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Comment by standardUser | Hacker News Reader

I've never understood this type of apocalyptic thinking. Humans are the most adaptable and most widespread of the large animals. We are arguable the best at surviving, at least in our 'class'. And while it's true we've come up with some pretty devastating ways to destroy each other and ourselves, that is very different from destroying all of humanity. We've faced plagues and global wars before, but even when huge portions of humanity have died off it's still not even close to all of it.

Even trying to devise a way to guarantee that humans go extinct seems like an almost impossible thought exercise. How do you exterminate 7 billion people spread over ~57 million square miles of land?

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I think its an artifact of pervasive guilt and shame. Much of the developed world enjoys the highest standard of living that humans have ever experienced, and did little to nothing to get there. It feels like flying too close to the sun, an overdose of good. To satisfy a sense of justice, the logical conclusion is judgement for millions that commit (perceived) poor behaviors without consequence.

People have fervently believed in apocalypses for thousands of years, in at least ever other generation. The fact of the matter is that we are evolved from people that survived by exterminating other people groups. We have deep genetic memories of actual apocalypse, from tribes to nations. We are evolved to anticipate war and destruction- and adapt.

I believe that most people don't actually believe in 100% extinction of humans; they believe that there will be a relatively few amount of survivors, and hope to be among them.

> How do you exterminate 7 billion people spread over ~57 million square miles of land?

I mean, just make the earth uninhabitable for humans. There are a few ways to accomplish this; even excluding climate change, nuclear weapons were and continue to be one such specter as the article alludes to.

Sure, some people will continue to eke out an existence even then, but it's quite easy to imagine humanity perishing over the course of a few generations after an event like that.

Also, when people say things like "humanity being wiped out" they usually don't literally mean "extinction of homo sapiens". They usually mean "quality of life significantly degraded" such that life resembles a Mad Max movie more than what we know today.

Maybe it's a good thing. Compared to earlier generation's ignorance or apathy I'd rather people think we need to fix things sooner than later.

We are living in very scary times.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/threat-limit-capital-flows-ch...

What about that portends extinction?

> Even trying to devise a way to guarantee that humans go extinct seems like an almost impossible thought exercise.

I personally don’t think it will happen, but it’s not exactly hard to think of possible ELEs given how we’re messing with the atmosphere. Another one of these [1] and we’re toast.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Oxidation_Event

How about just one 96km diameter asteroid?

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