What would it take to exterminate mankind?

[Dr Strangelove]

Mass Driver weapons.

[FrostyBoy]

If you look at those Earth photos from Nasa or wherever, you will notice that not even 5% of the earth is "taken" by Humans.

I'm talking about things that kill the land, such as buildings and roads.

Irrigation can't be that bad, imagine if we took all the irrigations out, what would be there? That's right, natural vegetation, which would also require water. So it makes little to no difference.



Putting all this aside, I believe that humans aren't actually in control of what is happening within us and around us; we just think we are, I believe that what is actually driving everything that happens (including every little thing each and everyone of us does) is controlled by evolution/existence in motion.

I don't believe that life knows how to destroy itself, it only knows how to survive and if killing off a species is required to make the "whole of life" stronger and bigger, then so be it.

[Zkribbler]

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

I think Whaleboy is saying: increased population --> increased greenhouse gases --> irreversible climate changes --> extinction.

[Theben]

Clones of Fez and PA.

[SpencerH]

An interstellar bypass.

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by Zkribbler


I think Whaleboy is saying: increased population --> increased greenhouse gases --> irreversible climate changes --> extinction.

People seriously underestimate the amount of greenhouse change that would apparently be needed to trigger a run away venus style global autoclaving of the earth. There's plenty of evidence that on multiple occasions of Earth's history enormous injections of CO2 have seriously turbocharged some runaway greenhouse effects and yet in no case did it trigger the runaway feedback loop that would somehow need to occur for globabl warming to have a snowballs chance in hell of causing human extinction.

Global warming will probably shake things up enough that practically everybody on earth will condemn those who allowed it to oocur, but there doesn't seem to be the slightest shred of reason to believe that all it takes is a trebling of earths historically very modest CO2 levels to cause a totally unprecedented effect on the earth's climate.

There has to be a reason venus' history wasn't ever repeated on earth and it's probably a very robust counter feedback mechanism of some sort. Perhaps when loading of the atmosphere with massive water vapor occurs (which is essential to have any sort of venus greenhouse effect), planets at about earths distance from the Sun experience massive glaciation at the poles or something similer.

[General Ludd]

You don't even need global warming to destroy the world, the more "conventional" effects pollution is enough in itself.

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by Geronimo


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

Wasn't there a number of mass-extinctions in earth's history caused by exactly that?

[Geronimo]

Originally posted by General Ludd


Wasn't there a number of mass-extinctions in earth's history caused by exactly that?

I'd certainly like to read about any such extinctions

[Proteus_MST]

Originally posted by Geronimo

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.

All points are probably covered by the attributes mentioned:
The high rate of mutation means, that the virus/bacteria itself creates variations as it goes from victim to victim. Perhaps this will be enough to cover all variations of humans.

And the virus is designed with stealth in foreground, so that mankind hopefully doesn´t even know what hit them by:

Having a long Phase of latency without any symptomes and then a short phase where the disease breaks out in the victim, killing it within short time.
Furthermore the virus/bacteria imitates the symptomes of other diseases as it breaks out, so that the doctors who treat the victims don´t get suspicious that the victim might die of a new disease but rather think it was something they know well. (and at the point the disease breaks out the first infected person hopefully already made contact to numerous other persons, thereby spreading it over a large area [if the phase of latency is sevreal weeks and the victim travels often this would ebe an ideal combination ])
The only point where the world would get warned in time would be of course, if informations of the plans to release such a virus would leak out.

But of course there are small spots where humans live isolated (for example small indian tribes within the rainforest).
Therefore I should introduce a fifth attribute the disease should have:
e) All kinds of animals should be the vectors of the disease. They themselves are not affected by the disease, but they can infect humans the same way that they could get infected by another human carrying the diesease (i.e. by means of bodyfluids and perhaps also by feces)

[Lancer]

Dodo birds?

[Mr. Harley]

Dr. Strangelove - it would require aliens with mass driver weapons, otherwise the humans using them survive.

Now that is one scenario that has been bandied about, which is less likely now but could, with nuclear proliferation, return. That's the surprise asteroid strike that cause a widespread nuclear exchange. Between the two you might just drop hunmanity to isolated pockets without enough genetic diversity.

[Provost Harrison]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker

I see no one reads my posts...

[Mr. President]

Y'all are probably gonna laugh, but I think HIV is well on the way to destroying mankind.

Firstly, it's spread by sex and needle drugs, which are two of the things people are never gonna stop doing. It's always fatal, even though the patients' life can be prolonged with massive cocktails of drugs. And the havoc it wreaks with social structures (look at southern Africa) could kill as many people as the virus itself if it runs out of control.

All it needs is a faster transmission path (and there's precedent; a broadly similar immune disease of sheep, whose name I can't remember right now, is airborne) and you can kiss the human race good-bye.

[Mr. Harley]

The disease in question is in Iceland and Greenland. It is highly fatal. HIV is not always fatal either. It has a 90% plus fatality rate, but there is enough survivability that we will make it. Humanity survived Syphlis, which is broadly similiar - highly communuicable (more so than AIDS but for a shorter window), highly lethal with an extremely delayed incubation period.