posted 06-12-99 12:42 PM ET            

The most likely way will be by asteroid. We will not obliderate ourselves because we are too greedy to do so (if we come up with a weapon to destroy the world, it wont be used until the maker can escape the distruction).

posted 06-12-99 01:54 PM ET         

Smeagol is correct about this one.

posted 06-12-99 02:05 PM ET         

As always, I remain,

posted 06-12-99 04:25 PM ET            

Virus (or other disease):
The probability that a very leathal virus would kill everybody is very, very low. Just think of how easy it would be to keep a few thousand people away from the rest, to have a safe haven on the south pole or on the moon or whatever. And with technology and computers evolving so rapidly, we will be able to handle all kinds of viruses, including ebola, in the futer.

Asteroid:
Not even worth mentioning....

The Sun goes ape****:
The Sun won't nova, and by the time it becomes a red giant (1-4 billion years from now) mankind will already be on other planets/moons in this solar system, and most likely in other nearby solar systems as well. Even if the Earth is engulfed by a red giant Sun, there will still be human beings somewhere safe.

Nuclear war:
This is, as I see it, the most probable way we will end, if we will end at all. If we somehow manage to start a full nuclear war before we can colonise other planets, then we are truly f***ed. If we manage to get humans onto other planets/moons before we nuke the earth, then we are most likely to survive until the end of the Milky Way

End of the Milky Way:
At the center of the Milky Way there is most likely a gigantic black hole, which is why the solar systems are slowly spiraling inward into the center of our galaxy. This means that in a large timeframe, say 2-5 billion years, all of the Milky Way will be gone, and nothing but that black hole will remain. If we do not manage to get our sorry butts into some other galaxy, that will surely be Game Over for us humans. And I don't think we can ever reach other galaxies, since they are VERY far away. IMHO we will last a maximum 5 billion years.

posted 06-13-99 08:19 AM ET            

The world will end- I'm not interested in it's physical death. I'm interested in how society will collapse- and I'm convinced that it will.

"When the end of the world comes, all the good people will be swept up by the rapture. There will be a great war between the forces of good and evil, and when it ends the Devil and all the bad people will be thrown into a lake of burning sulphur for all eternity.

The end of the world- or the end of civilisation, at least. Theologians now argue that St. John the Divine of Patmos was in fact depicting how a collapse of civilisation would be followed by a universal, unquestioning acceptance of the Christian faith. At the time "Revelations" was written, and at many times since, the hour of crisis seemed close at hand. The repression of the Roman Empire, the ravening hordes of the East, the loss of Jerusalem and fall of Constantinople at the end of the crusades- under such conditions it is understandable how our ancestors must have felt the approach of the satanic legions was inevitable.

Oh, how smug we pampered children of the forthcoming millienium would seem to those ancestors from the centuries of slaughter. How very smug, and how very misguided.

Let me introduce you to a little theory of mine. The so called "western civilisation" is going to collapse. Inevitably. Possibly not in your lifetime, but probably in the next century or so.

By now you may be snorting in derision. You will be considering every scientific and sociological breakthrough since the dawn of the renaissance and age of reason that might prevent such a collapse. Modern medicine, intensive agriculture, the communication revolution, the United Fu*king Nations. They won't make any difference.

Many great and enlightened civilisations have arisen, and each one towered like an invincible colossus over those which had risen and fallen before. In Sumeria, Egypt, Greece, Rome, China- these mighty empires assembled themselves into dominance before collapsing into anarchy and barbarism. Civilisations will always fail when they grow beyond a sustainable size and level of complexity.

Consider this- in our present society we assemble new advances and developments to the infrastructure that supports us. Each and every one assists a little more growth; the support of a another few tens of thousands of hermetically sealed little lives. Each one is another extension to the huge and all-encompassing house of cards that protects us from the cruel reality of Mother Nature. Unfortunately, sooner or later a card or two will start to slip- and when it does the whole of the towering mass will come down with it.

Our ancestors saw this grim reality only too clearly, and from their vision they created the allegory of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Death, Famine, War and Pestilence- and their acknowledging of the true, brutal faces of the slayers of empires may prove propetically accurate again. We live out our lives supported by a handful of articially enhanced high-yield crops, and healed by the miraculous application of antibiotics. Just more cards in the walls....

Only a handful of antibiotics have ever been discovered- of these only one remains particularly effective and that was discovered over twenty years ago. Since then, diseases have been mutating. Wards are sealed off as "superbugs"- strains of infections resistant to all known antibiotics- break out. Strains of T.B. are known that resist anything that science can throw at them. In an even more sinister twist, the last 30 years has seen apparantly new infections appear out of the blue to strike people down. Ebola, Marburg, Lassa fever, Legionnaire's disease, AIDS are all recent arrivals. In 1918, Spanish 'flu appeared from nowhere to kill tens of millions, in an eerie reprisal of the great world plague of 1345-1355 that wiped out one third of the known world's population. Last year, a strain of influenza normally affecting only birds somehow mutated into a form that could kill humans, and only desperate emergency measures somehow contained the outbreak.

What was the great plague? Historians may glibly assure that it was bubonic plague spread by rat fleas - but it appears to have spread far too quickly to suppot this theory. Some suggest that it was a pneaumonic strain that may have been airborne. If so, it may still have the potential to kill millions.

When you buy a loaf of bread, think of every fragile link in the chain that brought it to you. A couple of super-resistant crop blights could ruin the worldwide wheat, rice, corn and barley harvests. Consider this point also- when there is no more food in the stores civilisation as we know it will collapse within 48 hours.

"This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang, but a whimper."� (T.S. Eliot)

Yes- I think that this civilisation will fall, just as every other has fallen before it. This does not mean to say that I would mourn it. Firstly- I do not equate the fall of our civilisation with the end of the world. Other civilisations will probably rise and fall long after ours is forgotten.

Secondly- I want to smell the smoke from the burning cities.

I want to see it all torn apart.

I want to see this sham of a life inflicted upon me utterly blown away. I have been treated with chemicals, cocooned in revoltingly womb-like buildings, force-fed with ideologies and religion, inflated with lies and poisons, and neutered by society.

I want to ride horses around the ruins of London, carrying a spear. I want to dive through the veil of ashes coating the Severn, into the waters below, and finally be clean again.

I want to live."

That's about the size of it. Watch out for anuclear exchange in Kashmir, a war over Nile water rights in North Africa or the good old middle east to kick things off on the war front.

Don't expect scientists to save you. They've never convinced me.

posted 06-13-99 02:14 PM ET            

So what? We've lost people, not civilisation. Civilisation doesn't depend on the number of people, it depends on the knowledge of the people, and the knowledge is stored in books all over the world.

So unless THE WHOLE GODDAM HUMAN RACE decided to burn all the books everywhere just before a Greater Plague arrived to kill off enough educated people civilisation won't end in the manner you described.

[Crowd applauds. jig bows.]

Why, thank you. Thank you very much.

posted 06-13-99 04:06 PM ET            

A computer's hard drive lasts, on average, 5 years. Without a PC to play it, a CD-ROM is just a shiny disc. Even acid-free paper will only last 500 years or so. Knowledge is ephemeral- civilisations in the past have made astonishing advances only for them to be lost in the descent into barbarism that I think is inevitable.

Now start introducing religion to the mix. A few good ole dogmas to spice things up by saying that knowledge is evil. It's happened before- it can happen again.

You don't need to wipe out the majority of the population to cause civilisation to collapse, as any member of the Khmer Rouge could tell you. The right 5% would do. Take out 30-50% and it will really feel the strain.

posted 06-14-99 05:28 PM ET            

This is a novel experience for me- a raging atheist getting accused of religion. My use of biblical imagery is to increase the impact when I put the boots into it.