What does the future hold? (No Spam)

Hill-Shatar · Post by **Hill-Shatar** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 3:42 pm

A while ago I was reading through assorted old threads, when I decided to go all the way back to the far back pages and see what some of the oldest recorded posts were.

And I found this: [url="http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/showthread.php?t=10005"]Serious topic...NO SPAM.....America 30 years from now?[/url]

Now, even though the thread somewhat degraded, it got me thinking. Not only does it make me worry, but what does the Human population as a whole have to look forward to and worry about? Not only Americans, even though they have been throughly discussed, but the people as a whole?

Just not politics only, please.

Thoughts? Opinions?

Chimaera182 · Post by **Chimaera182** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 6:55 pm

Hrm. I think Weasel and ThorinOakinsfield pretty much said it themselves how I think the world will look in 30 years. Technology will hit the point where we won't even have to get out of bed in the morning; at the current rate technology is advancing, the laziness/slothness rate is rising exponentially, so in 30 years, we'll all be fat, miserable, lethargic blobs of fat and underused muscles. Goodbye slim figures, hello Jabba the Hutts of the world.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 9:08 pm

30 years?

1. A more in-depth revertion to the type of territorial warfare seen in the dark ages. One country striking against another to gain control of resources it needs to expand and alliances being made and such. A breakdown of the semi-peaceful world we've had for a long time.

2. Stronger, more deadly diseases/virii/cancer showing up to kill of humans. There's simply too many of us, and it's the only thing proven to be effective in killing off large numbers of our species continuously.

3. More changes with climates.

4. Earthquakes, I've a feeling I'll be hearing about earthquakes. Why? *shrugs* Just a feeling that there's going to be a massive one which will split apart one of the continents and break a large mass of land off of it.

I am too tired to think of more right now I think.

Kythras · Post by **Kythras** » Sun Oct 02, 2005 9:27 pm

I agree with al of Magrus' point + these

- I forget the figure, but pretty soon we are going to run out of fossil fuels. Alternate energy sources will be a must. Countries like Australia and America are are enormously dependant on fossil fuels. A bunch of European countries are tihnking about alternates.. fields of windmills in the Netherlands and Denmark come to mind, but oil will become the new gold and water will be the new oil...

trust me, water will be a commodity, believe you me...

- Personally I reckon this is mankind's last century. Wilst not a doomsday prophet, I can't help but look at the signs, the Aztecs said 2012, Egyptians 2010, Sir Isaac Newton 2060... they are too close together for my liking. A neclear was is going to break out I think, America, North Korea or Iran (Just to name a few) are going to start a "He hit me back first" cycle, mankind is f*cked after that

- Natural disasters are on a rise, I reckon humans have ****ed up the earth and it is hitting back, there is probably a scientific theory that fits with that.. I go with that one. I can't help but see the irony... mankind manipulates nature for millenia, and then BANG a tornado or tsunami hits back. You only get out what you put in...

dj_venom · Post by **dj_venom** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 12:52 am

[QUOTE=Magrus]2. Stronger, more deadly diseases/virii/cancer showing up to kill of humans. There's simply too many of us, and it's the only thing proven to be effective in killing off large numbers of our species continuously. [/QUOTE]
That and humans. Humans are extremely efficent in killing large numbers of humans.

But I disagree with a lot of you negative people, though I can see where you are coming from.

First of all, the world is not going to suddenly explode. Those dates have been believed to be that certain year, it isn't exact.

Secondly, we are already relying on less fossil fuels, what with the advancement in hydrogen powered cars.

Thirdly, the water cycle is the water cycle. We may run shorter on water, but we will never run out and all that will be catered for.

However, us humans will still be the inconsiderate race that we are, with millions starving while we enjoy our lifestyles. But we do have good things to look forward to:

1)Evolution. People are always evolving, and our bodies will evolve to cope with current situations. Also, we will reach higher points in sport, that has been proved with the increase (or rather decrease) in the time it takes to do specific events such as 100m sprint.
2)Technology will reach a point where our life is made much easier. However we won't become lazy blobs. Why? Because if we did we wouldn't last long, we would soon perish.
3) Space travel. With the possibility of Mars soon having an atmosphere, well we have a lot to look forward to there, and living on the moon

.

There are probably more than this, however I can't think of any at the moment.

Finally, another negative thing missed, we will probably be responsible for more species being wiped out.

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 1:45 am

I don't think there will be many advances towards spacetravel and intrastella exploration. Perhaps a manned mission to the moon or two and one to mars, but besides that - I don't think we'll see much advancements in that department. Perhaps another orbital spacestation - unless the Internatonal Spacestation manages and perhaps a new/better hubble.

As for war and poverty then I fear we'll see a larger segregation then what we have currently. I am not optimistic - humanity is far to warhungry as a species so I wouldn't imagine any major breakthrough in terms of world peace .... unless we somehow discover life in space

I doubt a war with North Korea though - that nation has no incitement what so ever to start a war or engage in war, neither nuclear or otherwise. They use their weapons to blackmail the international societies for aid, and withouth that aid they'd die. They can't conquere the ressources they need.
It is much worse with the segregation between christianity and islam currently personofied with the US vs. Terrorisme war. (No - I'm not saying terrorisme is based on islam or only muslims are terrorists etc) And this is how warfare will be in the "future" - well it is almost already there. I think we'll see an increase amount of terrorist actions, possible with dirty bombs or perhaps even small nuclear bombs smuggled in to cities.

[QUOTE=Kythras]<snip>
- Personally I reckon this is mankind's last century. Wilst not a doomsday prophet, I can't help but look at the signs, the Aztecs said 2012, Egyptians 2010, Sir Isaac Newton 2060... they are too close together for my liking. <snip>[/QUOTE]

As for the doomdayprophets, then bah @that. There have been countless of propheties towards an apocalypse or doomsday, so that is nothing to worry about.... And what have Newton said in terms of blowing ourself up in 2060?

CM · Post by CM » Mon Oct 03, 2005 5:19 am

[QUOTE=Magrus]
2. Stronger, more deadly diseases/virii/cancer showing up to kill of humans. There's simply too many of us, and it's the only thing proven to be effective in killing off large numbers of our species continuously. [/QUOTE]

Already have it. The Bird Flu in South East Asia has caused more han 14 billion dollars in damage to life stock and it has a 50% kill rate. Worse by far than SARS. If the Bird Flu becomes transmitable from human to human welcome to our first global wide pandemic. Now its off to work.

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 6:14 am

Just a quick word regarding viruses and bacteria: Mankind, as all other species, are in a constant interaction with virus and bacteria - our immune systems evolves to fight the intruders and the virus and bacteria evolve as an adaption to this, and to antibiotics. Resistent malaria, HIV, influensa virus etc is nothing new in humankinds history - it probably goes faster now due to all the antibiotics though.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 8:08 am

[QUOTE=dj_venom]But I disagree with a lot of you negative people, though I can see where you are coming from.

First of all, the world is not going to suddenly explode. Those dates have been believed to be that certain year, it isn't exact.[/QUOTE]

Who said anything about the world exploding? I'm simply of the firm mindset that there will be a series of earthquakes that shatters one of the continents as a land mass.

Also, as CE pointed out, the massive widespread use of anti-biotics are creating problems with diseases. For example, when shopping, I saw anti-bacterial tissues, soap, cleaning solution, etc. Anything surviving the normal American household war against "germs" is going to be stronger and stronger. Which leads to the scientists creating stronger ways to kill them, and stronger strains of diseases and bacteria and so on. These things breed so quickly, evolution occurs faster, and I've got a feeling at some point, there is going to be some odd occurance that instead of killing these things, it will make them spread like crazy and kill millions of people.

@CM, Ooh, that would help out all sorts of furry little critters if it spread to humans.

ik911 · Post by **ik911** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:17 am

[QUOTE=dj_venom]Secondly, we are already relying on less fossil fuels, what with the advancement in hydrogen powered cars.[/QUOTE]
Advancement, yes. But there are no fossilfuel-independent cars yet. To create hydrogen you need electric current and most electricity is still generated by burning fossil fuels. I think our savior will be the fusionreactor.

I don't think space will bring us anything. As far as I know, there's nothing there but a whole bunch of emptiness. Then again, that's exactly what they thought about the West, before some Italian fool sailed there.

slade · Post by **slade** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:31 am

The future does not look too good right now. As far as technology goes I agree with Chim we're just going to get fatter and lazier. New viruses and diseases may spread and hopefully one of you is right on being immune to some of the ones we have now. Space travel to other planets? Why bother we can not even maintain the one we have now. I also see more wars as well.

Magrus · Post by **Magrus** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 12:10 pm

ik911 wrote:I don't think space will bring us anything. As far as I know, there's nothing there but a whole bunch of emptiness. Then again, that's exactly what they thought about the West, before some Italian fool sailed there.

*snorts* Indeed. What a wonderful job he did with personal relations involving the people he met as well, don't you think?

Space travel to other planets? Why bother we can not even maintain the one we have now. I also see more wars as well.

Yep, most species figure out how to maintain a balance between how many are living in a certain area and what they have to keep themselves alive before killing off the things they need to survive. Most intelligent species my eye....

Cuchulain82 · Post by **Cuchulain82** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 12:20 pm

Personally, I think that technology and life will continue to change in little ways that no one notices or expects. Think about the following:

My father talks about his amazement the first time he saw a microwave oven in the late 1960's. He was in a diner in northern Canada in the winter, and has stopped to have some food. Because it was very cold outside, he ordered chili. He watched as the waitress put cold chili in the (microwave) oven and heated it up. Then, when it had heated for a few minutes she reached into the oven to get the bowl with her bare hand. My father, not knowing it was a microwave, said, "Watch out! That bowl's hot and it will burn your hand!" The waitress said, "No, this is a new kind of oven- the food gets hot but the bowl doesn't." My dad didn't believe her, so she handed him the bowl and, sure enough, the chili was hot, but the bowl was still cool to the touch! He was (and is still) a smart and well informed individual, but even he was amazed!

If you told someone in the 1950s that every household would have an oven that would work by bombarding water molecules with supersonic waves, they would think you were crazy. But today, that is a reality, just like IPods, the internet, cell phones and video games. I think that people will continue to try to make life enjoyable, habitable, and meaningful. Hopefully great ideas like development, education, and equity will be better received than ideas like consumption, protectionism, and resitance to change.

@CE, CM, disease

Isn't there a version of drug-resistant TB that is brewing in the Russian prision system that has everyone every worried as well? That is what I heard was going to kill everyone, if bird flu doesn't do it first.

On the flip side though, isn't it true that viruses also get weaker over time? I hear that HIV/AIDS is actually weakening as a disease...

Chimaera182 · Post by **Chimaera182** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 2:26 pm

[QUOTE=Kythras]- Personally I reckon this is mankind's last century. Wilst not a doomsday prophet, I can't help but look at the signs, the Aztecs said 2012, Egyptians 2010, Sir Isaac Newton 2060... they are too close together for my liking. A neclear was is going to break out I think, America, North Korea or Iran (Just to name a few) are going to start a "He hit me back first" cycle, mankind is f*cked after that[/QUOTE]
[QUOTE=Xandax]As for the doomdayprophets, then bah @that. There have been countless of propheties towards an apocalypse or doomsday, so that is nothing to worry about.... And what have Newton said in terms of blowing ourself up in 2060?[/QUOTE]
Xandax beat me to it. There have been many prophesies of the end of the world, and they've all been wrong to date. Penn & Teller's BS did an episode on these prophesies, and they listed dozens of proposed armageddons which had come and gone without so much as a light breeze to shake up the grain. Just to name one, 2000 and the Y2K thing which came with it.

[QUOTE=Magrus]*snorts* Indeed. What a wonderful job he did with personal relations involving the people he met as well, don't you think?

Yep, most species figure out how to maintain a balance between how many are living in a certain area and what they have to keep themselves alive before killing off the things they need to survive. Most intelligent species my eye....[/QUOTE]
Oh, but he did a great job with personal relations. Him and Cortez were just European ambassadors of good will and small pox.

And you've just given me something else to add to my sig.

Hill-Shatar · Post by **Hill-Shatar** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 4:30 pm

[QUOTE=C Elegans]Just a quick word regarding viruses and bacteria: Mankind, as all other species, are in a constant interaction with virus and bacteria - our immune systems evolves to fight the intruders and the virus and bacteria evolve as an adaption to this, and to antibiotics. Resistent malaria, HIV, influensa virus etc is nothing new in humankinds history - it probably goes faster now due to all the antibiotics though.[/QUOTE]

*nods*

It has sped up by a gargantuon rate. sometimes, when we grow bacteria, I go back after to see the rate of mutation, which is remarkable... nothing concrete on gettingthings to work the way we want though.

Sometimes they evn become immune to anti bacteria solutions. Luckily, scinece can usually easily stay ahead of it... a bacterias genome can only get so complex... which makes it sometimes a circle of genes that iverlap each other that we use to kill them, or alter them, using such things as plasmids...

DJV: Worse cancer? In which ways do you mean? Faster growing and quicker spreading cells? More resistant?

Xandax · Post by **Xandax** » Mon Oct 03, 2005 11:12 pm

[QUOTE=Chimaera182]Xandax beat me to it. There have been many prophesies of the end of the world, and they've all been wrong to date. Penn & Teller's BS did an episode on these prophesies, and they listed dozens of proposed armageddons which had come and gone without so much as a light breeze to shake up the grain. Just to name one, 2000 and the Y2K thing which came with it.
<snip>[/QUOTE]

Well - the Y2K thing was never a doomsday prophecy, so it shoudn't be counted as one

dj_venom · Post by **dj_venom** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 12:47 am

[QUOTE=Chimaera182]Xandax beat me to it. There have been many prophesies of the end of the world, and they've all been wrong to date. [/QUOTE]

Well of course they have all been wrong so far. If they were right, we would be dead and wouldn't know it. That's why making a doomsday theory is so wrong, because it's a lose-lose situation.

Athena · Post by **Athena** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 2:57 pm

Well there are two extremes on this subject. The hellish side of Lake George, LA and what not. I hate to think about where America will be 30 years from now. Too bad we don't have a father country to bend us over his knee and crack us a few good ones with sheol' belt!!

Chimaera182 · Post by **Chimaera182** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 6:33 pm

[QUOTE=Xandax]Well - the Y2K thing was never a doomsday prophecy, so it shoudn't be counted as one

[/QUOTE]
Well, it wasn't one of those ones that made the books; it was just one a ton of people seemed to think was worth noting. I couldn't think of one of the ones listed in the Penn & Teller BS episode.

Bloodstalker · Post by **Bloodstalker** » Tue Oct 04, 2005 7:18 pm

Eventually, the sun is going to go poof and we're (all of us) screwed at that point anyway.

I do see some validity in Mag's earthquake idea. It's not a matter of the world exploding or anything like that, it's simply a fact. At some point, an astreoid is going to hit that's big enough to have a major impact on the earths ecosystem, at some point a huge volcano is going to blow and kill thousands at least, and at some point a major earthquake is going to happen that's going to change the shape of the landscape in whatever region it occurs in. it's not a question of if, it's simply a question of when. It wouldn't surprise me to see a major quake in the in the time period he expects to see one.

As far as the whole science creating the super virus, I don't think it's any more of a pronlem now than it's ever been. Polio, Turboculosis, Small Pox, and a host of other diseases have all caused the same level of destruction in their time that any super disease would today. Plagues have existed since the beginning because some virus or another came along that our immune system couldn't deal with. Tith or without antibiotics, killer virus will evolve and wreak havoc on a population. While I agree that viruses are evolving due to the anti-biotics, they'd evolve the same in response to our own imunne system. I don't see any disease as being a super disease. My stance is that you can't get deader with a new virus than you could in the past with Small Pox or TB. As far as diseases spreading worldwide, that has little to do with the potency of the disease and everything to do with the modern world and how easy it is to move between continents. the bubonic Plague didn;t spread from Europe into North America bacuse there was no travel path for the disease to get here. Had there been flights between the continents as there are now, it would likely have been a worldwide catastrophe.

Yep, most species figure out how to maintain a balance between how many are living in a certain area and what they have to keep themselves alive before killing off the things they need to survive. Most intelligent species my eye....

True, but most of this balance has very little to do with intelligence than it does high death rates among the young of any species. Anacondas haven't figured out how to balance their population, for example. They simply have an extremely low rate of survival for young snakes. Most species is the same. If too many predators survive in an area, they cause the population of thier food source to fall and as a result they starve themselves back to size, while if not enough predators are in an area, the grazers consume too much food and they start to starve. It's not intelligence, it's simply a matter of not having the resources available to sustain higher populations. Humans were the same way until they started farming their own food.