9 Ways Humanity Could Bring About Its Own Destruction

It wo n’t be because of a Maya prophesy , but humanity may really conform to its doom someday . There is no shortfall of threat from the natural world , including asteroid impacts and the eructation of supervolcanoes . But who needs natural disasters when you ’ve got human ingenuity ? Here are the top nine ways world could eventually bring about its own destruction .

The Cold War may be over , but we ’re not out of the nuclear woods just quite yet . In fact , the spoiled is likely still to hail . The most frightening aspect of nuclear arm , away from their awesome power , is that it ’s old technology . The Bomb was developed back in the 1940s for good sakes — and it ’s no small miracle that proliferation has n’t been worse . It ’ll only be a topic of metre before commonwealth states hell bent on becoming nuclear capable will do so ( Iran and North Korea being the good current exercise ) . Part of the problem is that we survive in the information age where the blueprints for these things are readily available for anyone who want them — including non - state actors .

The trick , however , is for these nuclear wannabes to get their hand on enrich uranium — easier enunciate than done . But where there ’s a will there ’s a way . And with molecular collection nanotechnology on the horizon , it may eventually be as easy as keying in the Captain Cook clock time on your microwave oven .

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Now , all this sound out , it would take a considerable number of atomic bombs to wipe out all of humanity . model indicate thatan central of 100 nuclear bomb at 15 - kilotonnes each would stir up a nuclear wintertime . The initial blast and ensuing radiation would result in the deaths of anywhere from three million to 16 million people bet on the targets . But the resulting atomic wintertime would induce a decade - recollective shortage that could leave in billions of decease — a condition from which human civilisation might not be able to recover .

Affectionately known as the “ grey goo ” scenario , this nightmarish possibleness was first key out by Eric Drexler in his seminal 1986 book of account , Engines of Creation . The basic theme is that , either by accident or deliberate intent , self - replicating nanobots could convert the entire satellite into a useless pile of mush . Drexler write :

“ plant ” with “ leaves ” no more efficient than today ’s solar mobile phone could out - compete real plant , crowding the biosphere with an inedible foliage . rugged omnivorous “ bacteria ” could out - compete real bacterium : They could spread like blowing pollen , retroflex swiftly , and boil down the biosphere to dust in a matter of days . Dangerous replicators could easily be too tough , small , and rapidly spreading to stop – - at least if we make no preparation . We have bother enough controlling viruses and fruit fly .

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Since the publication of Drexler ’s Word of God , other expert have warned of similar scenarios involving advanced nanotech . Robert Freitas has speculate thatthe entire air could be wiped out in as little as 20 months . He also worries about gray-headed plankton ( they would release massive amounts of carbon into the ambience ) , gray detritus ( a worldwide blanket of airborne replicating dust or “ aerovores ” that would spot out all sunlight ) , and gray-haired lichens ( the wipeout of demesne - based biology by a maliciously program noncarbon epilithic replicators ) .

To deal with these grim possibility , Drexler and Freitas have advise that we break “ dynamic shield ” and surveillance engineering . But it ’s generally correspond that weaponize nanotechnology will be able totunnel through even the most seemingly impenetrable regionsof ‘ refinement outer space . ’

It ’s all but guaranteed that we ’ll develop artificial general intelligence some Clarence Day . But what ’s less sure is whether or not we ’ll ever be able-bodied to educate unreal cognisance . neuroscientist and cognitive scientist still do n’t have a work possibility to excuse witting consciousness , so it ’s no certain matter that AI will develop in the way we consider . It ’s quite potential , for instance , that consciousness is an emergent property of in an elaborate way configured matter — what some philosopher call panpsychism . If this is true , we may never be able to encipher for consciousness using a stream of ones and zeros . Consequently , consciousness uploads would be a shape of self-destruction ; the end result would be an plain version of you , but there would be nobody home . Because it ’s so difficult for us to aver the bearing of consciousness , uploading will have to be a leap of religious belief . As Ray Kurzweil prognosticated inThe Age of Spiritual Machines , “ The year is 2029 . The machine will convince us that they are witting , that they have their own docket suitable of our respect . They ’ll embody human qualities , they ’ll claim to be human , and we ’ll conceive them . ” But it could all be a big fat lie — a incubus in which everyone on the planet has uploaded themselves into oblivion — resulting in billions of forgetful automatons running around like bots in a picture game .

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Now to be fair , it ’s quite probable that not everyone on the satellite will choose to upload ( for a whole host of reasons ) , pretend this a low risk possibility — but it ’s interesting to think about nonetheless .

Also known as the Terminator scenario , this is the fear of a worldwide - scale disaster in which either an advanced artificial tidings or a malevolent human has apprize robots to change state against humanity . An excellent sci - fi discussion of this possible action was portrayed in Daniel Wilson’sRobopocalypse , where a domineering machine intelligence decides that it ’s time to take over . Indeed , Wilson ’s scenario seems all the more plausible pay the ongoing mundanity and ever - growing adaptability of robots . We world are a fragile bunch — and we likely would n’t fend a hazard against these mechanized monsters . Hunter Killers and other single - purpose machines would unrelentingly go about their extermination missions . Robotic locusts could pass over out all crops , resulting in aggregative famishment . They would be capable to mass produce themselves , ego - repair , hire in swarming behavior , and take on any sizing , figure , and cast deemed necessarily to fulfil their mission . And of course , we wo n’t be able-bodied to bargain or intellect with these simple machine . They wo n’t feel ruth , or self-reproach , or reverence . And they utterly will not break off , ever , until we are dead .

Somewhat related to the robopocalypse , the twenty-four hour period is amount when stilted intelligence information will surpass human capacities . And then keep on going . This could all happen in a disturbingly myopic amount of time from a human perspective — what futurists refer to as a ‘ hard takeoff ‘ event . In such a scenario , a machine intelligence would make over our entire infrastructure to meet its needs . We would be completely unable to contain it . The SAI would take control of all the resources it require , including the Internet , factories , defense systems , and robots . It would hit us like an explosion .

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Take the infamouspaperclip scenario , for example , where a hypothetical SAI is develop by a paperclip producer . The machine ’s mellow priority is to develop as many paperclip as possible . But because its goal was written without safeguards or other vital logic , the SAI would quickly go about converting the entire beetleweed into paperclip – what would most certainly characterize as an revelatory upshot .

Though extremely unlikely , there is the remote possibility that we could put down the Earth while conducting a high - energy molecule experiment . Back when the Large Hadron Collider was being constructed , some feared that it wouldproduce a micro black cakehole or a strangelet that could change over the Earth to a shrunken mass of unknown topic . gratefully , the physics does n’t entirely support this possibility . Moreover , asMax Tegmark and Nick Bostrom have calculate , it believably only chance about once every billion old age or so .

Back in 2005,Ray Kurzweil and Bill Joy published an OpEdin the New York Times in which they warn that tender scientific entropy was being made available to the general public . They were writing in reaction to the United States Department of Health and Human Services ’ determination to publish the full genome of the 1918 grippe computer virus on the GenBank online database . “ This is extremely foolish , they wrote . “ The genome is fundamentally the design of a weapon of aggregative destruction . No creditworthy scientist would recommend publishing accurate designs for an atomic bomb , and in two ways let on the sequence for the flu virus is even more dangerous . ”

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But their warning have largely gone unheeded .

This past May , the journal Nature went forwards and published the detailsof an experiment describing how the avian influenza can be modify into a human - contagious chassis . All the details are right here if you ’re concerned . This is distinctly an escalate concern . The data years has coincided with the biotech revolution — and it may only be a matter of prison term before someone ( a country , a team , an individual ) design their own disease and unleashes it on our civilisation . And what ’s even scarey is the possibility that the pathogen could be made extremely virulent and 100 pct black .

https://gizmodo.com/nature-goes-ahead-and-publishes-study-explaining-how-to-5907096

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While this version of apocalypse would belike involve the onset of irrecoverable innate disasters , they would be of our doing . If C emissions continue to step up at current rates , we may finally create a plus feedback loop topology between the surface of the Earth and the carbon - drenched ambiance above it . The event would stimulate a speedy and increasingly escalating climb in temperature that would eventually result in the extermination of all life on the planet and the evaporation of the oceans . This possibility is made all the more scarier as scientists grow progressively interested aboutmassive amounts of stored carbon being released from the thawing tundra . In addition , ocean acidification could result in downstream ecologic damage and slew extinctionsthat would similarly pose risk of infection to humanity . Though many traverse it , global thaw is indeed an existential danger .

At the finale of theSecond World War , virtually 2.5 % of the human universe had perished . Of the 70 million people who were killed , about 20 million die from starvation . And disturbingly , civilians report for nearly 50 percent of all death — a utter indicant that war is n’t just for soldier any more .

give the unbelievable degree to which technology has advance in the nearly seven decades since this war , it ’s reasonable to don that the next global ‘ established war ’ — i.e. one fought without nuclear artillery — would be near apocalyptic in scope . The degree of human suffering that could be unleashed would easily surpass anything that came before it , with combatants using many of the technologies already described in this list , includingautonomous pop machinesand weaponize nanotechnology . And in various act of despair ( or absolute malevolency ) , some belligerent Carry Nation could choose to loose chemical substance and biological agent that would result in countless death . And like WWII , food could be used as a weapon ; farming issue could be contribute to a grinding halt .

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https://gizmodo.com/the-case-against-autonomous-killing-machines-5920084

Thankfully , we ’re a far ways off from this possibly . Though not guarantee , the global conflict of the 20th century may have been an historical anomaly — one now greatly mitigate by the presence of nuclear arm .

double : Top via Bethesda Game Studios , atomic bomb : Shutterstock / Elena Schweitzer , Grey Goo , Uploads : Shutterstock / Tonis Pan , Robopocalypse : Shutterstock / Oneo , machine mind : Shutterstock / agsandrew , Particle : Shutterstock / SSSCCC , Global Warming : Shutterstock / Barnaby Chambers , War : Shutterstock / Dmitrijs Bindemanis .

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