The greatest threat facing Humankind?

[ponders_99]

To some of you, this may be preaching to the converted:

The Background on Viruses and Pandemics

A)Most of the following is based on reading widely, especially specific history books, medical papers and listening to the great CBC Show 'Quirks & Quarks' over many years.

B) Despite vast strides in science and medical technology, viruses remain one of the most deadly risks to all of humanity. They are vastly smaller than bacteria, quicker to mutate, harder to diagnose and almost untreatable to this day (drink lots of fluids-pray:frown.

C) For many years PRIOR to Swine and Avian flu, scientists have written, blogged and broadcast about the cyclical nature of pandemics and the STILL weak position of medical science against viruses.

D) Read 'The Great Influenza: The story of the deadliest pandemic in history' by John Barry (there are others). It will scare the shit out of you- Steven King (The Stand) did not have to make up much.:gasp:

E)Epidemiologists and other scientists say a DEADLY pandemic will hit within another 20 years (overdue at that). But there is NO way to know when, where, how extreme or from what vector (pigs, birds) it will erupt.

F) OF COURSE, I want doctors, politicians and media to react like crazy when EACH threat looms and reaches pandemic proportions! At the moment, H1N1 is no worse than 'regular' influenza (a too much ignored killer), but there ARE some very disturbing signs in how it has mutated, who and how it kills.

G) Ask yourself what happens if even 1% of the GTA became SERIOUSLY ill, even with a LOW mortality rate? What do you think happens to hospitals and doctors with a sudden influx of 40,000+ contagious patients?

Get the H1N1 shot {or whatever the next crisis warrants}
Get the regular flu shot
Get the anti-pneumonia shot
Get Twinrix shots
Get (ladies) the HPV shots

 

[LillianaKay]

I've got 20 years left to fuck as many women as I can.

Thanks for the heads up Bear. :whip: : :666:

 

[Nico]

The human race has survive viruses and pandemics.
Greatest killers are mass Valcanos eruptions or the earth crush letting off a massive gas leak. Could be Meteor or the moon moving towards the earth.
As for illness, it the strongest that survives.That is why some groups have certain illness and others don't.It a way of fighting off some viruses and pandemics.

 

[bcbole92]

I'm going to have to disagree with you bear, sorry. The H1N1 "pandemic" turned out to be quite an expensive hoax! (Possibly perpetuated by the drug companies, IMHO but who knows...)

No... the greatest threat to mankind (barring ELE natural disasters) is the industrialization of our food supply.

Much of what ails us as humans can be traced back to our food supply (or rather lack thereof...)

Just think, if one eats properly, you are already getting the necessary and essential vitamins and minerals to ward off most common illnesses and couple this with an active and healthy lifestyle and you will naturally boost your immune system.

Unfortunately, our food supply has been steadily eroded for many years... :???: :shock:

If you haven't already seen Food Inc., I highly suggest you procure yourself a copy!

[video=youtube;5eKYyD14d_0]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5eKYyD14d_0[/video]

 

[Sarah A]

First, agree with you on much, starting with food issues and natural health:great:. Last year I read the excellent 'Omnivore's Dilemma'. Details of the industrial/government 'Corn Complex' are scary enough:???:.
At least we have the KNOWLEDGE to solve the problem, even if political stupidity endangers billions.

However if you read the histories of flu, smallpox and other viral pathogens, it is clear that even the best diet cannot cure, limit or eradicate viruses. And while a healthy body is a usually a good advance guard for most illnesses it is NOT always the case (viz. Spanish Flu) and healthy survivors can be deadly carriers.

As far as natural disasters, only thing I can think of with the potential to wreak massive damage (millions of casualties) is a caldera volcano. And some geologists think we are overdue for THAT to!:shock: And of course we can do NOTHING about it.
But that pales beside the 10s of millions that a Spanish Flu could slaughter.

H1N1- Doubt very much it is a hoax. Too many 'conspirators' to co-opt. And do you mean-
There is/was no such thing as H1N1?
There was no pandemic?
The vaccine was just water?
Or...?

 

[Ari]

It has been awhile since I read this. There was a release of gas and only 4% of creatures survived on the planet. I wish I remembered the gas?

 

[Pompal 09.]

This was a movie ?

The greatest threat to mankind? Not sure but it'd not anything WHO would tell you about I know that. I would have to say overpopulation, depletion of resources and adapting to climate change but this would be over millions of years.

In the short term it's "The View", " MTV" and Fox News

 

[airforcewife64]

Perhaps I should elaborate... I was referring to the fact that the media blew the "pandemic" WAY out of proportion. In that sense I am calling the "pandemic" a hoax. I believe H1N1 (or whatever you choose to call it), was in fact an actual virus, but it wasn't any worse than other seasonal flus & no where near the "pandemic" EVERYONE predicted. And using the spanish flu outbreak of almost 100 years ago is pretty much like comparing apples and oranges... IMHO, conditions were much different back then with respect to sewage treatment, water treatment and general personal hygiene... (Just my opinion...)

I maintain that these viruses are simply natures way of "culling the heard" so to speak.

Ever heard of survival of the fittest?

A harsh reality, but one that has existed since the dawn of time. :???:

Just my nickels worth...

 

[vwvw30]

Agreed, but the sad thing is- this is the product of our own doing. We have created a nanny state for ourselves... No one wants to take responsibility for anything... Something happens and everybody screams it is the fault of this person or that person... or this group of people or that group of people. SOMEONE has to be accountable? Don't they? :???:

That, in my opinion is BULLSHIT!

What ever happened to "shit happens"? Yes, it is unfortunate... but it DOES happen! You just gotta do everything you can to make sure it doesn't happen to you. :shock:

In the case of viruses and illness... and the flu in particular, it really just affects the old and unhealthy... tells ya something doesn't it? And taking a flu shot is simply masking the problem, because a new strain will show up next season and you'll have to get a new shot! The drug companies have it made! And the general public is following their marketing plan perfectly! :roll:

The problem is our lifestyle. Change your lifestyle and take control of your own life. You will look better, feel better, and you won't even worry about getting sick. :great:

 

[Pompal 09.]

Possibly, though there's no consensus whether this was the sole cause of the Great Dying, or whether it was one of several, concurrent disasters that combined to wipe out a huge number of families and genera. Still, I don't think such an event would happen quickly enough to kill off our species; we'd have enough time to create enough contingencies to live through it.

Without a doubt, the biggest threat to humanity would be another asteroid impact, similar to the Chicxulub impact that created the K-T boundary:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Tertiary_extinction_event

We simply wouldn't have enough time to respond, and every human on Earth would probably be dead within 24 hours. Massive, 800-foot tsunamis would wipe our shorelines clean, and when the 1000-degree ejecta comes rocketing back to earth a few hours later, it'll torch everything left on the planet's surface.

(Total nuclear war deserves an honourable mention, but I don't think it would wipe us out entirely, like an asteroid would; even if only 0.0001% of the humans on earth survived, that would still be enough for our species to recover eventually).

This is why I laugh when people tell me that humans are actually capable of "destroying" the earth... when you look at what she's been through in the last six billion years, Earth has proven herself to be pretty damned resilient; we can throw as much "Global Warming" at her as we want, and she won't even bat an eyelash. Earth was here long before we were, and she'll be here long after we're gone - anyone who thinks we're "killing the planet" needs to talk to an archaeologist or a geologist for a few minutes, and find out exactly what our planet has gone through. :

(Yeah, yeah, I know, I'm a huge science nerd... But I'm also hot, so I can get away with it! )

 

[Stacey]

And yet again, I default to the uber-wise George Carlin!

[video=youtube;eScDfYzMEEw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eScDfYzMEEw[/video]

 

[Account--Suspended]

..... and certainly a 'planet killer' chunk of rock has the most potential for utter destruction.
However- we understand the nature of the threat ('near Earth' mapping has increased significantly in recent years), and we DO have the technology to deflect/destroy the dangerous asteroids or comets. A similar scientific and pragmatic understanding of viruses is not in sight.

And of course, not much chance we can hurt the planet. A moment in geological time (say 1,000,000 years?) heals all.

(Nice new Avatar pic BTW:great

 

[link]

WoodPeckers

 

[Hazzaaaaaaa]

Seriously? I think it was from my uncle's ass. Seriously.

 

[orly]

[/B]

There are a few flaw in your thoughts. People were tougher back in the day, there are more of us, we do more traveling to the four corners of the world and the number of diseases that are triggered by yet unknown pathogens thanks to science will kill millions. When you consider that the black death killed 35% of the known world's population in the 14th century, you should be concern. Today that would be 2.3 BILLION people.

 

[Lu-chan]

Shhhhhhhhh!! He may be nearby and hear you.

 

[righteousjohnson]

Thanks, glad you like the pic - it turned out a little "blonder" than I was expecting, which sort of contradicts the posts I'm making in this thread... :tongue:

I'm not sure if we currently have the technology capable of deflecting/destroying an asteroid... we would probably be able to detect it before it hit, but I don't think we could really do anything about it. Armageddon notwithstanding, even if we did blow it up with all the nukes we have, we'd still get hit by the resulting fragments, which still might be enough to wipe us all out.

I remember reading somewhere that blowing it up would be catastrophic, but altering the asteroid's trajectory, with a strong gravitational pull, it might be a viable possibility. Problem is, we'd have to be a long way from earth when we give it a nudge, and none of the shuttles in our current fleet have enough range to get that far out, nor do they have enough mass to sufficiently alter the asteroid's path. It was written by one of NASA's top astrophysicists, and he said we should be taking the potential threat much more seriously than we currently are.

I'll look around for a link, but if anyone else knows the article I'm talking about, feel free to post it up! :great:

 

[Matt St.James]

Not to sound callous, but the death of 2.3 billion people wouldn't put as much of a dent in our development as we might think. A virus wouldn't destroy all our infrastructure (notwithstanding the damage caused by social breakdown) and based on population growth patterns, we'd probably be back to 7 billion in less than a century, hopefully with a better understanding of how to deal with the next virus that comes along.

I guess it's a silly thing to quibble over ("No, this is more deadly!" "No, THIS is more deadly!" "No, THIS...") but it's a lot of fun to debate in hypotheticals, isn't it? :tongue:

 

[Pompal 09.]

No argument here - that's why I consider myself a conservationist, rather than an environmentalist. I love the diversity and beauty of nature, but I really think that some of the self-described "environmentalists" have gone right off the deep end, such as:

One of my favourite episodes:

[video=youtube;OQPGy49Cw5E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQPGy49Cw5E&feature=related[/video]

: @ Cartman's version of Poker Face! :

 

[Ol Jackrabbit]

To recover that quickly would require a growth rate of approximately 10% a year and that hard to do, but you have a point. It might take closer to 150 years. That is 7+ generations. The infrastructure/societal breakdown would come from the system not being able to handle that much indiscriminate death and illness. we had trouble handling the ~50 million that died from the Spanish flu in 1918 and that was only 2.5% of the world population of ~2 billion. It's been noted that the black death had lingering affects for over 300 on Europe's society/economy.