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Comment by xiphias2 | Hacker News Reader

Because they are not smart. Intelligence often wins over simple aggressive behaviour. Also this is why AI is so scary.

For most of history, and increasingly today the simple aggressive behavior of bacteria, viruses and fungi was uncontested. For all of our intelligence, they still win a lot, and our best efforts are becoming less effective as they adapt. They don’t even have nervous systems, but numbers and a fast reproductive cycle are a bitch. See also: a colony of army ants killing everything in front of them.

I don't see it happening. In the past they were able to kill more than 50% of humanity. I don't believe something similar will adapt by itself again. We have internet, full body suits, a lot of technology to defend against them.

Sure, and yet mosquitoes alone infect over 700m people a year with various diseases, and rack up more than a million deaths each year. I find the Internet is surprisingly ineffective against malaria or dengue too. It’s also true that few people can or would wear a full body suit all day, every day. For god’s sake, we can’t even get everyone to wear a condom, never mind biohazard suits.

Still I respect your optimism, however unfounded it seems to me. I think the next really nasty flu will probably disabuse you of it, but I hope I’m wrong.

He said 50% of humanity, while a million people is a large number to us it’s nowhere near 50% of humanity.

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