/sci/ - Science & Math

A big enough asteroid

>>1412814
the thing is unless it was big enough to shatter the earth entirely/turn the surface of the earth into magma, i dont think so.

And its doubtful such a large object could exist in a "mature" solar system, it would have long ago been destroyed by collision/gravity/the sun

>Can anyone think of a situation that would result in ALL human being dying out?
Everybody becoming an hero.

Hmm, some vents as big as the Serbian traps pour 1-4 million KM squared of lava and melt the methane hydrates, causing the world temperature to rise and make it unlivable for necessary plants and certain creatures.

Put all the nukes under Yellowstone

>>1412834
well something like that would kill a LOT of human beings, but it did not kill complex life off, and human beings are more adaptable and flexible than any complex life that has even been.

>>1412843

I'm guessing it would kill most of the human population, excluding a lucky few.

>>1412854
thats the kind of situation i'm talking about, is there anything remotely likely that could kill every last person?

It would be relatively easy to kill all the civilized people, pretty much if the supply routes to bring in food go away everyone in big cities would be dead or gone within a couple years. Honestly if I couldn't buy food I probably wouldn't live through the first winter around here. Anyone on 4chan that thinks they can go out into the wilderness with guns and knives and live for very long is an idiot etc.

But taking out all the little tribes, all the people with farming skills living in low densities on arable land around the world or that sustainably live as hunters/gatherers seems very difficult and unlikely unless an event happens that wipes out anything bigger than bacteria.

All it takes is one or two small groups of a couple dozen people to repopulate the world, out of 6 billion people it would be hard to kill them all.

>>1412840
I don't understand why terrorists just don't bomb Yellowstone.

Genocidal alien species.

>>1413121
Are you fucking retarded?

>>1412824
well there you go
get an impactor about half the size of the moon

surface of the earth turns to magma for a few years, seas boil off in days, and the salt boils too due to the incredible heat

only thing left is extremophile bacteria that hang out between the scorching surface and the hot mantle

>>1413127

anybody else ok with this?

humanity thinks it is the master of the universe, getting completely owned by a vastly superior race just like we have done to so many other species would be pretty awesome.

A comeback album from the backstreet boys?

Well, I can at least tell you that a zombie apocalypse will most likely not put an end to humanity. As anyone who has done population studies on predator/prey species, they can tell you that the zombies will die out along with the humans eventually and since there will likely be very small pockets of humans alive somewhere, it is highly unlikely that the zombies will outlast us.

vacuum metastability event

Massive plate shifting. Earthquakes demolish the land, volcanos blot out the sun, essentially making it winter for the next year, and massive tidal waves destroy shoreline cities, along with massive tornadoes. Assuming that the plate shift would be massive enough to tear continents apart, I'm pretty sure there wouldn't be many survivors, and the ones that would remain would die out in a generation or two.

Two cosmic events that would rape earth:

A rogue start collides with our sun, or a rogue gas giant, and trigger it going red giant, expanding nearly to (Or past) mars

OR

Super/Hypernova within the local cluster would have devestating effects upon the earth.

Someone nukes the moon away.

>>1413159
I disagree with your plate shift theory. Humans/prehumans have already survived several supervolcanic events, and that was with no knowledge of technology.
The cosmic events you talk about sound plausible.

>>1413159

oh my god you are a fucking canadian aren't you

i can tell because your ideas all suck and are shitty

>>1413151
Something like that scares the shit out me.

>>1413151
Elaborate.

google "exit mundi"

>>1413203
no

grey goo

>>1413200

not me you are responding to but essentially it would be a "bubble" propagating that had different laws of physics than we have, fucking shit up at the speed of light. we wouldn't see it coming and everything we know would just cease to be instantaneously.

>>1413200
anotherfag here, the effect said would have is that of a bubble expanding at the speed of light from the initial point to everywhere in the universe and the inner boundary of this bubble would be energetic in the extreme, enough so that all order we know of would be destroyed. We're talking about planck energy scales filling all of the universe.

>>1413211
Is this shit plausible.

>>1413211
You read the wiki page too huh?

>>1413200
The idea is that we are existing at a higher vacuum energy state than the vacuum state of the rest of the Universe. Through something like quantum tunneling, our region of the universe falls to the lower state, which also happens to completely change the laws of physics. This all happens instantaneously from our POV, because the bubble travels at the speed of light.
Suddenly, you're on 4chan posting on /sci/. Without you even being able to realize it, you and everyone and everything you know ceases to exist.

1. Induce beneficial mutations to humans
2. mutations reach a threshold where the mutants can no longer breed with old baseline
3. mutants crowd out the old baseline
4. in effect, humanity has ceased to exist

>>1413180
This.

Oil crash results in total economic collapse returning humanity to the dark ages. Then, when we're at a level of technology not that much different from 3,000 BC, the Yellowstone supervolcano erupts.

Some human makes a discovery that leads to extremely easy way to travel back in time, leading to ALL the eventual and preceeding world-lines that have humanity to also have time travel.

A few iterations later the human species never emerges from the olduvai gorge.

>>1413242
Toba Event.

>>1413220

nope. believe I first heard about it on history channel show "the universe" a couple years ago.

>>1413242
Already happened bro.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toba_catastrophe_theory
That's why I said humans would withstand just about any catastrophe that didn't also wipe out all other non-microbial life on Earth. We've survived several Ice Ages as well, so I don't buy the "zomg nuclear winter will kill us all!!111"

earth gets hit by a huge-ass asteroid

moon finally descends upon us