The human species is not literally doomed

THIS WAS ORIGINALLY WRITTEN IN FEBRUARY OF 2006
This concerns the long-term fate of our species over hundreds or thousands of years, and was in response to a discussion the FUSN list in which several people thought our survival time as a species was limited.

Barring an astonishing revolution in our understanding of cosmology, life on earth itself has outer limits imposed by entropy, or another big bang, or our sun going nova. A colossal meteor impact beyond anything the earth has known before could surely doom us all too. We can reasonably hope that none of these things will happen for millions or even a few billion years. Humans will not survive literally forever.

But I think we are very likely to survive lesser cataclysmic tragedies, including another large meteor impact of the sort that caused widespread extinctions in the past. Within this category I also include a massive set of nuclear explosions all over the world, an event which seemed entirely possible during the Cold War era. One worst-case scenario from such dire events is a winter of a hundred years during which all agriculture ceases. I am convinced that bands of us will survive. Small groups will be able to fight the cold by living underground. In various pockets around the world, there will be ample food supplies left dotted over the landscape as our food processing systems collapse. Hungry masses will eat most of these in their futile attempts to survive, but some will be left. The bands who survive may well earn that status by armed victory over many others. They will be eating stockpiles of canned soup and canned tuna for a hundred years. When all but a few of us have stopped fighting over this food because we have died, the survivors will be able to mount expeditions to recover more.

When the winter lifts, wild plants will flourish again. Seeds will be left over from our civilized years, as will books on agriculture. Some zones will be relatively free of radiation, if nuclear war was what hit us. Some crops and some people will be more resistant to radiation damage than others.

Another doomsday scenario is the appearance of a microbe that is so virulent and so contagious that we all die. One likely protection is isolated geographical pockets to which it does not spread. We also have our genetic diversity. There is the fascinating story of the gay man who survived multiple exposures to the AIDS virus because he had two copies of a rare gene linked to resistance against the Black Death in Europe. If one in 10,000 are immune to this new bug, that is enough for us to survive.

Our small bands will be able to repopulate the earth. We humans can reproduce fast when we put our minds (and other parts) to it. The raw materials, knowledge and mindset in this newly fertile world will be available for rapid technological development. I think that this sort of survival skill, perhaps repeated multiple times, will get us through many thousands of years. If 200 bands globally meet conditions as we forsee them, there is still room for 90% failure due to unforseen circumstances to leave us with a healthy 20 bands.

I will be interested in others' views on whether these scenarios for survival are persuasive, or references to literature that deals with the topic.

Perhaps during some cataclysm, in a tiny band some genetic change -- a very small change -- will occur to create a new species, which might come to crowd out the old-style humans. But I think these new beings will be essentially people, very similar to us, very recognizable to us, and very much our children. They will be heirs to our entire culture. I would not think of their dominance as the end of humanity.

In all of the above, I have assumed an extreme case. It is surely easier to imagine survival if an entire region did retain its biological integrity.

I'm not sure why people tend to think we will not survive. Perhaps it is that our starting point is our own civilization, and as we imagine horror upon horror involved in its destruction, it seems only a few more steps to reach extinction, when (I argue) it is actually a great many. Perhaps too there is the scorn many of us feel for survivalists, who have turned their backs on solving problems here and now. I think preserving civilization is an adequate motivation to action without needing to contemplate actual extinction.

It is a fact that we have been in the past ten thousand years enjoying an unusual warm spell, compared to the past few hundred thousand. From that perspective, global warming might slightly delay the reappearance of the glaciers [I now believe I was wrong about this, comment added November 2007]. Yet the glaciers do not threaten our survival. They spare the tropical regions.

None of this makes me any less concerned about the environmental catastrophes that loom within the next decades and centuries, but that's another topic. I do predict that if things deteriorate to the point where billions are starving, that would not end civilization. I believe the rich countries or regions would harness their superior organization and technology in the name of survival and protect what is theirs.

My views on this make me an optimist, from one perspective. I am an optimist with regard to human survival.

What is implicit in much of what I have written above is horror, cruelty, and the abandonment of all standards of civilization. I could be considered a pessimist in thinking it likely that survival under extreme duress will require this.

It is possible that the lack of ethics that keeps us from making progress in our current world will help save us when our survival is threatened. Consider that the ethical solution to a situation where a few survive while others starved might be to all starve together. Selfishness and violence might be required for a few to survive.

But the same genetic endowment that keeps us from making permanent advances in our moral compass also keeps us from suffering permanent losses. From survival and savagery can spring forth our good qualities again, when circumstances are favorable. The genes we bear today have all passed through countless individuals who have been the scum of the earth, murderers and rapists, not to mention swindlers and liars and the unfaithful. Despite that, we have emerged as mostly decent people, civilized people.

After a severe cataclysm, we can not only survive. Civilization can rise again.