Quote:
Originally Posted by August
I think it's a pretty safe bet that none of us will live to see the end of either the earth or the human race.
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Short of a planet splitting planetoid (yeah, asteroid is just too small here) impact, I'm sure we won't witness it. The rocky body we know as Earth will continue to orbit the Sun, for about another 4 billions years (I believe that's the number) until the Sun turns into a red giant and swallows it whole.
End of the Human Race is another matter. The right idiot in control of a nuclear arsenal has a decent shot of wiping us out, but probably not completely. But most likely, if we do see a species ending event, it will be from some pandemic that we can't stop. Or again, from an impactor from space.
But yet, it's kinda weird that one of the biggest natural disasters we could ever face, an impact from an asteroid or the like, is the only natural disaster we can both predict with adequate lead time and we can prevent, that we aren't spending more effort to protect ourselves.
https://b612foundation.org/ ftw