End of humanity.

[SpazzyMcGee]

Face it, one day humanity will kick the bucket, throw in the towel, take a swim with the fishes, start push'n up daisies, etc.; but how will it happen?

Will it be trillion years from now when the universe dies a cold death?
Will it be a 50 billion years from now in series of interstellar cataclysms?
Will it be 5 billion years from now when the Sun implodes or the preceding expansion?
Will it be 10 million years from now in the next mass extinction?
Will it be 10,000 years from now in the next ice age?
Will it be 1000 years from now due to climate change?
Will it be 100 years from now due to nuclear war?
Will it be 3 years from now when 2012 hits?
Will it be next Thursday?

EDIT:
Will humanity evolve into a sub-sapient species? (evolving into a still intelligent new species counts as survival)
Will humanity get wiped out by our mechanical creations when they learn to think for themselves? (integrating ourselves with machines counts as survival so long as it doesn't involve a bloody pogrom against base line humans)

[Aladdin]

.

[Area Man]

"Only God Knows"

l.o.l?? While I'm sure that kind of attitude is a real hoot to be around all day, it's also intellectual murder.

--

I'd like to place a $million bet[1] on < 1001 years, but it depends on what exactly you mean by humanity; can we evolve into genetically-incompatible supermen? can a meteor send us back to the stone-age? I though we were overdue for mass extinction.

[1] I'll take it now and pay it back if it don't happen.

[stephentyrone]

[1] I'll take it now and pay it back if it don't happen.

With interest, payable by your heirs to those of whomever takes the bet?

[Area Man]

[1] I'll take it now and pay it back if it don't happen.

With interest, payable by your heirs to those of whomever takes the bet?

Sure, why not. You'll have to ensure that my stock breeds, your stock breeds... but, if your and my stock interbreed within 1000 years, they might end up owing it to themselves.
Our fates will be intertwined. Might this personal interest in itself change the outcome? a sort of self-fulfilling prophesy?

[Aladdin]

"Only God Knows"

l.o.l?? While I'm sure that kind of attitude is a real hoot to be around all day, it's also intellectual murder.

"I said my message"

[brakos82]

2880 when that asteroid's supposed to hit us.


Although I bet the Twitterers thought the world ended a couple days ago.

[lu6cifer]

Spoiler:

Aliens in the form of Satan will come to our world, collect our children for integration with the Overmind, thus halting the proliferation of our species

[SpazzyMcGee]

I'd like to place a $million bet[1] on < 1001 years, but it depends on what exactly you mean by humanity; can we evolve into genetically-incompatible supermen? can a meteor send us back to the stone-age? I though we were overdue for mass extinction.

OK, more options. Will humanity evolve into a sub-sapient species?

Humanity will most definitely evolve into some new form past the 1 million year mark, but so long as we retain relatively the same intellect or gain a greater one we will count it off as survival of humanity.

Oh, and humanity integrating with machines in the future counts as survival unless their is a bloody purge involved (like cyborgs or AIs killing off all baseline humans).

[Aladdin]

,,

[QwertyKey]

It has to be next thursday! Because you gave the option.

Anyway, 2012 is just a baktun, so that is unlikely.

A nuclear war is likely in next 100 years *Looks at Dee Pee arr! Kay*

So that's my 'answer': 100 years?

[phillipsjk]

I think evolution will take hold within a few million years. That is to say, we will evolve into something else if we don't wipe ourselves out first.

+ vote for 10 million (mass extinction event)

[sje46]

Everyone has his own thinking . It all rely on Religion -- Bibbe I think describes , Qura'an describes for muslims & I surely believe what Qura'an says( What God said ).

Sure, fine, you're religious. But that doesn't answer the question. What you are doing is akin to responding to the question "Why is the sky blue" with "Because God made it that way!" You are ignoring the physics of all of it. When will humanity die, and how? Giving a religious answer in these highly atheist fora to this is better than your non-answer.

Humans are adaptive, like all animals. We will survive an all-out nuclear war and plagues and famines, and global warming, especially with our technology and shelters etc. Pretty much the only thing that will really destroy us completely is something that will destroy pretty much all life. A comet, or our planet suddenly jumps a few million miles closer to the sun. If war kills all but .01% of humanity, we can probably survive that as a species with our technology and inventiveness.

We could also evolve into much less intelligent creatures, although I doubt that will happen. That is our niche, our intelligence. I don't see how evolution will select for dumber humans, but I guess you really can't know.
So, I would say a few million years, at least.

[Aladdin]

,,..

[notzeb]

Aladdin just failed the Turing Test!

Forum bots are advancing at an incredible rate these days... still not sure how they could have made one this advanced.

On topic: humanity can't be wiped out before I die. And I'm living forever. I'll figure out a way to reverse entropy within the next trillion years, too, so you don't have to worry about a heat death.

[Aladdin]

.,.

[OOPMan]

Aladdin just failed the Turing Test!

Forum bots are advancing at an incredible rate these days... still not sure how they could have made one this advanced.

On topic: humanity can't be wiped out before I die. And I'm living forever. I'll figure out a way to reverse entropy within the next trillion years, too, so you don't have to worry about a heat death.

Hahahahaha...

[phillipsjk]

My guess was that English is not Aladdin's first language, but he claims to be: "Aladdin Rajab , (an) Australian living in Asia studying." - intro thread.

My guess is he seized upon the forum category "Religious Wars" without realizing that it is "tongue in cheek".

Originally I think it was intended for just computer related stuff -- editors, IDEs, the like. Later some people posted some other traditional (nerd) holy wars, like Star Trek vs Star Wars. From there it sort of expanded more and more... Zerg vs Borg, video game villains, etc. Now we've got Hawking vs Higgs.

- The Scope Of Religious Wars

So far nobody has made the leap to real religious wars. You could end up dangerously close to "hate speech," which is illegal in my country.

[Aladdin]

....

[ash.gti]

Question :If you look at the picture what culture or what country would you think I belong to ?

A pixilated one.

Anyway how is this a RW?

[Dream]

Question :If you look at the picture what culture or what country would you think I belong to ?

Wham! is a country now?

[notzeb]

Gah! I try to be open-minded, but I somehow keep forgetting that not everybody on this forum is American.

I should travel more.

[OOPMan]

Question :If you look at the picture what culture or what country would you think I belong to ?

Er, hard to say. You look mostly caucasian, but with a slightly near eastern look. So, somewhere in the near east?

[Aladdin]

,,.

[Aladdin]

,..

[ash.gti]

Wham! is an old TV series...

[Aladdin]

Wham! is an old TV series...

No sense + No sense

[ash.gti]

No sense + No sense

I am afraid to tell you most of what goes on in these forms is nonsense.

[Aladdin]

No sense + No sense

I am afraid to tell you most of what goes on in these forms is nonsense.

[bboylobo]

i think we will be in for a rude awakening on december 21st 2012. There is going to be a lot of crap happening up until then. i cant wait really. The look of "WTF mate" on many jesus freaks' face will be awsome

[notzeb]

i think we will be in for a rude awakening on december 21st 2012. There is going to be a lot of crap happening up until then. i cant wait really. The look of "WTF mate" on many jesus freaks' face will be awsome

I'll believe anything coming from someone with 0 posts.

How... how do you do that? Is this a post from the future?

Edit: oh wait, maybe religious wars don't count towards your post count. In that case I'm sticking with my vote of never. (In the worst case, we can always colonize a different universe, with entirely different laws of physics...)

[OOPMan]

Question :If you look at the picture what culture or what country would you think I belong to ?

Er, hard to say. You look mostly caucasian, but with a slightly near eastern look. So, somewhere in the near east?

I'm a pure muslim person .

Really?

You don't say?

Sorry, but could you please correct yourself....

A pure muslim person?

Muslim is not an ethnicity. Muslim is a Religion.

Are you Iranian?
Are you Iraqi?
Are you Saudi?
Are you a Palestinian?
Are you from the UAE?
Are you from Ethiopia?
Are you from Pakistan?
Are you from Afghanistan?
Are you from South Africa?

Are you from any one of the other numerous places in the world with Muslims?

Seriously...

If there's one thing that pisses me off it's when someone says: I am a Muslim when what they mean is: "I am a South African Muslim" or "I am an Indian Muslim".

Religion DOES NOT EQUAL Country/Ethnicity.

Also, Muslim is not a culture.

Why is it that so many people have a huge problem separating the following out from each other:

• Country
• Ethnicity
• Religion
• Culture

Race is not in the above list because it is a faulty grouping system.

/rant

[Area Man]

What's the secret, then? You can not only not add to, but actually take away from a discussion, and turn it into a self adulation shitpile, without so much as an official warning?!

Religion ruins even religious wars.

- - -

Spoiler:

Aliens in the form of Satan will come to our world, collect our children for integration with the Overmind, thus halting the proliferation of our species

Yes, yes, but how soon?

[Ran4]

I answer A: we'll evolve into genetically-incompatible supermen within 200 years or B: trillion years from now when the universe dies a cold death.

[Kaeyn]

I bear a strong belief that anyone who believes that the world will end within the next few years (or millenia, even) either doesn't know what they're talking about or is very strange. The many theories that have come up about the end of the world either cannot present any believable evidence behind them or have just been so-called prophets shrieking "The End Is Nigh" to the sky.

This pretty much demonstrates my point of view:
http://www.cracked.com/article_17445_6- ... lshit.html

The Mayans have pretty much been considered by everybody else in modern society to have been wrong, and morally disgusting. They had to carve a human chest cavity open every day just so the sun would rise. If they're considered wrong about this, they can be considered wrong about their apocalypse theory.

It is most likely true that the world will end, but not in NEARLY such a short period of time. People who say that the world's going to end due to a number of different theories just to be smartass-ish, that's fine. If anyone actually takes these theories seriously, and are preparing for our inevitable end of days, get real. Everything'll be fine. It's gonna take a lot more than words to end the world.

[notzeb]

It's gonna take a lot more than words to end the world.

Those are the words of complacency, my friend! You have doomed us alllllllllllllll

[SpazzyMcGee]

Humans are adaptive, like all animals. We will survive an all-out nuclear war and plagues and famines, and global warming, especially with our technology and shelters etc. Pretty much the only thing that will really destroy us completely is something that will destroy pretty much all life. A comet, or our planet suddenly jumps a few million miles closer to the sun. If war kills all but .01% of humanity, we can probably survive that as a species with our technology and inventiveness.

We could also evolve into much less intelligent creatures, although I doubt that will happen. That is our niche, our intelligence. I don't see how evolution will select for dumber humans, but I guess you really can't know.
So, I would say a few million years, at least.

I think most people underestimate the effects of a full out nuclear exchange. Let's use the Cold War as an example. If the two superpowers had launched their nuclear munitions at their stockpile peaks they would have obliterated every major and semi-major population center across the entire Northern Hemisphere. Anything that survived the initial strikes would most certainly die withing weeks or months as radiation and starvation sweeps the effected regions.

The most productive agricultural regions on Earth would be obliterated and the radioactive dust kicked up by the explosions would block out the Sun and kill off most crops across the planet. This mixed with war between the smaller nations who survived the nuclear exchange seeking to fill the power vacuum would completely destroy what we perceive as civilization across the entire planet.

All of our technological progress would be loss with the majority of people who held the information in their noggins and without easily accessible fossil fuels (the stuff we have pretty much burnt up) there will be nothing to fuel future industrial technological advance. Humanity will be reduced to its pre-industrial serfdom only this time it won't be a fertile world, it will be a nuclear wasteland with sporadic winds raining down radioactive death for centuries. Humanity will slowly decline until some random plague wipes us out.

We aren't all that different than neanderthals in the BEST of times, and look what happened to them.

If we don't learn to keep our nuclear weapons in our pants I think the universe will find intelligence is a disadvantageous adaptation.

[phillipsjk]

I bear a strong belief that anyone who believes that the world will end within the next few years (or millenia, even) either doesn't know what they're talking about or is very strange. The many theories that have come up about the end of the world either cannot present any believable evidence behind them or have just been so-called prophets shrieking "The End Is Nigh" to the sky.

This thread is not discussing "the end of the world;" it is discussing the end of Humanity. There is a difference.

How to destroy the Earth @ Things Of Interest

[SabreKGB]

We aren't all that different than neanderthals in the BEST of times, and look what happened to them.

If we don't learn to keep our nuclear weapons in our pants I think the universe will find intelligence is a disadvantageous adaptation.

We killed them. Without another killer hominid around to wipe us out, i don't think it's an apt comparison.

And, come on, we haven't shot off a load in anger in over half a century. I think we deserve some credit for that. I mean, could you go without pickling for 50 yrs? Yeah, neither could I.

I think our sun going red giant and killing us is probably the least likely (after 2012), since we know about it this far in advance and will have plenty of time to get the fuck out of Dodge.

[thatthatguy]

Carrying around nuclear weapons in our pants sounds like a surefire way to exterminate our species.

I'm not seeing humanity dieing out today (seeing as it's Thursday now). The whole 2012 doesn't worry me. It's about as likely as a prediction I made of the world ending in 2065 for no adequately explained reason. I also like to think that we, as a species, have grown up enough to not destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons. We may still see wars where nuclear weapons, but not to the point that it makes the human species extinct. We're certainly not going to all die from climate change , ice age, or mass extinction. Unless the climate changes to the point that life on earth ceases to be possible, at least a few humans will survive.

Thus, we're down to the 5 billion + causes that I can't even begin to speculate about.

The caveat here is that most religions foretell some kind of "end game" scenario, in which the world is destroyed/remade etc... However, since these people/texts have been predicting doom for thousands of years. I don't see a reason why they can't just go on predicting doom for thousands more.

TLDR: The Human Species be fine for the foreseeable future.