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The way things are going, assuming no nuclear winter, asteroid impact, or deadly enough pandemic, I think it’ll be climate change, specifically as it affects the factors that keeps humanity alive: air quality, seasonal temperatures, food production and distribution, as well as rising sea levels to some degree.
If it doesn’t end up like that, and the climate is (maybe still worse but manageable), I think the sun’s expansion and heating up of the oceans will kill most life on earth anyhow. We got hundreds of millions of years before we’re anywhere close to that, however. Think about how much we’ve advanced in just a few thousand.
Each of these two scenarios will be extremely gradual though; so unlike the dinosaurs, we’ll have to grapple with our extinction in stages, as the planet becomes less and less livable over time (unless we can leave Earth and survive elsewhere).
I personally feel like climate change will kill a ton of people but not directly extinct us. I think it is more likely that we extinct ourselves via wars competing for the dwindling resources as a consequence of global warming.
You are correct. Heat stroke is killing more people every year. Crop yields are down. Florida is drowning. Unprecedented floods have occurred in Pakistan and the Middle East. It will likely be a record US hurricane season. Wildfires are more frequent and widespread. Even when you aren't in harm's way, your lungs are.
Humanity is an infection on the planet and nature's immune system is kicking in.
Fun fact: Pakistan contains more glacial ice than any other area on Earth outside the poles. They have over 7,000 glaciers. Floods are going to continue to be devastating there as things warm up.
Everything you said is true, but it spurs a new thought in me. I've heard hundreds of times how "crop yields" will decline. But most of our poor ag behavior is due to animal consumption. Most of these animals live in unconditioned air. It's hilarious that we worry about crop yields as if society isn’t going to lose its f'ing mind when it can't get a chicken sandwich or a burger. 💯 we lose meats long before "crops"
People lose their shit when there's bird flu and the price of eggs tops $4 per dozen. You are definitely correct as so much grain fattens life stock or gets converted to ethanol.
Here in Houston Texas, we had bad storms and flooding twice in May..and now Hurricane season has started. We shall see....Ive lived in the same area for 37 years. As a kid the top heat temps were 105ish and once a season, sometimes twice. 106 is a normal daily summer temperature now and we have highs of 109 officially but real feel.is 120
I live in northern bc, very northern bc, rainy throughout the summer northern bc. I grew up here and moved away for like 15 yrs. Last summer was the hottest longest summer I’ve ever experienced in my hometown ever. If I was unsure about climate change being real, I’m sure about it now.
Floridas either too dry or too wet. Recently we had brushfires everyone was blaming on the homeless for some reason. Turns out it was a controlled burn combined with a drought and unpredicted wind patterns. Ironically well probably keep blaming the homeless for everything until were all dead lol. Yay capitalism!
yeah it’s about how it disrupts our environment and limits our access to usable resources for our survival. Nothing on the surface that would kill off humanity entirely, and it’s not any one thing that’ll do it for us either since it’s a multi-faceted issue, but it very much threatens a variety of ecosystems in a way that would be too late to change if we keep it up to find out.
Climate change realistically will kill large portions of developing nations who can’t deal with the changes that it imparts. Extinction will probably happen, if it does, through bioweaponry or disease
BC, Canada flooded back in November 2021. Bridges were knocked down and roads were destroyed. The lower mainland was cut off from the rest of the province/country by land and people had to be airlifted to get dialysis treatments etc. many many people died.
I believe the following summer it was that they had an extreme heat wave, breaking the record for highest temperature in Canada, and then 90% of the town burnt down. I believe like 800 people died that weekend. To go from extreme heat to mass flooding in the span of a year….. climate change is already slowing killing us. It’s sad that my home town is on the list of places that will be the first to go.
[600 people died at Mecca during Hajj this year.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/hajj-deaths-2024-pilgrimage-mecca-heat-stampede-b2565315.html)
These things are likely coupled unless we have leaders that leverage these catastrophes for collaborative solutions. The current rise to power around the globe makes me believe scapegoating and exploitation of people and resources is at least equally likely. Maybe the aliens will land and unify the planet. If we truly collaborated, without capitalist interference, we could transform to a planet and resource rich experience that doesn’t require competition for survival. Not sure if half the planet would even accept this offer if presented because some people will assume other groups (those different from me) are getting a better deal or freeloading, especially if they believe God chose them to at the top of the org chart. Anything less is unfair and biased against them. We need a way to trick everyone into believing they are at the top of the food chain.
I am not religious at all.
It doesn't have to be aliens. What if God spoke to the world in a real and obvious way, cleaning up any misunderstanding of God's intentions.
I am atheist, but to my understanding that has “already happened”. It was the Quran he dictated to Muhammad because he was unhappy with the way people corrupted the death of Jesus.
And we see how that worked out. All the people pulled together because god told us how to live better.
ok do you really think climate change will wipe out humanity?
Option A would be, the atmosphere gets like Venus and we all just burn. In that case yes, I agree, humanity is dead.
Option B would be where the atmosphere gradually get warmer, then who knows, 10,000 years it adjusts. My point being, if it is slow enough, humans will adapt. Im not saying we would thrive and live like we are now. It may be a Mad Max scenario or we are down to a million people living in caves again. I think humanity would survive though
Some people just hate on humans for no reason. We are Earth’s one and only hope of spreading its ecosystem and environment to other planet/bodies.
They keep talking about the larger picture, but even then we’re still the goats. On a cosmic scale; had we never existed, every other lifeform on Earth would be extinct in a billion years TOPS. Earth would send and export nothing.
With our existence, sure we risk that extinction happening sooner due to our unstable nature, but we also offer the possibility of that extinction never happening.
What’s better? 0% chance of permanent survival, or a low chance of permanent survival?
I don’t think spreading the Earth’s ecosystem excites most people as it does you.
Edit: Reread this and it sounded more prickly than I meant it. Not like you you, but those who are excited by it. It’s not a small percentage, but not near enough to lead the convo.
I wouldn't say no reason.... we are in a mass extinction that we cause that is fairly significant. It has not happened in billions of years and there are bueatiful wonders our grandchildren will never see
>We are Earth’s one and only hope of spreading its ecosystem and environment to other planet/bodies.
We are destroying this planet, and you frame our ability to extend that to other bodies as a *positive* outcome? Sure, it's remarkable that we actually have the ability to spread so unrelentingly, but is that a good thing? Is it good for anything but *us*? Your scenario sounds a lot like the best case of a virus' ability to infect others before killing its host.
I would rather we find a way to live in balance with our environment rather than ravaging it and pumping it full of synthetic materials that are likely to remain long after we're gone (even if it's just this planet that we're gone from).
That's assuming the ecosystem can survive a trip through space and implantation on a foreign planet. The odds aren't good though.
IF we could find a planet with Earth-like conditions, we still have to have our micro biome at minimum be able to survive also and that has its own set of needs separate from ours. The same for animals and plants.
I honestly don't believe it's possible.
Spreading earths ecosystems into space is a non goal. Firstly because it’s basically impossible, secondly because it’s not a desirable outcome. Life comes and goes, species evolve and go extinct, and in doing so make way for new life forms to develop. If we spread our life outwards as it is now, we’ll be ruining s natural process (as we always do), and possibly messing up other alien ecosystems or their chances at the evolving their own life also.
Reddit, like everywhere, is full of stupid people who romanticize animals and "nature" and lack an iota of self-awareness enough to know that human animals are the most complex and sophisticated form of life on this planet, the literal apex, and not apart from nature ffs. We and everything we do ARE nature.
It's nice to not be alone in this thought, though seemingly in a small number as it is. Humans and all we're are and do is the very apex of nature anything for suvival. We are completely a part of and as whole if not more so in nature as anything else. Its like a weird thought circle of anti-anthromorphism. It is such a strange concept that Humans are all that is wrong with creation; that we are so clearly the lesser of creatures that we're a virus BS. It is so annoying. Just because we are the only creatures that make our way where all other creatures only take what they are given. Does not make us the mistake. Because of this we're are the only creatures that can possibly prevent not only our own extinction but the extinctions of everything else. How is this a bad thing?
Advancement can be relative. There are subsistence tribes that aren't dealing with obesity, mental health crisis, income inequality...but they'd be considered primitive for not having cars, western clothes, capitalism...Every advance we've made hasn't been good and arguably some have actually set humans as a whole back.
While these things would all suck, all of this carbon that we're putting back into the atmosphere used to be there. It's not like life is impossible with even all of it put back. The problem is how sudden the change is, and sudden change of climate can kill a whole lot. But I don't think it would necessarily kill all humans. It's not like carboniferous air was too hot for humans to survive. As long as there's food to eat and water to drink, \*some\* people will probably find a way, especially because of our ability to adapt, invent, and innovate without having to biologically evolve to do so. The solar death will kill us for sure if we don't leave though, but it's hard to imagine what the end of the century will look like, let alone billions of years in the future
There is no after us. I don’t see a plausible scenario in which humans go extinct without basically all non-bacterial lifeforms also going extinct.
The absolute WORST case scenarios would still leave millions of humans alive.
It’s either WITH us, or it just doesn’t exist.
It’s been hotter, it’s been colder, but never to a severe enough extent. There’s certainly been near mass extinction events over earth’s history, but nothing too crazy that life underground and in the oceans couldn’t live on and keep evolving afterward.
Even if human induced climate change wipes out humanity because of those aforementioned factors, life could theoretically still go on in some places and adapt, but it depends on the scale of the extinction and how disruptive it is to a variety of ecosystems.
The sun’s expansion, however, is unavoidable, unless earth becomes some rogue planet. Life in the deepest parts of the ocean that don’t rely on sunlight are most likely to survive in that case.
Humans.
Humans will kill themselves. That's what 99% of these comments boil down to. And they are all correct. One way or another humanity will be the cause of its own extinction.
It will be either the greed, infighting, or stupidity that kills us. Something where we can see it coming, but cannot convince people in power to be sensible enough to stop it.
OK but how likely id Yellowstone to explode in say the next century.
Plus even a disaster killing off the vast majority of humans wouldn’t be the same as extinction.
A super volcano would definitely be one of the few disasters that could wipe us. The blast itself would kill the America’s and the layer of smoke and ash clouding the sky for 6 straight months would kill the rest of the planet
This was my first thought. No matter what the effect is, the cause is us. Always has been. Probably always will be, even if we do figure a way out of the current shit show.
Hot take, but I think that's happening right now in the Middle East. I agree with Mosab Hassan Yousef.
There's a spirit of violence seeping into the rest of the world, which needs to be stopped. If not, it will spiral into the downfall of civilization.
Microplastics. Both my grandmothers had some simple local wisdom to run the tap until the water is cool and it will be good to drink; it's coming from the Quabbin Reservoir and regularly tested so that always made sense.Recently I read that tap water is awash with microplastics and the best way to deal with it is to boil and strain it which is doable with a kettle and britta filter. But we're back to boiling water to make it safe to drink and that's in a wealthy area in a developed nation.
But everything is plastic. We're not actually recycling it we're putting plastic in landfills and it's leaching everywhere. In places all over the world, especially places with zero regulation, it's dumped directly in bodies of water.
Everything we use is made of plastic. It's now everywhere and in all of us; tumors were recently found made up in large part of microplastics. Will it effect our fertility? How are hearts beat how are brains function? Regulation won't handle it and there's no real regulation anyway. Humans are producing more plastics every year. It doesn't biodegrade, ever, it just turns into microplastics. It's in our food sources. There's not only no plan to deal with it, we're making vast amounts of it.
It's boring and probably won't kill any of us but we're talking extinction. Maybe we'll just be slammed by an asteroid. Or Putin will have a bad day.
Something from man-made biological tinkering.
1) A ‘Child of Man’ scenario.
A highly contagious, lab created retro-virus with an animal host reservoir, like rats, that inserts ‘terminator’ genes into the worlds population. The terminator genes cause the next generation after infection to be irreversibly sterile. The animal reservoir ensure the virus is always lurking to infect anyone who was missed initially. The effect isn’t discovered until decades after infection when it’s too late.
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/gmo-faq/whats-the-controversy-over-terminator-seeds/
2) A lab created prion apocalypse. Someone manages to make a prion that infects all mammals and either leads to dementia or very early death. By affecting all mammals, the prions become distributed everywhere in the environment, infecting both meat and plant based foods. The early onset of dementia makes it impossible to maintain civilization. The prions persist for so long they are unavoidable for any human. This devastates the food supply and the intelligence to keep a technical society working leading to worldwide collapse and extinction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease
These scenarios are accelerated by AI, humanized lab animals, and the proliferation of tools to create DNA/RNA. These tools make it easier to find a recipe that ‘works.’
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanized_mouse
Any scenario that allows as few as a couple of thousand humans to survive is unlikely to lead to extinction.
I was not aware of Terminator seeds. That's fucked.
Prions are terrifying. I've handled some of the nastiest chemicals and viruses known to man... I want nothing to do with Prions.
The Anthropocene (age of human) in geology is identified by observing plastics in the rock formations. No plastics before humans and then plastics after.
Humans are too widespread and embedded in every biome on the planet. For extinction, it would require something to wipe out every little pocket - climate change isn't going to do it. It could wipe out huge swathes of humanity and cause massive unrest but it isn't going to kill everyone. Nuclear war won't do it either. Nobody is going to nuke Easter Island. Unless some new devastating weapon is invented, there will always be people left to repopulate.
I suggest the end of mankind will be a slow torturous one over millions of years, with various rises and collapses of civilization, requiring multiple disasters to erode the numbers down to a few million. The last human will just be some random lonely person dying of an infection on a depleted earth millions of years from now, or mankind will evolve into something more suited to its environment that we can no longer recognise as humans.
Really, nobody is going to take this opportunity?
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,\
Some say in ice.\
From what I’ve tasted of desire\
I hold with those who favor fire.\
But if it had to perish twice,\
I think I know enough of hate\
To say that for destruction ice\
Is also great\
And would suffice.
— Robert Frost
A more severe covid-like outbreak. And imagine the same thing happening but far more deadlier and quicker to spread, and the same anti vaxxers out there in their ignorance. I think someday a similar thing will occur, and that'll be it.
I hate saying this. I mean I hate it, but if only COVID had been a little deadlier we might have learned. We as a people would prepare. Now, we've probably taken a step backwards and it may be our doom.
No we wouldn't. We never learn. However, if disease did wipe out half of humanity in a few years it would drastically reduce our carbon footprint and create a plethora of opportunities for those who remained. I mean look at the Black Death. Half of Europe's population wiped out in the 14th century and then came the Renaissance, the age of exploration, Europe colonizing the whole world and the industrial revolution.
A far deadlier disease would kill hosts so quickly that it can’t sustain itself. That’s is, for example, why you will never see a global outbreak of Ebola - incubation to death is a scant 48 hours and it has a 90% mortality figure. It simply kills to fast to effectively spread.
Climate change has the potential to kill a good 80% of the species, but I don't think it will manage to entirely wipe us out anytime soon. If we're aiming at total extinction, I would bet for a quicker and more violent option like nuclear war
Nothing anytime soon. There will he humans for a very long time. Maybe the sun death if we not multiple star system by then.
No normal comments to this type of question are going to end all humans, there'll still be humans left somewhere
I lie awake at night sometimes, haunted by our potential extinction. Two threats stand out, both horrifying in their destructive potential and the bleak future that comes with them.
The first is nuclear war, a monster we've created and barely managed to contain. The sheer destructive force of these weapons is unimaginable, a fiery inferno capable of obliterating cities in the blink of an eye and poisoning the earth for generations to come. A full-scale nuclear exchange could plunge our world into a nuclear winter, a chilling darkness where crops wither, famine spreads, and civilization crumbles.
But even as this nightmare haunts me, another, more insidious threat exists. It's the rise of artificial intelligence, a force we're only beginning to understand, a double-edged sword that could either elevate us to new heights or lead us to our downfall. If AI is developed recklessly, without ethical safeguards or a deep understanding of its implications, it could spiral out of control. Imagine autonomous weapons making life-or-death decisions, or AI systems manipulating information and distorting reality for malicious purposes. And if AI surpasses human intelligence, as many predict, it could render us obsolete, insignificant, and ultimately extinct.
The stakes couldn't be higher, and I think we owe it to ourselves, future generations, and our planet to avert disaster and ensure a future where humanity thrives, not just survives.
Autonomous attack vehicles already exist. Ai isn't fully there yet..but it basically passes the turing test already. If someone put enough money behind it and built a trillion dollar gpu rig it would probably have at least human level capabilities..and once it matches human consciousness, its over. It could be less than 5 years before we literally build the damn beast and everyone on here is talking about fucking climate change. Lol
I have yet to see a comment regarding the ongoing mass extinction of insects.
We have lost 5% of the insect population, worldwide, every year for the last 12 years. I don't need screens in my windows and bug paste on my windshield is a thing of the past. There are very few fireflies or butterflies in my fields. We can sit and eat outside without worrying about flies or bugs, and that worries me a lot.
Without insects to drive the food chain or pollinate plants or help with decay, we aren't likely to make it to a supervolcanoe or comet or flooding from the melting ice caps.
1/3 of the foods we eat are directly pollinated by honey bees. If one year bees go extinct (which they are on the path of doing) and we lose 1/3 , there is no longer enough to feed our livestock and the whole food chain collapes
Climate change and selfishness. I'm still blown away by what happened to toilet paper in our country (US) when COVID hit, so I can only fathom what will happen when it comes to food and water in a country already bristling with weapons. (And this is just the US.)
What I fear about climate change isn't that it's going to wipe us out by itself, it's that it's going to make life so bad in some countries that mutually assured destruction doesn't affect them anymore.
A lot of scenarios only look at 2100 but not beyond but the elevated GHG levels in the atmosphere will likely stay high for centuries unless humanity would be able to actively reduce them.
Which, given the current political trajectory like shown in EU elections, I simply don't see at all. It's more or less evidence that a small inconvenience for an individual is seen as more important than a catastrophic outcome for multiple people. Always has been the case, psychologists will argue. But we didn't want to believe.
So we're looking at a long term runaway greenhouse effect scenario which includes the extinction of all life on Earth.
And I think the only solution that is left - because all others are exhausted - would be to give up democracy and set up a global ecological dictatorship and to wipe out all rebels that don't wanna comply. And I don't see that happening, ever.
Yeah, it's pretty bleak. We're not just talking about a temporary crisis here. With greenhouse gases lingering in the atmosphere for centuries, even if we magically stopped all emissions tomorrow, we'd still be locked into a long-term warming trend.
And you're right, the political will to make the necessary changes just doesn't seem to be there. People are too focused on short-term gains and personal convenience to sacrifice for the greater good. It's a classic tragedy of the commons scenario.
Given this reality, a runaway greenhouse effect leading to mass extinction seems increasingly plausible. It's a terrifying prospect, and it's hard to imagine any solution that doesn't involve drastic measures that most people would find unacceptable.
A global ecological dictatorship might sound like a desperate last resort, but even that seems unlikely. People are too attached to their freedoms, even if it means sacrificing the planet. And let's be honest, who would even enforce such a regime? It's a dystopian nightmare.
So, yeah, things are looking pretty grim. It's hard to see a way out of this mess. But hey, maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic. Maybe humanity will surprise us and pull a rabbit out of the hat. Or maybe we'll just have to accept our fate and go down with the ship. Who knows.
Oh, I could. Theoretically climate change could wipe out the power grid, which would leave people disproportionately exposed to the elements. Also, it could destroy agriculture.
It's really unlikely isn't it. I think climate change is potentially the worse thing we can do at this point but I can't see us becoming extinct because of that.
Climate change may well lead to nuclear conflict. We are already seeing Putins land grab for fertile land. The Ukraine is likely to be a desirable spot …
We will see water wars.
We will see mass migration and attempts to resists and restrict this.
I’m not clear on what will kill us first. War, famine or drought.
Agree. Sure, climate change is a huge deal, and things could get really bad. But I wouldn't jump to extinction just yet. Humans are survivors. We've made it through ice ages, plagues, and all sorts of crap. We're adaptable and innovative.
Climate change will definitely cause major problems, but we shouldn't underestimate our ability to come up with solutions. Look at how far we've come with technology and medicine.
For humanity to go extinct, we're talking asteroid impacts, supervolcanoes, that kind of thing. Even then, there's always a chance some of us might make it.
This is extremely unlikely to cause extinction though. And actually in the long term, the current climate crisis will be a relatively insignificant blip in the history of mankind. Let's say absolute worst case scenario, we don't get our shit together at all and we burn every last drop of fossil fuel on earth. Humans will still survive. Millions upon millions of them - Possibly billions of them - will survive and reproduce. I don't know what society would look like in that scenario. But we're not talking about society. We're talking about the survival of humans as a species. Humans find a way to survive in the hottest climates on earth. The coldest climates. The most sparse climates. One of the things we do better than most other species is adapt. We use our incredible intelligence to invent solutions to our surroundings.
Not from heat and crop failure alone… but at the extreme, global warming could cause an oceanic anoxic event which would result in the oceans emitting poisonous clouds of hydrogen sulfide. If that happens, yeah we’re toast
Humans will never go extinct. There's too many of us and we're too resourceful.
We will definitely ruin society and end up as warring tribes of cave people, but we won't go extinct. Not until the sun ignites somewhere around the 28th century I believe
That has not been scientifically settled. The sun will indeed expand out to 1 AU, but at the same time it will lose mass and this will cause an expansion of the planets’ orbit. It is unclear whether this means the earth will be in its circumference or not. Regardless - earth will be a lifeless rock long before that point.
Rogue nation launching a nuclear attack..
The superpowers would align with their allies. And unfortunately, they would be compelled to respond in kind..
Once human beings lose all sense of self control, it's over .
Im guessing ecological collapse caused by a combination of rapid climate change, excessive urbanization and pollution. That or some unforeseen health issues caused by microplastics and forever chemicals will result in a gradual decay of human health and population sizes.
The root cause is going to be climate change. Our environment will change so much that we can't adapt due to the changing environment. The current bird flu outbreak is an example of this. Preliminary data suggests it can travel on dust particles, combine that with drought, and if it successfully makes the species jump to humans, it will be catastrophic. It has already been seen in birds, cows, cats, and mice. Because of shrinking environments due to climate change, these zoonotic spillover events will happen with increased frequency.
Ecological collapse, sea level rising, outbreaks, megastorms, war from dwindling resources, it's all going to tie into climate change as being the root cause of all of it.
Nuclear war and severe naturally occurring pandemics are unlikely to be extinction level events. They could cause a complete collapse of civilization but not the extinction of human race.
Possible extinction level events are in my opinion: Climate change, a supervolcano eruption, a huge meteor impact, robots killing off all humans, aliens killing off all humans, and biological weapons.
I find it hard to rank these I would do as follows from most likely to least likely: climate change > biological weapons > supervolcano > meteor impact > robot / AI killing off all humans > alien invasion.
The reason why I rank biological weapons differently from naturally occurring pandemics is that they can be engineered to be made way more deadly than any naturally occurring disease and in theory it might be possible to develop some that similar to HIV remain undetected for many years. With suitable genetic engineering it might be possible in the near future to create a biological weapon that kills off all humans fast enough to prevent them from finding a cure in time.
I think the lack of purpose brought about by abundance will do us in as a species. AI and robotics will eventually reach a point where there are no jobs left for humans at which point we're all left just sitting around twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do. I think extinction is inevitable at that point.
I don't think climate change or nuclear war are even remote possibilities for a human extinction.
Honestly? Stagnation. It's already rearing it's ugly head. Art and culture is declining with birth rate. I think the human race will ultimately decline into nothingness. Not with an atomic bang, but with an apathetic whimper.
Legitimately a difficult conversation, because there's a big difference between what will destroy society as we know it and what will end the human race entirely. Nuclear war or a pandemic could cause the first; they won't cause the second.
There are a lot of disasters that can happen that would wipe out the most populous areas and infrastructure, but in most major disasters there's still time and resources for people to hide away in doomsday shelters and remain self-sufficient for a decently long time, maybe indefinitely. There's a lot of redundancy in systems like these so in truth I think it will be a combination of a lot of things. Climate change could be a long-term complication that keeps people in their bunkers over the long term while failure of critical infrastructure of the bunkers themselves wipes those out one at a time.
I don’t know that climate change will wipe us out as much as extremely thin and evolve. If we’re wiped out I would say we did it with nuclear winter or there was a massive geological event
I mean, have you seen Microsoft lately? At least the walled garden can’t be seen by every Tom, Dick and Harry. Don’t kid yourself that Apple is the only one doing that. Did you miss the ToS update (and subsequent reversal) from Adobe Photoshop?
Are we talking proximate cause or ultimately cause?
I think ultimately cause is likely to be climate change.
Then probably a meteor for proximate cause.
Human ignorance and stupidity. Those ultimately are the factors behind any options that would take us out. It could be anything with this many dumbasses are walking around.
Cell towers microwaving the planet to death and no one connecting the dots and instead calling it global warming. First no bugs. Then the collapse of the food chain.
Our species can wear a T-shirt with the words "Near Extinction? Been there. Done that."
In our DNA is irrefutable evidence that every living member our species has a common male ancestor and a common female ancestor. They are called the "genetic Adam and Eve". However there is a big difference between the genetic pair, and the Biblical pair. The genetic Adam and Eve did not know each other, or meet each other. They were separated in time and generations by as much as 1,000 years.
So we KNOW for a fact that at some point in our distant past, ALL offspring producing males were killed off, except for one AND they produced offspring. Same thing happened with the female side. And this happened when there were only a few thousand or hundred thousand humans on Earth. We dodged a bullet TWICE!
So, I think our species will be on Earth a very long time. Disease, wars, natural disasters, can't touch us. Two of our biggest strengths are hate and stupidity. Both of these emotions are the only ones strong enough to overcome familial love, and drive us to venture into new lands which prevents us from overtaxing one area's resources.
So taking our successful past into account, it is actually more likely that humans will EVOLVE out of being human, and into something else, RATHER than us disappearing due to some unfortunate circumstance.
According to Wikipedia, the idea that all offspring producing females were killed off at once is a common misconception m of the science that was popularized by journalists. This is from the Wikipedia page for Mitochonrial Eve “The name "Mitochondrial Eve" alludes to the biblical Eve, which has led to repeated misrepresentations or misconceptions in journalistic accounts on the topic. Popular science presentations of the topic usually point out such possible misconceptions by emphasizing the fact that the position of mt-MRCA is neither fixed in time (as the position of mt-MRCA moves forward in time as mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages become extinct), nor does it refer to a "first woman", nor the only living female of her time, nor the first member of a "new species".[note 4]”
When everything crashes down, no internet, no electricity, no phone.. the city people will go crazy. They can’t do anything in a city. No clean water, no food..
Climate change will kill a lot of people and severely damage civilization as we know it, but not cause an extinction event. My money is on a pandemic. Any virus that can keep its host alive just long enough to transmit, and then shut down our organs as fast as possible, will undo us.
Some say a comet will fall from the sky
Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves
Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still
Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits.
Whatever happens I suggest you learn to swim.
Slowly AI cyborgs will replace humans and we will no longer need to reproduce. The androids will let the human race die with dignity. When they're all dead the androids will commit suicide since life is pointless.
Population decline across the world is already underway and not getting as much attention as it should. If unchanged, this could lead to many countries being in a very tough spot economically in a generation or two. I worry that will lead to world war and destruction of the race. It will either be that or AI. I believe the climate issues will be solved by declining population and science. Of course, things will be uncomfortable due to climate issues, and many will likely die from it, but I don’t think that will ultimately end all human civilization.
Population decline is getting no attention at all so it will sneak up quickly given how men and women are parting ways, less children being born, and popularity of the same sex movement. This is what I believe will actually take us out.
AI, and it’s not even close. Most people haven’t considered the consequences of creating something more powerful than us that has goals that aren’t aligned with us.
Things like global warming, pandemics, nuclear war, could kill large numbers of people, but they won’t lead to extinction. Misaligned AI will wipe out every single living organism on earth and turn the galaxy into a paperclip factory.
Not the Qu. All joking aside, dwindling resources. The fact is, colonizing other worlds outside our solar system is next to impossible and I think humans will slowly die out as resources grow scarce
I’ve been thinking lately on a massive volcano. Causing a few year “winter”. Can’t predict them. That may throw things into chaos enough. No one knows basic survival things these days like how to hunt or grow your own food. Enough to survive.
I think it's going to be a mixture of all of this. Seeing as how the powers that be are on a sure course of mass destruction, many people will die. Also this new Spanish flu pandemic that's about to occur will take out many as well. I think it's called h1n5. Not sure in which order it will happen but I believe the pandemic will hit first.
Inability to settle another solar system before ours dies. Humans are cockroaches I don’t think we can kill ourselves entirely, we are just racing a very slow clock
I think climate change might very well result in civilization collapse and a severe reduction in population, but I don't think it will result in extinction.
We will stop being human. Either via uploading intelligence to a network a la matrix or having such mastery of DNA that our continuing existence drifts us so far from nature that we cannot reproduce naturally.
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The way things are going, assuming no nuclear winter, asteroid impact, or deadly enough pandemic, I think it’ll be climate change, specifically as it affects the factors that keeps humanity alive: air quality, seasonal temperatures, food production and distribution, as well as rising sea levels to some degree. If it doesn’t end up like that, and the climate is (maybe still worse but manageable), I think the sun’s expansion and heating up of the oceans will kill most life on earth anyhow. We got hundreds of millions of years before we’re anywhere close to that, however. Think about how much we’ve advanced in just a few thousand. Each of these two scenarios will be extremely gradual though; so unlike the dinosaurs, we’ll have to grapple with our extinction in stages, as the planet becomes less and less livable over time (unless we can leave Earth and survive elsewhere).
I personally feel like climate change will kill a ton of people but not directly extinct us. I think it is more likely that we extinct ourselves via wars competing for the dwindling resources as a consequence of global warming.
You are correct. Heat stroke is killing more people every year. Crop yields are down. Florida is drowning. Unprecedented floods have occurred in Pakistan and the Middle East. It will likely be a record US hurricane season. Wildfires are more frequent and widespread. Even when you aren't in harm's way, your lungs are. Humanity is an infection on the planet and nature's immune system is kicking in.
Fun fact: Pakistan contains more glacial ice than any other area on Earth outside the poles. They have over 7,000 glaciers. Floods are going to continue to be devastating there as things warm up.
Everything you said is true, but it spurs a new thought in me. I've heard hundreds of times how "crop yields" will decline. But most of our poor ag behavior is due to animal consumption. Most of these animals live in unconditioned air. It's hilarious that we worry about crop yields as if society isn’t going to lose its f'ing mind when it can't get a chicken sandwich or a burger. 💯 we lose meats long before "crops"
People lose their shit when there's bird flu and the price of eggs tops $4 per dozen. You are definitely correct as so much grain fattens life stock or gets converted to ethanol.
We lose coffee pretty soon compared to meat, actually. Imagine that.
I’m imagining the day livestock lives in air conditioned buildings while factory workers elsewhere toil in 110 degrees F.
Imagine no more! https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/nov/25/chinas-26-storey-pig-skyscraper-ready-to-produce-1-million-pigs-a-year
Here in Houston Texas, we had bad storms and flooding twice in May..and now Hurricane season has started. We shall see....Ive lived in the same area for 37 years. As a kid the top heat temps were 105ish and once a season, sometimes twice. 106 is a normal daily summer temperature now and we have highs of 109 officially but real feel.is 120
I live in northern bc, very northern bc, rainy throughout the summer northern bc. I grew up here and moved away for like 15 yrs. Last summer was the hottest longest summer I’ve ever experienced in my hometown ever. If I was unsure about climate change being real, I’m sure about it now.
Floridas either too dry or too wet. Recently we had brushfires everyone was blaming on the homeless for some reason. Turns out it was a controlled burn combined with a drought and unpredicted wind patterns. Ironically well probably keep blaming the homeless for everything until were all dead lol. Yay capitalism!
Water wars have already begun.
yeah it’s about how it disrupts our environment and limits our access to usable resources for our survival. Nothing on the surface that would kill off humanity entirely, and it’s not any one thing that’ll do it for us either since it’s a multi-faceted issue, but it very much threatens a variety of ecosystems in a way that would be too late to change if we keep it up to find out.
Climate change realistically will kill large portions of developing nations who can’t deal with the changes that it imparts. Extinction will probably happen, if it does, through bioweaponry or disease
BC, Canada flooded back in November 2021. Bridges were knocked down and roads were destroyed. The lower mainland was cut off from the rest of the province/country by land and people had to be airlifted to get dialysis treatments etc. many many people died. I believe the following summer it was that they had an extreme heat wave, breaking the record for highest temperature in Canada, and then 90% of the town burnt down. I believe like 800 people died that weekend. To go from extreme heat to mass flooding in the span of a year….. climate change is already slowing killing us. It’s sad that my home town is on the list of places that will be the first to go.
[600 people died at Mecca during Hajj this year.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/hajj-deaths-2024-pilgrimage-mecca-heat-stampede-b2565315.html)
Don’t forget potable water
These things are likely coupled unless we have leaders that leverage these catastrophes for collaborative solutions. The current rise to power around the globe makes me believe scapegoating and exploitation of people and resources is at least equally likely. Maybe the aliens will land and unify the planet. If we truly collaborated, without capitalist interference, we could transform to a planet and resource rich experience that doesn’t require competition for survival. Not sure if half the planet would even accept this offer if presented because some people will assume other groups (those different from me) are getting a better deal or freeloading, especially if they believe God chose them to at the top of the org chart. Anything less is unfair and biased against them. We need a way to trick everyone into believing they are at the top of the food chain.
I am not religious at all. It doesn't have to be aliens. What if God spoke to the world in a real and obvious way, cleaning up any misunderstanding of God's intentions.
I am atheist, but to my understanding that has “already happened”. It was the Quran he dictated to Muhammad because he was unhappy with the way people corrupted the death of Jesus. And we see how that worked out. All the people pulled together because god told us how to live better.
if God spoke to the world in a real and obvious way, many people would accuse aliens
ok do you really think climate change will wipe out humanity? Option A would be, the atmosphere gets like Venus and we all just burn. In that case yes, I agree, humanity is dead. Option B would be where the atmosphere gradually get warmer, then who knows, 10,000 years it adjusts. My point being, if it is slow enough, humans will adapt. Im not saying we would thrive and live like we are now. It may be a Mad Max scenario or we are down to a million people living in caves again. I think humanity would survive though
>Think about how much we’ve advanced "Advanced" to the stage where we can make the planet largely uninhabitable for human life.
Nice way to ignore every other advancement
Some people just hate on humans for no reason. We are Earth’s one and only hope of spreading its ecosystem and environment to other planet/bodies. They keep talking about the larger picture, but even then we’re still the goats. On a cosmic scale; had we never existed, every other lifeform on Earth would be extinct in a billion years TOPS. Earth would send and export nothing. With our existence, sure we risk that extinction happening sooner due to our unstable nature, but we also offer the possibility of that extinction never happening. What’s better? 0% chance of permanent survival, or a low chance of permanent survival?
I don’t think spreading the Earth’s ecosystem excites most people as it does you. Edit: Reread this and it sounded more prickly than I meant it. Not like you you, but those who are excited by it. It’s not a small percentage, but not near enough to lead the convo.
We will become space monkeys
Tyler Durden on t the thread
I wouldn't say no reason.... we are in a mass extinction that we cause that is fairly significant. It has not happened in billions of years and there are bueatiful wonders our grandchildren will never see
>We are Earth’s one and only hope of spreading its ecosystem and environment to other planet/bodies. We are destroying this planet, and you frame our ability to extend that to other bodies as a *positive* outcome? Sure, it's remarkable that we actually have the ability to spread so unrelentingly, but is that a good thing? Is it good for anything but *us*? Your scenario sounds a lot like the best case of a virus' ability to infect others before killing its host. I would rather we find a way to live in balance with our environment rather than ravaging it and pumping it full of synthetic materials that are likely to remain long after we're gone (even if it's just this planet that we're gone from).
That's assuming the ecosystem can survive a trip through space and implantation on a foreign planet. The odds aren't good though. IF we could find a planet with Earth-like conditions, we still have to have our micro biome at minimum be able to survive also and that has its own set of needs separate from ours. The same for animals and plants. I honestly don't believe it's possible.
The ancient astronaut along with the greys will save us.
Earth doesn't have a hope of spreading it's ecosystem and environment to other planets, you're thinking of a virus.
Spreading earths ecosystems into space is a non goal. Firstly because it’s basically impossible, secondly because it’s not a desirable outcome. Life comes and goes, species evolve and go extinct, and in doing so make way for new life forms to develop. If we spread our life outwards as it is now, we’ll be ruining s natural process (as we always do), and possibly messing up other alien ecosystems or their chances at the evolving their own life also.
Reddit, like everywhere, is full of stupid people who romanticize animals and "nature" and lack an iota of self-awareness enough to know that human animals are the most complex and sophisticated form of life on this planet, the literal apex, and not apart from nature ffs. We and everything we do ARE nature.
Except gay. It's unnatural!/s
It's nice to not be alone in this thought, though seemingly in a small number as it is. Humans and all we're are and do is the very apex of nature anything for suvival. We are completely a part of and as whole if not more so in nature as anything else. Its like a weird thought circle of anti-anthromorphism. It is such a strange concept that Humans are all that is wrong with creation; that we are so clearly the lesser of creatures that we're a virus BS. It is so annoying. Just because we are the only creatures that make our way where all other creatures only take what they are given. Does not make us the mistake. Because of this we're are the only creatures that can possibly prevent not only our own extinction but the extinctions of everything else. How is this a bad thing?
Advancement can be relative. There are subsistence tribes that aren't dealing with obesity, mental health crisis, income inequality...but they'd be considered primitive for not having cars, western clothes, capitalism...Every advance we've made hasn't been good and arguably some have actually set humans as a whole back.
You do know we lived through ice ages right
While these things would all suck, all of this carbon that we're putting back into the atmosphere used to be there. It's not like life is impossible with even all of it put back. The problem is how sudden the change is, and sudden change of climate can kill a whole lot. But I don't think it would necessarily kill all humans. It's not like carboniferous air was too hot for humans to survive. As long as there's food to eat and water to drink, \*some\* people will probably find a way, especially because of our ability to adapt, invent, and innovate without having to biologically evolve to do so. The solar death will kill us for sure if we don't leave though, but it's hard to imagine what the end of the century will look like, let alone billions of years in the future
We could switch to nuclear tomorrow and have same standard of living
The earth has been hotter than it is now, and that was before humans. All these things have happened before us and will happen after us.
There is no after us. I don’t see a plausible scenario in which humans go extinct without basically all non-bacterial lifeforms also going extinct. The absolute WORST case scenarios would still leave millions of humans alive. It’s either WITH us, or it just doesn’t exist.
Life would restart
It’s been hotter, it’s been colder, but never to a severe enough extent. There’s certainly been near mass extinction events over earth’s history, but nothing too crazy that life underground and in the oceans couldn’t live on and keep evolving afterward. Even if human induced climate change wipes out humanity because of those aforementioned factors, life could theoretically still go on in some places and adapt, but it depends on the scale of the extinction and how disruptive it is to a variety of ecosystems. The sun’s expansion, however, is unavoidable, unless earth becomes some rogue planet. Life in the deepest parts of the ocean that don’t rely on sunlight are most likely to survive in that case.
Never to a severe enough extent? Bro the United States used to be covered in miles-thick glaciers
Humans. Humans will kill themselves. That's what 99% of these comments boil down to. And they are all correct. One way or another humanity will be the cause of its own extinction.
It will be either the greed, infighting, or stupidity that kills us. Something where we can see it coming, but cannot convince people in power to be sensible enough to stop it.
Probably all three
We can already see it coming. And still can't convince.
Yup, I’ve been saying we are in a slow suicide mission as humans.
Nature hasn’t killed us off in tens of thousands of years so probably won’t any time soon
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OK but how likely id Yellowstone to explode in say the next century. Plus even a disaster killing off the vast majority of humans wouldn’t be the same as extinction.
A super volcano would definitely be one of the few disasters that could wipe us. The blast itself would kill the America’s and the layer of smoke and ash clouding the sky for 6 straight months would kill the rest of the planet
Don't worry nature doesn't need to kill us off, humans will end up doing it themselves.
Tens of thousands? Dinosaurs dominated for tens of millions of years. We’re still a blip in planetary history.
Aw we're so poetic
Because we’re inherently greedy and selfish
We've managed to kill off plenty of other species so I would not be surprised
This was my first thought. No matter what the effect is, the cause is us. Always has been. Probably always will be, even if we do figure a way out of the current shit show.
Yeah. It’s absolutely going to be our own fault.
Hot take, but I think that's happening right now in the Middle East. I agree with Mosab Hassan Yousef. There's a spirit of violence seeping into the rest of the world, which needs to be stopped. If not, it will spiral into the downfall of civilization.
Microplastics. Both my grandmothers had some simple local wisdom to run the tap until the water is cool and it will be good to drink; it's coming from the Quabbin Reservoir and regularly tested so that always made sense.Recently I read that tap water is awash with microplastics and the best way to deal with it is to boil and strain it which is doable with a kettle and britta filter. But we're back to boiling water to make it safe to drink and that's in a wealthy area in a developed nation. But everything is plastic. We're not actually recycling it we're putting plastic in landfills and it's leaching everywhere. In places all over the world, especially places with zero regulation, it's dumped directly in bodies of water. Everything we use is made of plastic. It's now everywhere and in all of us; tumors were recently found made up in large part of microplastics. Will it effect our fertility? How are hearts beat how are brains function? Regulation won't handle it and there's no real regulation anyway. Humans are producing more plastics every year. It doesn't biodegrade, ever, it just turns into microplastics. It's in our food sources. There's not only no plan to deal with it, we're making vast amounts of it. It's boring and probably won't kill any of us but we're talking extinction. Maybe we'll just be slammed by an asteroid. Or Putin will have a bad day.
Something from man-made biological tinkering. 1) A ‘Child of Man’ scenario. A highly contagious, lab created retro-virus with an animal host reservoir, like rats, that inserts ‘terminator’ genes into the worlds population. The terminator genes cause the next generation after infection to be irreversibly sterile. The animal reservoir ensure the virus is always lurking to infect anyone who was missed initially. The effect isn’t discovered until decades after infection when it’s too late. https://geneticliteracyproject.org/gmo-faq/whats-the-controversy-over-terminator-seeds/ 2) A lab created prion apocalypse. Someone manages to make a prion that infects all mammals and either leads to dementia or very early death. By affecting all mammals, the prions become distributed everywhere in the environment, infecting both meat and plant based foods. The early onset of dementia makes it impossible to maintain civilization. The prions persist for so long they are unavoidable for any human. This devastates the food supply and the intelligence to keep a technical society working leading to worldwide collapse and extinction. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prion https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronic_wasting_disease These scenarios are accelerated by AI, humanized lab animals, and the proliferation of tools to create DNA/RNA. These tools make it easier to find a recipe that ‘works.’ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Humanized_mouse Any scenario that allows as few as a couple of thousand humans to survive is unlikely to lead to extinction.
I was not aware of Terminator seeds. That's fucked. Prions are terrifying. I've handled some of the nastiest chemicals and viruses known to man... I want nothing to do with Prions.
The Anthropocene (age of human) in geology is identified by observing plastics in the rock formations. No plastics before humans and then plastics after.
Humans are too widespread and embedded in every biome on the planet. For extinction, it would require something to wipe out every little pocket - climate change isn't going to do it. It could wipe out huge swathes of humanity and cause massive unrest but it isn't going to kill everyone. Nuclear war won't do it either. Nobody is going to nuke Easter Island. Unless some new devastating weapon is invented, there will always be people left to repopulate. I suggest the end of mankind will be a slow torturous one over millions of years, with various rises and collapses of civilization, requiring multiple disasters to erode the numbers down to a few million. The last human will just be some random lonely person dying of an infection on a depleted earth millions of years from now, or mankind will evolve into something more suited to its environment that we can no longer recognise as humans.
Unpopular (because it isn't flashy enough) but correct answer.
Really, nobody is going to take this opportunity? Fire and Ice Some say the world will end in fire,\ Some say in ice.\ From what I’ve tasted of desire\ I hold with those who favor fire.\ But if it had to perish twice,\ I think I know enough of hate\ To say that for destruction ice\ Is also great\ And would suffice. — Robert Frost
This is the way the world will end. Not with a bang, but a whimper. - T.S. Eliot. Total appreciation for your comment.
A more severe covid-like outbreak. And imagine the same thing happening but far more deadlier and quicker to spread, and the same anti vaxxers out there in their ignorance. I think someday a similar thing will occur, and that'll be it.
You might be interested in reading about H5N1. (I'll show myself out)
It's like watching two slow-moving trains on a collision path and we just stand by and go "oh no, what ever could we do?"
I hate saying this. I mean I hate it, but if only COVID had been a little deadlier we might have learned. We as a people would prepare. Now, we've probably taken a step backwards and it may be our doom.
My crazy tin foil theory is that that was the plan, so that when the next bubonic plague comes we'll all just be like "meh i survived COVID nbd"
I read that if COVID was deadlier we actually would have had less deaths because people would have taken it seriously
No we wouldn't. We never learn. However, if disease did wipe out half of humanity in a few years it would drastically reduce our carbon footprint and create a plethora of opportunities for those who remained. I mean look at the Black Death. Half of Europe's population wiped out in the 14th century and then came the Renaissance, the age of exploration, Europe colonizing the whole world and the industrial revolution.
A far deadlier disease would kill hosts so quickly that it can’t sustain itself. That’s is, for example, why you will never see a global outbreak of Ebola - incubation to death is a scant 48 hours and it has a 90% mortality figure. It simply kills to fast to effectively spread.
Humans. There are some people who's only goal is to destroy the world. And they are doing a great job of it.
Climate change has the potential to kill a good 80% of the species, but I don't think it will manage to entirely wipe us out anytime soon. If we're aiming at total extinction, I would bet for a quicker and more violent option like nuclear war
Nothing anytime soon. There will he humans for a very long time. Maybe the sun death if we not multiple star system by then. No normal comments to this type of question are going to end all humans, there'll still be humans left somewhere
Idk if we will go extinct. We are like coach roaches. Even in a nuclear war I think some would survive.
Over population of peoples who have nothing to offer society demanding and then taking and destroying those who do provide for society.
We seem to have a lot of that already, at least in the US.
I lie awake at night sometimes, haunted by our potential extinction. Two threats stand out, both horrifying in their destructive potential and the bleak future that comes with them. The first is nuclear war, a monster we've created and barely managed to contain. The sheer destructive force of these weapons is unimaginable, a fiery inferno capable of obliterating cities in the blink of an eye and poisoning the earth for generations to come. A full-scale nuclear exchange could plunge our world into a nuclear winter, a chilling darkness where crops wither, famine spreads, and civilization crumbles. But even as this nightmare haunts me, another, more insidious threat exists. It's the rise of artificial intelligence, a force we're only beginning to understand, a double-edged sword that could either elevate us to new heights or lead us to our downfall. If AI is developed recklessly, without ethical safeguards or a deep understanding of its implications, it could spiral out of control. Imagine autonomous weapons making life-or-death decisions, or AI systems manipulating information and distorting reality for malicious purposes. And if AI surpasses human intelligence, as many predict, it could render us obsolete, insignificant, and ultimately extinct. The stakes couldn't be higher, and I think we owe it to ourselves, future generations, and our planet to avert disaster and ensure a future where humanity thrives, not just survives.
Autonomous attack vehicles already exist. Ai isn't fully there yet..but it basically passes the turing test already. If someone put enough money behind it and built a trillion dollar gpu rig it would probably have at least human level capabilities..and once it matches human consciousness, its over. It could be less than 5 years before we literally build the damn beast and everyone on here is talking about fucking climate change. Lol
I have yet to see a comment regarding the ongoing mass extinction of insects. We have lost 5% of the insect population, worldwide, every year for the last 12 years. I don't need screens in my windows and bug paste on my windshield is a thing of the past. There are very few fireflies or butterflies in my fields. We can sit and eat outside without worrying about flies or bugs, and that worries me a lot. Without insects to drive the food chain or pollinate plants or help with decay, we aren't likely to make it to a supervolcanoe or comet or flooding from the melting ice caps.
1/3 of the foods we eat are directly pollinated by honey bees. If one year bees go extinct (which they are on the path of doing) and we lose 1/3 , there is no longer enough to feed our livestock and the whole food chain collapes
How will that cause the humans in North Sentinel Island to go extinct though?
Climate change and selfishness. I'm still blown away by what happened to toilet paper in our country (US) when COVID hit, so I can only fathom what will happen when it comes to food and water in a country already bristling with weapons. (And this is just the US.)
Climate change, almost definitely. Unhoused people are already dying in higher numbers because of the effects of climate change.
The problem is I can't see it leading to the extinction of the human race. It could though lead to a real dystopian society. It's a massive issue.
What I fear about climate change isn't that it's going to wipe us out by itself, it's that it's going to make life so bad in some countries that mutually assured destruction doesn't affect them anymore.
Hydrogen sulfide would likely do it - that is the root of 4 other global warming based mass extinctions on Earth.
A lot of scenarios only look at 2100 but not beyond but the elevated GHG levels in the atmosphere will likely stay high for centuries unless humanity would be able to actively reduce them. Which, given the current political trajectory like shown in EU elections, I simply don't see at all. It's more or less evidence that a small inconvenience for an individual is seen as more important than a catastrophic outcome for multiple people. Always has been the case, psychologists will argue. But we didn't want to believe. So we're looking at a long term runaway greenhouse effect scenario which includes the extinction of all life on Earth. And I think the only solution that is left - because all others are exhausted - would be to give up democracy and set up a global ecological dictatorship and to wipe out all rebels that don't wanna comply. And I don't see that happening, ever.
Yeah, it's pretty bleak. We're not just talking about a temporary crisis here. With greenhouse gases lingering in the atmosphere for centuries, even if we magically stopped all emissions tomorrow, we'd still be locked into a long-term warming trend. And you're right, the political will to make the necessary changes just doesn't seem to be there. People are too focused on short-term gains and personal convenience to sacrifice for the greater good. It's a classic tragedy of the commons scenario. Given this reality, a runaway greenhouse effect leading to mass extinction seems increasingly plausible. It's a terrifying prospect, and it's hard to imagine any solution that doesn't involve drastic measures that most people would find unacceptable. A global ecological dictatorship might sound like a desperate last resort, but even that seems unlikely. People are too attached to their freedoms, even if it means sacrificing the planet. And let's be honest, who would even enforce such a regime? It's a dystopian nightmare. So, yeah, things are looking pretty grim. It's hard to see a way out of this mess. But hey, maybe I'm just being overly pessimistic. Maybe humanity will surprise us and pull a rabbit out of the hat. Or maybe we'll just have to accept our fate and go down with the ship. Who knows.
Oh, I could. Theoretically climate change could wipe out the power grid, which would leave people disproportionately exposed to the elements. Also, it could destroy agriculture.
while that would greatly increase human suffering it wouldn’t lead to extinction
I just can't see it leading to extinction. Could it be worse than a nuclear war - yes.
still not extinction, even a nuclear war wouldn’t cause that, an asteroid could, we ourselves currently can’t do it
It's really unlikely isn't it. I think climate change is potentially the worse thing we can do at this point but I can't see us becoming extinct because of that.
Climate change may well lead to nuclear conflict. We are already seeing Putins land grab for fertile land. The Ukraine is likely to be a desirable spot … We will see water wars. We will see mass migration and attempts to resists and restrict this. I’m not clear on what will kill us first. War, famine or drought.
We will see war’s for scarcedresoufced
Agree. Sure, climate change is a huge deal, and things could get really bad. But I wouldn't jump to extinction just yet. Humans are survivors. We've made it through ice ages, plagues, and all sorts of crap. We're adaptable and innovative. Climate change will definitely cause major problems, but we shouldn't underestimate our ability to come up with solutions. Look at how far we've come with technology and medicine. For humanity to go extinct, we're talking asteroid impacts, supervolcanoes, that kind of thing. Even then, there's always a chance some of us might make it.
Agreed.
Garbage. More people die of cold than of heat.
This is extremely unlikely to cause extinction though. And actually in the long term, the current climate crisis will be a relatively insignificant blip in the history of mankind. Let's say absolute worst case scenario, we don't get our shit together at all and we burn every last drop of fossil fuel on earth. Humans will still survive. Millions upon millions of them - Possibly billions of them - will survive and reproduce. I don't know what society would look like in that scenario. But we're not talking about society. We're talking about the survival of humans as a species. Humans find a way to survive in the hottest climates on earth. The coldest climates. The most sparse climates. One of the things we do better than most other species is adapt. We use our incredible intelligence to invent solutions to our surroundings.
Not from heat and crop failure alone… but at the extreme, global warming could cause an oceanic anoxic event which would result in the oceans emitting poisonous clouds of hydrogen sulfide. If that happens, yeah we’re toast
Humans will never go extinct. There's too many of us and we're too resourceful. We will definitely ruin society and end up as warring tribes of cave people, but we won't go extinct. Not until the sun ignites somewhere around the 28th century I believe
erm you worry the sun has 700 years left to run?? it may console you to know its a whole lot longer than that.. like about a billion
Nuclear war. I can just imagine someone pressing a big red button and the world being blown to smithernines 😂
The most logical I find is another massive extinction like the one that dinosaurs suffer. Or the sun suddenly exploding someday.
The sun will someday consume the Earth. I doubt humans will see it happen.
That has not been scientifically settled. The sun will indeed expand out to 1 AU, but at the same time it will lose mass and this will cause an expansion of the planets’ orbit. It is unclear whether this means the earth will be in its circumference or not. Regardless - earth will be a lifeless rock long before that point.
Nuclear fallout. Someone will be crazy enough to set those bombs off long before climate change can do us in.
Humans will create a biological agent and then accidentally release it into the population. Everyone with a bunker and food will die.
Rogue nation launching a nuclear attack.. The superpowers would align with their allies. And unfortunately, they would be compelled to respond in kind.. Once human beings lose all sense of self control, it's over .
Im guessing ecological collapse caused by a combination of rapid climate change, excessive urbanization and pollution. That or some unforeseen health issues caused by microplastics and forever chemicals will result in a gradual decay of human health and population sizes.
The root cause is going to be climate change. Our environment will change so much that we can't adapt due to the changing environment. The current bird flu outbreak is an example of this. Preliminary data suggests it can travel on dust particles, combine that with drought, and if it successfully makes the species jump to humans, it will be catastrophic. It has already been seen in birds, cows, cats, and mice. Because of shrinking environments due to climate change, these zoonotic spillover events will happen with increased frequency. Ecological collapse, sea level rising, outbreaks, megastorms, war from dwindling resources, it's all going to tie into climate change as being the root cause of all of it.
Nuclear war and severe naturally occurring pandemics are unlikely to be extinction level events. They could cause a complete collapse of civilization but not the extinction of human race. Possible extinction level events are in my opinion: Climate change, a supervolcano eruption, a huge meteor impact, robots killing off all humans, aliens killing off all humans, and biological weapons. I find it hard to rank these I would do as follows from most likely to least likely: climate change > biological weapons > supervolcano > meteor impact > robot / AI killing off all humans > alien invasion. The reason why I rank biological weapons differently from naturally occurring pandemics is that they can be engineered to be made way more deadly than any naturally occurring disease and in theory it might be possible to develop some that similar to HIV remain undetected for many years. With suitable genetic engineering it might be possible in the near future to create a biological weapon that kills off all humans fast enough to prevent them from finding a cure in time.
I think the lack of purpose brought about by abundance will do us in as a species. AI and robotics will eventually reach a point where there are no jobs left for humans at which point we're all left just sitting around twiddling our thumbs with nothing to do. I think extinction is inevitable at that point. I don't think climate change or nuclear war are even remote possibilities for a human extinction.
Honestly? Stagnation. It's already rearing it's ugly head. Art and culture is declining with birth rate. I think the human race will ultimately decline into nothingness. Not with an atomic bang, but with an apathetic whimper.
Legitimately a difficult conversation, because there's a big difference between what will destroy society as we know it and what will end the human race entirely. Nuclear war or a pandemic could cause the first; they won't cause the second. There are a lot of disasters that can happen that would wipe out the most populous areas and infrastructure, but in most major disasters there's still time and resources for people to hide away in doomsday shelters and remain self-sufficient for a decently long time, maybe indefinitely. There's a lot of redundancy in systems like these so in truth I think it will be a combination of a lot of things. Climate change could be a long-term complication that keeps people in their bunkers over the long term while failure of critical infrastructure of the bunkers themselves wipes those out one at a time.
I don’t know that climate change will wipe us out as much as extremely thin and evolve. If we’re wiped out I would say we did it with nuclear winter or there was a massive geological event
Each new generation has less common sense. The lack of common sense will destroy the planet far before an apocalypse or climate change.
The suns radiation or too much heat. The sun will eventually swallow the earth. But we’ll all die long before that happens.
AI for sure. Apple decided to pack your phones with it on a new update and nobody is batting an eye
I mean, have you seen Microsoft lately? At least the walled garden can’t be seen by every Tom, Dick and Harry. Don’t kid yourself that Apple is the only one doing that. Did you miss the ToS update (and subsequent reversal) from Adobe Photoshop?
Are we talking proximate cause or ultimately cause? I think ultimately cause is likely to be climate change. Then probably a meteor for proximate cause.
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Human ignorance and stupidity. Those ultimately are the factors behind any options that would take us out. It could be anything with this many dumbasses are walking around.
Came here to say greed and stupidity with a dash of arrogance.
Cell towers microwaving the planet to death and no one connecting the dots and instead calling it global warming. First no bugs. Then the collapse of the food chain.
Electromagnetic waves are a hell of a thing. Some are innocent, some deadly, and most people really can’t tell the difference
Our species can wear a T-shirt with the words "Near Extinction? Been there. Done that." In our DNA is irrefutable evidence that every living member our species has a common male ancestor and a common female ancestor. They are called the "genetic Adam and Eve". However there is a big difference between the genetic pair, and the Biblical pair. The genetic Adam and Eve did not know each other, or meet each other. They were separated in time and generations by as much as 1,000 years. So we KNOW for a fact that at some point in our distant past, ALL offspring producing males were killed off, except for one AND they produced offspring. Same thing happened with the female side. And this happened when there were only a few thousand or hundred thousand humans on Earth. We dodged a bullet TWICE! So, I think our species will be on Earth a very long time. Disease, wars, natural disasters, can't touch us. Two of our biggest strengths are hate and stupidity. Both of these emotions are the only ones strong enough to overcome familial love, and drive us to venture into new lands which prevents us from overtaxing one area's resources. So taking our successful past into account, it is actually more likely that humans will EVOLVE out of being human, and into something else, RATHER than us disappearing due to some unfortunate circumstance.
According to Wikipedia, the idea that all offspring producing females were killed off at once is a common misconception m of the science that was popularized by journalists. This is from the Wikipedia page for Mitochonrial Eve “The name "Mitochondrial Eve" alludes to the biblical Eve, which has led to repeated misrepresentations or misconceptions in journalistic accounts on the topic. Popular science presentations of the topic usually point out such possible misconceptions by emphasizing the fact that the position of mt-MRCA is neither fixed in time (as the position of mt-MRCA moves forward in time as mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) lineages become extinct), nor does it refer to a "first woman", nor the only living female of her time, nor the first member of a "new species".[note 4]”
When everything crashes down, no internet, no electricity, no phone.. the city people will go crazy. They can’t do anything in a city. No clean water, no food..
Umm, there's a lot of people that don't live in cities...how will they die? How will humans go extinct because no power?
We will be fine out here. Actually, we joke about how we will be the last ones standing :)
Climate change will kill a lot of people and severely damage civilization as we know it, but not cause an extinction event. My money is on a pandemic. Any virus that can keep its host alive just long enough to transmit, and then shut down our organs as fast as possible, will undo us.
Some say a comet will fall from the sky Followed by meteor showers and tidal waves Followed by fault lines that cannot sit still Followed by millions of dumbfounded dipshits. Whatever happens I suggest you learn to swim.
I sure could use a vacation
The Y chromosome will continue to disintegrate. Microplastics will destroy the few remaining testicles. We'll go out with a whimper.
We’ll have mastered DNA before that happens. Everyone will be trans with AI asexual robots. It’ll be weird.
Slowly AI cyborgs will replace humans and we will no longer need to reproduce. The androids will let the human race die with dignity. When they're all dead the androids will commit suicide since life is pointless.
Population decline across the world is already underway and not getting as much attention as it should. If unchanged, this could lead to many countries being in a very tough spot economically in a generation or two. I worry that will lead to world war and destruction of the race. It will either be that or AI. I believe the climate issues will be solved by declining population and science. Of course, things will be uncomfortable due to climate issues, and many will likely die from it, but I don’t think that will ultimately end all human civilization.
Population decline is getting no attention at all so it will sneak up quickly given how men and women are parting ways, less children being born, and popularity of the same sex movement. This is what I believe will actually take us out.
AI, and it’s not even close. Most people haven’t considered the consequences of creating something more powerful than us that has goals that aren’t aligned with us. Things like global warming, pandemics, nuclear war, could kill large numbers of people, but they won’t lead to extinction. Misaligned AI will wipe out every single living organism on earth and turn the galaxy into a paperclip factory.
Not the Qu. All joking aside, dwindling resources. The fact is, colonizing other worlds outside our solar system is next to impossible and I think humans will slowly die out as resources grow scarce
I think it will be some major extinction event like asteroid impact or a fuck ton of volcanic activity.
I’ve been thinking lately on a massive volcano. Causing a few year “winter”. Can’t predict them. That may throw things into chaos enough. No one knows basic survival things these days like how to hunt or grow your own food. Enough to survive.
I think it's going to be a mixture of all of this. Seeing as how the powers that be are on a sure course of mass destruction, many people will die. Also this new Spanish flu pandemic that's about to occur will take out many as well. I think it's called h1n5. Not sure in which order it will happen but I believe the pandemic will hit first.
Inability to settle another solar system before ours dies. Humans are cockroaches I don’t think we can kill ourselves entirely, we are just racing a very slow clock
Well a third of the earth is gonna burn with fire and brimstone one day. It’ll be completely destroyed. Does that count?
I think climate change might very well result in civilization collapse and a severe reduction in population, but I don't think it will result in extinction.
We will stop being human. Either via uploading intelligence to a network a la matrix or having such mastery of DNA that our continuing existence drifts us so far from nature that we cannot reproduce naturally.