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The scene occurs very near the end (there's your spoiler alert) of what may be the best sports novel ever written, End Zone, by Don DeLillo. (The book came out in 1972, but I'm not clear on the expiration dates for spoiler alerts.) The protagonist, college football running back Gary Harkness, tells a teammate about his hobby: “I like to read about mass destruction and suffering.... Horrible diseases, fires raging in the inner cities, crop failures, genetic chaos, temperatures soaring and dropping, panic, looting, suicides, scorched bodies, arms torn off, millions dead. That kind of thing.”
The fictional Gary Harkness would love the new nonfiction book The Fate of the Species, by Fred Guterl. (Disclosure: Guterl is Scientific American's executive editor, but I'm not holding that against him.) Harkness would adore the first part of the subtitle—Why the Human Race May Cause Its Own Extinction—although he would probably be less enthused about the concluding phrase—and How We Can Stop It.
Guterl covers all of Harkness's interests and more, although the sundered limbs are merely implied. “What I'm aiming to do,” Guterl writes, “is tell some stories about real dangers we face. I won't give you a balanced view. I will intentionally ignore the bright side of these issues and focus on the question of how bad can it be.” The answer: Really bad. Not millions of dead but billions, including, of course, you and me and/or all our progeny, depending on the timing of the day of reckoning.
Guterl takes us on a tour of various apocalypses, starting with viruses, especially flu. Every infectious disease expert I've spoken to in the past two decades is terrified of a new strain that could rival the horrific 1918 flu outbreak in killing efficiency. Today we face an adjunct disease threat: wackos with radio programs telling millions of devout listeners that any public health actions taken by officials are mere smoke screens for nefarious policies. (Google “2009 flu” and “Limbaugh.”)
The book goes on to give due respect to the civilization-upheaval potential of climate change, ecosystem collapses, bioterror and artificial evil intelligence—that Stuxnet computer virus designed to mess up Iranian nuclear enrichment operations could return tweaked to take down the U.S. power grid. Any of those cases could wipe out significant portions of the world's population. And the subsequent societal breakdown would then sweep away vast numbers of the survivors. Hey, a blown transformer down the street took out my electricity for three hours last week, and I was about to start burying flash drives full of Bach for aliens to find in the distant future.
Despite the gruesome subject matter, Guterl maintains a sunny disposition. “I tend toward the techno-optimistic side of the spectrum,” he writes. “I also think optimism is our best weapon.”
I'm less sanguine. (Google “climate change” and “Inhofe.”)
Guterl also talks about the get-it-over-in-one-shot scenario, an extinction-event asteroid impact. In comes one of those Chicxulub crater makers, and we're cooked. Former astronaut Edward Lu says we could send a telescope into a Venus-like orbit around the sun that in weeks would double our information about potentially Earth-rattling asteroids. If an inbound killer rock were spotted, we would theoretically mount a mission to deflect the thing.
Lu's Sentinel Mission has to raise a few hundred million hard-to-find bucks to get off the ground. Meanwhile, as I write in early July, the National Hockey League's Minnesota Wild has announced the signing of free agents Ryan Suter and Zach Parise for a combined cost of just under $200 million. Yay.
The book's last chapter is called “Ingenuity.” As Guterl muses, “We've beaten the odds so far. To continue beating them will take every good idea.” Yet even the best ideas may not be foolproof, because, as has been said, fools are so ingenious. Many years ago I happened on a quotation that went something like this: “If all the world's oceans were filled with gasoline, sooner or later some lunatic would throw in a lit match.” The match may already be lit.
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22 Comments
Add Comment"that Stuxnet computer virus designed to mess up Iranian nuclear enrichment operations could return tweaked to take down the U.S. power grid"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't think that's really in the same league as, say, SKYNET or SHODAN, which are what's commonly intended if someone refers to an evil AI, a non-friendly AI, or something similar, and Stuxnet isn't AGI / Strong AI at all (which is implied by "artificial evil intelligence" due to all the fictional examples being AGI / Strong AI).
Bad water and land management, as well as increasing attacks from the climate shift, will be very difficult to deal with; however I think in the end it will be disease that gets us. A series of calamities all at the same time may lead to us not being able to stop the spread of a pathogen, which will in turn lead to a pandemic on the back of an already shaky civilization.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHopefully, despite the ignorance that is currently in vogue and perpetuated by the likes of Senator Inhofe, I think we can survive and even thrive. We will need to adapt and change though.
We know and have known many of the problems however nothing is done as the solution might maybe cost so much money like hydrogenated oils in fryers. That has been known to be a problem for many many years and the incredible cost has prevented action (any thing that costs more than $5 out of pocket is an incredible cost to many that control the destiny of humanity) Transformer oil TCDD and all that good stuff eat it up yea! Residues of agro chem yum. Hydrogenated oil peroxide lipids. All for a buck. Literally.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhy are people so fond of doom scenarios?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhat 'people' are you referring to? Most of the people talking about doom scenarios are doing so with an eye to *avoiding* the occurrence of doom scenarios. There are other reasons, of course, among them sowing fear and uncertainty as a way of earning money through ad revenue (Limbaugh, etc.). Generally, people are fond of thinking and talking about ways of surviving potentially mortal danger, because... that's what our genetics tell us to be interested in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis type of speculation is entertaining. At this point nothing to completely wipe out humans unless the planet itself explodes. Even so called extinction level events such as a giant comet, would likely kill billions but some people would in fact survive and we have the technical ability to continue even with the sun shaded out for decades.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOutside of those extinction level events nature can throw at us, nothing else will kill off everyone. It wont be global warming, even though they like to claim we are all doomed, war wont do it, even if every single nuke in all arsenals were launched today, it would kill a lot of people but there are not enough of those weapons to make a serious dent in 7 billion people and not enough of those weapons to render all land unusable.
Now there may be certain locations of people on the planet that will kill of themselves, mostly because those people are still living with 1st to 14th century beliefs that killing people in the name of king, country or some god are all perfectly reasonable things to be doing. Frankly, if you are that stupid, you deserve to be killed off by whatever your ridiculous beliefs cause. However, those beliefs are NOT in the vast majority of humans, which means war will not do us in. Famine is not going to happen either. Humans are simply too adaptable. If for some reason current arable land becomes somehow not usable, we will just move to the other land that is. If none of that works as easily as today, we will adapt, either irrigate, produce artificial light or whatever it takes.
Basically, this entire article belongs in books and movies. There are simply too many humans who are too adaptable to completely exterminate the species or even render us back to the stoneage. Still it doesnt mean we should not be wary. Just because we can't exterminate ourselves, doesnt mean we cant still kill a lot of people.
"Every infectious disease expert I've spoken to in the past two decades is terrified of a new strain that could ..."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThen he talked to one loonie. 'Terrified'...cripes, what exaggerated nonsense.Some are probably concerned.
I was powerfully influenced, in the early 70s, by EF Schumacher's Small Is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered. Since then, I have watched as the acquisition of Stuff has been marketed as the secret of happiness, popularity and success. This marketing is a lie. Some of us know this; some of us are taken in.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUntil we recognize that what is really important in our societies is being surrounded by friends and people concerned for our welfare in addition to the opportunity and encouragement to do things that we enjoy doing as well as we can. These things require a peaceful, safe place to live, clean water and air, healthy food and a strong, environmentally sane infrastructure.
We can't have any of that until we admit that, if corporations ARE people, then they are sociopaths and should be prevented - by strict regulation, punitive penalties and disassembly - from doing further damage to our world and its populations of people and other creatures.
We need to recognize that the acquisition of excessive wealth becomes a true addiction for many people - with the very same releases of endorphins or pleasure chemicals that feed our addiction to nicotine or heroin - and that it should be treated as such rather than lauded.
We also need representatives in our government whose interests are genuinely those of the majority of people, rather than those of minuscule, wealthy minorities. Perhaps, it should be a requirement that no one who is elected to represent their "community" should actually want the job. Certainly, their campaigns should be funded by citizens, through their government, rather than private treasure troves.
We also need to see that taxes are not onerous or burdensome; instead, they are the dues we pay to live in a safe, beautiful, productive place and we should be proud to pay them. Without the Public things they provide, we would mostly be living in squalor. We only have to look at countries where the rule of law and society have broken down to see that we don't really want to live like that (ref: Somalia, North Korea).
I have a dream of fewer people living in caring communities in tune with each other and the planet. But I suspect that's all it is. A dream. The dark, pessimistic, cynical side of this former idealist figures we don't have many generations left before extinction.
Oops. Got lost grammatically in that second paragraph. Well, you get the idea. :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeople tend to love doomsday scenarios simply because, deep inside, we know that we are not going to live forever, but instead of dealing with it, we project it onto our world.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's going to take a massive shift in the way people think, on an individual, personal level: billions of people are going to have to wake up one day and realize we can't go on as we are, that we have to look to each other, and inside ourselves, to have a future. Each person needs to decide that we are not going to be ruled by old patterns, behaviors, or modes of thought. Individual people must decide to take personal responsibility for ourselves, our neighbors, and our planet, instead of relying on the government, god, or simply someone else to do it. Every person must stop this "they are different than my" divisiveness and say, internally and externally: "For all your differences, your different religion, skin color, we are not different. Although you are different, you are my brother/sister, and we're in this together."
I look around every day at the thoughtless, selfish, ego-oriented behaviors of the people around me, what I call the "I'm-the-only-person-on-the-planet" attitude, and I know that this will never happen.
I just hope now that we'll leave enough of planet Earth for something better to evolve.
Agree, 800,000,000 Chinese (soon to want all the powerful co2 producing devices that we have) wil surely nudge us over the brink of any climactic tragedy. In truth, if dramatic climate change will eventuate in extinction, there is nothing we can do to prevent it. 150 years of exponential growth of green house gas emissions have set any stage that has been set. More likely any temperature variations will drift back to a much larger climatic variable cycles, and humanity will survive.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThe people of the LHC swear any black holes they create will evaporate before they can accrete enough matter to become self sustaining. They only have to be wrong once.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThese are not doomsday scenarios, although I agree it's likely that under any of these or other similar (&
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thissimilarly predictable) worldwide catastrophes, some pockets of human primates would survive & maybe eventually thrive again. Would we work up to driving hugely inefficient gasoline-powered cars again, & to eating disgustingly wasteful amounts of protein & carbs, & to having ridiculously stratified societies for no reason other than the fleeting satisfaction of wealth acquisition? ...well, hopefully not, if we learned anything at all from whatever disaster/s we will be called upon to survive.
As much as I cringe from seriously imagining how much suffering the future will bring, whether from earthquakes or meteorites or drought or viruses or dismantling of viable governments, there's no doubt in my mind that, if the capacity for science and technology is not entirely lost, our descendants will look aback on this era (- generalized as the past 10,000 or so years since we began manipulating our environment to human benefit) - they'll look back & probably conclude, rightly so, that we were only human primates, after all.
I haven't read this book.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo I wonder if any readers have read both this book and Jared Diamond's 'Collapse: how societies choose to survive or fail', and could comment on a comparison between them and other books about the ways we can damage ourselves?
I found 'Collapse' to be excellent because Jared Diamond puts our current situation into historical perspective with real examples of civilisations which failed because they'd trashed their woodland, soil, fisheries, other wildlife, water supply... But he also gives examples of people who've survived because they did adapt and learn to look after the habitats which fed them.
Whatever book or anything else which helps us to learn, all of us need to face reality, which is that we could cause even worse death and suffering than we're already causing now to our fellow humans and to other lifeforms, and that we can choose something better.
Глобальное потепление это показатель изменения формы Земли а антропогенный фактор это ускоритель.Форма Земли меняется из-за изменения процессов в земном ядре.Изменение формы Земли меняет альбедо Земли,скорость вращения вокруг оси,покачивание и угловой наклон.Эти изменения нарушат равновесие в системе Земля-Луна.Луна приблизится к Земле и апокалипсис начнётся во время Лунного затмения в северном полушарии.Всё будет происходить со скоростью вращения Земли вокруг своей оси и Луны вокруг Земли.В настоящее время скорость вращения Земли вокруг своей оси примерно 1800 километров в час,скорсти вращения Земли и Луны уменьшатся но они всё равно будут выше скорости полёта пули (скорость полёта винтовочной пули примерно 800 километров в час).Всё будет происходить по сценарию описанному библейскими пророками.Но главное не это,всё выше описанное это начало перехода нашего мира в другое измерение закодированной информации в виде информационно-лучевого потока.Переход произойдёт только правильной не искажённой и не изменённой информации поэтому вся генетически изменённая информация во время информационного перехода разрушится или останется в этом измерении.В настоящее время происходит генетическая модификация человечества,например спортсменов уже генетически модифицируют.Такая модификация будет происходить с благими намерениями которые приведут нас в ад.У цивилизация генетически модифицированных людей(gennomodov)ДНК будет отличаться на столько,что по генетическому материалу их нельзя будет идентифицировать как обычных людей.Они будут красивее нас,умнее,меньше будут болеть но мы у них(лучшие из нас не в моральном смысле)будем гастайбайтерами и отношение к нам будет соотсветственное.Официальное объявление о генной модификации человека будет означать конец цивилизации человека потерявшего разум и начало цивилизации человека генетически модифицированного.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisfifty years from now, life on earth will be five hundred times better than it is today, in every way imaginable save one; There will still be that cadre of malcontents who will be predicting, with absolute crystalline certainty, that some awful calamity (human caused, of course), is going to doom humankind just fifty years further down the road.....
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that xopher425@aol.com has taken the discussion in a very important direction, and I would like to continue that -- but I think in a more positive way.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIndeed, the key lies with human ego -- we must recognized the "loose nut behind the keyboard" as the old debugging joke goes.
But there is a way, not to eliminate ego, but to use it. There are two aspects in particular here that could bring us to a sense of mutual responsibility that can exceed our natural (and actually from an evolutionary standpoint, not so natural) numero-uno-ism. The first of these is the realization of the depth of global interdependence -- human, and in our interaction with nature -- and the understanding that if we don't mutually concern and coordinate ourselves, we'll strangle on the cords that bind us. The second is the supreme importance of social environment. If social values give honor and prestige to those who are concerned with contributing to the common welfare rather than the rich and powerful, the beautiful and talented, the selfish prima donnas in general, we would rapidly see a new and better world. The first, with a general grass-roots education to make the reality abundantly clear, and the second as both a natural and premeditated result of that clarity, can truly lead us out of the doomsday morass. [As to raw technology without changing people -- who guards the guards Murphy's law will not only doom it from the start, but will guarantee an acceleration in our downhill slide.]
Regarding an excellent starting point for such, I would highly recommend such websites as www.mutualresponsibility.org, if other's like it exist. I find particularly powerful their universally inclusive round table discussion approach. More than just theory, they have hosted successful actual ones in at least two cities in North America so far, and some in Europe I believe.
We're just to intelligent, important to go like Lemmings -- and this is a message that human ego by its very nature, will strongly buy into once the reality is clearly put before it.
The Carbon Trap is a thriller that describes mankind's attempts to control CO2 going awry and threatening all life on Earth. Everyone talks about too much CO2...what if we had too little???
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPeak Phosphorus is another one. The human population may starve because of collapse of agriculture. Mankind is running low of a critical element for fertilizer. Global phosphate supplies are dwindling even faster with environmentalists pushing Big Ag to grow biofuel feedstock and in using biomass for fuel. The estimates are that the world may have less than 50 years of phosphate at the current rate of usage. And as biologists know, there is no alternative to phosphorus in DNA.
I once heard that one cause of the obesity epidemic is the lack of chromium in the soil, and, therefor, in our food (chromium helps the body utilize insulin and regulate metabolism). Makes some sense, considering how we don't seem to be taking proper care of our soil. Too bad we're dumping all our waste into the ocean instead of feeding our plants . . . . . Plants take, we take, but nothing is being given back, so I have no doubt that there is a serious shortage of phosphorus - along with who knows what vital micronutrients.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFigure that in about a hundred thousand years Homo sapiens will go extinct. But it'll take the bloggers to notify us of this fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFigure that in about a hundred thousand years Homo sapiens will go extinct. But it'll take the bloggers to notify us of this fact.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI'm uncertain which nefarious government policy Steve Mirsky assigned to "Limbaugh" and the "2009 flu". There was a public outcry at the time over the inadequate supplies of HN1 flu vaccine. This was partly because of a government regulation that required individual dose packaging rather than multiple dose vials. HSS Secretary Sebelius missed the warnings and failed to boost production in a timely fashion. The result was a vaccine shortfall. Despite your implied accusation that Limbaugh promoted a 'conspiracy theory' he had no complaint about a conspiracy, only incompetence
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