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What will trigger the end of the world?

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end of society: ecology, the atmosphere will change in content of oxygen qucker than we can adapt.

end of the planet: red giant expansion of the sun.
 
Originally posted by: necine
I don't think a disease will completely wipe out humanity. Even the most deadly diseases don't kill 100%. 1% of 6 billion is plenty.

Probably zombies, lol.
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Yeah, I'm a fan of accidental cause (never fear the stupidity of humanity will always prevail), or natural disasters (namely ones from space like asteroids/GRB/etc).

The other thing humans do really well, is survive. We are a pesky little race, that due to so many differences (geographical, genetic, intelligence, etc) there will be some of us survive.

 
Originally posted by: SagaLore
I think it will be a Genetic Famine.

Some European company tested a genetically modified crop in India that failed horribly, forcing thousands of farmers into poverty (many of them committing suicide). Not only did the crop fail, but it left no re-plantable seed.

Imagine another 50 years, and all our agriculture is based on genetically modified crops. Then 1 year, something happens to make all crops in the world fail.

It would cause a panic/riots for organic food, massive inflation - the economy will completely collapse. Lesser countries will starve to death and start war.
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I think dicking around with the food supply isn't that smart, and we can't see the far-reaching consequences right now. But I haven't heard of this before, you have a link?
 
Originally posted by: tenshodo13
Natural Disaster.

I call Gamma Ray Burst
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Yeah, this is about the only thing that would be completely global and we would have absolutely no warning. One day a super bright light appears in the sky, our atmosphere gets ionized, we're bathed in radiation, and all die within a few days-months depending on the shielding. The chances of a star within range (6000 light years I believe) bursting like this with it's poles aimed at Earth are incredibly remote though.

I myself think that at this point, our technology has made us extinction proof. No matter what hits us, some of us will still survive and repopulate.
 
Originally posted by: ironwing
The gorillas will do it.
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Damn Dirty Apes!

Originally posted by: Fritzo
I myself think that at this point, our technology has made us extinction proof. No matter what hits us, some of us will still survive and repopulate.
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We are far from extinction proof. A large object (say something like Ceres) hitting the earth could liquefy the entire surface for years, and even if we saw it coming a decade away there would be virtually nothing we could do about it. But other then something from space killing us, it is not our technology per se that has made us nearly extinction proof, it is our massive populations. It would be hard to imagine an event so massive that could kill off 6 billion people in a short enough time for some of us not to be able to adapt to it. Pure statistics will save us.
 
complete extinction of human race? i would have to say an enormous meteor strike in the next few hundred years. Hopefully after that we will have spread to other planets, reducing this risk. Epidemics could wipe out the majority of us, but not 100%
 
Originally posted by: SMOGZINN
Originally posted by: ironwing
The gorillas will do it.
Click to expand...

Damn Dirty Apes!

Originally posted by: Fritzo
I myself think that at this point, our technology has made us extinction proof. No matter what hits us, some of us will still survive and repopulate.
Click to expand...

We are far from extinction proof. A large object (say something like Ceres) hitting the earth could liquefy the entire surface for years, and even if we saw it coming a decade away there would be virtually nothing we could do about it. But other then something from space killing us, it is not our technology per se that has made us nearly extinction proof, it is our massive populations. It would be hard to imagine an event so massive that could kill off 6 billion people in a short enough time for some of us not to be able to adapt to it. Pure statistics will save us.
Click to expand...

We would be able to see something that large coming years in advance. We've already got concepts on how to deflect things that large. it's the smaller ones we're having a problem dealing with. They're harder to detect, can do a lot of damage, but they wouldn't cause a mass extinction.
 
What do you mean by end of the world? End of civlization as we know it, all civilizations, the physical planet, the physical universe, what?
 
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