How do you think our world will end?

vurt said:

I'd say anything but climate change, it's an ongoing scam. "we only have 10 years!" has been a meme for these activists since at least the 80's (can't say i followed it much during the 70's, might have been a thing back then too).

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Depends what you mean by climate change. If you are talking about the current climate change movement then perhaps i would i agree with you. However I am referring to climate change that could be caused by anything - a large enough solar flare from the sun could wipe every human being off the face of the planet through radiation, a gravitational shift could cause cataclysmic weather patterns, the earth could enter it's next cycle i.e. ice age, hot house etc. Humans are incredibly vulnerable to even the slightest change in temperature i.e. 200 degrees or so.

Donald Trump.

To me 'end' is totality. There is nothing left of the human race. Stuff like nuclear war and climate change will definitely reduce population but i doubt it will cause extinction. I do think humans are pretty stupid as a race. Just look at Trump if you have any doubt.
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Anyway I don't know if we will manage to totally destory ourselves before the sun changes state; I suppose there is a chance that nuclear war or climate chnage would be sufficient to have total extinction but i have my doubts.

Just out of curiosity, do we have any flat-Earthers about the place? Judging by the standard of some of the stuff we see around here, I feel sure there must be at least one.

Plague, either man-made or natural.

There was no poll option for "horribly".

End of the World?

Oh, yay. More fun topics.

Actually I am reading a book that says due to many factors, global population is going to peak at about 2050 or so and start dropping. Women as they tend to become more educated will stop having so many children, putting it off til later years, etc. They predict China will lose over half their population by the start the next century. Replacement age is 2.1 per family. Lots of places are already below that such as Europe. Within the time they wrote the book, India has already fallen to 2.2 or something.

I had a lot more, even a prediction but it's Saturday and I don't want to get depressed lol.

Population is something that's managed at a national level redman, if low population ever becomes a problem then it's extremely easy to find ways to motivate people to have kids.

Drithius said:

Plague, either man-made or natural.

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I think we're the only two who voted "disease"...

I took "our world ending" to mean the death of every single last human, but I guess it could be interpreted in lots of ways.

Nothing in that list looks particularly likely to ever directly lead to the death of every single human on earth, but among them, I figured some crazy disease is probably the most likely. In particular, if it spreads to everyone before its full extent is realized.

I think the risk of a pandemic is a realistic one, and is probably underestimated. It seems unlikely that it would have a 100% infection and fatality rate, though. Perhaps it could even save the species, by reducing it to sustainable levels.

Couchpotato said:

I'll also say overpopulation is a good choice also because this world can only hold so many people. Just look at the current stats to see how fast the world population is increasing.

We better start building apartment mega-complexes and find alternative food sources.

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I see your overpopulation problem and raise you the depopulation solution.

Civilization is built on hard work and sacrifice but also the promise that the hard work and sacrifice will be rewarded. Its the glue that keeps people together. When those people are no longer rewarded for their efforts and it is actively harmful for them to continue doing what they are doing, society collapses.

How to know when the burden on the productive is reaching a tipping point? The disappearance of the middle classes is one sign. The breakdown of family relationships and marriage is another. Its all about the perverse incentives at the moment, and they just get worse and worse. If you keep motivating bad unproductive behaviours they tend to get worse.

Lies become truth. War becomes peace. When the number of unprodutive people is greater than 50% civilization goes downhill fast. Productive people, at that point, will drop their tools and walk away because there is no benefit to live in such a society. Divide and conquer. Bad actors want you to blame others and not take responsibility for yourselves. Society implodes because no-one is sustaining it any longer. It happened to the Romans and we had a long dark ages. This time who knows?

It only takes one lost generation for a civilization to fall. Considering the forces of globalization it could well knock over the entire world if it were to happen to enough large civilizations at once. Considering demographic trends into the future one can imagine a tipping point being reached if it gets bad enough.

I really have no idea.

If by "our world" we're talking about life on Earth as it exists right now - I think it's constantly changing, and it's hard to pinpoint one particular thing that would constitute "the end".

If we're talking about the complete obliteration of the planet and the human race, then I don't see anything on the horizon that would cause that, really.

There could very easily be SOMETHING coming to cause that, but I don't see it.

Climate change is obviously very real - and I think it's very likely to cause major changes, but - as much as I don't admire human capacity - I think we have a reasonable ability to adapt to change, and we can achieve substantial things when we're left with no other choice.

So, from that position - I don't think it's quite as big a threat as many seem to believe.

Well not sure it hasn't already many times over. Can't even really be sure I exist and not just a thought of a machine or program.

Though if this is all real and it hasn't happened before, the clear answer is over population.

It seems to me that the end of the world will come because of climate change. As it was with mammoths.

Humanity could be ended by AI or plagues. The further time goes on the more AI developes and the easier it is to kill big parts of humanity with tailored viruses, mabye created by terrorists.
AI and viruses e.g. via gene editing have big potential.

Besides of that and a more definite end would be climate change. Not anything like "10 degrees warmer". That wouldn't "end" us in itself. It might end us because of snowball effects accelerating themselves after we are over the point of no return when we aren't able to stop the ball from rolling and getting bigger and bigger anymore.
Earth becomes Venus and we truley are "ended".

Climate change wouldn't be likely to end the world, IMHO. Mass extinction, sure, but I expect a little of humanity will find a way to adapt in some part of the world even in the worst case scenarios.

How about this one?

(My first thought was the Doxology but this'll do. )

Oh dear.. a poll can be wrong I guess. As an environmental scientist I can honestly say climate change wiill not 'end the world' but simply change it. Some areas will see extreme change and be almost uninhabitable but others will see barely any impact. Most likely a cataclysmic event followed by disease will end the human race. The planet wil go on.

How the world will end?
Easy. I will fart a big one.

On a serious note:
Easy. I will die, so the world will end.
See also:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant

joxer said:

Other:
Due to uncontrolled destruction of ecosystems in the chase after dollars, the number of all kinds of insects will grow exponentially as we kill habitats of their natural predators which will cause the evolutionary shift that happens superfast with insects - we, humans, will become insects' food.
Once they're done with us, without anything more to eat they'll starve to death never realizing none of it was their fault.

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Not really. Under the pressure of cultural selection from certain human beings, species that are selected are compatible by default (meaning here the ones they can not get rid of despite trying)

Most insect species are not compatible (despite efforts to prop them up by the way)

Massive declines are happening in many places. And their predators, following the entropic chain, will go as well.