Poll of the Day > How many years does the human race have left?

(+) Yeah! (+)

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200, cause by then we'll be space traveling and banging aliens so much we'll no longer be the human race but some hybrid of different alien species.

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Pretty soon we'll all be Newtypes

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69

Humans as a species will last for a good while even if something like a black swan event occurs, it's modern society that you should be worried about which isn't sustainable in the long run imo

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Very long by our standards (hundreds of years minimum). But not very long in the grand scheme. We're never getting out of this Solar System unless something crazy happens.

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3

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Technically once a species reaches a certain level of technology it's almost impossible for extinction unless there is a solar system wide event.

Even if the earth became incapable of sustaining life (naturally), we have the tech to create protected areas to exist in, while harvesting resources and eventually colonizing other planets/moons in our solar system.

At which point it would take the sun expanding etc to wipe out all life, and once we actually colonize planets/moons further away than mars (Titan etc), even that would not neccesarily wipe out humanity.

The question then becomes if/when the human race will move beyond our solar system, and while that seems unlikely with the tech we have now, you never know what the future holds. Even cold fusion would in theory allow humanity to create giant ships that could sustain generations of life while needing nothing (no new matter) to do so. That could allow travel to other solar systems at least and eventually allow humanity to spread out among the stars (even without travel speeds greater then light).

Alpha Centauri is only about 5 light years away, so even traveling at half the speed of light you could in theory make it there in 10 years. You would only need a vessel capable of sustaining life onboard for 12 years or so total, which we could in theory make right now (and certainly could if motivated by impending dooooooooom).

Basically people who left now in their 20's could be there partying in their 30's lol. And everyone knows in Alpha Centauri, 30 is the new 20.

Nuke war would not stop us, a meteor like the one that killed the dino's wouldn't stop us, global warming to the extreme that creates a venus like atmosphere would not stop us. The sun freaking going out completely...would not stop us.

It would be FREAKING HARD to wipe out humanity right now. Easiest method would be aliens with superior technology that come here and wipe us out, other than that, the sun going nova, a black hole intersecting with us (or being created by us because we mess with forces we shouldn't), a virus of some kind that rapidly kills everyone but isn't noticable until months after getting it (IE everyone is infected before we even know about it and can get people in isolated protection underground etc (Even then they probably have people in such places already just in case).

We are not going anywhere, at least not the whole race. The 7+ billion people though? A ton of things can cut that number down by 99% or more.

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Once the Reapers come.

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30

None

We're in a simulation because we're already extinct

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2 years and a few months.

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Billions

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Depends on how long it takes me to charge the battery on my ionic field disrupter device.
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Judgmenl posted...

Billions

lol

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108 minutes

But after I enter the code it will reset and we'll have another 109 minutes

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We'll (or at least our descendants) last until the last stars die out, unless we find a way to travel to a younger universe

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modern civilization, who knows, but humans as a species will probably last a fair bit longer than that. (which is scary to consider... a post-apocalyptic future is an almost certainty)

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Muscles posted...

We'll (or at least our descendants) last until the last stars die out, unless we find a way to travel to a younger universe

We won't even make it to Novopangaea.
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Pretty much what Wolfy said.

There are other planets capable of sustaining human life, we just need the technology to expand.

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This many:

https://youtu.be/imNtSPM3-r4

Shoutout to whoever originally posted this video on PotD, by the way.

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Maybe millions? Although we might evolve past humanity at some point.

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I will be impressed if we can make it another thirty years.

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Seriously 3

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The death of the world is a slow burn.

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deoxxys posted...

Pretty much what Wolfy said.

There are other planets capable of sustaining human life, we just need the technology to expand.

Then hurry up and develop it before scarcity of resources makes it more and more difficult.

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Criminalt posted...

Then hurry up and develop it before scarcity of resources makes it more and more difficult.

And then develop methods for effectively traveling across VAST distances, and still being viable on the other side.

People tend to discount just how huge space is - but colonizing even the closest extra-solar planets would be like the equivalent of being a tribe in Morocco 40,000 years ago building canoes and trying to sail across the entire Atlantic from to Florida in one go.

Short of us discovering some sort of hyperspace or wormhole technology that is functional and affordable, or finding cryogenic tech that can be both fully automated and safe, we'd almost HAVE to go with the Generation Ship concept from sci-fi, where you shoot a ship full of people off into space and hope it gets where it's going (and you better hope you can fill it with enough resources to survive the trip, which would be a HUGE weight/space problem), while also hoping that you can maintain and transmit knowledge and information effectively enough so that the great-grandchildren of the people who started will be capable of developing a functional society once they get where they're going. And taking into account the Extinction Threshold for humans, you'd need to cram a LOT of people into that ship (or send multiple ships over a staggered period of time), which would be a phenomenally huge investment (and an unlikely one, unless we're pretty much at the point of destroying Earth completely and are desperately fleeing).

Worse, if you just send the minimum number of people to create a viable self-sustaining community, you're going to run up against genetic bottleneck problems and risk getting wiped out by a single virulent disease or genetic disorder that crops up. So for a realistic chance of long-term survival, you're going to have to send WAAAY more than the bare minimum.

It borders on being similar to people who say things like "We should just build domed underwater cities" without understanding any of the insanely complex (and borderline impossible) logistics behind actually doing it. It's easy to SAY "Oh, we'll just advance technology and colonize other worlds", but the reality is we may NEVER do that, because the problems we need to overcome may be completely insurmountable within the limits of resources and development that we're constrained by.
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ParanoidObsessive posted...

"We should just build domed underwater cities" without understanding any of the insanely complex (and borderline impossible) logistics behind actually doing it.

Would you kindly

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ParanoidObsessive posted...

And then develop methods for effectively traveling across VAST distances, and still being viable on the other side.

People tend to discount just how huge space is - but colonizing even the closest extra-solar planets would be like the equivalent of being a tribe in Morocco 40,000 years ago building canoes and trying to sail across the entire Atlantic from to Florida in one go.

Short of us discovering some sort of hyperspace or wormhole technology that is functional and affordable, or finding cryogenic tech that can be both fully automated and safe, we'd almost HAVE to go with the Generation Ship concept from sci-fi, where you shoot a ship full of people off into space and hope it gets where it's going (and you better hope you can fill it with enough resources to survive the trip, which would be a HUGE weight/space problem), while also hoping that you can maintain and transmit knowledge and information effectively enough so that the great-grandchildren of the people who started will be capable of developing a functional society once they get where they're going. And taking into account the Extinction Threshold for humans, you'd need to cram a LOT of people into that ship (or send multiple ships over a staggered period of time), which would be a phenomenally huge investment (and an unlikely one, unless we're pretty much at the point of destroying Earth completely and are desperately fleeing).

Worse, if you just send the minimum number of people to create a viable self-sustaining community, you're going to run up against genetic bottleneck problems and risk getting wiped out by a single virulent disease or genetic disorder that crops up. So for a realistic chance of long-term survival, you're going to have to send WAAAY more than the bare minimum.

It borders on being similar to people who say things like "We should just build domed underwater cities" without understanding any of the insanely complex (and borderline impossible) logistics behind actually doing it. It's easy to SAY "Oh, we'll just advance technology and colonize other worlds", but the reality is we may NEVER do that, because the problems we need to overcome may be completely insurmountable within the limits of resources and development that we're constrained by.

Frozen sperm/eggs can handle the min population problems (and allow you time to set things up on a new planet before expanding the pop greatly as well).

Space is Vast, but again, you are not jumping right from earth to colonizing another solar system, first you colonize this one, have people on multiple planets/moons, tons of resources to use at that point etc. Even then, advanced tech like cold fusion would help greatly. In theory we could at least expand to the next solar system (closest to us) even with our current technology given time (and the full resources of this one).

It's 5 light years away, which is of course very far, but should be doable with our current tech, even without a generation ship.

The main problem is that we are not really working in that direction at all. We have not built a real space station, we are not trying to set up a base on the moon (or skip it and just try and build on on mars). That really should be our goal right now.

If we can get a decent setup on mars, so we can mine ore/ice there and expand outward from mars, we are well on our way to colonizing this system, and it would only be a matter of time till we did it.

From there, we have TONS of time unless something catastrophic happens to our sun. Interestingly enough, it's theoretically possible to take a large asteriod/mini planet (pluto I'm looking at you), and build it into a ship, giving you a ton of resources to use on the trip (probably requires a better method of propulsion and energy conversion than we currently have, but would save a FREAKTON of time building something in space that large).

Pluto is pretty huge, but Hydra, one of it's moons is much smaller, and made enterily of ice (very useful for fuel conversion currently for us). It's size is almost perfect to use as a base to add on, allowing humans to live off the resources (water) for a long trip, while still not requiring some kind of massively advanced propulsion system.

By the time we were actually ready to colonize another solar system though, we would probably have advanced tech that made using Hydra just a minor advantage if any at all, but still, a 32 mile or so base would allow for humans to travel for a very long time before needing another source of power/water.


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wolfy42 posted...

Frozen sperm/eggs can handle the min population problems (and allow you time to set things up on a new planet before expanding the pop greatly as well).

No. Probably not. Frozen eggs have small chances of success from what I remember
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LinkPizza posted...

No. Probably not. Frozen eggs have small chances of success from what I remember

As we've discussed before, the new form of freezing, called vitrification, is significantly more effective; studies demonstrate that 9095% of eggs frozen using vitrification survive the freezing and thawing process (compared to just 61% of slow-frozen eggs)

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wolfy42 posted...

As we've discussed before, the new form of freezing, called vitrification, is significantly more effective; studies demonstrate that 9095% of eggs frozen using vitrification survive the freezing and thawing process (compared to just 61% of slow-frozen eggs)

Youd still need a ton. Way more than you would need if you just took enough humans. And you probably wouldnt be able to get enough unless you forcefully took them from women. Especially since many dont want to give away their eggs. And the one that do usually sell them for a high price

And even then, they would still have to make it there I think youre not thinking of everything that could go wrong. I have to agree with PO here People just kind of say things like itll be easy because of technology. But theres always a bunch of other problems
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Feel like people are being super optimistic in here, even though I said myself humans likely have at least many centuries left. But that's still not that long. Certainly not long enough to assure safety. I don't buy into fanciful things like wormholes and exotic energy drives. And all it takes is one major event to plunge us back to the stone age and wipe out every single gain. Or even extinction. All the major extinction events happened before we were around. We never had to deal with one, and its inevitable global catastrophe will occur again. The problem with us is that we live on land. Life bounced back from catastrophe before but that was mainly ocean life. Anything that changes the atmosphere drastically would wipe us out. I'm sure there's underground bunkers and whatnot but the order of recovery is on 1000s of years scale. Good luck with that if the Sun gets blotted out and all crops fail globally.

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LinkPizza posted...

People just kind of say things like itll be easy because of technology.

It's because Science has become the new religion of the modern age. People who don't necessarily understand it still have blind faith in it and its ability to solve all problems and answer all questions, when that's not really how it works.

We've traded in cassocks for labcoats and worship labs instead of churches and temples. But the blind dogmatic faith is basically the same mental process our ancestors felt the first time they looked up at the stars and started talking about spirits and gods.
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Exactly 31 years.

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Average of 8-14 eggs per harvesting for IVF. Here is a site that talks about the millions of people who have been born from it already, and specifics about harvesting eggs (sperm is obviously extremely easier).

So yeah, other then actually needing to either get people to volunteer, or pay them for the eggs etc, the tech is already here to set up a system that could eventually grow millions of humans with different genetics.

The tech is there for most of what is needed tbh, it's just not everyone knows about the tech. Again, you don't just jump out into the universe and start flying around, you start off in our solar system.

We are not talking about magic level tech here, we already have satalites that have made it to where we need to go, which means it's just a matter of using resources.

To colonize Mars for instance, your best bet is to get a large # of ships with TONS of extra resources ready to go all at once. Enough to handle 3-4x the number of people you are sending. Plenty of food/water etc to get started once there for years, along with the tools to start mining etc, so you can collect resources on mars. In addition, after sending the initial "fleet", you can send additional resources until they get production up and running (even if it takes a decade to do so, just send another ship or two each year with additional supplies.

Biggest problem is building a "fleet" on earth and sending everything up uses a ton of resources which is why it would be better to have a strong space station first (where you can build things you have sent up) or better yet, make a base on the moon where you can mine resources and build things directly (using much less resources to get them into space from there).

We have the tech, and hell, had the tech 30 years ago. If we had been seriously working on colonizing other planets since we landed on the moon, and started building a big space station, then maybe 10 years ago created a base on the moon as well, we would be easily at a stage where colonizing mars would be in our near future.

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Tens to millions, depending on a lot of things.

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joemodda posted...

Humans as a species will last for a good while even if something like a black swan event occurs, it's modern society that you should be worried about which isn't sustainable in the long run imo

It is not sustainable but the reason it is not sustainable is not because of the average person. It is not sustainable because of these large corporations polluting the air and seas, with these oil spills, factories, etc.

Me taking longer than 5 minutes for a shower or taking a plane trip a few times/year really doesn't compare to multi-billionaires and their yachts and/or private planes and huge mansion(s!) If this world goes to hell in a handbasket with climate change, it is the unsustainable lifestyles of the wealthy elite, global corporations, and governments selling nature to the highest bidder (just look at this a-hole from Brazil selling off the Amazon, bit by bit). Or some of these politicians taking private jets to conferences halfway around the world to tell the average person they are the ones "screwing up" the earth.

Depends on how fast man can destroy it.

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JOExHIGASHI posted...

108 minutes

But after I enter the code it will reset and we'll have another 109 minutes

I only just got this.

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Criminalt posted...

I only just got this.

It's an old show

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