When we think of the very real possibility
of humans going extinct, the usual culprits advanced are things like nuclear war and climate
change, or even an asteroid impact. But there’s way more out there that could
take us out. So here are ten unsettling ways humans could
go extinct. Number 10. Not Enough Population Growth Overpopulation is always advanced as a problem
for human civilization in the sense that we could go through a population correction. From Malthus writing in the late 18th century
to scholars today, it’s been predicted that there is a limit to what earth can handle
and provide for. This may be a bit alarmist, Malthus’s prediction
of population corrections were a bit spotty, and today we can build space colonies and
expand out to take advantage of the resources of the solar system, but population ultimately
does present challenges in any environment. But maybe in a way that wasn’t widely foreseen. One thing about our advancing civilization
is that in the most developed countries, as development occurs, birth rates seem to drop. Assuming that will also be the case for currently
developing nations, then there could come a time when people voluntarily reproduce at
below replacement levels. If the entire planet reproduces at the rate
of countries currently exhibiting the lowest levels of population growth, it’s possible
that the human species could go extinct in a matter of centuries simply from a global
desire to have fewer children. Number 9. Too much population growth On the other hand, nothing says that global
birth rates won’t instead start to rise in the future. There may already be some indicators that
the populations of some developed nations are starting to rise again. If the population drops in some countries
during the 20th century was an anomaly, then overall population will continue to rise. And rise it has, in 1800, earth had about
a billion people living on it. It took more than a century for that to double. But since the 1930’s, it’s risen at increasingly
higher rates to the current level of roughly 7.5 billion. This means increasing resource use to support
all those people, and just how high of a population can be sustained without becoming a multiple
planet species is ultimately unknown, but thought to be around 12 billion people at
current technological levels. But, increasingly advanced technology can
extend this. But could this trend cause our extinction? Not directly, but there would be population
corrections. But the problems inherent with feeding and
keeping people alive on a truly overpopulated planet with no more resources to provide does
introduce drivers for things like nuclear wars breaking out over resources, or out of
control climate change brought on by such high population numbers, or greater chances
for pandemic diseases, all of which could cause extinction. Number 8. Post-Humanism Jellyfish are odd creatures. They don’t really have things like eyes,
or ears, or even brains, at least as we define them. So what happens if you take a jellyfish and
you augment it with laser weaponry, armor, a brain custom built for battle, teach it
to master martial arts and shuriken throwing stars and then unleash it on an unsuspecting
humanity, at what point will scientists no longer consider it to be a jellyfish? That works for us too. Humans are moving in a direction of technological
advancement and this has and will continue to change to our very existence. Things like connectivity through the internet
have revolutionized humanity in a very short time. We have literally addicted ourselves to brain
prosthetics over the course of my lifetime, the cellphones. Now medical science looks to advanced prosthetics
and even direct brain interfaces to solve humanity’s medical problems. But at some point, there comes a time when
the technology becomes better than what evolution originally gave us. In principle, prosthetic limbs eventually
could outperform biological ones. This is the cyborg problem. Do we augment ourselves with technology that
is superior to biology? That is a question that’s quickly coming
at us. But say for a moment we go with widespread
augmentation, such as we did with tattoos. That’s a body modification, and they are
currently ubiquitous and have been since ancient times. Say technological augmentation goes that route
and everyone becomes cyborgs. At what point are we no longer biological,
when will scientists declare homo sapiens extinct? Number 7. The Silent Death One of the major mysteries of the history
of life on earth is what exactly happened to this planet about 450 million years ago
during the Ordovician-Silurian extinction events. This one was weird, and stands apart in the
fossil record from most other extinction events that have occured on this world. In this case, deep water marine life wasn’t
that badly affected in comparison to shallow water dwellers, who were hit extremely hard. In the case of the deep water animals, they
tend to have more restricted habitats, something that usually disfavors a species during an
extinction event. Possibilities include a nearby gamma ray burst
or an uncharacteristically powerful solar flare. A weaker version of this may have happened
around the year 775 that did not appear to have catastrophic effects on life on earth. Records from England of the period recount
the appearance of a red crucifix in the sky, which sounds suspiciously like an aurora borealis. But tree ring data from this period records
a spike in carbon 14, likely caused by a massive solar flare. These mysteries may never be solved, but whatever
the cause, the point is, if it happened once, it could happen again. Number 6. Natural Climate Change Climate change is something we hear a lot
about, but usually in the sense of anthropogenic climate change. But earth’s climate has always changed,
going from warm periods to ice ages, and possibly even the planet almost entirely freezing over
at one point. Even antarctica has in the past been host
to steamy temperatures, and even palm trees and dinosaurs as the continents drifted. Climate change is also something that, at
least locally, can happen very rapidly in nature. But if earth once almost completely froze
over in a snowball earth event, then could that happen again and force the extinction
of humanity? Thankfully, such a process would be slow,
and one thing human technology can do is create greenhouse gases, in which case excess atmospheric
carbon dioxide would then be useful. And in fact, there may already be enough heat
trapping gases being put into the atmosphere to prevent the next ice age, which is predicted
to otherwise occur in about 50,000 years. But, at some point, too much is too much. Number 5. Supervolcanoes Earth is no stranger to volcanism. It’s with us today, and has been with us
since this planet’s crust cooled. Most of the time, it’s a natural disaster
that while can cost huge amounts in lives and property damage, they aren’t usually
something that can end our civilization. Usually. On occasion Earth’s volcanism has gone completely
wild and produced eruption events, such as the Siberian Traps, that were so severe that
they caused mass extinctions. Today, we still face the possibility of a
supervolcanic eruption, such as the Toba supervolcano that may once have almost caused our extinction. Today, the threat of supervolcanos exist in
several areas of the world, including yellowstone in the US, and while it’s statistically
unlikely to happen on any given day, over time, it’s a risk. If and when such an eruption does occur, it
could be so severe that it could constitute a mass extinction event of humans. Number 4. Interstellar Impactors This is a relatively new variant on the asteroid
impact possibility, but with a further spooky technological possibility attached. The idea of an asteroid impact ending human
civilization is nothing new, and I’ve covered it in other videos. But that’s something that until now has
been confined to our solar system in scope. Something disturbs objects in the outer solar
system and then they come into the inner solar system and occasionally, one hits earth, and
causes a mass extinction. But the outer solar system isn’t the only
place these objects could come from. As the passage of the first known interstellar
object through the solar system became evident last year, and it passed fairly close to earth,
it’s being realized that objects moving at very high speed coming from elsewhere in
the galaxy can enter the solar system, and potentially hit earth and end human civilization. The thing is, a small one may have recently
hit us. In a paper by Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj of Harvard,
link below, they detail that a meteorite that entered the earth’s atmosphere in 2014 was
of interstellar origin. Using data from a catalog of detected meteorite
falls compiled by the Center for Near-Earth Object studies using US government sensors,
they found a meteorite that entered the earth’s atmosphere on a hyperbolic trajectory, suggesting
that it came from outside the solar system. And it did so at some serious speed, about
134,200 miles per hour. The object is estimated to only have been
about 3 feet in diameter and posed no threat to human civilization, and it does open up
the possibility that interstellar rocks might be found here on earth in the form of meteorites,
which is certainly tantalizing from the point of view that we could analyze something here
on earth that originated from across the galaxy, but it does raise a point. What if much larger interstellar objects hit
earth? These objects, if they prove common, are potentially
even more scary than solar system asteroids. They could hit earth at much higher speeds,
and greater energy, meaning that relatively small objects are still seriously dangerous. Thankfully, they probably don’t hit earth
that often, though we don’t know that for sure. But, what if someone intentionally targeted
one at us? There are now speculative methods where a
malicious alien civilization could toss a rock, or even a planet, at us at relativistic
speed and not just end human civilization but blow the planet into smithereens. This kind of a weapon may or may not be practical
over great distances, this is very new stuff on the speculative table, but it’s food
for thought. Number 3. Nicoll-Dyson Destruction It’s been said that one of the reasons we
don’t see type III civilizations encasing an entire galaxy’s stars in Dyson Spheres
is that they are so dangerous that the should be galactically declared illegal. This is because, as with many technologies,
it doesn’t just have to be a method of peaceful energy generation. It can also be easily weaponized. And it represents one of the most potent weapons
possible in the universe, enough to destroy vast swaths of a galaxy. The idea is simple. Build a Dyson sphere or swarm around a star,
modified with a hole to direct the star’s energy, focus it on a planet, and that planet
will be destroyed. Anyone on that planet wouldn’t know a thing
about it until the beam hit, and in principle could be used at great distances. Any civilization possessing such an array
could effectively hold the rest of the galaxy hostage, including us. In short, it would effectively be a planetary
extinction device. Number Two. Solar Flares and the Technology Trap The sun is incredibly stable. It provides life on earth with energy and
has done so for billions of years, and will continue to do so long into the future, but
not permanently. However, over very long periods of time, the
sun does change. It is growing in luminosity very slowly, but
there will come a point where it will cook earth, and cause the extinction of not only
humans if we’re still around, but the extinction of all life on earth. Thankfully, that’s a long way off, but the
sun can do something that would profoundly disrupt human civilization right now, and
if the wrong things happen here on earth, could also contribute to or cause our extinction. These are solar flares. Most of the sun’s flares are directed harmlessly
into space. Even if one hits us, we’re protected by
our magnetosphere and life itself is not usually affected by the flares, indeed if one hit
us head on tomorrow the animals wouldn’t know anything happened, and in the past humans
didn’t know about them when they hit other than maybe observing bright auroras. But our technology is very vulnerable, and
that’s bad news for human civilization. Imagine if everything suddenly stopped working. Your cellphone, your car, your refrigerator,
or your ability to pay for goods with a debit card. The transport of food would be halted in its
tracks, meaning that the only food supply you have is what you have on hand, or what
you can loot. Most people in the US for example typically
keep less than three days worth of food on hand. Most of us are at all times mere days from
the beginning of starvation. It’s unlikely that we could get everything
back up and running in such a doomsday scenario in time to prevent massive amounts of death. The skills that allow for industrial food
production, for example, the tractors, the equipment, the fertilizers and so on aren’t
viable anymore. This means we go back to methods of farming
that most people have no longer have any idea how to do. In other words, this wasn’t a problem a
century ago, but now being dependent on technological methods of farming, we would have severe problem. Add in the social upheaval that would no doubt
follow the solar flare and the failure of most technology, and it could be that some
event could come along concurrent with the aftermath that triggers extinction, indeed
it seems likely that the one piece of technology that’s probably well hardened against events
like solar flares are the nuclear weapons. But if in the aftermath nothing like that
happens, it could be that we’ll see a huge population contraction, but not an extinction
of the species. With some luck, people would survive that
know how to do it. And, it’s worth noting that there are still
people on this earth, such as the inhabitants of North Sentinel Island, that are uncontacted
and still live in pre-stone age conditions. For them, the day after the solar flare would
be a day like any other. Number One. The Known Unknowns This is more of a class of speculative methods
of human extinction. It’s anyone’s guess just how possible
these are but it illustrates that we could go extinct from something we haven’t yet
thought of, or at least fully understand. One example is an encounter with an extraterrestrial
artificial intelligence entirely bent on accomplishing whatever purpose it was originally built for. The famous example here is If it were originally
designed to manufacture paper clips using the raw materials of the universe. If it encountered earth and us, it would achieve
the end of making as many paper clips as it possibly can by disassembling and converting
the planet. Another is strange matter. This is a hypothetical material made up of
quarks, that if it actually exists, could be extremely dangerous. If certain thinking about strange matter is
correct, in this case called a strangelet, then earth coming into contact with it would
result in earth’s matter, and all life on it, being converted into strange matter along
with a release of energy. Earth would be left, after a time, a hot mass
of strange matter. And it’s always possible that science, or
a rogue state or entity, might make a mistake and create an insidious artificial virus that
could cause extinction, or some other unforeseen consequence of something perhaps seemingly
unrelated. But, for now, it also pays to remember that
we’ve been here for a very long time, and are currently very much not extinct and as
we branch out into the solar system, the possibility of extinction begins to drop. But, the universe has to end sometime, so
ultimately, sooner or later, it will be lights out for homo sapiens. Thanks for listening! I am futurist and science fiction author John
Michael Godier currently broadcasting from my Faraday cage to avoid interference from
… John … It’s not a faraday cage, it’s
your duvet and coat hangers… Plastic coat hangars. Hhhh. What? You’re not supposed to be on this channel. We inked a treaty. Well … you left the door open That’s because the LeBaron was compromised,
somehow you got in there when the door was locked, not that that means much from a car
built in 1985. So, since you’re here, who do we have lined
up for next week on Event Horizon? An actor and podcaster. He sounds very interesting. Who? Anson Mount. What? For corn’s sake, that’s Captain Pike in
Star Trek Discovery! Hopeless ANNA, hopeless. It’s going to be a fun interview indeed. And do check out my talk show channel, Event
Horizon, link below, Now, just a moment. John, they’re plastic, you don’t expec- Ah! Peace and quiet. Always trick the AI into thinking they have
the upper hand. And on that note, also check out my books
at your favorite online book retailer and subscribe to my channels for regular, in-depth
explorations into the interesting, weird and unknown aspects of this amazing universe in
which we live.
