NationStates Jolt Archive

Hello,

How do you think the world will end?

Hello, How do you think the world will end?


http://ParadigmAssociates.org/OneMansOpinion.html

Hello,

How do you think the world will end?

Most likely, the sun will go Red Giant as it runs out of fuel to power it's fusion process. As the surface of the sun expands, it will most likely vaporaize Mercury, Venus and Earth. Maybe Mars too. Then, it'll collapse into a white dwarf.

In a glorious sex orgy!

In a glorious sex orgy!

Why wait?

Why wait?

I. don't. know. I just don't know...

For mankind, a nuclear winter or nanobots or a global pandemic.

Probably something lame

I think it will end in this massive war where everyone nukes each other causing people to be blown up or die latter due to not being able to eat as everything has been posioned by the chemicals in the nukes.

I think it will end in this massive war where everyone nukes each other causing people to be blown up or die latter due to not being able to eat as everything has been posioned by the chemicals in the nukes.

wrong decade/century

George W. Bush is elected president of the United States for four more years. Muhammed Ali says something negative about Israel in passing, is investigated by the FBI for terrorist connections. In response to US trade ambargoes, Canada closes its border to their southern neighbour, which causes massive blackouts, loss of natural resources, and billions of dollars in tourism. The US populace, completely fed up with the direction their government is heading in, revolts; a small group of militants assassinate Bush, the Senate and a 60 year old hooker. The US, now under totalitarian control, declares war on random counties in an attempt to play the 'mad dog', so other nations will not mess with them. The rest of the world unites and WW3 ensues. The US, afraid of losing, launches nuclear warheads to attacking countries; including China, France, Russia, Iran, and a plethora of others. 60% of land is destroyed in a matter of hours, the survivors falling into a nuclear winter which chokes the atmosphere of oxygen, and blocks the sun, slowly killing off every living creature on Earth.

global economic collapse leading into fractured anarchy, eventually falling into near-barbarism. Then the environment will wipe 80% of us out. Our grandchildren's grandchildren's great-grandchildren MAY begin the slow upward spiral again.

We're going to keep getting dumber and crazier so I think it'll end like that. not with a bang but with a DUH! unless of course you take into account most nukes are controlled by wackjobs.

George W. Bush is elected president of the United States for four more years. Muhammed Ali says something negative about Israel in passing, is investigated by the FBI for terrorist connections. In response to US trade ambargoes, Canada closes its border to their southern neighbour, which causes massive blackouts, loss of natural resources, and billions of dollars in tourism. The US populace, completely fed up with the direction their government is heading in, revolts; a small group of militants assassinate Bush, the Senate and a 60 year old hooker. The US, now under totalitarian control, declares war on random counties in an attempt to play the 'mad dog', so other nations will not mess with them. The rest of the world unites and WW3 ensues. The US, afraid of losing, launches nuclear warheads to attacking countries; including China, France, Russia, Iran, and a plethora of others. 60% of land is destroyed in a matter of hours, the survivors falling into a nuclear winter which chokes the atmosphere of oxygen, and blocks the sun, slowly killing off every living creature on Earth.
As I said: Probably something lame

Rofl!

I believe it will be something lame as well.

Say, somewhere, way up in the cosmos, bored deities (preferably Greek ones, as they tend to like playing around) start playing around with matches...inevitably, one bends over, lights a match and farts. Earth is then set upon by a great cosmic break of firey wind...diestroying its atmosphere, catching its forests ablaze, boiling its seas...and frying all inhabitants.

while all things do eventualy end, they don't all end at the same time. so the question is almost totaly meaningless.

aside from that everything that ends is the beggining of something else.

so every time i hear that question my invariable response is to ask for a deffinician of what is being ment by world and what by its ending.

oh the very substance of the rocks will be converted to energy in the death of our own sun or some other cosmic event unimaginable ages after our species has long since expired or evolved, and in such a context that question becomes accademic, and utterly and thoroughly forgotten.

it is such a big and diverse universe out there that to immagine our one little dustball to be totaly unique in possessing sentint life is an absurdity beyond and beneath worthyness of comment.

but you did say specificly our world, or did you say 'the' world? i forget.

well that's for the rocks that will outlast us by orders of magnitude beyond how long or even they have as yet been here.

now as to the potential extention of our own species we certainly have the capacity well within our own hands to bring that about and in more then one way.

there is however no inevitability as to when or whether we will or may.

now a lot of thigs are going to chainge when the oil runs out and it will run out and depending on how blindly will insist on remaining dependent on it untill it does there could be a lot of mass starvation in the cities and that sort of thing when it does.

this could also be easily avoided with reasonable foresight
which none the less remains up to us as to weather and when we will.

so what will end and when is one of those 'always in motion' things

our species might well morph and sooner the most immagine as a resault
of some of the geneticly modified stuff that's been released into the environment

we might start having a large ration of unusual births
as a resault of this and other factors owing to our negative
impact on the natural cycles of renewal on which all life
depends including our own.

chief amont these other factors is the degree of our reliance upon combustion to generate energy.

and since a majority of 'wierd' births are likely to be nonviable this would likely bring our population levels back into balance with our place in nature.

so we may some day be furries living in an ecotopian paradise in order to survive. tecnicly at that point the human species as we know it today would no longer exist, though i strongly suspect we would remain just as creative and sentient.

obviously that is one of the more out there scenarios and i would not go so far as to suggest it as among the most likely, only one of the more interesting, delightful and ultimately hopeful.

what i don't believe is that any nontangable being or force of combination of several or many is going to take the place of the kind of world we live in being the natural collective resault of how each and every last one of us actualy live and our actual, often hidden even from our individual selves priorities and the markets/incentives they create. though i'm sure many exist and love us and wish us well, or at the very least no particular harm.

=^^=
.../\...

Economic collapse caused by an ever increasing population of old people growing ever older hogging all the production of the younger people. Revolt would happen except the youthful population is carefully kept away from anything which might be used as a weapon and is kept too isolated to organize a resisitance (for your on good and you thank us for it when you get older). The women of childbearing age will stop having children in an already overpopulated world which can offer so little. The lack of a younger generation to replace them and the ever increasing size of the gerontocracy will eventually place such material demands on the aging "last generation" while allowing them so little that they will just die from overwork and undernutrition leaving the old folks to die off.

Good point there, Squi. I don't think it'll necessarily end up as the Apocalypse, but the problem of overpopulation and specifically the insanely growing 60+ age group is already and will exponentially become more of a problem as the trend continues. Modern medicine and health practices are sadly detrimental to society in the end, as they disturb the balance of nature. Cancer, AIDS, man's instinct for war/bloodlust from time to time are not there by accident, they're nature's way of maintaining balance. Each day in our "humanitarianism" we find more and more ways to cheat death while oblivious to the potential consequences of these actions. We have to seriously start addressing overpopulation.

The other thing is reliance on machines to do our work for us. I have trepidations about all the new unmanned scout technology; one day in the not so distant future, machines may be fighting all the wars for mankind. Sounds great, no human loss, right? Unfortunately, as we rely on and improve the intelligence of machines in these and other endeavours, humans become more and more proportionally weak and dependent on machines, as their intelligence and capability of self-awareness increase. Computers and the internet will soon dominate every aspect of life. They become far, far more complex and human-like, allowing for more possibility of a virtual "insanity" developing with potentially detrimental effects to all known life. "HAL" from "2002: A Space Odyssey" and "Skynet" from the Terminator series may not be as far fetched as they seem somewhere down the road. We must be ever vigilant to never, as a race, become outdated in comparison to, or "obsolete" in in the eyes of that which we have created.

If not overpopulation or replacement by AI, the pandemic (less likely) or eventual Nova of our sun in a few billion years (certain) will wipe out our population/planet. Whether we as a race will still be alive will be entirely dependent on our ability to not initiate a nuclear holocaust, drain the resources necessary for sustaining life, or block out the sun, as we would almost certainly have the technology to leave our planet and inhabit others by that point, barring an epoch of "Dark Ages" ushered in by any number of variable possibilities.

As for the universe, or multiverse, or omniverse itself, redshift will eventually reverse, as our universe contracts back to the single atom from which it was created, and has continued the process since perhaps infinity. Stephen Hawking had a theory about this "Big Bang" just being another in a series of expansions and contractions, our roughly 18 billion year estimate on our universe being like just another breath of the lungs in the flow of time (which doesn't exist in the true sense, anyway, only in relativity :P ).

Now I know how I HOPE it'll end.

I HOPE the world doesn't so much end...as get replaced. Replaced with something more interesting.

http://www.xs4all.nl/~mke/exitmundi.htm

I think the old 2012 thing is far off but possible I like the one about the old inbreeding.

Yay for the Fallout storyline! Go Nuclear stuff!

How the world will end is quite well known and understood.

The Sun shines by converting hydrogen in its core into helium, and in the process loses mass that is converted to energy via Einstein's E=mc2. It has been doing this for about 4.5 billion years, and is expected to do so for 5 billion more years. After that time, its hydrogen fuel will be depleted. With its internal energy source shut down, gravity will cause the core to collapse. That collapse will generate enough heat to expand its outer layers, turning our Sun into a red giant that will expand beyond the Earth's orbit. (So don't make any plans for the year 5,000,002,000.)

The collapsed core will become a white dwarf, composed of degenerate matter supported by the inability of two electrons to occupy the same space. A star more massive than our Sun eventually becomes a neutron star via a similar process. The most massive stars collapse to form black holes.

Please note that angels, trumpets and any number of horsemen are not in fact required.

Whether humankind is around to witness or record the event is another question, and rather depends on how we learn to behave between now and then.

How the world will end is quite well known and understood.

he Sun shines by converting hydrogen in its core into helium, and in the process loses mass that is converted to energy via Einstein's E=mc2. It has been doing this for about 4.5 billion years, and is expected to do so for 5 billion more years. After that time, its hydrogen fuel will be depleted. With its internal energy source shut down, gravity will cause the core to collapse. That collapse will generate enough heat to expand its outer layers, turning our Sun into a red giant that will expand beyond the Earth's orbit. (So don't make any plans for the year 5,000,002,000.)

The collapsed core will become a white dwarf, composed of degenerate matter supported by the inability of two electrons to occupy the same space. A star more massive than our Sun eventually becomes a neutron star via a similar process. The most massive stars collapse to form black holes.

Please note that angels, trumpets and any number of horsemen are not in fact required.

Whether humankind is around to witness or record the event is another question, and rather depends on how we learn to behave between now and then.
I doubt we'll be around. My money is on sentient ants. :)

I doubt we'll be around. My money is on sentient ants. :)

I'm not that pessimistic.

I think we can survive.

We've come an incredibly long way in a very short time, and have managed to overcome a lot of problems along the way.

The near absence of slavery and the incredible increases in medical knowledge are two examples which provide a spark of hope for the future.

I'm not that pessimistic.

I think we can survive.

We've come an incredibly long way in a very short time, and have managed to overcome a lot of problems along the way.

The near absence of slavery and the incredible increases in medical knowledge are two examples which provide a spark of hope for the future.

True enough, and maybe we can outgrow our savage ways. But as time goes on, the chances of another cataclysmic event wiping the Earth slate clean(well, almost clean. Earth is a resilient thing) approach 100%.

True enough, and maybe we can outgrow our savage ways. But as time goes on, the chances of another cataclysmic event wiping the Earth slate clean(well, almost clean. Earth is a resilient thing) approach 100%.

Yeah, true enough, but I still prefer to cling to the hope.

As an agnostic, it gives a sense of purpose.

And as a parent, the sources of hope are constantly refreshed.

Yeah, true enough, but I still prefer to cling to the hope.

As an agnostic, it gives a sense of purpose.

And as a parent, the sources of hope are constantly refreshed.

Ah, don't worry. Does it matter if mankind ends in 100 million years or in 5 billion?

True enough, and maybe we can outgrow our savage ways. But as time goes on, the chances of another cataclysmic event wiping the Earth slate clean(well, almost clean. Earth is a resilient thing) approach 100%.
I do not think that it is mankind as a whole that is "savage". I rather think that the leaders, those who are safe at home, are the true savages. The knowledge that they themselves do not need to fight for the things they order their subordinates to, results in the worst wars imaginable - which cost millions of dead Germans, French, Russians, British, etc. soldiers and civilians in World War 1 and World War 2. So long as the leaders are not personally held accountable - also the leaders of the US - for any and all crimes committed under their responsibility, so long we will have wars and conflict with humans killing humans for no apparent reason. The recently proclaimed "War on Terror" which sprang up in the last 3 years and is now in full swing, is one of the main supporting proofs for this theory. The US should learn that history repeating itself is a good thing, because we already know what is going to happen. Compare Bush to our own Emperor Wilhelm II. before and after World War 1. Both lost support after their wars, one was eventually forced to resign. What happens to Bush and his administration of collossal failures, remains to be seen.

When I've finished my doomsday device. Or when the psychic powers kick in....

Either way, you guys are screwed. :D

When I've finished my doomsday device. Or when the psychic powers kick in....

Either way, you guys are screwed. :D

It's spelt p-s-y-c-h-o-t-i-c.

It's spelt p-s-y-c-h-o-t-i-c.

Ah, doomsday devices never work. None of them have. In all of history, nobody has been able to make a working doomsday device. I've made three prototypes. None worked. :(

The world will end when the sun goes red giant, or if an asteroid comes our way before we invent asteroid deflection technology.

It'll prolly end due to nuclear war or the sun expanding and engulfing the Earth.

Watch this!
http://starterupsteve.servepics.com/swf/endoftheworld.html

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
-T.S. Eliot

The world ends with the last intelligent person being unable to define it.
No thought = no earth

Hello,

How do you think the world will end?
The US will start a nuclear war with a random country for disrupting their foreign policy and being 'commies,' then that country will launch nukes at all nuclear countries because it didn't know that the US did it. This process is repeated until there aren't any industrialized countries left in the world.

It's spelt p-s-y-c-h-o-t-i-c.
it's spelled spelled :p

My theory:

As people continue to break wind worldwide, the methane gasses will eventually come together. This will envelope the world in a terrible smell. This smell alone would be enough to choke out all life. Of course, since some of us aren't stupid enough, some idiot will decide that they should burn the gasses away. Needless to say, the Earth would be fried in a matter of minutes.

Or anything from Exit Mundi (http://www.xs4all.nl/~mke/exitmundi.htm) seems equally possible.

Some say the world will end in fire;
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To know that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.

Robert Frost

How do you think the world will end?

With a whimper.

Now I know how I HOPE it'll end.

I HOPE the world doesn't so much end...as get replaced. Replaced with something more interesting.

Bingo!
Check out the book of Revelation (last book of the Bible). The world WILL get replaced with something much more interesting.
Maranatha!

The world will end when I die.

As I see it.

The world will end when I die.

As I see it.

Well said. But, in the bigger picture, I see it like this:

If there isn't a huge economic collapse, starting with the United States and consequently spreading to the rest of the world, we will keep going as we are. And if we do, we'll absolutely destroy the environment, the ozone will be eaten away, and the general homeostasis of the world will disintegrate to the point that it is complete uninhabitable. This will of course take place over a long period of time and the last stages will be preceded by strikingly low birth rates.