Hacker News Reader

Comment by cj | Hacker News Reader

Within our lifetime we’re safe.

I think the point is 100-300 years (maybe longer?) from now things might reach a tipping point.

None of the above are actually expected to end the species. Not in anyone's lifetime, given the range of climates humans survive in. We might end up with a 90% reduction in population but Short of a massive asteroid impact or massive solar event it's pretty hard to imagine wiping out the entirety of humanity.

I agree. But anything causing even a 10% population decline over a short period of time would have insane second order effects (e.g. nuclear war) as we fight over control of resources.

> it's pretty hard to imagine wiping out the entirety of humanity.

That's kinda my complaint here. Imagination is more important than knowledge. If we started much earlier in education explaining to kids how remarkable and fragile our existence is, how intricately interconnected we are with nature, birds, bees, mushrooms and microbes, then maybe Hollywood disaster movie plots wouldn't seem like the only route to the end of humanity.

With only 10% of the population, we might find so much institutional knowledge lost that the remaining just can't feed themselves. We'd have to relearn hunting and gathering, and that just might not happen.

If we have to relearn hunting and gathering, that's not even closely compatible with feeding 10% of current human population, that's consistent with <1%, probably 0.1% or less of current population surviving. Feeding even 0.8 billion people still requires intensive mass agriculture.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com