What would it take to exterminate mankind?

[Lancer]

Ming has already been mentioned.

[Gibsie]

Originally posted by TheStinger
Daleks

[Lancer]

"6 billion chinese finger traps."-Gen Ludd



"In a few more hundred years i'm sure will see the complete destruction of the rain forest, the complete melting of the Ice sheets in the antartic, world wide flooding, breaking of the atlantic conveyor system that keeps western europe warmer than it should be and the midwest of USA+ the Carabbean cooler than it would be."-child of Thor

While this might knock back the population, I can't see it wiping us out, or even close. The population would decrease to the point at which it can be sustained by the decreased recources.

"I think it's unlikely that anything named in this thread (except perhaps a meteor) could wipe out humans. What could happen is that the human population could easily be reduced greatly (to say, a few thousand or something). Then smaller, could potentially finish the job."-civman2000

A progressive jackpot where the prizes get really BIG! Sounds reasonable. However unlikely. The remnants of humanity would be spread around pretty good. The "local catastrophes" would have to occur all at once, as people would continue to breed and fill in the areas of past catastrophes. For example, a thousand years after Yellowstone blows, it would be prime real estate again.

"Ming!!"-child of Thor

I said exterminate mankind, not the OT.

"Looking for something to do during downtime at work, Lancer?"-JT

Work is such a bummer, it might not be a bad idea.

Gepap, I'm getting to the point where I agree with you regarding mankind's ability to destroy itself. Partly because your pov seems reasonable, partly because of wishful thinking.

"Mankind is the cancer of the universe."-Alex

I was thinking more along the lines of an infestation of some all consuming insect, and I'm looking for a good exterminator.

"A full-throttle Yellowstone explosion might not entirely wipe us out, but could well reduce our population to levels where subsequent inbreeding would leave us subtly different as a species. Whether we'd still be "human" would be a moot point."-Laz

I think in this case one could find an example of the future of humanity living in trailer parks today.

[Whaleboy]

Ah now this is my kinda thread!

Ok, big virus, highly infectious, high fatality rate, long incubation period before symptoms become apparent.

Destruction of the rainforests would suck but not cause too many deaths itself, though it would accelerate the greenhouse effect, as well as localised eutrophication which would destroy sources of water upon which much of the 3rd world is dependent.

Killing off the third world would be relatively easy, and that's 80% of the human race. The other 20% is tough because of food-mountains and government resources to tackle diseases etc. Cities OTOH are very vulnerable to certain viruses.

Nuclear war would help.

An economic collapse that would render much of the first world into poverty would then leave it vulnerable to anything that could kill of the third world today. It all depends upon climate and the distribution of humans.

It won't kill all humans outright, the question is whether or not there'll be a viable surviving gene-pool, distributed in such a way that it can be actualised.

[Whaleboy]

N.B. At the current rate of population expansion and climate change, the human race is doomed to extinction sooner rather than later, by one method or another.

[Ben Kenobi]

N.B. At the current rate of population expansion and climate change, the human race is doomed to extinction sooner rather than later, by one method or another.

What population expansion? World population is projected to decline by 2050.

[Lancer]

Nah. I say we muddle through as we always have. We might be reduced to being cavemen again, but I'm sure that had it's good days as well, and there's always cave women...

Raquel Welch, MMmmmm...

[Commy]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
What population expansion? World population is projected to decline by 2050.

Doubt that, UN estimates population at 2050 to be between 7 and 12 billion...

On the other hand, I guess since you said after 2050, we could start declining, but with 12 billion people, would it really matter?

Anyway, I'm thinking, with our current technology, no naturally created virus could take us down completely, however, a synthetic one might stand a chance, but doubt it...

Global warming could have bad effects, but I think all it'd do is hinder our progression and econmy...

A big asteroid probably wouldn't do it either...we would mostly likely see it before it hits, probably by a few months...enough time to build bunkers, or launch nukes at it...

If aliens landed, we'd most likely win, even if they had superior technology...the fact is, if aliens attacked us, it's most likely that they want our resources...unless the resources include metals and rock, it would be difficult for them to attack us AND preserve the resources they want (food, human hosts, whatever)...unless they slowly took us down by giving us longevity vaccines that make us infertile (an "unknown" side affect), any other method would most likely result in failure...

Really, thought, the odds of earth being created as it is in the first place is one out of about a trillion billion million trillion...add on the 1 in a million chance of us killing ourselves, I don't see it happening...

[Zkribbler]

Originally posted by Sn00py


Nano-Viruses? Now that is more scary than a biological one.



Holy crap.. What do you do? Build nano-bots to attack them? There would be massive wars waged on at the nano-level just to keep us alive.

I dunno. I'm currently making my way thru Michael Crighton's Prey but I'm not to the end yet, so I don't know if we'll survive.

[C0ckney]

seriously, nothing.

[Kuciwalker]

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by child of Thor
I think we just need to carry on as we are.

In a few more hundred years i'm sure will see the complete destruction of the rain forest, the complete melting of the Ice sheets in the antartic, world wide flooding, breaking of the atlantic conveyor system that keeps western europe warmer than it should be and the midwest of USA+ the Carabbean cooler than it would be.

Depleating ozone - riseing skin cancer rates.
Increasing levels of toxicity in our seas/water - falling fertility rates.

etc etc.

So lets just keep on enjoying the good life while it lasts

all that dinky crap will just make life suckier than it is but in no way could any of it even all combined possibly bring about the extinction of the species.


Even if the rain forests are all wiped out there would still be a massive biomass of plants on earth. There was life before rain forests you know.

(not denying how sad it is to contemplate our species bringing about such irreversible losses.)

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Proteus_MST


To be more specific a virus or bacteria which has

a) a high rate of mutation
b) a long phase of latency where the vistim doesn´t detect any symptomes but is able to infect other persons
c) is transmitted by any bodyfluid, be it sweat, urine, sperm, blood or saliva
d) after the phase of latency would kill the victims by showing the symptomes of another disease (for example the symptomes of a pneumonia or, much better, the symptomes of a sudden heart attack )

would be fine to do the job

probably there would be too much variation in the human population for any single such virus however sophisticated to successfully replicate in everybody. YOu would probably need at least a half dozen such viruses all released at once to do us all in. Even then if there was warning time, people might hole up in bomb shelters and the virus would likely be more or less inactive within a couple years.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Whaleboy
N.B. At the current rate of population expansion and climate change, the human race is doomed to extinction sooner rather than later, by one method or another.

Can you think of any species that has ever been driven to extinction due to it's population expansion?

[Kuciwalker]

A virus would also likely leave patches of humanity. If it were that deadly, it would kill so fast as to create safe zones.