Ways the Human Race could Destroy Itself :: Apocalypse

The End of graciousity Could the Human Species Destroy Itself? in that location are lots of ways humanity could be wiped out - although I dont think either of them are particularly likely. raw(a) causes - An extinction-level asteroid impact would probably be sufficient, although not much else would - a disease epidemic, major climate shift, etc. would still leave many a(prenominal) survivors to rebuild within a few hundred old age. The window for such an impact is, however, extremely short, because its extremely likely that within 300 old age or so we will have the means to predict and invalidate all dangerous impacts. And the chance of that happening is, from historical comparison, 0.001% or less.There are a few other possibilities that would be much more(prenominal) catastrophic, though. One is a supernova very nearby, which would blast Earth with intense da Gamma radiation and most likely kill all macro-organisms. However, there arent any stars large and old enough for thi s to be a risk for hundreds of thousands of years. some other is orbital destabilization of Earth (such as ejection from the Solar System) by a close-passing star - but the chance of that is extremely remote, and in accompaniment wed have thousands of years of warning. And the last that I can think of is alienate invasion which is really out there, obviously.The eventual solar threats to life on Earth are not really relevant to humanity/posthumanity. The sunniness is not large enough to supernova, but it will last engage the Earth when it comports out of internal fuel and swells into a red giant. Thats a good 4-5 billion years away, but well before that, though, the sunbathe will have become bright enough to heat Earths outdoors enough to trigger a major atmospheric shift by overwhelming the cloud effect (which keeps temperatures on Earth stable) with a shoo-in greenhouse gas effect, boiling the oceans and making the planet Venus-like, uninhabitable draw off by micro-orga nisms. But even that is about 2 billion years away, plenty of time for posthumanity to rise and either avert the problem or simply head elsewhere.Accident - A scientific experiment run awry, or an unexpected side-effect of some new technology could potentially collapse some serious havoc.One possible horribly catastrophic scenario would be the unforeseen generation of a miniature black messiness someplace on Earth. If the hole did not evaporate instantaneously (and it would have to be pretty large not to, so I dont know how it would be possible to generate one accidentally) it would quickly bore a hole to the center of the Earth, absorbing more and more mass as it went, and eventually implode the planet.