact than the sun is laughable.

  This guy.
• mcburg93

  

  Hopefully if it does end in my time its quick. I dont want to die slowly.
• gut

  I have many, many years left. But for all you OC losers...a little over 10 days.
• Heretic

  

  justincredible;1339958 wrote:Painful. DO NOT WANT.

  What if it's this situation?
  
  1. Cubs make the World Series.
  2. It's Game 7. In Chicago.
  3. Cubs are down 3-2, two outs in the bottom of the 9th, bases loaded, count is 3-2, best hitter at the plate.
  4. He hits a high fly ball that may go out. As it reaches the outfield....BOOM....world ends. They never know if they'd have won or if it'd just be another year of being fucking worthless losers like every other damn year in their stupid existence.
• gut

  If the world blows up, he could not possibly have caught the ball and therefore the runs score. Kind of like having the ball hitting a bird flying across the field.
• gut

  On a related note, would you rather go out with the bang, or hunkered down in your doomsday shelter waiting for your supplies to run out? Most likely, there's very little to nothing left meaning no hope of recovery....talk about depressing.
• sleeper

  

  gut;1340076 wrote:On a related note, would you rather go out with the bang, or hunkered down in your doomsday shelter waiting for your supplies to run out? Most likely, there's very little to nothing left meaning no hope of recovery....talk about depressing.

  We will evolve and survive. We just won't be humans anymore.
• Devils Advocate

  

  sleeper;1339912 wrote:I've actually seen studies that sperm count in males is on the decline. After a certain point, males will no longer produce enough sperm to maintain the population and thus humanity will slowly cease to exist.

  
  Dammit...... I've fapped away 14 generations
• ts1227

  

  Wednesday
• Mulva

  

  To be completely wiped out? No time soon. 95% of humanity could die out and there would still be 350 million people left on the earth. Extinction would likely be a very slow process.
• sleeper

  

  Mulva;1340085 wrote:To be completely wiped out? No time soon. 95% of humanity could die out and there would still be 350 million people left on the earth. Extinction would likely be a very slow process.

  Tell that to the Dinosaurs. :rolleyes:
• gut

  Mulva;1340085 wrote:To be completely wiped out? No time soon. 95% of humanity could die out and there would still be 350 million people left on the earth. Extinction would likely be a very slow process.

  Basically equal the population of the US. Pretty amazing stat.
  
  But a large % of those survivors would be dead within a year. If 95% of all life was wiped out, it would be very difficult to hunt & gather, or even raise crops.
  
  Is 0.5% a more realistic number for people that could be self-sufficient? Now we are down to 35M...and if 95% of people that were self-sufficient got wiped-out initially with everyone else then we are down to about 1.75M. Still a pretty big number. I'd guess it would take only a small self-sufficient community of several hundred people to repopulate the earth, provided some disease didn't wipe them out.
  
  If the earth/soil couldn't support life for several years it would be very difficult for humans to not go extinct. I'm guessing only a very, very tiny % are capable of growing crops with hyroponics, but even then they may need some tech/mechanical people for power generation and water purification.
• Mulva

  

  sleeper;1340094 wrote:Tell that to the Dinosaurs. :rolleyes:

  Except nobody knows what killed the dinosaurs or how long it took.
• ernest_t_bass

  

  Christ will return before it happens.
• gut

  ernest_t_bass;1340116 wrote:Christ will return before it happens.

  Christ would take one look at today's world and say "shit, the printing press has put the miracle business out-of-work"
• sleeper

  

  Mulva;1340106 wrote:Except nobody knows what killed the dinosaurs or how long it took.

  I have faith, therefore I know.
• SportsAndLady

  

  This will happen, and we'll all be dead and gone
  

  While some high-profile scientists, such as Carl Sagan, have advocated the transmission of messages,[SUP][33][/SUP][SUP][34][/SUP] scientist Stephen Hawkinghas warned against it, suggesting that aliens might simply raid Earth for its resources and then move on

• gut

  SportsAndLady;1340132 wrote:This will happen, and we'll all be dead and gone

  Hawkings might be fairly prescient there. However, I'd submit alien's with the ability to travel to earth are probably already aware of the resources here. At a minimum, we have probes beyond where we can travel to sending us info so it stands to reason aliens would, as well. And if they are resource constrained, they would be very pro-active in identifying new sources.
  
  So the counter argument to Hawkings would be a raid is inevitable, but perhaps we can contact a friendly race to be an ally.
• tk421

  

  The idea that a civilization that could travel to this planet would need our resources is Hollywood. There isn't anything on this planet that they couldn't get anywhere else.
• sleeper

  

  ccrunner609;1340175 wrote:anything that wipes out a large portion of our shitty gene pool would just wipe out all the crap. The dtrong genes would be left and the human race would live on bigger, better.

  Could this statement be any more racist?
• Ironman92

  

  sleeper;1340181 wrote:Could this statement be any more racist?

  
  Coulda said the n word.
• sleeper

  

  Ironman92;1340192 wrote:Coulda said the n word.

  CC could be black. It's not racist if a black person said it; it's their word.
• gut

  tk421;1340147 wrote:The idea that a civilization that could travel to this planet would need our resources is Hollywood. There isn't anything on this planet that they couldn't get anywhere else.

  I wouldn't go that far. I think the Hollywood aspect is that such an advanced culture would view intelligent life as nothing more than animals that pose a mere inconvenience.
  
  We are hardly "advanced" in that regard, but I think we would attempt fair trade first as opposed to going to war for resources of some planet just because we could.
  
  It's not completely out of question that, for one reason or another, an alien force would invade or conquer us. But that's probably a far less likely scenario where they have no other options facing extinction.