It’s kind of a scary thought to ponder, but you’ve probably considered it at one point or another.
How will human beings become extinct?
What will be the final catalyst that wipes us off the planet for good?
Are you ready to do a little thinking about our existence?
Here’s what folks on AskReddit had to say about it.
1. Oh, boy…
“A highly contagious virus designed to make its host infertile without presenting any other symptoms escapes from a lab and infects everyone.”
2. A hot take.
“As a long term optimist, my favorite is evolution.
As we expand out into space through the eons eventually we diverge and evolve into new species, and what we consider human is extinct.
You can also view AI as a version of evolution and count that as well, but I personally think we can coexist with an AI we create.”
3. WAR.
“It’s got to be war.
We literally have a weapon that can wipe out an entire country, now multiply the amount of that weapon by thousands.
One day countries and leaders will face a breaking point through clashing ideologies and before we even knew it, we already fucked ourselves over.”
4. Irreparable damage.
“By irreparably damaging our biosphere.
Takes a biosphere to evolve and sustain a complex living organism like us, destroy that and we probably won’t last long.”
5. That’s not pleasant.
“Slow and painful.
Slowly losing clean water until we’re a desert planet and we die.”
6. That’s not good.
“I’d say we’ll either kill each other for resources due to overpopulation or (which by now I think is more likely) a pandemic worse than the coronavirus will collapse health and economic systems throughout the world which will lead to supply shortages then maybe to war.”
7. Something to think about…
“Humans will biologically die out. I think at we could maybe reach a point where sentimental value of being a human is slowly gone in favour of something else, like being a machine, uploading consciousness.
We may be our real selves but digital, or just a program with personality effectively killing the host and stealing their memory, while retaining their information, soulless.
Either way, it won’t be human.”
8. Human error.
“I think we will make a mistake. Something like, we send the majority of the population to another planet, but they crash. Or, we couldn’t get to another planet in time.
Humans make mistakes. It’s about time we make a big one.”
9. Or maybe a machine?
“It could even be machine error. In 1983, at the height of the Cold War (during Reagan’s era), the USSR detected multiple incoming ICBM missiles allegedly launched by the US.
Turns out the system mistook a particular alignment of sunlight for nukes. Had it not been for Stanislav Petrov, a USSR officer who decided against retaliation despite all evidence pointing towards an attack, we would have had full blown nuclear war and humanity may very well be extinct today.”
10. This is scary.
“Honestly, a massive asteroid. (I’m talking miles in diameter).
I mean nuclear war is devastating but just think about the colossal amount of energy released during such an impact event (billions of nukes).
The worst part? There’s pretty much nothing we can do about it with our current technology.”
11. Our fault.
“We’ll probably damage the environment to a point where we can no longer live in it.
In the last 100 years we’ve been burning through Earth’s resources like we have another planet to move to.”
12. Two theories.
“Two likely options:
Climate collapse.
Might not be the direct cause of human extinction, but it would certainly prompt a lot of candidates for human extinction.
Nations going to war with each other as their land goes underwater or becomes otherwise uninhabitable, wars over the last remaining resources, increased temperatures across the globe result in more heatstroke deaths and tropical diseases spreading across the globe.
In that scenario, either nuclear war or uncontrolled disease kills us all.
Massive collapse of technology.
A coronal mass ejection cripples all technology on Earth- life support systems, planes, power plants, anything more complex than a radio is rendered unusable. Within hours, millions are dead. As supply chains collapse across the globe, famine becomes a part of life for many.
With today’s level of dependence on technology, it would knock us back to being an agrarian species. And the more technologically advanced we get, the worse a coronal mass ejection becomes.
Imagine a time when most humans have complex cybernetics- a coronal mass ejection would literally kill billions as their body’s electronic components failed. It would deal us a blow we could never recover from.”
13. As simple as that.
“Stupidity.
Or I should say the rapidly increasing gulf between common and academic knowledge.
Science is moving faster than the average person’s intellect because we have coddled being fucking morons for decades now.
Look at how Covid has been handled in the scientific vs. common communities and imagine that level of dissonance in an even greater threat.”
14. I’m sorry I’ll miss this.
“An asteroid composed of dinosaurs will crash into the Earth and they’ll eat us all.”
People sure are creative, aren’t they?
Okay, now we want to hear from you!
If you had to guess, how do you think human beings will become extinct?
Let us know in the comments!
