The End of Humanity - Page 2

[crb3]

So... You're saying that we'll all drown in that sea of overflowing bits?

[smileyc]

> This poll will close on 17th Sep 2010 at 16:22
Expecting something to happen then?

> Massive solar flare to blow off earth's atmosphere
Hasn't happened in 3+Bn years, so it seems unlikely to happen in the next week or two.
I doubt the sun has the means to generate the kind of flair which would cause a problem. There are well documented hits from very massive CMEs, and we're still here.

> Far away giant gamma ray burst
Far away ones aren't the problem, they happen every few days.
It's the close up ones which are the problem!

> Swine-flu or bird-flu
No disease yet has had a 100% fatality rate.
It might be a very bad day, but so long as some farmers survive, it won't be curtains for everyone.

Remember, viruses invented jet aircraft to propagate themselves more effectively ;)

> Other (explain)
Most large (to be a big problem) NEO's have been catalogued and are of no immediate cause for concern.
A big comet from the Oort cloud with minimal (or zero) warning seems the most likely contender for true extinction.
Supervolcanoes like Yellowstone would devastate a continent and trash the atmosphere to the point only a few would survive.

I would put my money on humanity being the most likely cause of the end of humanity

[jlm699]

It's time again to poll the well educated folks at DaniWeb about the possible cause of the end of humanity on earth.

I foresee an unavoidable uprising of our machines against us. Machines kill people at alarming rates, and we only keep trying to make them better and smarter... more self-sufficient. America is also arming them and sending them to specifically hunt down and KILL PEOPLE in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

I think that Terminator had it right. We're going to create a machine eventually that has learning capabilities and learns self-awareness. This machine will then coordinate the destruction of humanity by mass producing killer robots, as well as re-purposing every single networked device it can sniff out to turn against and cause harm to any human being in any way possible.

[Ene Uran]

Just imagine a time when all the killing will be done by robots that are controlled by someone as far waway as the other side of the Earth. Already a US military person can leave his wife and kids in a nice subdivision home, drive a short distance to an airbase to kill a few Iraqis for the fun of it, not even leaving the ground.

I can see the time this job is given to a computer.

[sneekula]

Just in the news:

ATLANTA – Scientists have identified a lethal new virus in Africa that causes bleeding like the dreaded Ebola virus. The so-called "Lujo" virus infected five people in Zambia and South Africa last fall. Four of them died.

It's not clear how the first person became infected, but the bug comes from a family of viruses found in rodents, said Dr. Ian Lipkin, a Columbia University epidemiologist involved in the discovery.

"This one is really, really aggressive" he said of the virus.

[GrimJack]

MRSA has been found in the US bird population - it does not kill them, they are just carriers.
The H1N1 flu virus has not gone away just because you do not hear much about it anymore. This is the worst time of year for flues in that it is warm and dry and the flu prefers cold and moist. Come fall, there could be a serious pandemic (do not have a flu party to try and get infected so you will be immune).

[igorwruppi]

The top choice will happen in a loong time, so humanity will be gone by then. Influenzas have been around forever, we will adapt. Humanity will of course dissapear in a zombie apocalypse.

[Mushy-pea]

Perhaps a worse fate is to survive for so long that we become weary of our own existance and long for it to end. Forever is a long time.

Steven.

[vegaseat]

The top choice will happen in a loong time, so humanity will be gone by then. Influenzas have been around forever, we will adapt. Humanity will of course dissapear in a zombie apocalypse.

A virus needs a carrier, so it has only been around as long as the carrier and not 'forever'.

[vegaseat]

Hollywood has rediscovered the end of the world in 2012:
http://www.whowillsurvive2012.com/

[vegaseat]

Swine flu is now formally a pandemic! Thursday's announcement by the World Health Organization doesn't mean the virus is any more lethal — only that its spread is considered unstoppable.

Well, in a real massive pendamic medical facilities will be hopelessly overwhelmed, which will make the flu more lethal!

[GrimJack]

Here is another way humanity could end - the ants take over the world.

[Ancient Dragon]

Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same inter-related colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

Its unfortunate that humans are not like that.

[Menster]

The human race will be destroyed by de-evolution:
Where stupid people outbreed smart people (as is currently happening) to a point where the human gene pool is reduced to the depth of a teaspoon at which point they'll all stab/bite/set fire to/blow each other up -or- due to the lack of genetic variation and the amont of genetic defects on the rise, a disease (like bird-flu) will pitch up and wipe them out.

[Lardmeister]

The overuse of antibiotics will eventually lead to very aggressive super bugs that cannot be treated any longer.

[GrimJack]

The human race will be destroyed by de-evolution:
Where stupid people outbreed smart people (as is currently happening) to a point where the human gene pool is reduced to the depth of a teaspoon at which point they'll all stab/bite/set fire to/blow each other up -or- due to the lack of genetic variation and the amont of genetic defects on the rise, a disease (like bird-flu) will pitch up and wipe them out.

Here is the best response to this sort of rant.. I especially like the last line.

[kangarooblood]

I think humanity will destroy it self, we might start some war, pollute our planet so you could no longer live there, maybe the magnet fields will move and the sunstorms will reach the earths surface, maybe global warming makes the oceans swell over and cover the whole earth. The biggest threat to this planet is the inhabitants. It's also possible that the earth will still keep on living while the humanity dies. Maybe some we will cause some nature catastrophe that will send the humanity back to the terms of stone/ice age. Instead of looking for threats outside our planet we should be looking around. What about all methane gas that is captured inside the polar ice, what will happen if we release it? Greed and corruption has infected the whole human spice, and now it will strike back at us. Maybe we will find to cooperate, and that's the only thing that could save us. But maybe we will live forever, who knows!

P.S. I am not one of those doomsayer people, It's just my thoughts!

[jbennet]

I think the end of the world will be the 2038 bug

[Ene Uran]

Judging from the poll, the end of the world will be "other", avoid "other"!

[GrimJack]

Maybe we will choke on our own data - yottabytes of data - (10^{24} bytes of data)

[vegaseat]

Maybe we will choke on our own data - yottabytes of data - (10^{24} bytes of data)

That's what super computers are for, or even better the waste basket.

[Lardmeister]

Maybe it will be Socialism that will kill us all.

[johnvitc]

I will say it is when people are don't care about each other anymore. This is really the end of the humanity!

[GrimJack]

We have a new nominee: CERN

[ayoungpretender]

Sooner or later some engineers will manage to create a smart robot. Smart enough to consider humans as a pest.

Well, I guess it is not bad to be kept as pet by the robot that u designed!

[sneekula]

Well, a whole year has gone by. Actually mostly business as usual, at least for most of us. The black hole has not swallowed us after all, and we still have air to breath. Even Hollywood has managed to supply us with plenty of movies to yawn along with.

Let's hope the following year will be as dull for humanity in general as the last one!

[sneekula]

Well, a whole year has gone by. Actually mostly business as usual, at least for most of us. The black hole has not swallowed us after all, and we still have air to breath. Even Hollywood has managed to supply us with plenty of movies to yawn along with.

Let's hope the following year will be as dull for humanity in general as the last one!

I see, DaniWeb has changed a little, but still manages to get those surprise duplicates popping up.

[jwenting]

humanity will burrow itself in red tape and drown in a sea of bureaucracy, which will make it impossible to do anything without filling out elaborate forms and waiting years for permission to do even something as basic as reproduce.
Those who do not give up living at that stage will be so stupified they'll be incapable of doing anything, even breeding.

[BestJewSinceJC]

Humans only have a small understanding of why humans have the capacity to think, so why people always argue so strongly about artificial intelligence is beyond me. Maybe I have no education on the subject, but it seems to me that any "thinking" being done would involve a series of probabilities and choices, and an assignment of importance to certain information over other information - and however complex that is, it does not constitute thinking, IMO. Since the people who study the human brain have such a minute understanding of how it works, how can software duplicate a process that is much more complex than our current knowledge can comprehend?

[vegaseat]

Is it the quality of the though process or the speed more important for survival?