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Astronaut: 'Single-Planet Species Don't Last'

Posted by michael on from the rated-w-for-wiped-out dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle astronaut John Young, due to retire in two weeks, says that the human species is in danger of becoming extinct: 'The statistical risk of humans getting wiped out in the next 100 years due to a super volcano or asteroid or comet impact is 1 in 455. How does that relate? You're 10 times more likely to get wiped out by a civilization-ending event in the next 100 years than you are getting killed in a commercial airline crash.' He says that the technologies needed to colonize the solar system will help people survive through disasters on Earth. Young has written about this topic before in an essay called 'The Big Picture'." In related news, the Shuttle overhaul program is on track for a May 2005 launch.

23 of 921 comments (clear)

  1. Prove it by stecoop · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What other higher order specie that has multi planet colonization did he do his evaluation against? What was the success rate of the multi planet effort - would it have been better to spend those resources maintaining quality on one planet?

    So he writes about volcanic activity, planetoid impacts and solar disasters. What if we spent all our resources on keeping the planet safe? We could drill out pressure of volcanoes and build super bombs for planetoids. If our sun goes all bets are off though we need to find another solar system but I bet we could figure out something in 4.5 billion years.

    But all in all he is correct I am just point out a con; however, I don't think that ~5 billion people could be wiped out by any single event that left the planet habitable afterwards.

    1. Re:Prove it by calibanDNS · · Score: 3, Insightful
      What's his point?

      His point is that we aren't funding this type of research enough. Also, he seems very concerned (and rightly so) that most of our species are blissfully ignorant of the dangers that we impose on ourselves, for example by relying so heavily on fossil fuels.
    2. Re:Prove it by Anonymous+Struct · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I agree, we definitely could go a long way to defending the planet from these types of events, and it's certainly not a bad idea to pursue that. But in the end, it comes back to all of our eggs being in one basket. It's hard to comprehend, much less respond to every potential threat that might come along and wipe out the planet. As Mr. Miyagi says, 'best defense - no be there'.

      I'd also go so far as to say that colonizing other planets is now the most important thing mankind can achieve. Purely from the perspective of preserving our species, it's the next critical step. If you consider how susceptible we are not only to external threats (meteors, epidemics, space locusts, etc), but also just the day-to-day concerns that we might accidentally annihilate ourselves with the war-de-jour, the best way to increase our chances for survival is to spread out a little bit and prevent an accident like that from doing us all in at once. Bottom line is, if you're all about doing something great for mankind, this is a really important problem to solve.

    3. Re:Prove it by Cade144 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So, if we colonize one or two other planets, that just gives us a few more baskets. What we need are hundreds or thousands of baskets.

      In fact, we should probably abandon planets altogether.

      There are tons and tons of nice organics and water waiting for us in the Kupier Belt. Sitting at the bottom of a gravity well, dependent on one biosphere for all your free oxygen is just asking for trouble.

      All we need to do is:

      • Develop fusion technology
      • invent entire engineering disciplines based on zero-gravity industry/construction/living technologies
      • Move a substantial representation of our gene- and meme- pools up out of Earth's gravity well
      • Live for a few centuries in the Kupier Belt and Oort Clouds
      • Spread to other solar systems like a fungus, possibly using Von Neuman Machines to soften up / improve target planetary systems
      • Exist!
    4. Re:Prove it by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful
      It seems to me that the real threat to the species is the species itself.

      I've been of this thought for a long time. Anybody who passed high school biology should realize that the human race is already in serious shape. Think about it:
      • Starvation - In nature populations are kept in check by starvation. Starvation is running rampant in third world countries. The world population is growing so rapidly that it's becoming more and more difficult to adequately feed everybody.
      • Disease - In nature populations are thinned out by disease. Mankind has managed to effectively fight disease for decades and thereby help increase the population. The flu used to kill hundreds of thousands of people but now it's more of an inconvenience. Smallpox is all but gone. Nature responds to this by introducing AIDS, SARS, Ebola, etc. If the avian flu manages to jump into the human species (not unlikely) then new flu outbreaks could kill millions.
      • Fertility - The fertility levels in many species drop when they become overpopulated. Mankind has done a good job of creating fertility drugs, etc. to allow continued growth of the population. Mankind seems to think it's a right to have offspring, despite what nature may be telling them.
      • Homosexuality - There are theories that nature uses homosexuality to help control population sizes. The basic theory is that when a population reaches a size that can no longer be naturally supported by the environment that homosexual tendencies become more prevelant. Of course it could just be that the percentage of gay people hasn't changed, it's just that there are more now since the overall population is growing.
      IMHO these are all signs that the human population is reaching a breaking point. It may not happen in the next 50 years but it wouldn't surprise me at all if within the next 200 years or so there's some major population-thinning event like a pandemic, massive starvation, etc.
    5. Re:Prove it by berj · · Score: 3, Insightful
      The fact that we are at the top of the food chart at the moment doesn't mean that we have to be here.

      This happens to be one of my pet peeves. Anyone who thinks that humans are at the top of the (supposed) food chain (or chart as you call it) has never been stalked by a cougar or a bear.

      I'm not sure when/where the idea of a food chain with a bottom and a top arose but it's poppycock. There is a food *cycle* in which every thing is food for something else (what do you think happens when you die and they put you in that hole in the ground?) and humanity's place in it is no more special than a carrot's or a tiger's.

      If you're talking about predator/prey relationships then humans still don't win. If anything sharks would win there (anyone out there know if Great Whites have any natural predators besides humans?)

      Berj

    6. Re:Prove it by B'Trey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Dinosaur's were huge and highly specialized for their environment. They were vulnerable to any serious alteration to their habitat. Humans are the ultimate in generalists. We can survive in anything from tropical jungles to frozen tundra. Starvation due to huge decreases in the amount of food available would sharply reduce our population, but if anything more advanced than insects and grasses survive, there's every reason to believe we will too. Philosophers are divided on whether or not this is a good thing.

      --

      "The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.

    7. Re:Prove it by Kombat · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I'd also go so far as to say that colonizing other planets is now the most important thing mankind can achieve. Purely from the perspective of preserving our species, it's the next critical step.

      While I believe you are correct, I don't think mankind is there yet. Look at it in perspective. What we're talking about here would take global cooperation of the scale never seen before. We can't even wipe out AIDS or world hunger or war, how are we going to work together to colonize another planet?

      I'm reminded of Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot," and the profound wisdom of his words:


      "The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors, so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds."


      How do you convince a culture like that to put aside the generations of bigotry and hatred, and to work together for something truly noble? Think about your target audience. You have 10th generation racists, anti-gay bigots, xenophobic taxpayers who all demand that their way be the way because "I pay taxes, dammit!"

      In one sense, you can look back through history and believe that mankind has come a great distance, but when you consider things on a cosmic scale, you realize we've barely advanced at all. We still have war, racism, hatred, disease, even though eliminating all of those things has been without our reach for several decades now.

      In the end, it will not be the asteroid that dooms us. The asteroid is merely a statistical inevitability. They've hit before and they'll hit again. What will really doom us is our self-absorbed inability to recognize the inevitability of our impending doom, and act on it. Our own selfish need to be "on top" of this rock will prevent us from conceiving of an existance beyond this rock. We will continue going on, pretending that maybe that last asteroid was really the last one, and the next 4.5 billion years will be smooth sailing. Could we really be that naive? I believe, "yes."
      --
      Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
    8. Re:Prove it by hostyle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Starvation - In nature populations are kept in check by starvation. Starvation is running rampant in third world countries. The world population is growing so rapidly that it's becoming more and more difficult to adequately feed everybody.

      The world has more than enough food to feed everyone on it many times over - food doesn't just run out, its a highly renewable resource. The problem is greed - human, corporate and government greed. "Its our food, if you want it pay us for it" attitudes. There are food surplus "mountains" in every first world country, doing nothing but rotting. Other problems are war - take Sudan for instance, where lots of relief food arrives, but bever reaches those who need it. Its stolen or destroyed by the warlords.

      --
      Caesar si viveret, ad remum dareris.
    9. Re:Prove it by B'Trey · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Funny, you seem to be arguing with me but you also seem to be repeating everything I said.

      Suppose a large meteor did take out he US. Our population is a little under 300 million. That only leaves about 6 billion other people to try an muddle through without us.

      A sufficiently severe catastrophe, whether an asteroid hit or something else, could take out 99% of the human population and still leave some 63 million people.

      Americans, Europeans and many others are certainly dependent on technology. Most of us wouldn't know which end of a seed to plant in the ground. But there are huge populations of the world who still live fairly primitively.

      The question wasn't whether we'd just shrug it off and continue like nothing happened. The question was whether the human race would go extinct. You know, every last member of the species dead? That kind of extinct?

      About the only thing which would kill us without completely destroying the world would be some sort of super flu or other bug which was universally fatal to us but not to other species. (Another possibility would be one which was not fatal but caused universal sterility.) The odds of that are extremely tiny - there seems to always be some fraction of the population that are somehow immune to any specific disease.

      Saying that we won't be driven to extinction doesn't rule out the possibility of any of a plethora of catastrophes. It just says that, as a species, we'll almost certainly survive anything short of complete destruction of the planet. Our civilization may not, but we will.

      --

      "The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.

    10. Re:Prove it by AnonymousKev · · Score: 3, Insightful
      > It's good to know you've got a scientific basis for your homophobia...

      I didn't see any fear of homosexuality in the parent post, but I do have a question. Why is any level of disagreement with the homosexual lifestyle immediately branded as a phobia? It seems like the term is overused and misused an awful lot.

      --
      Anonymous Kev
      Proudly posting as AC since 1997
      (Finally got a dang account in 2004)
    11. Re:Prove it by EvilAlien · · Score: 4, Insightful
      No, he was saying that homosexuality, which will tend towards pair bonds not producing offspring, may emerge as a way of maintaining species population at a somewhat sustainable level. There was no mention of fear, nor any value judgement in the parent post. Please set mode -troll.

      Homosexuality was also not put forth as a danger to the human race. It was listed as an example of emergent issues that help keep populations in check. Political correctness does not trumpt science, reality, or reason. It is possible to think about and try to understand why successful species (i.e., species that survive and reproduce) have sub-populations that pair bond in ways that will tend away from reproducing. There is nothing homophobic, biased, or discriminatory in try to understand how and why this happens.

      Another issue to factor in to our understanding of these emergent homeostatic mechanisms is why heterosexual pair bonds who are naturally equiped (and actively engaging in the requisit behavior) to reproduce choose not to.

      --
      perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10)'
    12. Re:Prove it by Fareq · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Correct. Food is not a production problem.

      It's a distribution problem. Recall U.S. efforts to "feed the hungry" in a bunch of third-world countries... local warlords take all the food, the people end up no better off...

  2. Great! by October_30th · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I'm glad to see that the unmanned-space-exploration-mafia has not been able to completely silence the drive for manned space exploration - yet. I have no doubt that if nothing changes drastically, that will happen eventually. There're just too many "good political reasons" to kill the expensive and risky (PR-wise) manned space program. After all, taking the fall for dead astronauts could kill anybody's career...

    Yes. Manned missions are risky and expensive. Unmanned and remotely controlled probes are just fine and dandy and they yield plenty of useful information about the conditions in space and on other planets, but what's that information good for if we're never going to leave our planet and/or when we're going to get hit by an extinction level event?

    As a species we have definitely become too concerned about safety in exploration. Can't shoot people up to space because they might get killed? Well, duh? What if the explorers like Magellan or Vasco da Game had thought about it like that?

    The saddest comment I once got was: "we'll never be able to colonize other planets because the conditions are so fundamentally hostile, so let's not waste any funds/effort on manned space flights." What the hell happened to the human will to explore and survive? What's the point in sending out probes if the information gained will certainly be lost in the (near) future when the big one hits the earth?

    --
    The owls are not what they seem
    1. Re:Great! by mordors9 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Obviously we need to greatly expand our NASA budget and start preparing to colonize other planets... wait, you don't think that is the point of scaremongering us, is it?

  3. 1 in 455? by WPIDalamar · · Score: 4, Insightful


    Just cause some retired guy in an interview says it, doesn't make it true.

    1. Re:1 in 455? by ViolentGreen · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Seriously... Why the human race be more likely to be destroyed by a geological or cosmological event in the next 100 years than in the past 3000 or so of recorded history?

      --
      Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
  4. Airline Crash by zerosignal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    So there's a 1 in 4550 chance of me dying in an airline crash? That figure sounds suspiciously high.

    1. Re:Airline Crash by doowy · · Score: 5, Insightful

      civilization-ending event: if one occurs, you will die. (and he claims one occuring in the next 100 years is 1 in 455)

      Your mistake is not realizing an average person takes many, many, many more than 1 flight in their lifetimes.

      According to the National Safety Council, your odds of dying are actually slightly worse. Your odds of dying due to injury in a plane crash are about 1 in 4,023 (see this table).

      If you rarely fly, then your at a favorible statistical end of the spectrum with respect to fatalities due to injury by air travel - but remember, some people bank several flights each and every week for years.

      --
      ..mork
  5. How'd they get 1 in 455? by mopslik · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The statistical risk of humans getting wiped out in the next 100 years due to a super volcano or asteroid or comet impact is 1 in 455

    Dare I ask how that number was dervied? It seems awfully arbitrary, and full of doom-and-gloom.

  6. One Planet ... by Lodragandraoidh · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From the article: It's not the point that we should move (to another planet). It's the point that the technologies that we need to live and work in other places in the solar system will help us survive on Earth when these bad things happen.

    Hello - the title of this /. article is misleading...

    --

    Lodragan Draoidh
    The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
  7. What about one-star species? by pla · · Score: 4, Insightful

    While I agree with the overall idea (we need to get stable off-planet colonies ASAP), we need more than just the moon or Mars.

    Most of the possible "civilization-ending" events will actually leave quite a few humans alive, certainly enough to reestablish civilization over a few centuries. The "really big" problems involve our primary, the Sun. If that stops behaving in a very calm, consistant manner, we all die, no recovery possible.

    At the very least, we need a colony beyond the asteroid belt. Sadly, no large rocky planets exist out there (though perhaps one of Jupiter's big-4 moons would suffice). Better yet, a truly extrasolar colony, but that would require information we don't quite have yet (such as a likely Earth-like planet around another star).

  8. 'Single-Planet Species Don't Last' by warpSpeed · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Tell that to the cockroaches...