There are cases in history when people tried to predict the collapse that awaits humanity. For example, the mysterious and enigmatic Nostradamus regularly tried to predict the end of the world. Herbert George Wells developed predictions with the help of science and quite popularly and intelligibly described the future of mankind in his book The Time Machine. Other writers and clairvoyants built their pictures of the future for various reasons: some wanted to warn, others to entertain, and still others simply sought personal gain and popularity.
But even if these pioneers of futurology predicted the future, this did not change its outcome. Perhaps someone radically changed the development of history, but saving the world from one catastrophe, gave rise to another.
Today we have achieved success in technology. Of course, while we do not manage to win in battles with nature, but at least we can predict, soften and quickly recover from the blows of nature.
The future is imperfect...
As much as we would like to, we are still bad at calculating future risks. Hence the feeling of powerlessness. People have been talking about the apocalypse for thousands of years, but no one has done anything to prevent it.
In part, this is due to heuristics - the universal human tendency to overestimate or underestimate the impending threat. History is full of examples of this.
If humanity dies out, then everything will lose its meaning. Because everything that was created was for the sake of future generations and their children. There is no other meaning, everything else is empty.
If you do not even plan on having children, then your life is in vain. It is not so scary if, as a result of a powerful catastrophe, only a hundred people on the entire planet will be alive. But what if a catastrophe occurs that wipes out absolutely all people? I chose only 5 reasons for the apocalypse (my purely personal opinion). I warn you, the list is incomplete...
Over the past hundred years, humanity has discovered and continues to discover new threats to its existence. For example, in 2000, the term "Supervolcano" was introduced. This is essentially a huge volcano that can change the landscape, the climate of the entire planet. So know that when you go to Yellowstone Park, you will spend money on a monster that threatens our entire planet. Yes, it is he who is considered one of the possible killers of mankind. But what can we do to prevent the eruption of a supervolcano, or at least get rid of the inevitable consequences? Plug it with a cork (admit it, this simple and at the same time stupid thought flashed through you too).
This is not the way out. Imagine that you are inflating a balloon, and when you reach the limit, you do not stop. The air needs an outlet and it will burst. It's a foregone conclusion. But if, in extreme cases, we can hide in bunkers during an eruption, then we will not get anywhere from gamma radiation propagating due to planetary explosions. I propose to begin, otherwise the introduction turned out to be very large ...
1. Nuclear war.
So far, nuclear weapons have been used only twice in military conflicts. In Hiroshima and Nagasaki. During the Cold War, nuclear weapons technology made rapid strides forward. Now, the threat of nuclear conflict is unlikely, but still quite palpable.
We invented this way of destruction of mankind ourselves. Everything in the world happens cyclically (wave-like, spiral-like or, finally, progressively, whatever you want to call it), just as supervolcanoes erupt every 100,000 years, so the Caribbean Crisis occurs approximately every 70 years. The Cuban Missile Crisis is the most famous case of direct confrontation that could lead to all-out nuclear Armageddon. In fact, the history of strained relations between the Soviet Union and the United States is full of rash acts and terrible mistakes. Now the beginning of a nuclear war depends on international tension. But the conflict of just two states will affect the whole world.
A full-scale nuclear war would kill at least a few hundred million people, affect many more indirectly, but that, by definition, is not enough to put a nuclear war on this list. In principle, yes, but read to the end.
Fallout from nuclear bomb explosions will make the nearby area uninhabitable for several decades, at least. But nuclear weapons cannot become an instrument of Doomsday, because in terms of scale, this is still a point weapon.
However, a cobalt bomb was proposed as a weapon of global destruction, and it will be fatal for all mankind. This idea was put forward by Leo Szilard. It is this bomb that is called the "doomsday machine".
One of the varieties of cobalt is capable of sowing radioactive fallout around the world, which will lead to radiation sickness for everyone who will somehow come into contact with the atmosphere. All crops will perish, a terrible famine will reign on the planet. But, thank God, it exists only in theory, in practice it is almost impossible and very expensive. Although in 2013 the United States decided to continue the study of this issue, probably in the name of democracy, how everything is going on with them.
2. Bioengineered pandemic.
A real bio-epidemic will destroy many more people than any war. However, evolution is not on the side of viruses. Some people have very strong immunity, and their children, in turn, will become even more resistant to the effects of viruses. The same thing happened to syphilis as it went from a ruthless killer to a chronic one. At first, syphilis killed with lightning speed, in just a month, but then I realized that it was unprofitable for reproduction and therefore decided to settle in the human body for a long time.
But people are digging their own graves, constantly working to improve deadly viruses. Recently, scientists introduced an extra gene into mousepox that made it more likely to kill, reducing the body's resistance and even vaccinated people could not cope with it. Recent work on the study of bird flu has shown that its super ability to infect was created artificially, more precisely by human hands.
Now the risk of a worldwide epidemic is small, but as technology becomes cheaper and illegal laboratories grow, the possibility of repeating the plot of Resident Evil inevitably increases.
Usually, such things are tightly controlled by the government, and therefore some governments are interested in periodically testing their new products on people. How can I do that? Of course, in wartime. And so we find evidence that modern microwars are ways to test new technologies of mass destruction. But at the same time, one should not forget that there are always “self-taught” people who have very interesting views on life. Someone thinks that the world without people would be better, or that humanity is sick and needs to be cured.
The approximate number of possible deaths from such a disaster is almost impossible to calculate. But definitely, some "advanced" virus will mow down a good half of humanity - in the best case for us.
3. Super intelligence.
Intelligence is the most powerful weapon. That is why some of us in the distant past have outgrown our relatives, and left the proud monkeys in the shadows. Now our future depends on human will. It's not a threat, it's just a fact. If the monkeys annoy us with something, and we all get angry at them, then in less than a month they will go into the annals of history, and a couple will remain in cages for constant torture. It is not sad, but all this speaks of the power of free thought.
But now man is not interested in monkeys, man wants to create artificial intelligence with deep practical and philosophical knowledge. In fact, now we, like monkeys, are preparing ourselves a smart killer. What if someone outgrows the human mind? Pierre Boulle proposed his own version of the development of events in his novel Planet of the Apes. Another option is shown by the directors the brothers Wachevsky (The Matrix) and James Cameron (The Terminator).
In the latter cases, machines have become excessively productive, which, on the one hand, saves time very well, and on the other, simply kills humanity. They don't get tired, they don't need to train, and they have a lot of advantages. The most important plus is offspring. They will not create their own kind, their children will only be better and this is inevitable, this is the ideal option for the development of society, but only robots can do this, humanity has a limit to improvement. How do you like the constantly improving armageddon machine? And this will happen when a person invents software that can learn and write programs itself.
It is amazing that even in the 1950s and 1960s people assumed that such a future would come in a generation. But at the same time, they did nothing to protect themselves. Maybe they just didn't take it seriously.
4. Nano technologies.
Nano technologies give control over matter at the atomic level. By themselves, such technologies are not dangerous, they open up endless possibilities for technology, electronics, and bioengineering. But the problem is that there is potential for this kind of technology to be abused.
There are already nano cameras, nano robots and a bunch of other nanos... But the most terrible threat is the "gray goo". These are microscopic robots that reproduce themselves and devour absolutely everything in their path (as, for example, in the movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still").
Nano technology allows the development of more advanced weapons that can kill at a great distance. With nanotechnologies, any concept of “personal” will disappear, because every second, imperceptibly for you, you can be spied on, eavesdropped on, or simply killed unnoticed. Speaking of murders, there is a theory about a "smart poison" that will only kill the right people. Very interesting, read at your leisure.
5. Uncertainty.
Possibly the scariest item on this list. It may threaten us even now. Maybe we won't wake up tomorrow, but we don't know about it yet.
This "monster" can be anything or anyone: a higher civilization that controls the development of evolution throughout the universe; black hole invisible to sensors; clockwork in the bowels of the Earth ...
Whatever the threat, it will certainly mow down all of humanity.
Everyone knows that people are most afraid of the unknown. But the nature of a person is arranged in such a way that even if he does not know about something, this does not mean that he will not talk about this topic. For example, there is one chance in a billion that the end of the world will happen this year ... And so every year.
You may ask why tsunamis and meteorites were left out? There have been many examples in the history of our planet when, in both cases, a sufficient number of individuals survived to revive the population, and bring it out of a critical state. Climate change will make our lives much more difficult, but we will survive.
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Is HIV not as scary as it is painted?
I have two news for you: good and bad. I'll start with a good one. In September of this year, the UNAIDS agency (UNAIDS - the UN organization that deals with the problem of HIV / AIDS on a global scale) published new statistics on HIV. Since 2001, the number of reported HIV infections worldwide has dropped by a third. The number of deaths from AIDS has also decreased. In 2001, 2.3 million people died from AIDS and related diseases. In 2012 - 1.6 million people.
As the report says, all this is due to the fact that antiretroviral therapy has become more accessible. More than half of officially registered HIV-infected people are being treated.
Back in 2008, epidemiologists exhaled and stated: our fears about the HIV pandemic are greatly exaggerated. Extinction of earthlings from AIDS and accompanying diseases is not expected. Except in Africa. And then, if we take the whole world, there are real chances to stop the infection.
Modern medicine claims that HIV can be safely transferred to the category of chronic diseases, with which - with adequate therapy - you can live a full life. With proper therapy and a healthy lifestyle, an HIV-infected person can live longer than an uninfected person. In medical terms, the right therapy will delay the development of immunodeficiency syndrome indefinitely. Generally, HIV is like diabetes, you can't cure it, but you can live.
In general, HIV is a slow killer and in most cases is in no hurry to bury its owner. The disease develops within 5-10 years. At the same time, the carrier of the virus does not experience any particular inconvenience, except for enlarged lymph nodes, which do not even hurt. The person may not be aware that they are infected. Obvious symptoms appear only in the last two stages. Without any treatment, an HIV-infected person can live 10 years. Occasionally more.
The modern method of treating HIV has the complex name Highly Active Antiretroviral Therapy (HAART or VART). To suppress and reduce the content of the virus in the body, at least 3 drugs are used. When the concentration of the virus falls, the number of lymphocytes in the blood is restored. Almost normal immunity returns to the infected. With a minimum content of the virus in the blood, the risk of infecting a partner is greatly reduced and it becomes possible to conceive a healthy child.
There are people who are resistant to HIV infection. These lucky ones have a genetic mutation, which, as scientists suggest, appeared about two and a half thousand years ago. Strangely, only in Europe. Completely immune to HIV 1% of the European population, 10-15% of Europeans have partial resistance. Among those already infected, about 10% are non-progressors, i.e. They do not develop AIDS for a long time.
Elusive and relentless killer
And now the bad news. Die of AIDS.
Guaranteed. No matter how well a person is treated, AIDS will sooner or later reap its harvest. For comparison: mortality from the most terrible disease of the past, "God's punishment", bubonic plague - 95%, from pulmonary - 98%. From AIDS - 100%. AIDS makes no exception.
Despite the fact that the HIV virus is one of the most studied pathogens of infectious diseases , there is no cure for HIV/AIDS. And probably never will. The difficulty is that the HIV virus has a high ability to mutate. In fact, there is not one, but four varieties of HIV viruses: HIV-1, HIV-2, HIV-3 and HIV-4. The most common, because of which, in fact, there was a danger of a pandemic, is HIV-1. It was first opened in 1983. HIV-2 hosts mainly in West Africa. The other two varieties are rare. There are dozens of recombinant variants of the virus. If you follow the news, you have probably heard or read about a new type of HIV-1 recently identified in Novosibirsk.
That's not all. Each variety also knows how to mutate and forms more and more new strains in the carrier's body. Eventually, a drug-resistant strain emerges. Doctors can't keep up with the fast virus. Developing new vaccines and testing them is a long, complicated, and expensive undertaking. So any therapy sooner or later becomes ineffective, and death awaits an HIV-infected person.
HAART only reduces the concentration of the virus in the body and keeps it at a minimum level. Physicians have not learned how to completely remove the virus from the body. The virus infects not only lymphocytes, but also other cells with a long lifespan. Such a reservoir for antiviral drugs is invulnerable. In these impregnable fortresses, HIV slumbers for years, waiting in the wings.
In addition, HAART drugs are extremely toxic. Side effects of anti-HIV therapy may be as deadly as AIDS itself. Among them are liver necrosis, toxic epidermal necrolysis (Lyell's syndrome), lactic acidosis and other diseases with a high probability of death.
There are cases when people became infected with two different strains of the HIV virus. This is the so-called superinfection. Until now, the causes and methods of its occurrence have not been found. A double set of viruses is more resistant to drugs. Superinfected people die much faster.
HIV is not easy to diagnose. There are 3 methods for diagnosing HIV: PCR, ELISA and immunoblot. PCR analysis is the earliest diagnosis of HIV, it can be taken as early as 2-3 weeks after the alleged infection. However, PCR often deceives and gives a false negative result. For ELISA analysis, you will have to wait about a month. Here the situation is reversed by PCR: ELISA can be positive in people with tuberculosis, multiple blood transfusions, and oncology. The most accurate analysis is the immunoblot. For absolute certainty, you need to take an analysis once a year.
AIDS - a disease of decent people?
HIV arrived in the former USSR in 1986. As you know, there was no sex in the USSR, drug addiction and homosexuals, too, so they did not pay much attention to the virus. In general, against the background of the rest of the world (AIDS and concomitant diseases in Europe by that time had already become, as doctors cautiously put it, a significant cause of death among the population from 20 to 40 years old), the situation in the USSR was rosy. For the entire Union, there are less than a thousand detected cases.
And those are mostly students who got infected from Africans. The belief that HIV is a disease of drug addicts, homosexuals and prostitutes also played a big role. A decent person has nothing to fear. Some even perceived HIV as a new Stalin, who is carrying out a kind of purge of society from the marginalized. And then the USSR collapsed, along with it the epidemiological service. In 1993-95, HIV made itself known rather aggressively with outbreaks in Nikolaev and Odessa. Since then, it has not been possible to stop him.
Here is ITAR-TASS infographic for 2012:
A few more statistics, if you are not tired. According to 2013 data, 719,455 HIV-infected people were recorded in Russia. Over the past 5 years, their number has doubled. Statistics on HIV in Russia competes with those in Africa. And what is the saddest thing, successfully . The actual number of infected people in Russia may be about a million people. And these are not gays, drug addicts or prostitutes (although they are still considered a high-risk group). Doctors say that HIV in Russia has a respectable face: the face of a socially secure, often family man, aged 20 to 40. Up to 45% of cases of infection are not due to infection through syringes or anal sex, but through heterosexual contacts. Because of the illusion of security, people are unwilling to be tested and treated. So it turns out that in the main risk group in modern Russia are those very decent people who believe that they have nothing to fear.
Doctors believe that the reason for this, frankly speaking, catastrophic situation is lack of a coherent AIDS program. Academician Pokrovsky is convinced that a systematic preventive campaign is needed among the population. First of all, Russians need to be convinced that HIV can catch up with everyone, regardless of the level of decency. Second, explain the need for protection and regular testing. Third, make prevention and testing easily accessible.
This year, 185 million rubles have been allocated from the budget for HIV prevention. True, the competition for holding an information campaign was announced on October 8. The results of the competition will be summed up on November 13. Prevention, therefore, will take a little over a month. And it should be held within a year, to be honest. So, most likely, the history of 2011 will repeat itself. Then the prophylaxis took 37 days. No testing or real help was provided. The money was spent on TV commercials and promotion of the Ministry of Health's HIV website. So much for fighting AIDS in Russian.
What do HIV and Elvis Presley have in common?
No, Elvis was not infected with HIV. But, like Presley, HIV has had a profound effect on modern culture. Like Presley, HIV has become a source of various rumors, plausible and not very theories, conjectures and versions. This is typical of the modern world, where there are a lot of people who want to earn / become famous and have access to the Internet. Or maybe they're just being honest?
There is a whole movement of HIV/AIDS denial, the so-called "AIDS dissidents". Among them are many famous scientists and even Nobel laureates. For example, Kary Mullis, who received the Nobel Prize for guess what? For the invention of the PCR method! If you remember, this is one of the methods for diagnosing HIV.
Wikipedia does not give an intelligible explanation for this amazing fact. But he only notes that Mullis is not a specialist in the field of virology. Or Heinz Ludwig Sanger, former, as Vicky, a professor of virology and microbiology, points out. Or Etienne de Harvin, again former pathology professor. Actively denies the viral nature of AIDS and former South African President Thabo Mbeki, successor to Nelson Mandela. According to the press, his anti-AIDS policy led to the death of 330,000 people.
Dissidents believe that HIV does not cause AIDS. AIDS is a non-communicable disease. Development over 5-10 years is an unusually long time for infection. The causes of AIDS are malnutrition, drugs, stress, anal sex, harsh living conditions, etc. That is why AIDS has chosen Africa, where 70% of the population lives below the poverty line. That is why, despite the supposedly terrible virus, the population of Africa during the official AIDS epidemic, contrary to all forecasts, doubled.
Moreover, dissidents argue that highly toxic HAART drugs may be the cause of AIDS symptoms. Kills what, by design, should save. Some believe that HIV/AIDS is like swine flu, a hoax. Pharmacists and government officials invented AIDS to make money selling expensive, very expensive drugs. Judge for yourself: the annual cost of therapy ranges from 10 to 15 thousand dollars. But these drugs must be taken for life.
In a word, HIV and the AIDS it causes are the perfect disease to make money. Otherwise, why are the companies that produce HAART drugs so eager to remain monopolists in the market? Why are HAART drugs still imported to Africa and India from developed countries, and not produced in Africa and India itself? After all, this would reduce the cost of treatment tenfold. And many more whys.
There are opinions that HIV / AIDS is an artificially derived virus. The latest bioweapon designed specifically to save white humanity from rampant blacks. As an argument, the story of the study of syphilis in Tuskegee (USA, Alabama) is cited. In 1932-1972. physicians observed the natural development of syphilis in African Americans.
The study participants (read: test subjects) did not receive any treatment. Despite the fact that penicillin, an effective cure for syphilis, had already appeared in 1947. In the case of HIV, the experiment is already being set up on a planetary scale. It has been proven that blacks are more likely to get AIDS. In the United States, blacks make up almost half of AIDS patients - 43.1%. It is not typical for a virus to display such racial discrimination. And while Africa's population continues to grow, the AIDS epidemic could have far-reaching demographic consequences.
HIV is really purging Africa: a 15-year-old African has a 50/50 chance of dying from AIDS before reaching 30. Real Russian roulette. HIV is systematically killing Africa's able-bodied population of reproductive age: those who can work and have children. Experts believe that the food crisis in southern Africa in 2002 and 2003 was not caused by drought. The real reason is the weakening of agriculture. Workers are dying of AIDS.
Who will win: HIV or us?
Of course, compared to pneumonic plague or the Spanish flu, HIV is just a baby. Compare: in 1918-1919. 50-100 million people died from the Spanish flu. In just a year, the Spaniard killed about 5% of the world's population. Pneumonic plague was responsible for the first known pandemic. In 551-580. the so-called “Justinian plague” captured the entire civilized world of that time and carried away with it more than 100 million people. The “accomplishments” of HIV pale in comparison to these greedy and quick killers: in the 32 years since its discovery, HIV has killed “only” 25 million people. According to 2012 data, there are about 32 million HIV-infected people in the world. Even if you add up all the past and potential victims, HIV is barely half the Spanish woman's record.
However, both the Spaniard and the plague, having harvested, left the stage. HIV is in no hurry. For 32 years he has been in charge of the planet and is not going to leave. For 32 years, scientists have been struggling with a cure or vaccine and losing the competition with the virus. HIV is constantly mutating, changing masks, but its essence remains the same - a relentless killer.
The most terrible feature of HIV is that the virus is directly related to the basis of human existence: reproduction (except for the artificially created by man way of spreading the virus through syringes). The only absolutely reliable way to protect yourself from HIV infection is to refuse sex and childbearing. In other words, refuse to procreate.
Who will win in this terrible game “HIV vs humanity” is unknown. Do not forget that in addition to HIV, there are a couple of serious candidates for the killers of earthlings: nuclear weapons and environmental disaster. Perhaps the question is no longer whether our civilization will perish or survive, but what will destroy us first.
Getting out of the next momentary "crisis", we rarely think about future generations. Not those that will come in a couple of centuries, but those that will (and will they?) Live in 1,000 and 10,000 years. Doubts do not arise by chance: sooner or later we will face one of the global catastrophes - not just a large-scale disaster, but a bold point in the history of mankind.
For centuries, individual minds have tried to see into the distant future in the ways they can: mystics like Nostradamus make "predictions", writers like H. G. Wells create fantastic works, futurists make predictions. And although we are still unable to prevent most of the global catastrophes, modern technologies make it possible to partially mitigate their consequences.
Alas, these threats are still poorly understood, perhaps because of the sense of powerlessness and fatalism associated with them. Talk about the “end of the world” has periodically arisen for thousands of years, but has anyone tried to get in the way of the apocalypse, to do anything to save them? Such units. People find it difficult to do something about a problem they have never encountered before (partly because of the "availability heuristic" - the ability of the human mind to estimate the likelihood of an event by the ease with which similar examples are recalled). When it comes to an event the likes of which has never happened in the human lifetime, we tend to underestimate the risks.
Meanwhile, the number of potential causes of the destruction of mankind does not decrease with time. On the contrary, we discover (or ourselves create) more and more new threats. An example of this is the supervolcanoes discovered in the 1970s and the nuclear threat. The probabilities of this or that global catastrophe also change over time, they can decrease because we have realized the risk and have taken any actions to prevent the threat. Thus, the emergence of sanitary standards, vaccines and antibiotics shifts the responsibility for pandemics from the "higher powers" to the health authorities. Against a number of other possible catastrophes, we are still powerless (an example of such a danger is a gamma-ray burst, which can occur somewhere nearby).
Here are some possible reasons for the disappearance of our civilization - just five of a fairly long and periodically updated list:
1. Nuclear war.
Nuclear weapons have only been used in war twice, and nuclear arsenals are nowhere near as vast now as they were at the height of the Cold War, but nuclear war is not as unlikely as it might seem. The Caribbean crisis nearly turned into a nuclear confrontation. If we assume that this happens at least once every 69 years, and the probability of the use of nuclear weapons as a result of such a conflict is about one chance in three, then the probability of a nuclear catastrophe in any given year reaches 1:200.
However, the Caribbean crisis is only the most famous historical example. And how many other dangerous mistakes and tense moments were there in the relations between the nuclear powers?
The main threat to the existence of mankind will not be nuclear strikes and subsequent radiation contamination (although hundreds of millions of people may fall victim to them). But only the subsequent nuclear winter is fraught with global extermination, which, at best, will leave behind a handful of people who miraculously survived hunger and disease on a cold and parched planet. However, the severity of the consequences may vary depending on the type of soot and smoke released into the stratosphere, and there are currently no reliable methods to assess the real risks.
2 Man Made Pandemic
But we can make disease worse. One of the famous examples is the ectromelia virus (mouse pox), which, having received an additional gene “as a gift” from scientists, learned to infect even those individuals that were vaccinated, and became even more deadly. Recent research on the avian influenza virus has shown that its virulence can be deliberately increased.
At present, the risk of someone knowingly unleashing a potential pandemic culprit is rather small. But biotechnology is becoming more and more accessible. Governments that develop bioweapons are looking for leverage of political influence, not methods of total destruction, but the owners of "garage laboratories" can release a dangerous strain just because they can. Or for ideological reasons, as the representatives of the Aum Shinrikyo sect did (though not very successfully, unlike their other poison gas attack). Many believe that the Earth would be a better place without people.
3. Overmind
Intelligence is a powerful weapon. A tiny advantage in problem solving and group coordination, and we humans have left the apes far behind. Now their existence depends on human decisions. Being smart is profitable, so we are making a lot of efforts in this direction - from the creation of nootropic drugs to the development of artificial intelligence systems.
The problem is that smart people can really achieve their goals effectively. But the presence of intelligence in itself does not guarantee that these goals will be good. On the contrary, there is a good chance that superintelligent communities and systems will not obey generally accepted moral norms. And with amazing efficiency they will put an end to the history of mankind.
Artificial intelligence systems can very quickly move from “not yet like humans” to “much higher than humans”. Presumably, the breakthrough will come when the software becomes perfect enough to create even better algorithms. There are good reasons to believe that some technologies may begin to develop so quickly that the human mind will not be able to keep up with progress - a technological singularity will come.
At present, it is difficult for us to even imagine how dangerous certain forms of artificial intelligence can be, and what strategies to counter this threat will be effective. Meanwhile, back in the 50s and 60s of the last century, people were sure that superintelligence would appear “within the life of one generation,” but did not take any significant steps to ensure security. Perhaps they did not believe their own predictions or believed that the future was still too far away?
4. Nanotechnology
Nanotechnologies themselves are a good thing, but, as in the case of biotechnologies, the growth of their level, and at the same time their accessibility, opens up wide prospects not only for scientists and engineers, but also for attackers.
And the main problem in the field of destructive nanotechnologies is not the notorious "gray goo" (self-replicating nanorobots that devour all available matter). It is quite difficult to create such machines, biological systems are still much more efficient in matters of self-reproduction and devouring. Perhaps, sooner or later, some maniac will master this task, but there are tempting fruits hanging much lower on the tree of destructive technologies.
First of all, it is an opportunity to produce almost anything with a minimum of costs (and with an accuracy of an atom). On a planet where governments are able to "print" any weapon, including autonomous and semi-autonomous, and new "printers" to create these weapons, the arms race can become very fast, and the world - fragile. “Smart poison” capable of choosing its victim and climatic weapons are just examples of destructive high-tech “toys” that can end up in the hands of humanity.
It is difficult to judge what dangers nanotechnologies might pose, but the mere fact that someday they will be able to give us everything we want makes us wonder.
5. Unknown global threat
Perhaps the most troubling possibility in the future of mankind seems to be the presence of some mortal danger, of which we have no idea.
The “silence of the Universe” may be evidence that this unknown threat exists. We still have not found any signs of the existence of alien intelligence. Why? Is life and intelligence in the universe really such a rarity? Or do all civilizations sooner or later encounter something that leads to their extinction? If there is some kind of Great Filter, other civilizations must have guessed about it - but, apparently, this did not help them ...
Whatever this unknown threat may be, it should be practically inevitable, the rule “who is forewarned is forearmed” will not work here, no matter what technical means the doomed civilization possesses. None of the global threats formulated by humanity falls under this definition.
However, the fact that we know absolutely nothing about the potential Great Filter does not prevent scientists from speculating on this topic. Max Tegmark and Nick Bostrom have shown, based on the relative age of the Earth, that the risk of an apocalypse from unknown causes in any given year is of the order of one chance in a million.
In other works, Bostrom and other researchers identify the following potential catastrophes that can lead to the disappearance of human civilization, both natural and man-made:
Decay of the metastable vacuum;
Close gamma-ray burst;
Supervolcano eruption;
The fall of an asteroid (including as a result of its malicious deviation from a trajectory safe for the Earth);
Superflare on the Sun;
Strong weakening or complete disappearance of the Earth's magnetic field
Another change of magnetic or sharp change of geographic poles;
Global cooling down to the freezing of the planet or other catastrophic climate changes, including those caused by human activities;
Depletion of the ozone layer (due to natural or man-made causes).
Man-made:
Unfriendly artificial intelligence;
Bioterrorism or biotechnogenic catastrophe;
Unlimited reproduction of nanorobots and other nanotech disasters;
Nuclear war, nuclear winter and global radioactive contamination;
Failed physics experiment;
A systemic crisis associated with the mutual strengthening of the above processes.
Alien attack.
However, the five possible global catastrophes considered here seem to be the most likely reasons for the complete disappearance of our civilization. For example, when an asteroid falls, humanity must be very unlucky so that it is completely wiped off the face of the earth. The presence heuristic leads us to overestimate the dangers that constantly appear in the media and underestimate potential catastrophes that have no precedent. We must change our approach if we are still to be here in a million years.
