The greatest threat facing Humankind?

[kneady]

I made the hundred-year estimate based on the fact that we've gone from 3 billion in 1960 to 7 billion in 2010, which is only 50 years. I assumed it would take about 50 years to recover from the effects of social breakdown and rebuild our infrastructure, and another 50 years for the population to recover.

I'm also assuming that medical technology would continue to improve rapidly, and if 35% of the population had died from a virus, I suspect the (remaining) governments of the world would pour incredible amounts of money into medicine to stop it from happening again. Unless the virus is one that is particularly dangerous to children, in which case infant mortality rates would skyrocket, and the global recovery would slow considerably. Again, we're talking hypotheticals, but it's still a lot more fun than doing homework on a Friday afternoon! :tongue:

Here's an interesting and amusing analysis of global population growth:

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

 

[Lebanese Dolly]

: Good one! I'm going to try to work that word into an essay sometime, I'll let you know how well it's received. :tongue:

 

[J.A.]

For sure I have heard/read the same points.

That is why it is far better to find the space junk several orbits BEFORE it might impact Earth. The earlier the intervention, the more subtle and safe the various solutions.

Even if we are not yet building the best space craft yet, we know several ways to do it, and even if less than efficient, there are no barriers that $100 billion (or more) wouldn't solve.
There are more than enough nuclear warheads to deflect and likely destroy (bits small enough to mostly burn up in our atmosphere) almost anything local.

Of course its a dangerous universe. If we are targeted by a planet or massive black hole- adios!arty:

 

[Emad Thee]

Ok, here's my take on the subject:

1) virus' attack the elderly and the young first. So any virus that kills off 2.3 billion of us would be hitting them first. This would affect our growth rate. Plus, our growth rate is based on the medical community continually improving healthcare therefore extending lifespans etc. If a major outbreak occurred, it wouldn't stop at 2.3 billion. It'd keep killing until a cure was found. That too would limit our population growth.
2) Asteroids: I often wonder why the space program is SO hellbent for leather to reach Mars. I often wonder if they know something they aren't telling us......
3) Natural disasters: other than a "planet killer" volcano, there isn't much that we don't have the technology in place to overcome.

Our greatest threat is ourselves. Nothing else compares to the damage we are causing to the planet. No other animal (other than a locust) shits where they eat SO much as we do.

For eg: watch the movie gasland. They are fracking natural gas and putting in toxic chemicals into the land under our feet for the sole purpose of profit. When the chemicals start showing up in our fat stores, because they entered the food chain, what then?

The gulf oil spill: They destroyed the seafood/shrimp population for 100 yrs if not forever.

They banned whaling due to the risk of extinction due to overfishing. We're doing that to sharks too now and with shark fins having zero nutritional value, they are throwing out ALL the nutrients as garbage. Are they slowing or stopping? Nope.....idiots still want their shark fin soup.....

Now I know I've harped on this before on other sites, but until we learn to use our fricken heads, and do something to make it illegal or cost prohibitive to sit in rush hour traffic everyday, we are fucking ourselves in the ass. All you have to do is look at the pollution caused by people sitting in bumper to bumper traffic for hours each day, and the brown haze that hangs over the highways and you'll see first hand just how self destructive we really are.

Just think of it this way: we can pretty much do without a LOT of the products we use and consume but what we cannot live without? Air and water. Those two elements are THE most important things to a living creature yet we pollute both with impunity.

As for the whale wars/sea shepards? I think they should be equipped with 10" guns and torpedos.............

 

[stimpy]

A truly good read ladies and gentlemen. Enjoy life and live it as if it's your last day. If any of the scenarios depicted in this thread were to come to fruition we are all doomed so why worry about it!

Eat,drink, be merry and fuck like rabbits, it's all good!!

 

[priv828]

See, I think that is the problem right there....for far too long people have been acting like "hey we're all gonna die anyways so why not"?? Why not dump 100 million barrels of oil into the gulf, why not pollute our drinking water, why not pollute the soil we grow our food one....

Why not? because what about our kids? What about future generations? What about a little self control? What about leaving the planet better off then when we inherited it?

See, the reason I say mankind is doomed by our own hand is until such a time that people stop putting themselves first, there can be no real progress. I mean situations like "I'm so rich I can build a 100 story building just for me and my family", I'm so rich I can pollute everyone's drinking water because I have a purification plant at home...I'm so rich I make billions of dollars off someone else's illness....I'm a politician so I can spend money because there's an endless supply.....(just some examples).

Everyone blames "corporate greed" on the world's ills but corporations are run by people......

 

[Answer Queen]

Well said.

As far as the astroid is concern, Armageddon is just Hollywood. The worse thing you could do is break up an astroid in little pieces, unless all the pieces are to miss the earth, a very unlikely scenario, the little pieces would be more damaging than the whole big piece; think air burst munitions like the daisy cutter bomb BL82 B, or the classic atom bomb. They're much more effective detonated from above than a ground burst situation. Asteroids would be much the same. If onwe is going to hit it's going to hit, so hang on.

 

[Ayameko]

The greatest threat facing Humankind? Humankind itself. We are killing our planet already.

 

[jasneskis]

well Blackie, the difference between one big asteroid as opposed to a bunch of smaller ones is that while the smaller ones will kill a lot of people via the air burst you wrote about, it will no longer be a "planet killer". As the movie suggested, it an asteroid the size of texas hits earth, nothing will survive, not even bacteria (due to the intense heat created by the impact).

Smaller pieces create havoc and kill millions or billions, it'd be like the effect of an H bomb on a city or 10,000 1,000 pounders....

A good movie on this subject is Knowing with Nicolas Cage. Forget the numerology plotline but the solar flare issue is something scientists know already is a problem (with the way it is affecting our planet now).

 

[ican2bpicky]

No Air:???:

 

[Pompal 09.]

......."the tyranny of evil men"

 

[feedphillipnow]

Fair enough, as it boils down to one big kick in the nuts or a death by a thousands cuts. It still sucks. I just can't get all messed up in thinking about an event that I can't do much about.

Now, I burnt my toast this morning, I'm pissed off something fierce.

 

[Rhymhey]

especially if it was your last two pieces of bread...I SO hate it when that happens lol

(or even worse: you get it all slathered nicely with peanut butter and you knock it off the plate and it lands face down on the floor!)

 

[Benedict Y]

While I share your sentiment that lots of money improves our chances, I don't think it's that straight-forward. I'm usually a big fan of capitalism (1st degree was in Poli Sci, and I was only one credit short of a minor in Economics) but history is filled with very expensive mistakes that didn't work nearly as well as they were meant to.

Example? The European Space Agency's "Beagle 2" that went to Mars im 2004. After five years and nearly $100 million dollars, it was a complete failure that never sent back any data to Earth. Scientists are still puzzled as to why it failed; one theory is that it landed in a crater, while others suggest it may have missed the planet entirely (which tells you a lot about how tiny miscalculations have huge consequences).

Another example? The Challenger shuttle blew up because statisticians misread the temperature data, thinking the distribution was linear instead of curvilinear. So, they ordered the launch in colder weather than was prudent, and due to the failure of a rubber O-ring (cost: US$0.50) the whole shuttle was destroyed.

Even if we had enough nukes to destroy the asteroid, can we design, manufacture, test and equip a ship that can:

- carry a nuclear payload that large
- reach a sufficiently-far distance from Earth to destroy/reduce the asteroid in time
- get through the trail of asteroid fragments surrounding the larger asteroid without damage, and place the nukes on or inside the asteroid
- prepare for launch in a very short timeframe
- launch in less-than-ideal conditions (even a strong wind is enough to scrap a launch these days, and a ship like this would be even more sensitive to weather variations than a traditional shuttle)
- provide astronauts with enough protection to carry out the mission without getting killed first
- break the asteroid into small enough pieces to burn up in the atmosphere (again, no guarantees, even using every nuke on the planet).
- get the astronauts out of the blast zone (if possible, though I suspect this would probably be a one-way trip)
- avoid any and all human error that would compromise the mission or cause it to fail (probably the hardest part, for it seems that no amount of money can prevent the most basic of all fuckups)
- deal with a million different "unknown unknowns" (which always seem to come up at the most inopportune moments)?

Even with a trillion dollars, it's still not certain that all of these objectives would be within reach, especially without adequate time for design, testing, manufacturing, and proper training for the astronauts going on the trip. The optimist in me wants to believe it, but the realist in me knows that nothing is certain, especially for a complex space mission unlike anything we've ever done before. I know that we'll try our best, but there's no way of knowing if we'd succeed.

***

As much fun as this has been, I'll have to leave the discussion and get back to my real life - but here's hoping that NASA continues to take the threat at least as seriously as we are! :tongue:

 

[Scotch]

There are a few details that aren't so accurate there Nikki:

1) A nuclear device is not that big. In fact, they are a LOT smaller than your average satellite therefore the shuttle can carry them no problem. In fact, there have been rumors about a suitcase sized nuclear device......
2) The shuttle would be used to carry the parts into orbit then whatever vehicle would be launched from there. Alternatively, they can use the same launch vehicle that will be replacing the shuttle.
3) Not sure if it is the same probe but one was destroyed on impact and after much deliberation and investigation it was found that the people who designed the landing gear designed it to withstand a free fall from 100 feet, and the people who designed the retro rockets had them cut off at 100 METERS........OOPS
4) Breaking up the asteroid using every nuke on the planet: There are enough warheads to destroy the earth right now, if they aren't enough to destroy an asteroid, then the asteroid is bigger than the earth itself......
5) Astronauts not getting killed: Any attempt at a distance far enough to prevent impact on earth would be a one way ticket as it is, so all the necessary stores etc for a return voyage wouldn't be necessary therefore more protection to get them to the asteroid would be possible.
6) You wouldn't have to destroy the asteroid to prevent a disaster from happening. According to your example, if a minor miscalculation can get a probe to miss an entire planet, the asteroid would only have to be diverted a miniscule amount to get it to miss by 10,000 miles. At a year away it would probably only have to be moved a millimeter off course.

But I think you're making one too many references to the movie armageddon. Even though it's a great flick, it's more than a little farfetched......if you're going to reference science fiction, you could use any of the star trek movies or shows. They all show asteroids in a condition no different than our moon....I mean really, in the movie the fricken asteroid GROWLED....a growling asteroid...yeah, OH KAY right.....kind of difficult since there is no air in space and since sound has to travel in an atmosphere, there would be no sound even if it did actually growl......

The very nature of a capitalistic society and every man for himself is what will eventually do us in. Just think of how many decades of man hours have been wasted by scientists not sharing information? Just imagine how quickly new drugs could be developed if every drug company worked together as opposed to against one another? Trial and error costs time as well as money and if there IS an asteroid heading towards earth? That mentality would prevent us from having the technology in place to do something about it.....

 

[jordan h]

Speaking of the "moon", isn't it about time we named the fricken thing? Every other planet that has a moon or moons all have names......

Calling ours the "moon" is retarded......

I say call it Bob.....that's it...Bob the moon!!!!

 

[valdizzle]

LUNA!

 

[naguero]

LOL that's just moon in italian.....

That's like a guy named Peter saying he's changing his name. To what you ask?

Ah Pietr........lol.....

 

[MissMoi]

and it IS the name of our moon. Just like Jupiter is the name of a Roman God, our star is Sol (Latin) and the most distant mini-planet Sedna is Inuit for sea goddess,


"The Moon, Earth's only natural satellite, known as Luna in Latin and other languages
Luna, the Roman incarnation of Selene, the goddess of the moon in Greek mythology"

 

[crc]

I thought our "moon" was called "The Moon" (capitalized...) and all the other planets' satellite moons are called moons (lower case "m").

Further to that, because we only have 1 "moon", there is no need to distiguish one from the other whereas in the case of Jupiter that has over 50 (I think I read somewhere that there were 63), it becomes very necessary! LOL

Similar to the case when speaking about "God" and "gods"... :???: