The End is nigh. But how?

[Indy4ever]

I was just thinking about that thread which asked about when the world ends (as we know it), what would you do? Then the simple fact came to mind that this all depends on how the world ends, and when.

Personally I think we are all going to be turned into mush by nanobots. I can barely get my computer to run ten minutes without crashing, so god knows what an army of billions of microscopic robots can do with just one tiny little accidental tweak of their programs. And when? Ooooh........... A hundred years? Technology is steaming forward, much faster than ethics can go to keep up with it. At this rate we will either all be dead or immortal by the end of the century.
What do you think?

[Gav]

The comment about nanobots turning everybody to mush is a common misconception about the potential of nanotechnology. You are referring to the so called 'grey goo' hypothesis. We are nowhere near developing anything of this magnitude - yet and if we had the power why would anyone want to? As a weapon it's useless (why make a weapon that destroys you as well as your opponent), as a commercial tool it is just as useless. In fact it's a non sequitur.

You are surrounded by natural nanotech items, in fact you are made up of them - cells. Read Erix Drexlers book 'The Engines of Creation' - although his views are hardly unbiased he puts his stall far better than any of his protagonists (or I have the time to). You can find a copy here.

For a book which attempts what it would be like with Drexlers view of nanotech also check out Unbounding the Future.

The problem with peoples pessimistic view of the future is based lasrgely upon space opera (al la Star Trek, Star Wars) not Science Fiction. One is entertainment that may or not use science as a plot device in a melodrama. The other (aka Hard Science Fiction) tries to speculatively say 'what if or 'maybe' even 'lets hope'. The News agencies also have a large part ot play in the publics misconception of science. Lets face it, you get more bucks if some medical advance goes wrong or the news is gloomy and it's all out fault than if the news is more mundane (i.e. "Today a new cure for piles has been discovered!").

[Indy4ever]

And once again, someone on the forum sucks the life out of what was meant to be a 'jovial' comment. Well done. You must have lots of friends.

[Gav]

Originally posted by Indy4ever
And once again, someone on the forum sucks the life out of what was meant to be a 'jovial' comment. Well done. You must have lots of friends.

I didn't find your thread starter particularly jovial.

And yes, well done for guessing, I do have lots of friends.

[lochinvar]

It depends, really, on what you define as "the world ending."
Do you mean literally Ending, as in It's All Gone, or do you mean "Ending For Humans"?

I give it another 50-60 years. By then we'll have exhausted all the possible combinations of anti-biotics and all our parasites and diseases will be immune to them. Plus, we'll have given rise to many more new ones, spurred by our continuing population concentration and growth.

We are multiplying too fast for the planet. We have become a cancer on the biosphere, and it's a self-regulating system. It'll find a way to reduce our population drastically or just wipe us out altogether. Life will go on, just without us.

AIDS is a perfect example of a regulatory disease. What better way to limit a population than to make procreation potentially fatal? The fact that it's preventable doesn't matter; whether we die or we just don't reproduce, the net effect is the same--fewer people. If we find a cure for AIDS, something else will come along.

The system is patient.

[Gav]

Loch', I think in terms of disease things will be rosier than that. The only reason that we have these resistant strains is because antibiotics have been over used. There is a solution, but it stopped being used in the West after penicilin was discovered - Phage therapy. Now doesn't that sound scary! Not if you know the fundamentals. What you do is you find the bacteriophage for the bacteria that is causing problems introduce the phage ... end of story. It's not a miracle cure but it is extremely effective. It's been used Russian Federation (and the Soviet Union previously) for almist a century. Still it's not accepted in the west, why? mainly becasue the big pharmaceutical comglomerates are trying their best to tie us into their expensive antibiotics. Incidentally phage therapy is extremely specific, phages typically only destroy one type of bacteria so they don't even harm the bacteria in your gut (unlike antibiotics). One day the west will start using phage therapy - so I doubt bacteria will do us in.

And before anyone asks, no, phage are incapable of infecting humans.

Now other viral infections are another matter entirely ...

I totally agree that population growth is a problem although not really in the west. In most western countries birth rates are either stable or falling slightly. I believe that in the future those countries with the falling birth rate will see a turnaround and their populations will spiral back upward - only gently. In effect a slow ebb and flow. The problem area's are the developing nations where there is little or no education, emancipation, wealth or birth control. [Look at the spread of Aids as an example of contagion spreading for the reasons above.]

The developed world could do more to help but seems a bit ... disinclined, shame really as the pressure this could place on economies and [perhaps] the environment means that it will one day affect all of us no matter how technologically advanced. Even Japan has started big recycling projects.

I'll stop there, I'm in danger of seriously rambling.

[Gav]

Loch':

I don't believe that the world will end soon (short of asteroid impacts) but we may be responsible for our own extinction. Idiots like Bush with this great idea of restarting the nuclear weapons race are more likely to cause it than nature.

Although I would never rule nature out

[a517dogg]

I think the world will end when Rush Limbaugh is elected president in the US. All the other nations of the world will nuke us (with good reason), and we will nuke them back.

[D'Artagnan1673]

Reading this thread has once again reminded me of why I left the board for a while. This thread has turned into a vehicle for bashing conservatives.

[rukovsoft]

right now i don t see why blaming the conservatives is wrong?

of course NOT ALL the conservatives are to be blamed.
personnaly i hate the religious/bob jones/oil industry/diplomatically-bullying/ bush like/racist/extreme wing of the republican party

those people are CRAZY and DANGEROUS!!!! they should be removed or impeached.

on the other hand, thank god some people of the traditional moderate wing of the republicans inherited from ABE are still trying to make their way in all this mess.
ie: Sen MacCain is a perfect example.
I wouldn t mind voting fOR HIM.

But please, you can bash the democrtas too. it s easy.
some examples: shady business around the kennedy familly backing one candidate for obscure reasons, their internal struggles, their lack of reaction regarding BUSH's lies and befoire the war with irak....and i forgot the lame economic program that consists of "g bush taxex cut is bad"...well i agre it s bad, but propose somehting else...

[D'Artagnan1673]

I am sorry I wrote what I did. Politics in the fencing community drives me nuts. I was almost tempted to add some bashing to the Democrats but I refuse. I get no enjoyment on political arguments when I can honestly say that I do not keep myself informed enough to truly argue for one point or another. Get me on a religious argument and I can say something because I have an informed opinion, but whether the republicans in the executive office of our government are right is something I am not adequately educated to argue.

I shall keep my arguments to something I know of, like fencing, if I even know that.

[hawaii kid]

from Indy's original topic starter.
~I was just thinking about that thread which asked about when the world ends (as we know it), what would you do? Then the simple fact came to mind that this all depends on how the world ends, and when. ~

Hey Indy! How's it hangin? I'm sure you recall that in that other topic the "end" was clearly defined as an Asteroid hitting the East Coast of the United States.
Now, I don't know much about nanobot theory but the bit about the cells is probably pretty close. The good news is that we can influence cell behavior.
As far as why would anybody want to destroy mankind, I just read a story (fiction) about a guy who was trying to kill everybody on the planet because he felt that we humans were actively destroying it. But then we invented nuclear WMD's and he decided we were going to take care of the job ourselves without his help. I would not be at all surprised to learn of some cult that had the same policy of global anihilation in the interests of Mother Earth.

But to answer your original post, I am convinced that everything other than me is a figment of my imagination and that when I die, everthing in the universe dies with me! and you'll have a hard time proving it to me that I'm wrong. So, you better go out of your way to keep me around.

[Indy4ever]

An asteroid? Oh come on, that is, like, so 1998. Surely it could be something random that none of us would expect? I just want to know if there are any original ideas.

And Gav, I was trying to run in the same vein as the last thread which I guess you havent read, so no harm done then. And I agree with your idea about us nuking ourselves - unoriginal as it seems, it is probably gonna happen.
And none of this politial arguing. D'art is right, this is going too far.

[daeceg]

Hmmm...hard science fiction being hopeful about the future of humanity?

Someone doesn't read much Gibson, huh?

[hawaii kid]

something random that none of us would expect Eh??

Like the final scene of Men In Black II ? Where the locker door opens and we are shown that our universe is micro sized in comparison to another universe out there? Letting us infer that our universe could be squashed like a bug on a windshield on a hot August night?

Wouldn't give us much time for decision making would it?

BTW, anybody beside me think that MIB II sucked? Yawned all the way through it.

Oh yeah, you wanted original ideas.

Hmmm, O.K. let's see....original ideas on the end of the world as we know it that won't have any polital overtones to get rukosov or D'art riled up...

The whales all get together and decide they've had enough of mankind, use their large brains to start mutating themselves into Godzilla like creatures and start wiping out.. T o k y o ... and other big citi.... O>k. that's been done hasn't it?

We clone our selves into a super race of geniuses but get so introspective that we neglect our physical bodies and a 2% rise in the average annual temperature of the planet wipes us off the face of the Earth.
No, they'd probably blame that on the republicans too...

O.K. try this---> we all develop an allergy to air and the only antidote is sulphur dioxide, which kills all the oxygen producing plants, which makes all the other animals die off.

That's all for now. I'm going to think up some more tie puns for Windsor to figure out.

[rukovsoft]

i think the world will end when graduate of bob-jones university will rule the country...
....heu wait a minute, is the end that close?

[Zelda]

The world ends when the Vogons accidently blow us up for the interpace hyperway........(sorry being reading again)

[Dragonfly]

End of the world portents. "So many names"..... [Robert Deniro in one of his devil movies]. I believe the world will go through a natural process of dying and rebirth as does everything else. Unfortunately, there are so many things working towards it's premature demise, I hardly know where to begin, but your case scenerio of viral disease is apt.

AIDS virus: viruses do act differently than bacteria in the body, from what I remember from micro; bacteria if not encapsulated are easier to control, the encapsulated bacteria such as Leprocy, TB, and Pneumonia are more difficult. Polio was caused by a virus I think, and it took many years of serious medical research to find a vaccination - but what it may require is one giant brain to lead a research team in the development of a cure. That's the usual way; almost all the great breakthroughs were in the hands of a very few brilliant people.

Currently: in nursing is to not 'over' sterilize and they're moving into hand-washing and away from gloves. Gloves being more of a mode of transport than a clean hand with clipped nails. The other theory of some cultures outside of America is that America is too sterile, too clean, but our mortality rate is not as high as oher cultures? Breast feeding [sorry folks] reduces the risk of infections in infants and many women are encouraged to breast-feed in the absence of contageous disease as long as they can.

AIDS as a virus may never be cured and may just run it's course as bubonic plague [bacteria] and the red-death [virus?] did. Some health professionals have completely given up on explaining drug therapy to TB patients, many of whom throw away their prescription after a few days as they "feel better". Overmedication seems to be the other problem as mentioned above. 8 Billion people on the earth as of 1988; there may be less now, does anyone know the current population?

I gave a book to a friend [who currently hates me] called Guns, Germs and Steel. I highly recommed it as well as "The Microbe Hunters" and also "Silent Spring" by Rachel Carson.

One thing is pretty clear; the world with all of its people have still not yet learned to get along and that is a major problem.

[jeff]

With a bang or with a whimper? Do we get a choice?

For science guys: gray goo (it's a programming bug, not a feature) See Bill Joy's "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html (and subsequently discussed over and over.

For SF fans #1: Zelda's choice, obviously

For deists of all stripes #1: Armageddon ("Times Up!")

For deists of all stripes #2: Supreme Being decides he/she has better tenants for this planet ("You guys are noisy, stupid and messy; I'm terminating your lease")

For movie fans: Albert Shanker gets ahold of the A-bomb (okay, it's obsolete, but classic. For non-New Yorkers, he was a very contentious teachers' union president 25 years ago)

[Wizardly]

I'm hedging on the next ice age ruining things for us. I hope I get to stick around long enough to see how that turns out. At least global warming wont be a problem anymore (although I had heard that some in the know suspect that global warming might trigger an ice age).

Wimper scenario 1: "that wasn't supposed to happen." Someone will do something catastrophic that will end the planet and have plenty of time to ponder their stupidity before it ends. Call it the Chernobyl scenario I guess - things are fine when everythings working like it should...right up until someone takes a risk beyond the ability to control it because they didn't think things through. "I guess we didn't have enough heat shielding when we tried to invent fusion...heh, sorry guys, we just turned the earth into a star." "Yikes, the ship carrying that chemical just sank in the ocean. That chemical will kill all the plankton in the ocean and make it uninhabitable for it for the next 1000 years." "Remember that little experiment we did with the sun? That probe we launched? It turns out the reaction was a liiiiiiiittle stronger than we though...the suns is going to nova...we have about, oh, 8 minutes to live."

Wimper scenario 2: "couldn't have done anything about it anyway." We'll suddenly discover that something we did a long time ago will come back to bit us in the ***. Maybe some kind of immunization given to all the kids will sterilize them all, or something like that. Maybe even some kind of pollution.

Bang scenario: "The Dark Ages strike back" Corporations will take over the world, entrench themselves firmly into decision making positions of power, and run the world, basically becomming a new kind of nobility. They'll feud and war just like they used to, except this time the guns are bigger. "There's a company over in Japan we don't like. We're going ot nuke them. We may not be able to use their land, but we didn't want it anyway, and in a cost-benefit analysis, it's better that we do."

Bang scenario 2: Bugs Bunny doesn't get to the Illudium Q 36 Explosive Space Modulator in time...Mars now has a clear view of Venus.