Bob Brown once said that the future will either be green or not at all. In nature, different species become extinct for various reasons. The complex language of humans seem to be a major distinguishing factor between us and other organisms but is it enough to protect us from extinction? Sadly, humans are most likely to become extinct at some point because humans aren't exactly ''intelligent'' in a biological sense about our survival on the long run. Humans impact the environment in various negative ways but expect the future to solve the problems we create today. At some point, humans might cause a disaster that wipes out our entire human race. Intelligent life forms capable of killing us on a grand scale can also cause our extinction. With that 'lovely' thought in mind, physicists, scientists, mathematicians and doctors spend a lot of time analyzing and contemplating our survivability. Here are the most plausible scenarios that might wipe out the whole human race...
Asteroid strike
This is actually a possible method of extinction as it's the most probable cause of dinosaurs' extinction among scientists.Asteroid strikes are very common in the universe, these minor planets can cause a global devastation if earth takes a good strike with enormous velocity, huge size, and solid matter.In 1995, the comet shoemaker-levy broke apart and 21 fragments struck Jupiter with the energy of over 6 million megatons of TNT.To put that into perspective the largest nuclear bomb ever made produced about 58 megatons just 0.00001 % the energy made by Shoemaker-levy.The impact on Jupiter is larger than the earth itself.Another reason to make us believe this could really happen is the evidence of Meteors' impacts on earth, for instance, the meteor crater in Arizona desert.
If you ever wonder how an asteroid strike can cause a mass extinction rather than a huge number of deaths, you have a point! But asteroid strikes don't cause only damage to the impacted area only, it changes the entire ecosystem.The dinosaur extinction theory consists of a 4 to 9 meteor that hit the earth causing a scattering of dust in the earth's atmosphere blocking sunlight for months thus decreasing earth's temperature, endless fires, and huge tsunamis.90 % of marine species and 85 % of land species died off affecting the larger species with more needs than smaller ones.In addition, we haven't yet developed proper defense mechanisms for asteroid strikes, the nuclear weapons that we have can be effective only at certain limits.
Nuclear/Biological War
Humans are certainly hardwired to war, thus, we could never achieve world peace. Considering the impressive advancement in DNA manipulation technology, in the near future, one mad scientist with a lot of money could easily engineer a deadly virus that could end up obliterating our entire mankind. a nuclear war can also cause our extinction. All it takes is two aggressive governments and we will 'fall' into an all-out nuclear war that would drown our planet in deadly levels of radiation. These levels of radiation will surely impact the climate and cause a shortage of food that would shove us into a global hunger. Such a frightening war can reasonably occur.
Artificial intelligence (AI)
Machines had a huge role in our evolution. Everyone predicts that in the near future, man will invent flying cars and automatic machines that can do anything. Unfortunately, as much as we love technology and those impressive 'ironman-like' machines we see on the internet, there will come a day when machines become so powerful that they surpass human intelligence. After that, AI will surely cause our extinction. One of Britain's best pre-eminent scientists, Stephen Hawking, believes that AI will one day take off on its own, and re-design itself at a rate that humans would be superseded because of our slow biological evolution. Soon, AI will become capable of improving their own intelligence and realize that humans are redundant, superfluous and even dispensable, thus, wiping us all to make the world a 'better' place.
Antibiotic Resistance Crisis
Antibiotics are certainly the most important discovery in the history of medicine.With nearly 100 million deaths the Black Death was one of the most devastating pandemics in human history reducing the human population by more than 20 %.This dreadful plague is caused by a bacteria called Yersinia Pestis.This bacteria has few or no mutations at all and can be eliminated with different antibiotics available today, just imagine how many lives we could save if we just knew.
With the overuse of antibiotics and the authorization of Nonprescription antibiotic therapy, the emergence of multi-resistant increases dramatically.Nearly two million Americans per year develop a serious type of infection generally sepsis or pneumonia, resulting in 99,000 deaths, most of them due to multiresistant pathogens.In 2006 this caused the US government more than $8 billion.Besides humans are the only a species which benefit from antibiotics, in fact, an estimated 80% of antibiotics sold in the U.S are used in animals and agriculture to promote growth and to prevent infections.
We also started noticing the emergence of super bacteria resistant to the majority of known antibiotics with scary numbers of deaths.
This crisis is universal and reflects the worldwide overuse of these drugs irrationally and the lack of development of new antibiotic agents by pharmaceutical companies burdening the health community and sinking down the economy.Rising the awareness and a regulation system of antibiotics' use are more than required today if we want to avoid catastrophic future damages.
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References :
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4378521/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25065505
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:827452c3-fcba-41b8-86b0-407293e6617c
Picture Credit:
Thumbnail & 3 - pixabay.com
Second picture - wikimedia.org
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