There are three main candidates to cause the extinction of humans.
The first is nuclear war. As more and more countries acquire nuclear weapons, the chances for an all out nuclear war increase. Accidents can happen. Madmen can decide a nuclear war is winnable. Countries may intend to use “tactical” nuclear weapons and end up with a full “exchange.” The various agreements on nuclear weapons between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. made during the Cold War are lapsing and are not being renewed, and now we have many more countries developing both weapons and delivery capabilities. If the blasts don’t wipe us out, the fallout and the nuclear winter will.
The second is pathogens. A number of countries have experimented with biological weapons, including the U.S. and Russia. We still don’t know absolutely if Covid was natural or an escapee from a Chinese lab. Even if governments stop this madness, natural pathogens can still occur or can jump from animals to humans.
The third candidate is global climate change. The earth is obviously warming, plant and animal species are disappearing, the sea is rising, forest fires are growing in intensity, and storms are worsening. Of the three this is the slowest moving threat, but it is also the one that is already occurring, and it seems to be picking up speed.
Notice that the threat of nuclear war and global warming and and most of the threat from pathogens are caused by humans. You know, the species with the large brain that can solve problems and think rationally.
Something else just occurred to me. All three threats will be more dangerous and more likely if Donald Trump is elected. Think about that.
You missed one: a somewhat large-ish celestial body that collides with the earth. These collisions happen all the time, we've just been lucky that one big enough to cause mass extinction hasn't happened while humans existed.
ReplyDeleteI actually thought about that, but the three I mentioned seem much more likely.
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