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So i realize this isn't specific but let me throw up a bunch of possible scenarios. Aliens invade and are hostile (xcom and a whole lot of other games), aliens come in peace (and it's probably legit so how would diplomacy work here), human augmentation and the consequences (deus ex), robots replacing most types of human workers with automated work leaving many without jobs, robots becoming sentient or very nearly (Terminator, the matrix and i think battlestar galactica), improvements to eliminate human flaws up to the extent of being post-human (whether disabilities or possibly sexual preferences up to stronger and/or smarter individuals or creating people for tasks/jobs that you assign to them before birth), a sort of zombie/genestealer cult/reaver ('firefly' the movie) type scenario (basically for whatever reason people become aggressive to other humans due to some sort of vaccine or similar and form a group together).

I realize the whole zombie/genestealer cult idea is probably more fictional but the point of this thread is to prepare for scenarios that you normally can't prepare for. I realize it sounds futile but it may be needed in some cases like the alien, robot and augmented human scenario.

I mean what happens if aliens do come in peace but accidentally cause a lot of problems to humans as side effects to their own technology, trade and diplomacy? What if they see us as useful human guinea pigs for scientific tests that they can be more inhumane with much as we are to animals vs people? What if they screw us in trade and cause a lot of power shifts due to certain groups of people getting access to valuable alien tech. What if they accidentally kill us via proximity to us with something they aren't aware is killing us? What happens if in a sense their dealings with us cause a lot of upheaval not just because of trade but certain politics. Perhaps diseases get spread from one species to another. They may very well even mean us no serious harm but consider us lesser and in so doing treat us worse than them and more expendable. Keep in mind their tech and empire will also be better so they may get their way a lot of the time. Would we have to resort to a 'one world government' to handle alien outsiders? If we did where would the capital be if there is one and who would we elect provided this is done democratically even and would all nations accept this leader? What if anti-alien dissidents rose up to attack the aliens and how would we both respond?

Anyway that is just one scenario but there are others. I just figure it might be considered a fun or interesting topic for fellow Dakka members. Perhaps we can even get some games going of it in a sub-forum on Dakka.

I'll be dead in 50 to 100 years so it's all good.

 Ahtman wrote:
I'll be dead in 50 to 100 years so it's all good.

Screw that. I'm going to live to 102, then die. Like the city of Detroit

100 years. The US becomes a religious state setting the scene for armageddon vs the Islamic world.
Germania and its newly incorporated states of France, Italy, Poland etc fights a proxy war against Russia.
The SE Asian countries fight bitter skirmishes over land and resources.

The independent nation of London deals with all factions equally, so long as it gets its negotiated financial settlements on time.

At the same time disease ravages the populations of the world. The flu claims millions. HIV has decimated africa. TB is endemic throughout the world. Scabies is as regular as the common cold. Cholera is common even within wealthy enclaves.

There is talk of a manned mission to Mars.........

Also the Earth is the hottest it has ever been. But thats nature for you.

I prefer the Molemen Strike from Underground scenario myself.

I think "aliens" is an unlikely scenario. When you look at the vast distances involved, and the energy/technological requirements for interstellar travel, any civilisation advanced enough to be able to do it, probably wouldn't need to. There is literally nothing on this planet that would be of interest to such advanced aliens.

Post-humans, on the other hand, are almost a certainty: we're practically a race of Human-iPhone symbionts already. I'm guessing that in the next hundred years, it will become possible to access things like your calculator through some kind of cybernetic interface, and from there it will snowball.

What's far, far more depressingly likely is a state of permanent proxy war between various super states, sort of what Mr Burning described above with a bit more "1984" total state surveillance added in.

Population growth will spiral out of control, food and water shortages leading to wars, famine, huge epidemics and chaos that spread across the world as people migrate en masse in search for a place to live. In this period of chaos, much of our technological knowledge is lost and once the dust settles we are pretty much back in the dark ages.
History always repeats itself, you will see.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Population growth will spiral out of control, food and water shortages leading to wars, famine, huge epidemics and chaos that spread across the world as people migrate en masse in search for a place to live. In this period of chaos, much of our technological knowledge is lost and once the dust settles we are pretty much back in the dark ages.
History always repeats itself, you will see.

Then it's time to stock up on food and ammo.

I have often wondered, in the event of catastrophe, what percentage of stored guns ammo and beans would be unused and left to rot.

How many bug out bags would be uncollected by their owners?

Post Humanism will probably consist of iPhone owners trying to access their phones via thought.

Medical equipment may become prevalent within the human body. Diabetes is a real contender for becoming a common ailment. I can see equipment for diagnoses monitoring and dose dispensing being something that humans have internally.

Surgical grafting of medical machine to man may be the future of 'cyborgs'. It'll be greay for big brother too. And hackers. I can see such equipment as being at risk of attack.

Rogue nano viruses may be the STDs of 100+ years.

I figure attention spans will hit 0.00 at some point and humanity will die out, unable to muster the focus needed to feed itself and carry out other basic living functions.

 gorgon wrote:
I figure attention spans will hit 0.00 at some point and humanity will die out, unable to muster the focus needed to feed itself and carry out other basic living functions.

Humanity facebook lives its apathetic lurch to destruction.

 gorgon wrote:
I figure attention spans will hit 0.00 at some point and humanity will die out, unable to muster the focus needed to feed itself and carry out other basic living functions.

Like growing crops on Mountain Dew?

In all seriousness it depends on who you ask. A large crisis will probably be massive migration due to climate change. Fresh water acces and suitability of farm land are expected to come under significant pressure.
On the tech level, we are expected to keep developing new technologies at ever increasing rates. It is not difficult to imagine some level of human-tech integration in 50-100 years. The level of integration is difficult to exactly pinpoint but it would present a significant security risk (just think about advanced pacemakers available now). This would possibly involve some form of genetic control to eradicate diseases. The issue in the tech future is who will have acces to it? Who develops these technologies will be neutral, positive or detrimental. Just think about current iPhone prices, any technological upgrades that could be put in the human body might be significantly more expensive and exclusive. The same goes for medicine and disease, these involve companies doing it for profit, if they actually developed a cure who could afford it?
This will be the crisis of the future. Tech will develop to such a level that a significant part of the workforce will be either replaced or become obsolete because they can't afford certain upgrades to the human body (think about chips implanted to support neural functions or even artificial brains). Money will be the issue, how are we going to make sure everything is affordable to a larger, longer living population that will be dependent on less resources?

I don't take such a dim view, I'm sure that these issues can be resolved but the form of government interference that would be required is not going to please a lot of Westerners.

 flamingkillamajig wrote:


I realize the whole zombie/genestealer cult idea is probably more fictional but the point of this thread is to prepare for scenarios that you normally can't prepare for. I realize it sounds futile but it may be needed in some cases like the alien, robot and augmented human scenario.

The zombie scenario isn't that far fetched if you ignore the walking dead element. It's not impossible that given 20-30 years with our flagrant misuse of antibiotics a new bug emerges that is 75%+ lethal to humans (think a re-run of the plague). This is where the Walking Dead scenario comes into play, because if it happens quickly society is likely to break down because there won't be enough people that know who to run the individual parts of the technology to keep it going. We are very specialised now. That means once the power goes, the electronics go, the fuel goes, no one can maintain anything. We only actually have about a weeks supply of food at any one time if there is this sort of disaster. We'd quickly be back to medieval times with some better guns for a while. There's even the thought that we'd never actually get out the medieval age again because we have used up all the easier accessible resources that would allow us to raise ourselves again beyond late medieval/early industrial.

Global wheat, corn and rice production become the property of a single company. The crops become standardized and a single strain of each is grown. The crops all share the same herbicide resistant genes.

A single fungus destroys the worlds supply of wheat, corn and rice. Global famine ensures. The company fails and takes several financial institutions with it. The circulation of their Herbicides stops. This leads to global failure of all other mass produced plant based food sources including grass as well as enough financial chaos to prevent intervention till it is too late.

It takes 4000 years for humanity to re-enter the Bronze age.

 StygianBeach wrote:
Global wheat, corn and rice production become the property of a single company. The crops become standardized and a single strain of each is grown. The crops all share the same herbicide resistant genes.

A single fungus destroys the worlds supply of wheat, corn and rice. Global famine ensures. The company fails and takes several financial institutions with it. The circulation of their Herbicides stops. This leads to global failure of all other mass produced plant based food sources including grass as well as enough financial chaos to prevent intervention till it is too late.

It takes 4000 years for humanity to re-enter the Bronze age.

This is already happening to a certain extent with bananas. This has also caused the relevant academic communities to develop solutions for these problems, hopefully the solution or new ways to combat the problem will be found before they are gone.

 Disciple of Fate wrote:

 StygianBeach wrote:
Global wheat, corn and rice production become the property of a single company. The crops become standardized and a single strain of each is grown. The crops all share the same herbicide resistant genes.

A single fungus destroys the worlds supply of wheat, corn and rice. Global famine ensures. The company fails and takes several financial institutions with it. The circulation of their Herbicides stops. This leads to global failure of all other mass produced plant based food sources including grass as well as enough financial chaos to prevent intervention till it is too late.

It takes 4000 years for humanity to re-enter the Bronze age.

This is already happening to a certain extent with bananas. This has also caused the relevant academic communities to develop solutions for these problems, hopefully the solution or new ways to combat the problem will be found before they are gone.

Monoculture has been on the scientific radar for a long time. Sadly I think it has taken the current banana problem to get the message out.

I think the only real solution is to get big agriculture out of the food business, which is the same as no solution. I would love to be wrong though.

If we have to choose an extinction I would vote for Grey Goo

What will happen is that the Pleidians(Also known as the nordics) wil come down from the heavens and restore us humans to our natural form that the Archons stole from us.

It seems to me the big possibilities for catastrophe are mass disease outbreak that was lethal/incapacitating enough to actually collapse economies, nuclear war or asteroid strike. They aren't in any particular order, and I don't have the slightest clue what order they might be put in. I'd put them all at very low odds.

I think probably the most likely result is a wildly different future, with mass interconnectivity, vast amounts of robot production and an economy built around distributing resources in a way that none of us are even capable of predicting. I also predict that all of us will be at least slightly bothered by this future, but that our children or children's children will find it hard to imagine it was ever any other way.

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Population growth will spiral out of control, food and water shortages leading to wars, famine, huge epidemics and chaos that spread across the world as people migrate en masse in search for a place to live. In this period of chaos, much of our technological knowledge is lost and once the dust settles we are pretty much back in the dark ages.
History always repeats itself, you will see.

It's very strange to use 'history repeats itself' to argue for something that's never happened before. Sure, there's been famine and at times it has caused mass migration. I mean, right now there's famine and in some parts of Africa it is causing migration, which is leading to violence.

But to predict this on a global scale is loose to the point of being almost nonsense. The amount of food we produce per person only increases each year. This is because our ability to create new farming land, and increase productivity out of existing farming land is only increasing. Meanwhile population growth is slowing. Your prediction is the exact opposite of where food production is headed.

 sebster wrote:


It's very strange to use 'history repeats itself' to argue for something that's never happened before. Sure, there's been famine and at times it has caused mass migration. I mean, right now there's famine and in some parts of Africa it is causing migration, which is leading to violence.

But to predict this on a global scale is loose to the point of being almost nonsense. The amount of food we produce per person only increases each year. This is because our ability to create new farming land, and increase productivity out of existing farming land is only increasing. Meanwhile population growth is slowing. Your prediction is the exact opposite of where food production is headed.

A global food shortage isn't likely to arise quickly from increasing population. That generates price increases over time making the poorer even poorer and struggling to survive whilst those with money are OK. Eventually that leads to a tipping point where the poor so vastly outnumber the comfortable that a rebellion ensues (such as the French revolution). On the other hand there are scenarios where there could be a sharp shock to the food supply. A super volcano erupting (lets say Yellowstone for example) that continues for many years would effectively result in a 'nuclear winter' that could last decades until the ash and sulphur dioxide dissipate. That would result in massive failures of crops around the world and the issues that would then bring.

 sebster wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:
Population growth will spiral out of control, food and water shortages leading to wars, famine, huge epidemics and chaos that spread across the world as people migrate en masse in search for a place to live. In this period of chaos, much of our technological knowledge is lost and once the dust settles we are pretty much back in the dark ages.
History always repeats itself, you will see.

It's very strange to use 'history repeats itself' to argue for something that's never happened before. Sure, there's been famine and at times it has caused mass migration. I mean, right now there's famine and in some parts of Africa it is causing migration, which is leading to violence.
But to predict this on a global scale is loose to the point of being almost nonsense. The amount of food we produce per person only increases each year. This is because our ability to create new farming land, and increase productivity out of existing farming land is only increasing. Meanwhile population growth is slowing. Your prediction is the exact opposite of where food production is headed.

Societal collapse is something that has happened countless times across human history, and the reason is almost always the same. Lack of food. Sure, it has never happened on a global scale before, that much is true. So far it has usually been one civilisation or small groups of civilisations, with some notable exceptions. But if continent-spanning civilisations can be destroyed when the holding capacity of the land starts becoming insufficient to support its population, the same could happen with a world-spanning civilisation. Our modern, global civilisation is also quite unlike everything we have ever seen before in history after all.
And sure, food productivity is currently increasing. But so is food consumption, while the amount of arable land is decreasing ever faster due to climate change. Technology may be able to compensate that for now, but technology can't raise the holding capacity of the world infinitely. In the end, we are going to run out if food consumption does not stop growing. Even today, despite technological advances, large groups of people still have to make do with insufficient food. All it takes is one drastic change in the climate, large war or other event causing a reduction in holding capacity, and the whole system could come crashing down. We may be confident that such a thing won't ever happen to us, but I am sure the Mayans or Romans once thought the same. History teaches us that societal collapse can happen gradually, but also that it can happen very suddenly and unexpectedly.

 Whirlwind wrote:
A global food shortage isn't likely to arise quickly from increasing population. That generates price increases over time making the poorer even poorer and struggling to survive whilst those with money are OK. Eventually that leads to a tipping point where the poor so vastly outnumber the comfortable that a rebellion ensues (such as the French revolution). On the other hand there are scenarios where there could be a sharp shock to the food supply. A super volcano erupting (lets say Yellowstone for example) that continues for many years would effectively result in a 'nuclear winter' that could last decades until the ash and sulphur dioxide dissipate. That would result in massive failures of crops around the world and the issues that would then bring.

Yeah, that's true. Some other kind of disaster leading to a collapse in food production among other things could lead to other disaster. But I think that'd be better described as a "Yellowstone" disaster than food disaster, to use your example.


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 Iron_Captain wrote:
Societal collapse is something that has happened countless times across human history, and the reason is almost always the same. Lack of food.

That's not even slightly true. Lack of food is theorised in some cases, for instance it is believed to have played a part in the collapse of the Mayan empire, but not that many. Acute food shortages have driven political change (French revolution, Russian revolution, a whole bunch of Chinese dynasty changes), but that's not the same thing as societal collapse.

And sure, food productivity is currently increasing. But so is food consumption, while the amount of arable land is decreasing ever faster due to climate change.

Food production is increasing, and our ability to produce more is increasing even faster. Climate change will cost some land, but our ability to open up new areas to farming is increasing all the time through improved irrigation techniques.

At the same time population growth is slowing.

This is not a recipe for a future shortage of food.

Technology may be able to compensate that for now, but technology can't raise the holding capacity of the world infinitely. In the end, we are going to run out if food consumption does not stop growing.

You might want to compare total food production in the world in 1900, and how staggering our current production is by comparison before you you make that declaration. The idea that there is an end to technological improvement and that end is coming any day now is just so fething wrong.

Even today, despite technological advances, large groups of people still have to make do with insufficient food.

This is because of political and economic issues, not because of a lack of food. We throw out about half the food we make.

All it takes is one drastic change in the climate, large war or other event causing a reduction in holding capacity, and the whole system could come crashing down. We may be confident that such a thing won't ever happen to us, but I am sure the Mayans or Romans once thought the same. History teaches us that societal collapse can happen gradually, but also that it can happen very suddenly and unexpectedly.

The Romans didn't run out of food.

And of course systems can collapse, and if that happens it will upset the movement of food and result in starvation. But that will be an issue of system collapse, not of running out of food. The argument you were making is that at some point we will simply have too many mouths to feed and not enough capacity to feed them all, and that idea is completely wrong.

Aliens don't wanna get involved with us. We're like that hot and crazy chick. You know it would be fun, but you just don't stick your alien dick in crazy. Besides, humans are the gonorrhea of the universe.

More than likely we'll kill ourselves. Hopefully it's after my future grandkids are no longer around either so they don't have to deal with it.

Food collapse, you say? Bumblebees just got placed on the 'Endangered Species List' for the first time. This is not a movie. This is very, very bad.

I've heard some bad rumors about problems with bananas and/or coffee. Not sure what's true and what's bullcrap, as I haven't seen any legitimate articles about either, but the rumors I've heard suggest that one or both of those things could be all gone in 50 years.

 BigWaaagh wrote:
Food collapse, you say? Bumblebees just got placed on the 'Endangered Species List' for the first time. This is not a movie. This is very, very bad.

No, they didn't. A couple of species of native bee populations (Hawaiin iirc) were put on the endangered list. The greater bee population is not endangered, and commercial bee operations actually have more bees and hives than ever*.

This got reported terribly in the media, which missed the distinction between one particular species of native bee, and bees as a whole.



*Colony collapse disorder is an issue, but it isn't leading to a decline in commercial bee numbers. It's just making it a bit more expensive for commercial bee operators to replace lost colonies. This doesn't mean we shouldn't do stuff about colony collapse, starting with those nicawhatchamacallit pesticides, but it does mean we aren't facing down a beepocalypse tomorrow.


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 ZergSmasher wrote:
I've heard some bad rumors about problems with bananas and/or coffee. Not sure what's true and what's bullcrap, as I haven't seen any legitimate articles about either, but the rumors I've heard suggest that one or both of those things could be all gone in 50 years.

Much like peak oil, people often miss that the solution is inherent to the problem. Right now there's little motive to expand coffee bean production, the price paid doesn't make it worth. People have used that to conclude that therefore there will be no more increase in bean fields, and with some fields lost to various causes we will see declining production and massive price increases. Except once prices start to rise, the motive to create new fields appears.

 sebster wrote:

 BigWaaagh wrote:
Food collapse, you say? Bumblebees just got placed on the 'Endangered Species List' for the first time. This is not a movie. This is very, very bad.

No, they didn't. A couple of species of native bee populations (Hawaiin iirc) were put on the endangered list. The greater bee population is not endangered, and commercial bee operations actually have more bees and hives than ever*.

This got reported terribly in the media, which missed the distinction between one particular species of native bee, and bees as a whole.



*Colony collapse disorder is an issue, but it isn't leading to a decline in commercial bee numbers. It's just making it a bit more expensive for commercial bee operators to replace lost colonies. This doesn't mean we shouldn't do stuff about colony collapse, starting with those nicawhatchamacallit pesticides, but it does mean we aren't facing down a beepocalypse tomorrow.


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.

It appears you're a bit off on that and looking at an action that was taken back in September for specific varieties in Hawaii. The wild bumblebee species mentioned for listing was once prominent throughout half of the lower 48 and parts of Canada, but now it's numbers and range are in dramatic retreat.

Also, as the article posted below points out, these bees are not domesticated, commercial honey bees. Their numbers are not what is being discussed here.


http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-bumblebees-idUSKBN14U2MZ

Everyone seen Idiocracy?

Basically, that.

That's where we're headed. We already have 'Smart Water. With Electrolytes. Inspired By Clouds' on sale.

We already have Reality TV eating itself.

We already have President Trump.

The under-educated have won. It's all down hill from here.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
Everyone seen Idiocracy?

Basically, that.

That's where we're headed. We already have 'Smart Water. With Electrolytes. Inspired By Clouds' on sale.

We already have Reality TV eating itself.

We already have President Trump.

The under-educated have won. It's all down hill from here.

I think it is more a case of neo liberalism has won.

As has been previously been pointed out in our modern world hunger is optional, it is only a matter of price.

In regards to the AI vs human question, I doubt the AI would actively wage war on humanity. I think it would simply carry out its primary goal and if this goal was production based then humanity would be collateral damage. Otherwise I would imagine something similar to "Her".