What would it take to exterminate mankind?

[Lancer]

With all the bomb shelters all over the place left over from the cold war, I'd say the infestation would be difficult to eliminate. A show on dinosaurs I watched some time back said that after 2 years the air had cleared pretty much, but all the dinosaurs were dead by then. That couldn't happen to people as canned food can last alot longer than that. The population might be reduced to a million people or something, but I think we would survive such an event. What about Yellowstone blowing up? Full on nuke war? What would it take?

[Zkribbler]

(a) a really nasty mutated virus.
(b) a big meteor crashing into the Earth.
(c) a robot revolt (see, Terminator I, II & III)
(d) run-away global warming, a la Venus.

[joncha]

(e) 2 Lancer OT threads per day for 1 year.

[Lancer]

I'll take that as a personal challenge. Besides, with Poly so slow, plus the wave of regular posters leaving, someone has to keep the lights on around here. Been to ACOL lately? Like a ghost town...


Zkrib, a and d are good choices I think. Has there ever been a complete extermination of a species due to a virus or disease?

The global warming thing, not terribly likely. Greenhouse gasses have been 250X current levels in the past, and the earth corrected itself.

[Frankychan]

Does Bush count?

[Lancer]

He has someone who does that for him.

[Frankychan]

Seriously though, I think it would take a virus or plague of epic proportions, a huge a** meteor...or an alien invasion. I doubt a world war would do humanity in unless all the biological, chemical and nuclear weapons were used.

But I heard the US has enough of Bio andn Chem weapons to kill everyone on the planet 15 or so times over...

[Provost Harrison]

Alas the species is mutating into chavs...all hope is evaporating...

[Mr. Harley]

A genetically engineered or nanotech disease, or a self-replicating nanotech that gets out of control (in which case it wipes out all multicellular life on earth, humans aren't per se singled out).

[Sir Og]

A signifficant and quick change in the enviorment. A meteor impact could do that maybe a change in Earth's magnetic field.

I don't think that a virus can do it.

[FrostyBoy]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
A genetically engineered or nanotech disease, or a self-replicating nanotech that gets out of control (in which case it wipes out all multicellular life on earth, humans aren't per se singled out).

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.


A scary and strange future is ahead of us..

[General Ludd]

6 billion chinese finger traps.

[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

[Sandman]

Not disease, or shortages, or global warming, or war, but maybe a combination of all of them. Although some tribespeople would probably survive in New Guinea or something.

Am I the only person that's sceptical towards nanotech? In fifty years, it'll look as naff as fifities science fiction does now.

[civman2000]

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, local catastrophes could potentially finish the job.