most likely first armageddon for at least 35 percent of population within 40 years?

I voted for the first, because, you know, it already is and had been happening in Africa for quite some time now. I mean, if you want to count people with drastically shorted life spans as well, I would guess that 35% of the population are suffering due to that and pollutants. I really don't see how decreased energy output would have much to do with it. If anything pollution due to increased energy output in countries like China will make the problem worse.

Super viruses sounded the coolest.

Yep.

i actually DID consider the point regarding the first scenario with respect to africa. Perhaps the question should be considered only with respect to industrial populations

That's because of distribution issues though. Not the Earth's inability to produce enough food to feed everyone on it.

If the first horseman of the apocalypse represents war...

My vote is for 'splosions, which will then probably end up bringing about the other two negative scenarios.

Capt. Trips, anyone?

Cloning causing super viri?
Never heard that one.

corollary: percent chance a singular conscience emerging in computer networks or between or in nano-bots before or in one of the scenarios?

<3

Yeh. It doesn't fit exactly, but it's sorta close. And really, it's not so much distribution, it's government corruption/ absence of useful government. It's not like it would be really hard for them to buy or even grow their own food, but the government systems snuff out most economic growth.

Avian flu.

Also, Mystic0 is back?! Since when! Welcome back... (do banninated people get a "you're reinstated" e-mail or something??)

He payed money to the charity fund to get unbanned.

i'm watching "blade runner" right now... interesting movie!

meh, we've had pandemic flus before. I was thinking more along the lines of "grey goo"

yeah, I was wondering where your brain managed to collide "armageddon" and "35% of the population" so I guess I have my answer.

The truth? It's not going to happen. North America, for instance, wastes a large amount of food and water. We're only now trying to become more efficient. As someone else mentioned, the main roadblock is in transportation technology and we're pretty close to some huge breakthroughs on that front.

I think nuclear agression is the most likely.

Just curious, what developments are you referring to?

hmm, 35% is somewhat low for a catastrophic pandemic, considering that the black death killed half or so of all europeans in a few years, i now see

A lot of them are scattered across a lot of disciplines. High density energy storage and fuel synthesis technologies and an upswing in nuclear power. Creating more efficient vehicles has never really been a priority, but with rising oil prices we're finally looking into it and the advancements are happening pretty fast. High altitude solar sails for ships. Supercavitating hulls. Expanded use of RFID for inventory management. Warmer-temperature superconductors. The social advances behind nuclear's resurgence might even allow us to use reactors in more vehicles, which have in excess of 5 times the energy density even taking the reactor shielding into account (powerful enough that you'd be able to use one in an airplane, even though the airplane would have to be gigantic).

Didn't they already try to make a nuclear powered airplane?

The last time they tried was in the 1940s. Modern understanding of aircraft and nuclear reactor design, as well as a little bit of modern materials engineering, could yield greater success.

that just sounds like a bad idea. something goes wrong with the plane and it goes down, instant dirty bomb.

dirty bomb, whatever

Gaseous core nuclear reactor consisting of a magnetic compression toroidal reaction chamber the size of a briefcase that operates on laser-vaporized subcritical fuel pellets and uses a shotgun-style scram system. The reactor is sheathed in thick metal and the entire reactor and fuel assembly is contained within thick concrete shielding. You would be able to drop the thing from orbit and it would still be in one piece.

For certain resources. Others like water are simply in short supply in places that need it. If a place like Israel or Australia were to experience a population boom, it's unlikely they could survive with their current lifestyle.

That's food. With water, there's desalinization technology.

nukes = death

Desalination is expensive, uses lots of resources to operate, and can't desalinate all the much water. For example, the world's largest desal plant (Jebel Ali Desalination Plant in the UAE) produces 300 million gallons of water a day. New York City uses 1.2 billion gallons of water a day. That's an extreme example, but what about countries that can't afford desal plants or areas far away from seawater? A much more effective measure is water conservation, thus changing lifestyle.

I need to anned my previous post, and say yes, water is a resource that can be limited by improper distribution.

Nostradamusssss

As Jon already pointed out, that is not the case. An effective dirty bomb spreads nuclear material with a big explosion. It's designed to do that. A reactor on a plane would not.

Of course the public would still be outraged because the public is completely retarded and paranoid.

BUT WHATEVER DO YOU MEAN EMON, SURELY YOU COULD NOT BE REFERRING TO OUR GOOD FRIEND FORD



A lot of people assume a nuclear reactor is like a big car engine filled with murder. They don't seem to realize that, generally speaking, they're big, heavy, solid, and made with almost no moving parts. They are, essentially, a gigantic concrete block with some metal rods sticking out of it. Gaseous core nuclear reactors use a fuel mixture with the moderator built in (I believe it's something like a boron-uranium silicate). So the reaction can't sustain itself. A shotgun-style scram system essentially peppers the reaction chamber with extra neutron-absorbing pellets. As soon as this happens the leftover reactants cool down and solidify. GCNR designs also typically call for a liquid hydrogen coolant, so even if the reactor did somehow manage to crack open (probably because another plane accidentally dropped an aircraft carrier onto it) there are no fluids to carry particulate matter out of the reactor and no moderator that stays radioactive as it enters the atmosphere. A nuclear powered plane also wouldn't burn if it crashed, which means they'd be much safer - most people survive plane crashes and die of smoke inhalation before they can escape.

If we were flying nuclear-powered aircraft in 2001 9/11 wouldn't have happened.

if any plane ever had any sort of failure people would completely flip out


(we should go back to sailing, slower world = better)

>_>

People aren't starving because we can't get it to them, they're starving because their governments' are so corrupt that they can't use the resources they currently have. Even if we could some how instantly teleport the food they needed into the region it wouldn't be sustainable. The same problems that prevented them from having access to food in the first place would cause them to waste the food they were given. Besides, the world really can't just support such a huge totally unproductive percentage of it population. Until they can be self sustaining, the problems won't go away. What they really need is infrastructure.

Yellowstone is overdue for an eruption.

(Okay that would probably only affect North America.)

I'm willing to bet 50% of Europe is far less than 35% of the world.

apart from the millions of cubic kilometers of ash that would be pumped into the atmosphere

You think that would reach around the globe? Hmmm...