What is the most realistic approach for people to survive total Earth destruction?

[someotherguy]

What would be the most realistic way for human race to survive and thrive if Earth is about to be destroyed? Imagine there's some kind of an unavoidable event that will completely destroy Earth - not Nuclear war, but there just won't even be Earth after.

The possibilities I know of are:
Terra-forming on a nearby planet like Mars or on a moon of some nearby planet around the Solar system. The nice thing is we don't have to go far.
Reaching a nearby planet hospitable to people. It seems like they are light-years away, so I'm not sure how reaching them would be possible (perhaps freezing people, or just sending eggs and sperm and a device to incubate humans on arrival?), or if we even know of any that are completely OK for humans - may need to do some terraforming anyway.
Another possibility is to build big space stations, where you can live, and mine asteroids to build them further. This seems hard, as you need enough room to grow food, etc.

Am I missing any possibilities?

How long is it until we're able to do any of this?

Edit:
I understand that none of these proposals will happen within my lifetime. But is humanity within a 100 years of being able to spread out? a 1,000 years? 10,000 years? I really hope it's like 100 years. By total destruction I mean there won't be Earth any more at all. I am imagining a rogue planet on a collision course, although if humans have technology to move onto other stars, there might be technology to move/destroy rogue planet ... depends what kind of technology is really needed to accomplish some of these things.

[Archangel Tyrael]

How long is it until we're able to do any of this?

I don't think anyone can really answer that properly.

[Heathy]

yeah all you'll get is complete conjecture, but if the earth was gone, we're pretty fucked to put it lightly, travelling to a new planet might work for a while but there is a good chance we'd never adapt and probably die off eventually from complications, if it didn't get destroyed you could always just stay in space for a while and then come back down after the shit storm is over. depending on the catastrophe though, i'm guessing it might be uninhabitable in which case your basically faced with the same situation as travelling to a different planet. we are unfortunately dependant on the ecosystems of this planet, without them we die, its really that simple, if we all disappeared tomorrow, the world would go on just fine without us, if all the insects disappeared it would be armageddon after a very short time.

the problem with freezing ppl is that it kills you, even if you could some how resuscitate a dead body, the ice crystals that build up in cells during freezing break the walls of the cells, like glass growing from out of the water contained within you. currently cryogenics is simply a pipe dream until you can somehow freeze someone without creating ice and while also not killing them in the process.

i guess it could theoretically be possible to create a closed orbital ecosystem that could sustain a certain amount of ppl but i feel it would be prone to failure at some point and its not something your likely to just whip up in the event of some world destroying catastrophe.

for the most part its split by opinion some ppl think, exploring space and finding things will lead us further, others think that its probably a waste of time and resources, and i guess other don't know what to think. for me, i'm actually in the 3rd group, i feel that it doesn't really matter, if we were meant to colonize it will happen eventually, but i don't think it will be for a long time, the moral and ethical boundaries on deep space exploration are thread spawning topics in themselves. personally i think we wouldn't survive on another planet no matter how close to this one it is, simply because we are not from there, the complications are many. for a small example its distance, even if we could travel at half the speed of light, it would take 40 years to reach say 581g say you fire off a probe first and wait 40 years to see if what it finds is a luscious planet, during the 40 years you take to get there anything could happen. so, whichever way you look at it, its a gamble. ofc when you get there then your compounded by problems such as simple things like 'will we poison the ecosystems by just being here' 'will we contract some disease that we have never had the chance to adapt to' and so on and so forth.

[Masark]

Depends on the exact event causing the Earth's destruction. Most possible means of making the earth not here anymore would require substantial lengths of time, giving us quite awhile to figure out ways to GTFO.

[Cyberowl]

I think it is safe to say that the most realistic approach to survive total earth destruction is not being on the earth at the time, no?

[Skroe]

It really depends on what you mean by destroying earth.

Is earth still mostly intact, just uninhabitable? Is it like a giant version of Mercury? Just a great dead iron and silicate rock in space? In that case, Mars is probably your best bet, but the chances of that failing are very high.

Has earth been obliterated? Is it a ring of debrie at 1 AU (larger and denser than the Asteroid belt)? It's likely that a large proportion of that end up in the sun, or ejected from the solar system. Mars' orbit might move in some. Maybe not

In either case, Mars is probably your best choice, but humanity is likely dead.

[xenogear3]

Flipping stock and real estate market will certainly not save Humanity.

[Grummgug]

the primary problem is radiation. we are largely shielded from cosmic radiation here on Earth because of the planet's magnetic field and thick atmosphere. but we would need heavy shielding to live on the moon or mars. humans would be exposed to more than 15x the maximum annual radiation limit of a worker in a nuclear power plant just on the six-month trip to Mars. and once there, you are still being exposed to radiation because mars doesnt have much of a magnetosphere and a thin atmosphere. mankind would have to live in heavily shielded bunkers.

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mankind would have two options. one is to terraform mars to block radiation and make it habitable. the other is to ditch our organic bodies and transfer our consciousness into machines so that the radiation problem is moot. to be honest i dont know which is more feasible. in 100 years, ditching our organic bodies may be vastly easier.

[Deleted]

Can't be done in our lifetimes, it sucks I know but sometimes it is best to get drunk and enjoy the mayhem.

[Grummgug]

bottom line is the universe is poisonous to us. our bodies evolved specifically to live on earth.

[Romanesca]

Can't be done in our lifetimes, it sucks I know but sometimes it is best to get drunk and enjoy the mayhem.

RIP hopes and dreams

[Skroe]

The funny part is, it's not the atmosphere or the lack of a magnetic shield that would kill us on mars... it's the landing.

If anyone figures out a way to land objects larger than SUV on Mars in one piece, alert NASA.

[Vouksh89]

Depends on the exact event causing the Earth's destruction. Most possible means of making the earth not here anymore would require substantial lengths of time, giving us quite awhile to figure out ways to GTFO.

That is certainly the most interesting website I've read in quite awhile. I just lost an hour reading through it...

[the game]

Can't be done in our lifetimes, it sucks I know but sometimes it is best to get drunk and enjoy the mayhem.

I agree with Rich. Unfortunately we don't have the technology for interstellar travel to find another earth. Like it's been said though in this thread it's unlikely we would adapt to another earth before we died out on it.

[Archangel Tyrael]

Can't be done in our lifetimes, it sucks I know but sometimes it is best to get drunk and enjoy the mayhem.

Personally, I'd be happier collecting berries and sailing to far away lands.

[Deleted]

It depends, will the disaster penetrate to my mums basement?

[xenogear3]

It is more likely humans kill themselves before Earth explodes.

[Xargoth6634]

Jump right before the asteroid hits?

[Elegiac]

A colony on Mars is the best bet. Michio Kaku had it right when he said that extraplanetary expansion is necessary for the long term survival of the human race.

[Gheld]

Can't be done in our lifetimes, it sucks I know but sometimes it is best to get drunk and enjoy the mayhem.

I second drunken mayhem watching.

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A colony on Mars is the best bet. Michio Kaku had it right when he said that extraplanetary expansion is necessary for the long term survival of the human race.

Freeman Dyson had an interesting proposal that would work in more of a pinch for time, which would be to create a hollow cavity inside of a comet, fill it with an atmosphere, develop a little eco system inside. It obviously wouldn't accommodate more than a couple hundred people, but realistically, if you had just a couple of years to get as many human beings off the planet (and the rest die) as possible, you'd be lucky to save more than a few dozen people.