When and how do you think the last human will die?

[Reiper]

So I have been thinking about this a bit lately. When do you think the last human will die?

Obviously nothing lasts forever, and humans are no exception, but the idea of us going extinct seems implausible, especially if we can travel between planets.

So when do you think the last human will die, and what will kill them?

 

[Esotera]

It depends on how you define humanity - if you're defining it as a modern human then we've only been around for ~200,000 years and no doubt will evolve into a new subspecies given that time again. Also if we successfully colonise different planets that means we'll have a scenario where several races evolve independently so you could argue that there are two or more last humans to die. Anyway, I don't see our species going extinct apart from by an event of sheer bad luck, and that will only work if we're stuck on one planet/solar system.

If we lose our current technological expertise & go back to something like medieval tech, it's hard to see how the race would ever recover to the same level without an abundance of fossil fuels. So I guess the most plausible scenario is us burning all the fossil fuels, then several catastrophic events like an asteroid strike and pandemic occuring at the same time. That leads to a reduction in numbers until the population is unsustainable, and the last person dies of natural causes or nature.

 

[Beat14]

Staring up at the stars, he/she will curse themselves on having too much pride to procreate with the penultimate human being. Having doomed the entire race said person will then top themselves.

The hubris of man!

ot more so: starvation/thirst or big boom such as nuclear blasts. Long term some big geological event. Enough mass extinctions in the past to go on I guess. I'm not digging them up now though. (pun?)

I'm not sure. I guess really, a geological event it most likely to have the biggest impact, maybe nuclear.

 

[Queen Michael]

The 13th of August this year, 09:52 AM Eastern Standard Time. (11:21 AM if I don't find any eggplants.)

 

[Total LOLige]

The last human, Hugh Man will die one hundred years from now after everyone has been killed by a super virus. Cause of death: Loneliness.

 

[WhyWasThat]

The last human will 'die' on Judgement Day.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The last human will 'die' on Judgement Day.

If you're assuming judgment day from a Christian/Islamic perspective, you're not particularly correct. The day of Judgment is the same as the date of rapture when deserving believers ascend to heaven; the rest don't die instantly. That takes a bit (at least in the classical versions of the Apocalypse).

 

[lechat]

The last human will 'die' on Judgement Day.

If you're assuming judgment day from a Christian/Islamic perspective, you're not particularly correct. The day of Judgment is the same as the date of rapture when deserving believers ascend to heaven; the rest don't die instantly. That takes a bit (at least in the classical versions of the Apocalypse).

or maybe.....

also no low content warning here!!!!

 

[Wickatricka]

Pandemic seems the most likely to me. Just think of something like the common cold that changes every day (don't quote me I'm not sure if that's right) so we can't come up with a cure or stop it from spreading.


Captcha: Smelly socks. lol...

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

The last human will 'die' on Judgement Day.

If you're assuming judgment day from a Christian/Islamic perspective, you're not particularly correct. The day of Judgment is the same as the date of rapture when deserving believers ascend to heaven; the rest don't die instantly. That takes a bit (at least in the classical versions of the Apocalypse).

or maybe.....

also no low content warning here!!!!

Still doesn't work - millions of people survived Judgment Day in that context - thus why the machines were stuck fighting a ground war to wipe them out.

 

[Blood Brain Barrier]

So I have been thinking about this a bit lately. When do you think the last human will die?

Obviously nothing lasts forever, and humans are no exception, but the idea of us going extinct seems implausible

I don't think so. Not at all. Actually the idea of us surviving longer than a thousand years seems implausible at this point in time.

What will the last human die of? Apathy. When each ideology, religious and scientific concept has been analysed to death and dismissed we'll just say "what's the point?" and decide there's no point to living anymore. Even today we live by the scientific creed yet from that perspective there's nothing to live for - nature can put better use to our atoms elsewhere. I think humankind will eventually shift away from the religious view because it's too stupid, but we will start seeing the scientific view in the same way.

 

[Abomination]

Depends on if we manage to travel to other solar systems. If we do then I can't see us ever going extinct... if we don't manage to do it then we'll either kill ourselves through some sort of WMD or the sun will eventually supernova killing us millions- if not billions - of years from now. But if it takes that long we would likely have evolved into a different species so the last "human" would have already died.

We have survived more years WITHOUT using fossil fuels than we have been alive using them so even if we run out of those (and not develop an alternative which I believe is highly unlikely) we still know how to sail, train horses, run electric rails, we have electric cars. The economics of the world will shift, obviously, but life will go on unless some idiot decides to start lobbing WMDs at someone else.

And even then, the advances in anti-ballistic missile tech could see such a scenario as one requiring more "traditional" methods of warfare - the scenarios are countless with variables changing every 5 years.

 

[Quiet Stranger]

You'll all be dead so I won't be able to tell you

 

[Phrozenflame500]

Either we'll all die in a planetary-wide event, or the last human will die of starvation/dehydration/exposure.

"When" is hard. Either when the sun explodes and we haven't colonized other solar systems, or civilization breaks down due to a MASSIVE nuclear war or something.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

Probably not unlike the ending of "Till A' the Seas."

So basically the planet warms slowly to the point where we can no longer survive over the course of millennia and the last dipshit falls into a dry well in search of water that no longer exists.

Understand that THAT future is possibly the most optimistic one that stands any chance of reality. Sure its theoretically possible that a few of us might escape into space and die out there, but its far more likely that there will NEVER be any significant space exodus before we ruin this planet or all die in nuclear war/global pandemic/increasing infertility ensures that we will pine for a slow global warming scenario.

 

[Ratties]

I feel like mother nature has been trying to kill us off for years. Not been able to pull it off yet. I am thinking she just needs to have an incurable virus with almost no symptoms. Know it travels really fast and just starts wiping people out. In our most desperate hour, mother nature decides to send every natural disaster at us while we are weak. "Know I finally killed that pathetic species known as humans today." "I mean they can't even get along with each other, fuck em."

 

[Ragsnstitches]

Assuming that we count speciation among humans as still being human then:

If we keep going the way we are without progress? The last man will die of some affliction that stems from the damage we caused to our world either via war or seriously poor judgement (much of a muchness). Too many possibilities to be specific.

If we can transcend our petty issues of today and step into tomorrow, then the next potential issue is something major affecting our ecosystem on earth like a major natural event (theorised "super volcanoes" can basically cover the earth in a cloud of ash, drastically decreasing sunlight and affecting all life at the most important of stages (photosynthesis)... the knock on affect could lead to our demise, which would either be malnutrition or toxicity (if the plummeting tempratures don't get us first).

Alternatively, it could an extraterrestrial event like an asteroid or an unprecedented blast of radiation from our sun.

If we are lucky and none of that happens, or if does happens and we manage to survive, the next big issue would be our sun dying and effectively making our solar system inhospitable. If we are still on earth, the sun will cool significantly first and we might freeze or when it expands into a Red Giant we might end of frying due to radiation if not actually be engulfed by the suns increased diameter.

If we have managed to move past our lonely little world into space and beyond then we could potentially escape that death. Its so far down the line, that if we ARE still here then we might not even need a homeworld to live off of, making us a Nomadic space faring species. Either that or we settle on other planets, though we would likely strip mine most planets for resources if we haven't learned to synthesis what we need from the loose atoms floating in space or from the stars themselves.

At this point chances are we will experience huge and multiple divergences in our species, especially if we settle on different planets with varying environmental influences.

From there, all I can imagine is that the last man will cease to be at the end of the universe.

And if we manage to survive that I can't fathom what would end us.

 

[kingpocky]

Eventually we'll figure out how to convert our minds from our biological shells to mechanical ones. Then it'll be the major ethical question of the century - what counts as a human? But eventually, the last organic human beings will die off or convert over.