Quote:
Originally Posted by fisheye
Of course there are other things that can end civilization as we know it like the Yellowstone super volcano, a solar flare, or a meteor. We have all our eggs in this one basket we call Earth. To insure the human race we should colonize the moon or Mars. That way we could reseed the Earth should humans go extinct. But that will not happen overnight and we need time to work out the logistics. Plus we could take our problems with us off world.
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One day I made a list of things I could think of that could take us out or return us to the Stone Age, which includes your items plus some additional ones:
Supervolcano eruption - Yellowstone
Extended period of volcanism like those that created the Deccan Traps
Climate change, man-made or natural
Another ice age due to solar changes or passage through galactic dust clouds
Major asteroid or comet impact
Pathogen mutation natural or man-made - unstoppable killer bug
Massive crop failure due to pathogen + lack of genetic diversity
Ecosystem instabilities due to reduced diversity (extinctions)
Massive solar flare like the one in 1850
Gamma ray burst from a nearby star
Nearby supernova
Oort cloud disruption by unseen solar companion raining comets on us
Nuclear war
Unforeseen effects of nanotechnology or artificial intelligence
and those are the ones we know about. Most of these we can’t do anything about. It's no wonder we haven't heard from anyone yet.