Could it be that many folks feel this way because the world population has more than doubled in thier lifetime?
Yes it is a shocking and terrible thing, particularly if you are a nature nut like myself. But an increase in population makes the destruction of society less likely, not more.
As big as that event was it was nothing compared to the Toba event 70k years ago. Toba resulted in a decade long volcanic winter and 1000 years of planetary cooling. That one dang near did us all in and is the reason that all of us can trace our mitochondrial DNA back to one woman in Africa.
Yes toba came the closest, but it hit at a time when the total human population was in the thousands, and spread out over a very small area. With billions of humans around the globe, including Antartica and space, no volcano could do it anymore. Not even the Yellowstone Caldera...
The Black death of the 1300s by most accounts killed 1 in 4 of every human on the planet and killed about half of the population of Europe in just 2 years time. If half of the people on the planet dissapeared today our systems would collapse resulting in further deaths.
The black death was serious, but could in no way cause extinction. Many Europeans were naturally resistant, and no one in North or South America (a few million at the time) died from it. We have achieved massive redundancy by spreading out.
Our dependence on modern technology makes us more vulnerable to system collapse. The spanish flu 1918-1920 killed more than 50 million or about 3% of the world population. It probably would have killed many more if it were not limited by the trasportation systems of the day. History is full of pandemics that did some real damage to earths population. Malaria, Typhus, Cholera, and Small Pox have all kicked our butt at one time or another. Influenza, measels and small pox ran through the new world unchecked and killed an estimated 80% of the native populations within 100 years.
I totally agree about the risk of severe pandemic today, with mass transit. A few terrorists with some ebola tissue samples flying around the world scares the crap out of me. Good thing they are not very smart or interested in subtle plans like that. But a disease could not kill all humans. The last few will be isolated and cut off as others die, and there are always resistant populations. Again there is good redundancy to survive any disease or disaster short of an impact event.
Of course the events of the past century brought us to the verge of thermonuclear armageddon on more than one occassion. The possibility of nuclear war hasn't diminshed by that much or at all over the past several decades. There are still more than enough bombs in the world to finish us off and it only takes one incident to get the ball rolling.
Nuclear war is the most likely severe disaster, and the one that I plan for. That is funny since considering my place of residence, I would be within a few miles of several 300 kt detonations. The only hope is if I happen to be in the subway when it happens. However nuclear war cannot directly kill all humans. The megattonage is enough if spread out perfectly. But it cannot be spread out perfectly. North America, Europe, and Asia would be decimated. But even in these places, many would survive. In South America, Africa, The Pacific islands... the damage would be relatively minor. Even with possible nuclear winter, famine, etc... the harm would be terrible, but not enough to cause extinction. If anything, it would only be the first step on a long road to extinction. But my gut tells me that humans are like rats, and we will be around for a long time in some form. Will humans last forever? Biologically that seems unlikely, with the wildcard being space exploration and expansion to other planets. We have been slacking on that front.
Everyone I know always hopes for the best but many are preparing for the worst. Perhaps many of the prepper types are lacking in science education but it seems those who would readily dismiss thier concerns are a little short on history.
How can someone prepare for something they don't understand? I don't dismiss their claims mostly because they make no coherent claims. Come at me with specifics, as you have done above, because you are smarter than all of the survivors ive seen on tv combined, and we can run them down point for point. And when doing that, we find that none of the supposed disasters, even if they would be much worse than Y2K et al, would cause human extinction. Reducing our standards, we could expect major local disruptions to society from time to time. One can prepare for this. But even still, I fail to see the historical record of these things going on so frequently. When was the last time a society collapsed and was not replaced with some other society soon after?
I guess my advice would be to buy two shotguns and plenty of 00 to boot. That is a years worth of food, water, and petrol right there.
