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Post by antichrist on Jul 29, 2009 13:05:25 GMT -5
Well, there are a lot of humans out there that don't rely on technology more advanced than a good spear. Those will probably be the one's that survive. They may mutate, they may lose some to radiation poisoning. But I don't think anyone's going to bother bombing the Amazon river basin, or the middle of nowhere Africa, or the Ande's.
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Dan
Full Member
Posts: 228
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Post by Dan on Jul 29, 2009 14:30:20 GMT -5
OT, but:
someone, please tell me that I'm not the only person who mis-read the word "count" in the title of this thread....
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Post by Vene on Jul 29, 2009 15:09:25 GMT -5
I'd say disease. It is so easy for pathogens to spread between continents, our own technology could end up killing us. And with bacterial resistance the way it is, it's not a stretch to think that it would be immune to our drugs. I already went over that. Even the worst disease doesn't have a 100% kill rate, and more rural (to say nothing of island) populations might even escape infection altogether. It doesn't need a 100% kill rate, it doesn't even need a 100% infection rate. It just needs to be high enough to cripple us.* A disease with a low mortality rate, but a high infection rate can very easily disrupt vital services. That was a problem we were looking at with swine flu. For example, how are you supposed to get food when the stores are shut down? Why are the stores shut down? Because so many of their employees are sick they can't be open. Even if the are open, so? The employees at the factory responsible for packaging the food are sick, and due to the nature of their job, they can't go to work while contagious. It just has to be big enough to harm our infrastructure. It doesn't have to be a quick extinction, in fact, I don't think it will be a quick extinction. Even with your island populations, diseases can still reach them. As long as there is travel there, it can happen. There's also vectors that can do it. Or evolution, changing to the point where they are not recognizable as humans. Like I said earlier, dinosaurs are extinct, but yet, a fair number did evolve into birds. Cladistically speaking, that chicken sandwich is made from dinosaur meat. Given a few million years and true isolation, those island populations of humans won't be Homo sapiens anymore. *As an aside, the reason that bird flu hasn't been a serious problem is because it's too deadly, it kills before it can spread.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Jul 29, 2009 20:02:10 GMT -5
Speculative fiction trope: lost technology. Even though the technology doesn't go anywhere, it's significantly damaged, & there just aren't enough people to know how to repair & maintain these things to service (lol) those who are left.
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Post by RavynousHunter on Jul 30, 2009 0:00:35 GMT -5
Am I the only one who read this as [RR has a "coup" thread], as in a coup d'état?
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Post by szaleniec on Jul 30, 2009 7:27:34 GMT -5
OT, but: someone, please tell me that I'm not the only person who mis-read the word " co unt" in the title of this thread....
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Post by Tiger on Jul 30, 2009 11:18:06 GMT -5
It doesn't need a 100% kill rate, it doesn't even need a 100% infection rate. It just needs to be high enough to cripple us. A disease with a low mortality rate, but a high infection rate can very easily disrupt vital services. That was a problem we were looking at with swine flu. For example, how are you supposed to get food when the stores are shut down? Why are the stores shut down? Because so many of their employees are sick they can't be open. Even if the are open, so? The employees at the factory responsible for packaging the food are sick, and due to the nature of their job, they can't go to work while contagious. It just has to be big enough to harm our infrastructure. Loss of infrastructure = extinction? We lived almost exclusively as low-tech hunter-gatherers until about 12,000 years ago, and some people (namely, the people who are most likely to avoid infection) still do. Can is not the same thing as will. Exactly. And since there are quite a number of populations rural enough to rarely or never have contact with outsiders at present, I'm rather confident that a few of them will manage to avoid infection. Prior to the arrival of humans, Hawaii was colonized by a new species every 33,000 years on average. This pandemic will run its course within a few centuries in a worst case scenario. With the arrival of a non-native creature being that rare, I'm having a very hard time imagining that every single inhabited island in Polynesia (and Melanesia and Micronesia) is going to be visited by a vector in that time. True. I suppose what I'm arguing against is the end of our branch rather than our species.
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Post by Vene on Jul 30, 2009 12:27:33 GMT -5
Loss of infrastructure = extinction? We lived almost exclusively as low-tech hunter-gatherers until about 12,000 years ago, and some people (namely, the people who are most likely to avoid infection) still do. The vast majority of us can't survive without that infrastructure. Can you forage for food? As in, for all of your food. Do you know how to set a splint for a broken bone? Oh, and don't rely on modern weapon, it has a habit of rusting, breaking, or just running out of ammo. None of this is "will." I'm discussing possibilities. Humans are not that hardy. This event could occur in a thousand years, a million years, or 400 million years. But if natural history has taught me anything, it's that we will fail. You really need to look up vectors. Avoiding human-human contact is not enough. We're a global community now, even those small islands aren't immune. Harder to reach, yes, but not immune. And even with complete isolation in this scenerio, great, good for them. What's to say they can't get hit with an event later on? That is an entirely different issue, you need to be very specific about these things. Also, I get the feeling you believe that human extinction will only take a few hundred years at most. I'm thinking on more of a geologic time scale, thousands to millions of years. Human civilization has only been around ~10,000 years, we're nothing. Even if we exist for 10 times that long, we're nothing. maybe once we've been around for 1000 times that long, we'll be of note in the Earth's history.
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Post by rookie on Jul 30, 2009 13:11:16 GMT -5
Um, isn't it easier than that? I mean, all we have to do is somehow eff up the water supply? I mean, starting with the oceans. We dump some sort of hormone that messes with, say, a certain algae or plankton or some such. So it starts growing way faster than anything can eat it. Before too long it (in theory) can over oxygenate the water killing most life there. Then that which depends on teh ocean for food is screwed. And what eats what eats ocean critters. And so on. Maybe someone with a slightly firmer grasp on biology than failing out of high school bio can help me on this.
But it's not like we can't do it. Humans can make some crazy shit, mostly from common household products. We can do it. We have the technology. We can make it better, stronger, etc.
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Post by Vene on Jul 30, 2009 17:57:16 GMT -5
I really do think it will be a combination of factors, not just a single one. Problems with our water supply very well could make it worse. As could pollution in the air.
Also, I'm sure many of us here know that the human population is increasing exponentially. There is something that happens to all species whenever this happens, death. Not necessarily extinction, but death. Unless we keep up with technology, we can't sustain this growth. Better yet, stop the growth. If the human population levels out, we should be fine.
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Post by Jedi Knight on Jul 30, 2009 18:02:25 GMT -5
None of this is "will." I'm discussing possibilities. Humans are not that hardy. This event could occur in a thousand years, a million years, or 400 million years. But if natural history has taught me anything, it's that we will fail. I agree! We are nothing special, really. Temporary, as all other species. Whether we are transitional or facing extinction, remains to be seen. Right now, we have the remarkable ability to shape the environment to suit us. That may change.
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Post by Tiger on Jul 30, 2009 18:12:43 GMT -5
The vast majority of us can't survive without that infrastructure. Can you forage for food? As in, for all of your food. Do you know how to set a splint for a broken bone? Oh, and don't rely on modern weapon, it has a habit of rusting, breaking, or just running out of ammo. I cannot, but there are a large number of people who can and do. And as I pointed out, these people also happen to be those who are most likely to avoid infection. In a million years, it's almost a guarantee that we'll have colonized other planets, which makes a species-destroying calamity far less likely. I know what a vector is. Immune, no. But there's enough of these places that a large number of them could easily pull through unscathed. The human populations has survived bottlenecking before. And adding a second doomsday event into the mix makes it even more unlikely. I don't believe that. As stated, I believe that human extinction (as a result of death rather than evolutionary change, to be specific) will not occur. I'm simply arguing against the scenario you presented.
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Post by Tiger on Jul 30, 2009 18:14:04 GMT -5
Um, isn't it easier than that? I mean, all we have to do is somehow eff up the water supply? I mean, starting with the oceans. We dump some sort of hormone that messes with, say, a certain algae or plankton or some such. So it starts growing way faster than anything can eat it. Before too long it (in theory) can over oxygenate the water killing most life there. Then that which depends on teh ocean for food is screwed. And what eats what eats ocean critters. And so on. Maybe someone with a slightly firmer grasp on biology than failing out of high school bio can help me on this. But it's not like we can't do it. Humans can make some crazy shit, mostly from common household products. We can do it. We have the technology. We can make it better, stronger, etc. That's a scenario that did not occur to me. I find it much more likely than any of the others I've heard.
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Post by Admiral Lithp on Jul 30, 2009 18:28:15 GMT -5
I find it less likely than nuclear warfare. The ocean's a big place. Locally, I can see that being a disaster, but globally?
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Post by yojetak on Jul 30, 2009 18:50:39 GMT -5
I find it less likely than nuclear warfare. The ocean's a big place. Locally, I can see that being a disaster, but globally? we are definitely going to blow ourselves up.
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