When do you think the human species will go extinct?

[Aeula]

Next month.

Humanity will kill eachother over the perfect xmas gift, and the one left standing will kill themselves because they realized they killed the person they where supposed to give the perfect gift to. The end.

[Lora]

Spoiler alert; we all die and end. Food is finite. An "apocalypse" is surely to be soon since we are finally at a relatively comfortable position in the world. Theres that asteroid that is coming that could hit us in like 2029 or 2030ish, supervolcano, quasars, anything really.

[Deleted]

Speaking long term: The earth has no chance of survival. Eventually it will be destroyed by the sun. Unless something hits or moves the earth knocking it out of the solar system, then the rock known as earth will survive but it'll probably just be a rock at that point.

If that happens, Earth will still be destroy, because if something impacts on it, that will make it move, will most likely destroy it instead, also, assuming it doesn't get destroyed, without a Sun, we will literally freeze, unless we live on the underground, but I don't really know that.

[Wildtree]

I find it interesting how much optimism there is. It's a good thing tho.
However, it's a little funny too that the majority of votes goes to the answer "We will eventually send our species to reproduce to other habital planets."
Yet we have first to find a planet that can even be used to live on. And then how to get there. It takes us "forever" already to reach our sister Planet Venus.
38 million kilometers at the closest range possible.. That's a damn long flight. Now we talking about other solar systems.
I believe it would be outright stupid to believe that we are the only ones. Or even more that there wouldn't be a planet were we could live.
But I doubt that outsourcing would be possible anytime soon.
It may take tens of thousands of years til we get to that point.

[Anakso]

Spoiler alert; we all die and end. Food is finite. An "apocalypse" is surely to be soon since we are finally at a relatively comfortable position in the world. Theres that asteroid that is coming that could hit us in like 2029 or 2030ish, supervolcano, quasars, anything really.

We all die I agree, it's the way of life. I don't think humanity will ever all be dead though, at least not any time soon, or that an apocalypse is coming soon. That 'could hit us' is like a minor 1 in a million chance of hitting us, and if it turns out it's going to hit us, that'd actually be a good thing. Countries will work together to stop it, we have the ability to do that now. Whether nukes or they start funding the recently hypothesized tractor beam or any of the other on paper only (mostly due to lack of funding) ways we've come up with to stop an asteroid. I doubt the Supervolcano would wipe out all life either, it'd be a huge blow but we'd continue. Don't know why you included Quasars, doubt one of those is coming for us.

[Deleted]

Haha, "never" is an option, oh sweet scrotum skin.


Fast edit:

Theres that asteroid that is coming that could hit us in like 2029 or 2030ish.

science.nasa.gov

Asteroid 2004 MN4 will come scarily close to Earth on April 13, 2029, but it will not hit.

Also the size of it is like 0.3km, so it can only damage a small area like ½ france or something.

[Anakso]

If that happens, Earth will still be destroy, because if something impacts on it, that will make it move, will most likely destroy it instead, also, assuming it doesn't get destroyed, without a Sun, we will literally freeze, unless we live on the underground, but I don't really know that.

That's why I said rock known as earth. The earth in terms of large rock will survive, just everything on it will die. Also a black holes gravity could fling us out of the solar system without touching us. The chances of a black hole coming over and doing that is pretty damn small though, far more likely the earth will survive until the point the sun expands.

[Isilbêth]

When Wow will end.

[Decagon]

Technically the species Homo Sapien will go extinct. Either we all die or we evolve.

Sort of this. I think it's entirely inevitable that we will evolve if we survive to populate other planets, however, I'm still counting this as a "human survival" case.

[Urmydinner]

If we're not wiped out by a disaster first, we will most certainly go on to colonize other planets. 99.9% of all of the species that ever lived are extinct, but none of those creatures have the brain power and technology that we have to potential to posses.

[Kazzyku]

I was kind of thinking we'd run out of resources to sustain ourselves. Hipsters and their organic farming don't realize that organic farms can't actually feed very many people compared to the more traditional-type of farm. Honestly, the kind of living farmers/ranchers have make it difficult for me to believe that people still even do it. For example, cocoa is insanely difficult to harvest and only grows in a very specific area, and the people that harvest it make pennies a day. It's very likely that we won't even see "real" chocolate in our lifetime; and if we do it would be considered a delicacy.

But back on topic, I think the most realistic thing to happen would be running out of clean air, clean water, or food. Look how quickly the population has exploded, and it's going to keep getting higher at an alarming rate. People need to be educated about having children that they cannot properly care for - in all parts of the planet. I've read an article where the norm is for uneducated women to have several children, whereas a woman with a higher education may have only one or no children at all. So not only is our population getting larger, we're actually getting stupider as a whole, too. So there goes your hopes of intergalactic space travel and colonizing other planets - we can't do that if we're too dense to tell our asses from a hole in a ground.

Perhaps we'll evolve and adapt. Perhaps the planet will find a way to reverse our gigantic footprints. Who knows.

[Wildtree]

If we're not wiped out by a disaster first, we will most certainly go on to colonize other planets.

Well now , for our own sake, hopefully they are empty... Cause what if they are inhabited and those who live there aren't happy about our arrival at all? lol

[Decagon]

I was kind of thinking we'd run out of resources to sustain ourselves. Hipsters and their organic farming don't realize that organic farms can't actually feed very many people compared to the more traditional-type of farm. Honestly, the kind of living farmers/ranchers have make it difficult for me to believe that people still even do it. For example, cocoa is insanely difficult to harvest and only grows in a very specific area, and the people that harvest it make pennies a day. It's very likely that we won't even see "real" chocolate in our lifetime; and if we do it would be considered a delicacy.

But back on topic, I think the most realistic thing to happen would be running out of clean air, clean water, or food. Look how quickly the population has exploded, and it's going to keep getting higher at an alarming rate. People need to be educated about having children that they cannot properly care for - in all parts of the planet. I've read an article where the norm is for uneducated women to have several children, whereas a woman with a higher education may have only one or no children at all. So not only is our population getting larger, we're actually getting stupider as a whole, too. So there goes your hopes of intergalactic space travel and colonizing other planets - we can't do that if we're too dense to tell our asses from a hole in a ground.

Perhaps we'll evolve and adapt. Perhaps the planet will find a way to reverse our gigantic footprints. Who knows.

While not ideal, hitting the carrying capacity doesn't mean all of humanity will go extinct, just lots and lots of (as in, most) people will die, leaving the rest of the humans to continue to repopulate.

[Wildtree]

Perhaps we'll evolve and adapt. Perhaps the planet will find a way to reverse our gigantic footprints. Who knows.

This one fits:
How much is left?

[guff]

In my mind, our only chance at survival would be to disperse. We need to spread out (not on one planet) to have any possibility of survivng the "inevitable" freak accident. When it will come is impossible for me to say though

If we do spread out, we will, in the end, evolve into distinct species. If the survival of one of them is enough then I could be tempted to hope our species will live for a really long time - loosly stated :P

Realistically, I think most of the human race will be knocked out by said freak accident soonish (within hundreds/thousands of years). This may or may not be a setback for the race

[Kazzyku]

This one fits:
How much is left?

Holy crap that's depressing. So we'll feel the sting of the lack of resources in our own lifetimes, and relatively soon. Good grief.

[Deleted]

but none of those creatures have the brain power and technology that we have to potential to posses.

Where of all assholes did you read that, or is this just random crap said by some random person?

[Decagon]

This one fits:
How much is left?

I took AP Environment Science at school once, and while I don't claim to be an expert or anything, my teacher pointed it out that for the 15 years (or so) he has been teaching, every single time he has us do an assignment to figure out how many years of x resource (usually accessible coal or oil) the years left always seem to remain constant or even go up. Technology will continue to allow us to consume at a rate that we are until we truly get low enough that furthering technology does nothing for us, at which point, I have faith in humanity that we will adapt, after all, our ability to adapt is why humanity exists and has continued to exist.

[Wildtree]

Holy crap that's depressing. So we'll feel the sting of the lack of resources in our own lifetimes, and relatively soon. Good grief.

We have to take it with caution. Not sure how accurate it is.
However it is definitely the case that we running terribly short on drinking water, as we know it.
Does not account tho, that we have the technology to make drinking water. If that's perfected we will never run out of water, given the vast amount of salt water we have.

---------- Post added 2012-11-21 at 10:34 AM ----------

I took AP Environment Science at school once, and while I don't claim to be an expert or anything, my teacher pointed it out that for the 15 years (or so) he has been teaching, every single time he has us do an assignment to figure out how many years of x resource (usually accessible coal or oil) the years left always seem to remain constant or even go up. Technology will continue to allow us to consume at a rate that we are until we truly get low enough that furthering technology does nothing for us, at which point, I have faith in humanity that we will adapt, after all, our ability to adapt is why humanity exists and has continued to exist.

I'm not arguing that

---------- Post added 2012-11-21 at 10:37 AM ----------

About our water problem:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/...er-in-one-map/
http://www.universityworldnews.com/a...20831164011938

[SirRobin]

I'm not sure our resources are really "that" finite but they are hardly unlimited. Of course, not going extinct hardly means maintaining our rampant consumerism either. Humans are just as adaptable socially and ethically. So I could easily see us going the "solyent green" or "logan's run" route in order to survive. May not be a world many of us would be comfortable in but we'll likely be dead by then anyway.