Thread: The Future: What Will It Be Like?

How do you think The Road would come about? The only realistic thing I can think of is a nuclear holocaust, which is looking less likely nowadays. With regards to pollution; humans are much less important than we like to think we are. Nature will always perservere. We're a mere blip in the history of the planet.

Heh, the future will be Earth without humanity.
Done and done.

Originally Posted by Invader

Heh, the future will be Earth without humanity.
Done and done.

Most likely.
Far as I'm concerned, if humanity doesn't wake up in the next few years to what it's doing to the planet's ecosystem., we're pretty much ****ed.

Originally Posted by Xei

How do you think The Road would come about? The only realistic thing I can think of is a nuclear holocaust, which is looking less likely nowadays. With regards to pollution; humans are much less important than we like to think we are. Nature will always persevere. We're a mere blip in the history of the planet.

Through deforestation and desertification, pollution, war, everything adding up to that scenario.

I agree with Memento's views, since in my view as time progresses and technology elevates the likelihood of a human-caused, catastrophic, terraforming event akin to nuclear war becomes more and more likely.





^This is the Red Forest, the woods surrounding the area where the Chernobyl accident took place... after the reactor blew, the trees all died and absorbed so much radiation from the blast that they turned these colors, preserving the fiery colors of the explosion forever, in a ghastly, nightmarish way... a visible reminder of the tragic accident



^Also taken in the area around Chernobyl



^Test blast at Muroara atoll, French Polynesia

Originally Posted by www.wired.com

Think you might escape the aftereffects of a limited nuclear war that happens on the other side of the globe from you? Think again.

Imagine that the long-simmering conflict between India and Pakistan broke out into a war in which each side deployed 50 nuclear weapons against the other country’s megacities. Karachi, Bombay, and dozens of other South Asian cities catch fire like Hiroshima and Nagasaki did at the end of World War II.

Beyond the local human tragedy of such a situation, a new study looking at the atmospheric chemistry of regional nuclear war finds that the hot smoke from burning cities would tear holes in the ozone layer of the Earth. The increased UV radiation resulting from the ozone loss could more than double DNA damage, and increase cancer rates across North America and Eurasia.

"Our research supports that there would be worldwide destruction," said Michael Mills, co-author of the study and a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "It demonstrates that a small-scale regional conflict is capable of triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones that were previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war."

Combined with the climatic impact of a regional nuclear war — which could reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions — Mills’
modeling shows that the entire globe would feel the repercussions of a hundred nuclear detonations, a small fraction of just the U.S. stockpile. After decades of Cold War research into the impacts that a full-blown war between the Soviet Union and the United States would have had on the globe, recent work has focused on regional nuclear wars, which are seen as more likely than all-out nuclear Armageddon. Incorporating the latest atmospheric modeling, the scientists are finding that even a small nuclear conflict would wreak havoc on the global environment (.pdf) — cooling it twice as much as it’s heated over the last century — and on the structure of the atmosphere itself.

Mills’ work, which appears online today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, used a model from National Center for Atmospheric Research to look at the impact of throwing 5 million metric tons of black carbon, or soot, into the atmosphere. He found that when a cluster of cities are burning together, they end up creating their own weather, pumping soot 20,000 feet into the atmosphere. Once there, sunlight would heat the smoke, and drive it up 260,000 feet above the earth’s surface.

Along the way, the hot soot would cause a variety of atmospheric changes with a net result of huge reductions in ozone, which in the stratosphere serves as sunblock for the earth. In the middle latitudes, the researchers found the ozone layer would be reduced by 25 to 45 percent, with the polar regions losing 50 to 70 percent of their ozone coverage. This thinning is known as a "hole" in the ozone layer, and would be many times the size of the famed hole over Antarctica.

According to research cited by the paper, the increase in ultraviolet light falling to earth at the 45-degree latitude — a little south of Portland, Oregon — would cause damage to DNA to increase 213 percent.

"It would have a dramatic effect on skin cancer and cataracts and be very damaging to crops and ecosystems," Mills said.
The reduced levels of ozone would persist for five years, with substantial reductions in ozone continuing for another five years after that.

Even if the cause of the war were local, its impacts would be felt across the globe.
"Pretty much everywhere [would be] affected," Mills concluded.

Read More http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/20...#ixzz0dOCV3yXP

Yeah... we're pretty much fucked.

Meh, if the government doesn't murder us all, the universe will

How funny, either way our destiny is to die.

Originally Posted by WakataDreamer

Yeah... we're pretty much fucked.

Hopefully, the world can come together and cooperate on the issue of nuclear weapons.

Originally Posted by Soros

Hopefully, the world can come together and cooperate on the issue of nuclear weapons.

I'm hopeful about this. Considering how massively better things have got in just 20 years. Also Obama seems very anti-nuclear, which is great.

Originally Posted by Carôusoul

Also Obama seems very anti-nuclear, which is great.

Yes, but America seems increasingly anti-Obama.

Sorry, just had to say it.

Anyways... anti-nuclear presidents are good, but their anti-nuclear stance doesn't necessarily translate into tangible anti-nuclear action, unfortunately.

We still got nukes.

Lots of em.

And so does Russia, the biggest country in the world.

And a bunch of other countries, all of which are among the most powerful nations in the world (and, therefore, the most likely to get involved in a large-scale war which could escalate to the detonation of nuclear weapons).

I'm hoping that the world disarms before this has chance to happen....



hoping.

Originally Posted by WakataDreamer

Yes, but America seems increasingly anti-Obama...

This is a trend that a new president comes into office he is to be the savior of sorts, then as his term pans out he seems to follow a similar trail as the last president and anything bad that happens during his term is blamed on him and he becomes the evil-in-office... Then supposedly another "savior" is presented and the cycle repeats over and over and over.... It's because the presidents agenda lies with the ones who paid for his position in office, and usually it's the same people over and over and over.