Are we nearly at the cusp of the end of the world?

Yes

1 (5%)

No

8 (40%)

There's no real way to tell, but it's likely

2 (10%)

There's no real way to tell, but it's not likely

9 (45%)

Total Members Voted: 8

[Taors]

The economy in shambles, endless wars around the globe, constant surveillance and tracking of the individual, nuclear weapons, warring ideologies, and a divorce from Nature. Are we bound for the complete destruction of the human race, or a new rebirth?

[Hologene Relapse]

It's always darkest before dawn.

[Taors]

It's always darkest before dawn.

Oh my god share your wisdom with me.

[DogOn]

Unless the LHC takes us out I don't see it happening.

[Harry Tuttle]

I think every generation thinks it is the last. I think it is a form of arrogance. Somehow humanity keeps ticking along.

[bakerbaker]

I think every generation thinks it is the last. I think it is a form of arrogance. Somehow humanity keeps ticking along.

i agree with you. but i wouldn't say its arrogance.

in one sense or another, we've always been approaching the end.

humanity will likley continue to thrive for millenia.
though we certainly are living at the end of an era.

in due time, a new one shall be born.

[Taors]

I think every generation thinks it is the last. I think it is a form of arrogance. Somehow humanity keeps ticking along.

i agree with you. but i wouldn't say its arrogance.

in one sense or another, we've always been approaching the end.

humanity will likley continue to thrive for millenia.
though we certainly are living at the end of an era.

in due time, a new one shall be born.

I'm thinking around 4 years, give or take a few months.

[bakerbaker]

12.21.2012

[YixilTesiphon]

No.

[John Shaw]

Nuh uh. Ain't gonna be no end to the world.

[timmysoboy]

a sun flair will send Venus off it's orbit, and smashing it into mars to create a super-object.  this'll hurtle into Jupiter and the whole fucking planet will blow...  after that mass of gravity is gone the earth will soar off of it's orbit, and into deep space.  Only the few prepared (who will live deep beneath the earth's surface) will survive, living off of what fossil fuels our doomed planet has left.

Eventually (after generations of floating) the earth will find a new orbit that is livable, and eventually the core-dwellers will come out.  They will prosper in their new solar system for 4 days (or seven by the new orbit), before a our new mother-star explodes into a super nova and ends the human race as we know it.

[Harry Tuttle]

a sun flair will send Venus off it's orbit, and smashing it into mars to create a super-object.  this'll hurtle into Jupiter and the whole fucking planet will blow...  after that mass of gravity is gone the earth will soar off of it's orbit, and into deep space.  Only the few prepared (who will live deep beneath the earth's surface) will survive, living off of what fossil fuels our doomed planet has left.

Eventually (after generations of floating) the earth will find a new orbit that is livable, and eventually the core-dwellers will come out.  They will prosper in their new solar system for 4 days (or seven by the new orbit), before a our new mother-star explodes into a super nova and ends the human race as we know it.

I think that's pretty much how Matt Groenig would write it. 

[DogOn]

We are parasites on the host.  Every organism tries to reject these parasitic attacks in its own way, and the earth moves slow.  Your body will become feverish when attacked by virus, and your body will send white blood cells to a bacteria in a cut, which will weep fluid and kill the bacteria, and flush out the sickness and heal. 

As we produce pollutants and spread in population, the earth cannot support its inhabitants with the necessary resources like water and plant life in that area, and it dries up and the people die or move on.  Every reaction is a larger part of a systematic response, and the resources are finite.  When more is shifted from one area to another, it means less in the place of origin. 

Humans can now survive in the cold vacuum of space a mere 100,000 years after the first distinguishable homosapiens came into being.

Dinosaurs were around for 260,000,000 years and had far less ability to adapt to their environment. In less than 2600th of the time we have already gained the ability to be completely self sufficient of a planetary land mass, and we spend a fraction of our effort trying to put things into space because its alot more cost effective to do it on earth.

Humans > Earth.

This whole, humans are just a parasite with shoes downer is totally bizarre to me. For the most part we're friggin amazing, compared to anything else in the universe that is.

the earth cannot support its inhabitants with the necessary resources like water and plant life in that area, and it dries up and the people die or move on.

Is this a joke? We have enough water for 10 times the amount of humans we have now, and basing on the estimates of people who have actually done the work earths population will cap out at about 13 billion. When water dries up, it forms clouds and rains down elsewhere. Plants produce seeds which we can put back in the ground to make new plants. We're not running out of water, and we're not running out of plant life.

[Taors]

Humans aren't parasites, and they're certainly not better than Earth/Gaia. It's a symbiotic relationship.

[MacFall]

As we produce pollutants and spread in population, the earth cannot support its inhabitants with the necessary resources like water and plant life in that area, and it dries up and the people die or move on.  Every reaction is a larger part of a systematic response, and the resources are finite.  When more is shifted from one area to another, it means less in the place of origin. 

Pollution and other forms of waste are inefficiencies which will eventually be worked out by the free market. And yes, resources are finite. As finite as all the matter and energy in the entire freaking Universe. Everything that has existence has the potential to become a productive resource as new technologies are developed, including vacuum. And long before we get around to exhausting everything in existence, we will find a way to use what we now short-sightedly consider "waste".

The end of the world as we know it may well come within a few centuries, but the end of humanity is not probable.

There you go, my eschatological viewpoint. I think that humans will grow up, shrug off the institutional vestiges of our ancient barbarism, (including, primarily, the state) and continue to develop and thrive.