How long do you think the human race will last on Earth, and how will our demise will come about?

Question

Think of over population, environmental destruction, depletion of resources, green house effects, acid rains, new deseases, asteroids etc. It can only be a matter of time.

Answer 1

Barring the accidents such as asteroids -50 to 100 years for "over population, environmental destruction, depletion of resources."

New diseases, and other pandemic effects could increase that time actually (as the survivors -- if any-- will not have to compete for resources like we do now). The reason for that is pandemics will cause massive death tolls around the world. Some will say that a pandemic will affect only a small percentage of the world population but I am a pessimist in that regard.

I believe that the interconnectivity and interdependence, and population of the world is greater than ever before in the entire past (that of course is obvious). Because of these factors and interconnectivity we are also at risk of greater consequences from any pandemic.



Even in years gone by, the effects of pandemics were devastating. However we are now at risk for exponentially greater death tolls. Sure we have more technology to cure diseases, but we also have more people to have to try to protect, we can not get any cures out to 6 billion people in time to protect them all (if we can even get any cure at all to work).

As more and more people die the risk of other diseases striking and killing uninfected persons (including those who may have survived the pandemic, but are already weakened by it) will also grow. Those who survive other diseases will then be at greater risk of dying from the pandemic.

Transportation will break down, people will be afraid to go out of their homes, those who do not have a supply of food and clean water will die of starvation.