Human Extinction Scenarios

god forbid new Yorkers ever leave new York, how could I forget :)

voted gray goo

voted transcending upload
why bc it looks interesting

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/c/c4/Colossus_the_forbin_project_movie_poster.jpg/220px-Colossus_the_forbin_project_movie_poster.jpg

^^^ one of the best "superintelligent computer" movies, not a transcendent upload though but certainly a self-improving computer. But it turns out not to result in the extinction of all mankind, just our enslavement.

Nuclear annihlation still seems totally possible and could happen at the shortest drop of a hat, one wrong button press and that's that. New plague and/or evil nanobots also could basically happen, right?

Not sure I buy global warming as an extinction level event as opposed to just a decline and fall of modern life as we know it

Yeah, I feel like as long as nuclear weapons are still lying around, the potential for nuclear annihilation still exists.

everyone in the world would celebrate together in the biggest party ever

Not everyone; the "left behind" folks and other armegeddonish types would be way-bummed.

Destruction by ETs is my favourite => foolish arrogant earthlings thinking that we're kings of the universe and all that. Congratulations, Planet Xmorphion-93Q - what can we way, the better team won!

"Armageddon-ish"

voted nuclear holocaust for nostalgia's sake.

i dont think nuclear annihilation is considered possible, there simply aren't enough nukes on the planet (probably never were)

there never were enough nukes, old man. there never were. *kicks dust*

http://gizmodo.com/5899569/how-many-nukes-would-it-take-to-blow-up-the-entire-planet

Of course, none of these figures take fallout and other atmospheric effects into account—just square mileage blown away. So it'd actually, technically, require fewer warheads to exterminate our species. But that's irrelevant, Maximilian points out: "There are an estimated total of 20,500 nuclear warheads in the world today. If the average power of these devices is 33,500 Kilotons, there are enough to destroy the total earth landmass." And why do we need so many of these things again?

This website looks like it'd be good for many of these topics: http://armageddononline.tripod.com/nuclear.htm

i like physics disasters, among a bunch of disenchanting punishments for hubris wherein we insignificantly fizzle out, it'd be nice to prove our importance by DESTROYING THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE.

worried about this poll ending

ends with us all being raptured

Polls tend to end in a whimper

world will be ended by dozens of lurkers all voting at once

d3athdr0n3 maybe

world ends when we're tied up and can't prevent a certain box from being opened.

really so many of these scenarios enlivened my childhood

i was terrified of nuclear war as a kid, still kind of am... but since I get kinda panic attacky thinking abt how the world will actually end I went with a lolsy fiddle-dee-dee answer

tbh most of this stuff scares the crap out of me *peeks out from under blanket*

i used to stand on the big hill behind my house and listen real intently for incoming icbm. #bornmorbid

also i swear to god i remember getting a duck and cover lesson during the last major round of nuclear brinksmanship but i have to wonder if my mind didnt invent it because i have to assume that by '84 to '86 d&c was considered a pretty lol proventative measure.

9-9-9 tax proposal = proof that humanity is living in a simulation

I took solace in the fact that we lived in the central of so many urban areas (Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC) and close to a major AFB so we'd probably die in the initial strike and not have to cling to some cruel mockery of life like those suckers in The Day After.

strongo, how old are you? I remember a duck and cover drill in elementary school in the 80s, including the part about putting newspaper over your head, which I know wouldn't work having seen The Day After and ruminating near constantly on our inevitable total nuclear annihilation.

i swear half the teen fiction i read when I was a kid was about end of the world/nuclear holocaust

z for zacariah, children of the dust, tomorrow when the war began, etc

read them all like they were handbooks, lol

Alas, Babylon

For some reason, I distinctly remember the part about their struggles to find salt.

I harbour post apocylptic fantasies and read/watched anything like that as a handbook too. Children of the dust was amazing!

I took solace in the fact that we lived in the central of so many urban areas (Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC)

security blanket #1 against being abducted by aliens (aliens would never abduct me because so many other people would see them!)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Excellent.

I thought Colossus The Forbin Project was pretty awful. But I did like that they tricked the omniscient supercomputer into looking away by faking being a couple in love, and then convincing the computer they needed some privacy while making love, during which time they plotted its demise.

You guys have seen this right?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2D71CveQwo

*cries*

No way, that's cool.

Almost as cool as being able to grow organs.

http://i462.photobucket.com/albums/qq341/ZombifiedToast/zergling.gif

i was crying re: poll results

pff i can run and i once grew organs but you don't see me ending humanity.

what is the "gray goo" wrt accidental misuse of nanotechnology? is it like that futurama episode where there were billions of molecule-sized benders?

flawed superintelligence is gonna be so pissed that we didn't give it any credit.

cheetahs can go way faster than that...they shoulda been more realistic w/ the name

9-9-9 tax proposal = proof that humanity is living in a simulation

― Clive "The Chip" Crinkly (King Boy Pato), Sunday, April 8, 2012 4:51 PM

For real if you set all the taxes in Sim City 2k at 9% you were made for life.

gray goo is: a bunch of tiny self-replicating nanomachines endlessly self-replicate while consuming the matter around them in search of resources for self-replication, and their numbers grow exponentially until eventually the earth is covered and then devoured by a gooey (apparently) swarm of nanomachines

also while checking that i discovered a widespread convention i was unaware of

Denial-of-service attacks in the virtual world Second Life which work by continually replicating objects until the server crashes are referred to as grey goo attacks.[11] This is a reference to the self-replicating aspects of grey goo. It is one example of the widespread convention of drawing analogies between certain Second Life concepts and the theories of radical nanotechnology.[12]

I thought Colossus The Forbin Project was pretty awful. But I did like that they tricked the omniscient supercomputer into looking away by faking being a couple in love, and then convincing the computer they needed some privacy while making love, during which time they plotted its demise.

― and i don't even care, similar to how a badass would respond (Abbbottt), Sunday, April 8, 2012 8:02 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I guess I just liked its unrelentingly bleakness - from the word go, things get worse and worse for our heroes and there's just absolutely no hope. Also, the evil computer's voice is pretty cool.

I would have voted genetically engineered biological agent. My personal fave 'whimper scenario' is Vonnegut's Ice 9. I have been hunting for some not too heavily academic non-fiction about past extinction events and got recommended Tony Hallam's Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The causes of mass extinctions. It's mind-blowing that our pre-human mammal ancestors somehow managed to cling onto life during some monumental double dip apocalyptic events.

Lolled all over again at most heinous fart

A good recent review of evidence for the end-Permian extinction event (the big one 252 million years ago. Siberia covered in lava, CO2 skyrockets, global warming, ocean thermal stratification, photic zone anoxia, widespread purple sulfur bacteria, hydrogen sulfide releases choking coastal dwellers and destroying the ozone layer. Nearly everyone dies.

Also,

These emerging insights from geology, geochemistry, and paleobiology suggest that the end-Permian extinction may serve as an important ancient analog for twenty-first century oceans.

Excellent, thanks.

It seems counterintuitive with the current population level, but I’m starting to think evolutionary self selection/declining fertility rate is the real elephant in the room. Could get really ugly.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-world-might-actually-run-out-of-people/