Hate to break it to you, but short of something sudden like our sun exploding, getting directly hit by a cosmic ray or giant asteroid, it’s incredibly unlikely.
We have reached a technological point where we could save ourselves from our own extinction, caused by us or not. It’ll almost certainly be a tiny fraction of today’s population though, but enough will survive to avoid extinction
That technology requires massive manufacturing capacity that requires civilization. When water and food become scarce from a changed climate, there goes that.
We won’t go extinct for a time, agreed. We’ll cling to our hardened structures and aging tech for as long as we can.
But humans thrived on easy mode. In a climate we evolved to thrive in. Without that, we’ll become subject to nature’s whims once again.
This is precisely why “we’re going to colonize Mars” is a hilarious pipedream. We couldn’t make a practically infinitely forgiving environment that automatically recycled our waste, water, and air work. We stressed it as hard as we could for as long as we could until it started pushing back, yet we only increased our attack.
A few peak humans growing potatoes on mars is a cute “yay humanity” moment. But you’ve met us. A colony of hundreds, or thousands, some born into what would inevitably be a highly class segregated system that demands their servitude, given the private profit egotists now in charge of such things, where anyone making a mistake or having had enough easily leading to boom everybody dead try again? Yeah, that’ll go swell.
Extinction of mankind.
Hate to break it to you, but short of something sudden like our sun exploding, getting directly hit by a cosmic ray or giant asteroid, it’s incredibly unlikely.
We have reached a technological point where we could save ourselves from our own extinction, caused by us or not. It’ll almost certainly be a tiny fraction of today’s population though, but enough will survive to avoid extinction
Humans can do a lot of things that they aren’t.
That technology requires massive manufacturing capacity that requires civilization. When water and food become scarce from a changed climate, there goes that.
We won’t go extinct for a time, agreed. We’ll cling to our hardened structures and aging tech for as long as we can.
But humans thrived on easy mode. In a climate we evolved to thrive in. Without that, we’ll become subject to nature’s whims once again.
This is precisely why “we’re going to colonize Mars” is a hilarious pipedream. We couldn’t make a practically infinitely forgiving environment that automatically recycled our waste, water, and air work. We stressed it as hard as we could for as long as we could until it started pushing back, yet we only increased our attack.
A few peak humans growing potatoes on mars is a cute “yay humanity” moment. But you’ve met us. A colony of hundreds, or thousands, some born into what would inevitably be a highly class segregated system that demands their servitude, given the private profit egotists now in charge of such things, where anyone making a mistake or having had enough easily leading to boom everybody dead try again? Yeah, that’ll go swell.