No thread about destroying the world is complete without at least a shout out to "How to destroy earth"
How to destroy the Earth @ Things Of Interest I've sent in a few suggestions to the place and gotten some feedback and am quite familiar with the ideas there. Simply put ending the earth is
really difficult. The sun's end may not even do the job. Earth may very well get pushed out to a "safe" orbit by heightened solar wind (red giants are not entirely stable and thus throw out quite a bit of mass).
As far as the biblical/God situation goes: there is another option to consider.
God is like a gardener who cares about seeds/like a painter who cares about canvas. God contrived a situation wherein the seeds once sprouted/canvas once painted upon were weened from God's influence and allowed to act in accordance to their own dictates (free will). Consider for a moment if you will: If everything that anything did was only in accordance with God's will, then why should anyone sin? Assuming that God was both omniscient and omnipotent the only real option remaining is that God has willingly limited "his" own influence upon creation (something that only an omnipotent being could do).
And as far as how humanity and/or the current culture will end: that is going to depend on quite a few things.
First allow me to dispel many of the myths proposed in this thread by listing what will
NOT end us. *Caveat* Individually none of these have a chance at doing the job, but in combination these could drop the human population below the termination point for reproductive viability
1)Nuclear war. Nuclear war and subsequent winter may end the current incarnation of our world/country's culture, but will not end humanity.
2)Bio-chemical warfare. Bio warfare is too random and resistances too wide-spread. Chemical warfare is too limited in scope (hard to produce enough quantity and hard to distribute effectively).
3)Satellites (?
?) I don't even know how to respond to this. An upper atmospheric event propagates EMP down to us via Compton scattering and upscattering, but this by itself won't kill us. It will only interfere with society. Neutrons "kill" by knocking hydrogens out of water (which is 70% of us). However, the atmosphere is also quite water rich and as such neutron bomb effectiveness is
seriously diminished by large volumes of atmosphere buffering against the bomb's effects. It's entirely possible to knock out every satellite we have with certain weapons and it is entirely possible to scorch an area the size of Maine, but it is not even remotely plausible to knock out us.
4)Degenerative cultural/economic spiral. Humans are resilient little buggers. Someone somewhere will isolate themselves and form a remote community. And this is not an isolated phenomena. It will happen in quite a few places. Once the "crisis" is over humanity will re-establish contact and start anew (as a dark age it might set us back a thousand years, but it won't do us in... no chance).
5) Global Warming/ Next Ice Age. Global Warming won't even come close. And by the time the next Ice Age rolls around I will eat my laptop if we aren't easily able to hold out in space or other planets (possibly artificial ones) and wait it out. Heck we may even have the tech to avert the Ice Age by the time the next one hits.
*Note* Humanity's threshold for survival is something on the order of 50,000 people. With advancements in genetic engineering this number only drops as genetic diversity can be artificially introduced. We can build structures able to survive in shallow water (Water is a very good radiation soak, retains heat much better than air, and allows for making use of tidal forces for energy production). We can build green/hot houses that will allow for crop harvests in just about any climate imagineable and indefinitely sustainable artificial sunlight. Earth is a very good radiation soak (every 3 feet of earth reduces radiation by 1/10). So people who build themselves underground shelters will be almost like cockroaches in the degree of difficulty it takes to get rid of them. Hydroponic and fungus farming in combination with aforementioned greenhouses would make underground survival nearly indefinite.
Now for things that could actually work:
1)Humanity could get wiped out by a truly astoundingingly unlucky astronomic event of enormous proportions: stray fast moving black hole, extra-solar fast moving heavy object (something the size of mars going at a significant fraction of C), etc.
2A)Genetic engineering: with sufficiently advanced scientific knowledge and technical application we could change ourselves beyond the point of reproducibility with a "modern" human. At which point we cease to be homosapien sapien.
2B)Cybernetics/Organic-Chemistry: similar to above... sufficiently advanced scientific knowledge and technical ability we could create "perpetually regenerating" bodies that are mostly synthetic/semi-organic technology and cease to be human.
3)Aliens/God: Yeah. So what? God isn't happening. If reality was going to alter itself to get rid of us we either wouldn't have ever existed or it would have happened a long time ago. And as far as aliens with phenomenal cosmic powers... Why would they care? Anything that has been around and evolving (socially, biologically, mentally, academically, scientifically, technologically, politically, etc) for millions of years before us is so different from us as to harken to the difference between us and ants. (Remember body of knowledge doubles every 10 years. A few million years is a
VERY large number: 2 ^ 100,000)
4)Humanity erases itself from spacetime... Timespace manipulation at high levels could potentially do a number on earth, humanity, even our solar system depending on what's going on. Time-travel could wreck humanity's historical progression. Opening up a new universe (something we may very well do some day as our current one cools down) and having it go awry (if you banish earth to a universe with weaker nuclear forces we would all very quickly decay into base particles and energy).
So in sum: its easy to disrupt society and end what is our current society. But ending humanity: that takes serious effort. It will either happen in a spectacular cosmic event/accident or, on our terms, as we advance ourselves beyond our current forms. And as far as earth goes: Earth is in it for the long-haul. She will almost certainly still be here even after humanity has left this corner of the universe for greener pastures.
MTF