Yes, I saw the added bit just after posting mine but could not think of what to add. :haha:
It is a rather depressing view, I cannot deny it, but surely one would have thought that at least a handful would survive, those 'on board the boats' perhaps and thus begin again with the greater resources available due to the decline of population? Naturally I suspect those will be governmental members :03:
Or perhaps I have too much hope for humanity within me and how we would face the total collapse of society.

Would, in your opinion, the collapse of the global society result in total instant collapse, or a more gradual splintering collapse, with the decline in the use of technology through the destruction thus fracturing the global society and saving it from complete collapse?

Well, history knows many examples were societies indeed died down to the last man and women. I do not think this would be the fate of us, we would probably survive biologically, scattered around in small tribal communities, maybe some local small "kingdoms" run in authoritarian ways, but our global culture, the structure of our global society , the global communication, in short: what we call civilisation, developement, industry, economy, transportation - all that we would see collapsing. Global population numbers nevertheless would fall dramatically. Losses of up to 80, even 90% are imaginable.

It depends on the changes in the biosphere caused by climate change as well as man's actiivty in poisening the environment, wiping out other species, destroying fertile ground and functional ecological sub-systems. this planet has seen environmental changes in the past hundreds of millions of years that have caused most species to die out, in at least two cases the extinction of all life was almost complete and life needed to start all over again at almost zero, with complete new designs. Also, sometimes failed designs were deleted by evolution to begin with something very new again.

If such desastrous changes should take place, then man of course will not escape them, since he is more fragile and depending a creature than many other (lower organisms). In case of destruction of hierarchical orders, these structures become destroyed in the revese order in which they have formed up. Mammals are pretty much at the top of the hierarchy, and they will die first. Bacteria on the other hand will be amongst the last species dying out.

:salute:

Have you ever figured out that three seashells thing?

According to Stallone (apparently);
oh and hey I found a drawn image of the process. Would you like to see?

Hmmm, good points, and funnily enough I was thinking about the same thing last night after I logged off, furthermore, the wars leading up to the collapse whilst technology is still available would further drain the limited resources we have available and damage the environment further (nuclear detonations and so forth). Definately a case of the living envying the dead there. I dare say though, that once we have moved on, perhaps a new species will arise as dominance, as mammals took over after the age of the reptiles had passed. I wonder, should they gain the 'intellect' of ours, what they would make of our remains? Will one day our skeletons hang in a museum as an example of a species which suddenly disappeared due to an extinction event?
Perplexing thoughts. :hmmm:

Personally I believe we are already very close to that edge, and a strong candidate for our destruction right now will be bees (another candidate would be environmental collapse).

If you haven't heard by now bees are dying out due to a mysterious ailment called Colony Collapse Disorder. Entire hives have been mysteriously emptying since 2006. This is a huge problem as something like 90-95% of our food crops are reliant on bee pollination (only wind pollinated crops would be unaffected). Most of the plants in the world are polinated almost entirely by bees If bee populations across the globe fall dramatically we are talking mass starvation. If they happened to go extinct, we and many other animals would be in serious trouble, along with large sections of food producing plants (no more or very limited reproduction for them). Also there have been signs that its not only honey bees that are being affected (its harder to monitor wild native bee populations though).

All of this from one small little insect most of us rarely even think about.

I cut out beef and pork from my diet last year and my doctor was very pleased at my cholesterol level 64! (and I was up in the 200+ zone prior).

However, everyone should eat what ever the hell they want to eat. Just know that if you are eating anything "bad" there may be consequences later in life. :yeah:

Ah but if your fellow citizens are paying your health care bills shouldn't they have a say in what you eat so your bad choices don't cost them extra later on?

That would be a very difficult matter to handle. One of our basic freedoms in America is the freedom to be stupid if one wishes. We have been paying for smokers for decades....

Good example. But smokers have been paying ever higher taxes for decades and I think we're not all that far from an outright ban.

I guess I just wonder how long the freedom to be stupid will last.

The government will not ever ban tobacco. It makes too much money off it.

Federal, State and in some places, local taxes all contribute to the fact that the government makes more from every pack of smokes sold than does the company that produced them.

You think its bad there, you should try here where a pack of cigs was over 10$ a pack. Almost all of that is tax. But that's the Canadian government for you.