Looking into the future of mankind

Basic knowledge and learning the facts


The next stage of my research process is to begin looking at the more scientific side of my chosen project, which is focusing on the many different futures that could await man kind. Even though I have a pretty solid and clear idea of what I am focusing on and want to produce, there is a lot of information on my chosen topic that I don't actually know as a large amount of it is based on statistics and scientific fact which means I am going to have to do a large sum of research to make sure that I am getting all of the right information down about each threat that mankind could come up against. As my designs are going to be based off of the information about each of these future situations it is important for me to look into as much as possible so I have plenty of information and ideas to inspire my work.

Over the Easter break, which I was spent mainly relaxing, I noticed there was a programme being repeatedly advertised on tv which was a documentary doing a countdown of the most likely thing in the future that was going to wipe out a good deal of mankind from least likely to most likely. The programme was called 'End of the world night' and aired on Channel 4. This seemed to be a weird bit of fate as I had been hoping there would be a programme focusing on a topic similar to this which I could simply watch and take notes from instead of raiding the web for information in the first place. So I sat down with the programme that would usually last around an hour and a half but as I was pausing it constantly to write down notes, it lasted a tad longer for me, roughly around 3 hours but I did managed to get down a huge chunk of information that was given. I did hand write these notes originally but I thought it would be simpler for me to type them up and put them on my blog so I can have all of my references and research all in one place. The notes I made are typed up below.

My notes from the programme 'End of the world night'

Channel 4

• Humanity has been on earth for 2,000 years.
• ‘Deep Impact’ (1998) – FILM
• Different ends to humanity could possibly be global pandemic, nuclear accident, climate change and asteroids.
• Oxford’s the future of humanity institute
• Founder is Nick Bostrom 
•  Look into the term existential risk
• Dr Anders Sandberg – works at the institute at oxford martin school
• 90% chance of mankind being around at the end of centaury
• Cambridge studies the elements of an existential risk
• Martin Reese, ‘Astronomer Royal’, quotes that “I think we have a bumpy ride through this century, an important maxim is that the unfamiliar is not the same as the improbable”  

Alien invasion

• ‘War of the worlds’ (2005) – FILM
• The British ministry of defence had an UFO bureau which closed down due to a lack of evidence.
• The SETI Institute in California spend around 2 million dollars studying for intelligent life in space
• Alien invasion is very low on the probability scale
• Panspermia – Life brought on a comet
•  It is a possibility that mankind is actually an alien species that arrived on earth as bacteria on a comet.
•  Prof. Chandra Wickramasinghe, director, Buckingham centre for astrobiology quotes that “there are around 1.4 billon habitable planets exist in our galaxy”
• Aliens are the least of our worries besides other events that could affect us

Asteroid strike

• ‘Armageddon’ (1998) - FILM
•  One Asteroid strike has already wiped out a group of creatures, leading to a mass extinction, the death of the dinosaurs. Could this sort of event happen again?
• It has been 65 million years since dinosaurs roamed the earth
•  Prof. Christopher Riley, University of Lincoln quoted that if we were to be hit by a asteroid “we would get an advanced wave of debris that tends to be surrounding a comet as I gets closer to the sun”
• A debris cloud would look like a meteor shower from earth
• Martin Reese quotes that “there are a million asteroids in our solar system that have a potential to  strike earth and destroy a city”
• Rosetta mission (2004) was a mission to land a craft on an asteroid which succeeded
• One in a million chance of an asteroid wiping out mankind

The sun dying out

• ‘Sunshine’ (2007) – FILM
• The plot of sunshine is that mankind sends a nuclear device into the sun to try and reignite it as it quickly starting to die.
•  The colour white helps to reflect the radiation and heat of the sun
• The sun is around 5 million years old
• The earths sun is very slowly burning through its hydrogen reserves
• There are roughly around 5 billion years left until the sun dies out so mankind being wiped out by this event is a long way into the future so mankind will actually end up ‘killing itself’ before the sun will be able to

Super Volcano

• ‘2012’ (2009) - FILM
• There is a super volcano under yellow stone national park in North America
• This volcano hasn’t blown for around 640 thousand years which means this volcano could be ground zero for a natural Armageddon
• Super eruptions happen every 5,000 years or so
• There is a hazard centre at university college London
• Pompeii is an example of a large scale and devastating eruption.
• The 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland managed to effect a large amount of people around the world, with flights having to be halted because of the ash it through up
• Prof. Clive Oppenhelmer, University of Cambridge, studies these type of events
• Sulphur gases spread globally when eruptions occur
• A super volcano is Toba, Indonesia, which erupted around 70 thousand years ago left a crater which is 62 miles long which has now become a large lake
• This eruption cooled the entire earth by 10 degrees
• It also plunged the earth into a volcanic winter that many have nearly wiped out mankind due to how deadly it was
• It is said that that this eruption and its side effects caused a dramatic reduction in the number of humans on earth at its time, it possibly reduced mankind to a few thousands individuals for a few centuries
• We would be powerless to stop a super volcano eruption if one happened in this century

Nuclear accidents

• ‘The china syndrome’ (1979) – FILM  
• 12 days after this film about the danger of nuclear power plants was released there was a real life nuclear accident at a spot called 3 mile island which was 11 miles away from Harrisburg Pennsylvania.
• In this event, the cooling systems failed at the nuclear power plant on 3 mile island and the staff were then accused that they acted irresponsibly and weren’t paying attention properly.
• All nuclear accident have been less apocalyptic than people have imagined.
• The world’s worst nuclear reactor accident was at Chernobyl and only killed 50 or so people even though the gravity of the event seemed pretty awful as the whole roof of the power plant blew off and released harmful gases into the building and area outside
• Now that time has passed and the area is now clean, people can go walk around the inside of the building to see the damage caused and go deep into the rooms were the radioactive materials were leaked as it is no longer a harmful room to be in.
• There were no strange mutations to be found that is an event which is normally portrayed is in pop culture when there has been a nuclear accident or radiation leak
• These type of accidents shouldn’t be taken likely though, they could still be a real hazard if they are on a larger more deadly scale
•  Nuclear fission is the earth whereas nuclear fusion – Sun

     Artificial intelligence and android uprising

• ‘Terminator 2: Judgement day’ (1991) – FILM
• Artificial intelligence could be very dangerous for mankind
• Stephen Hawking quotes that “I think the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race”
• We need to make sure that ‘unfriendly’ AI does not happen
• Murray Shanaham, Professor of cognitive robotics, imperial college London quotes that “the concern is that AI could go wrong in an all manner of ways”
• Bristol’s robotics lab is at the for front of creating intelligent life
• A member of staff looking into and creating robotics in Bristol is Prof. Alan Winfield who works at the University of the West of England
•  First generation robots are kept away from humans and go jobs such as building cars, appliances like washing machines or do more flashy tasks like exploring different planets
• Second generation robots work alongside humans
• ‘Baxter’ is a robot designed to be a smarter and safer robot. It can learn by example rather than having to be programmed by code
• The robots we have now ‘aren’t very smart at all’ but it is said that we will have super intelligence in robots or other machines before the end of this century

      Zombies

• ’28 days later’ (2002) – FILM
• ‘Zombies’ are more possible than aliens
• Manmade viruses could cause a serious and deadly pandemic if released
• A manmade pandemic could be caused by accident and, hopefully, not on purpose
• In 2002 researched at stony brook university in New York made a synthetic form of the deadly ‘Polio’ virus. The scientist involved in the creating process said  it was almost ‘too easy’ to do as they simply order all the parts they needed to create the virus and have it sent straight to them
• This experiment was intended as a message, a warning, to show the world that this could be done
• The worrying thing now, with how quickly technology has improved and how much more accessible things have become, very small groups of people could be creating or experiment and create something deadly which could then be potentially released either by accident or on purpose and which could possibly kill hundreds of millions of people
• In 1995, there was a horrific case were 12 people were killed in Tokyo by the deadly Sarin nerve gas. This attack was the work of a small cult who’s leader was Shouko Ashara
• ‘Bioerror’ or ‘Bioterror’ could easily wipe out or badly infect the human race

Climate change

• ‘The day after tomorrow’ (2004) – FILM
• Climate change is a real and happening threat which is effecting earth
• It is an event that can’t easily be pin pointed which makes it rather unpredictable
• Climate change warning first surfaced in the 1950s as an initial pre warning to mankind and has only continued to grow and become far more serious as time went on, leading us up to present day where people still aren’t paying attention to the warnings given
• The weather has gotten pretty drastic and dramatic in recent years and the threat of global warming only continues to grow
• By the end of the 21^st century the best case scenario is that the planet will have warmed by an average of 2 degrees
•  In the case of global emissions we are just above the worst case scenario. We are dangerously close to several tipping points and we will be seeing huge shifts of weather patterns and temperatures in just a few decades
• Humanity can help to see off climate change if we take drastic action NOW but, unfortunately, there is still a large amount of people who believe this is an over dramatization and the earth really isn’t sinking into more and more trouble

      Natural Pandemics

• ‘Outbreak’ (1995) – FILM
• Natural pandemics are a real threat. These have been occurring over and over again throughout time and the growth of humanity
• Ebola is a natural virus that is happening right now
• Imperial college London has a department that studies these types of viruses and one of their top scientists is Prof. Wendy Barclay, chair of influenza virology.
• David L. Heymann, Professor of infectious disease epidemiology at London school of hygiene and tropical medicine is also one of the top in his field when it comes to natural pandemics
• Many pandemics originate from animals
• Hospitals mainly seem to amplify infections or pandemics even though, ironically, they are trying to cure the people who are infected
• Airborne diseases are the most deadly as they can travel anywhere they want and usually travel over large distances, infecting everyone in its path. They are the worst case scenario
• The Spanish Flu was a natural virus that surfaced at the end of the first world war and killed an estimated 50 million people, far more than the amount of people who died In the war itself
• The modern world is making the threat of natural viruses even worse  
• Overcrowding, which is what the earth is suffering from at the moment, is a key problem when it comes to pandemics. It allows the virus to spread faster from host to host is people are in a close proximity
• A natural pandemic is one of the events which is most likely to kill a large amount of the human race

      Nuclear war

• ‘Dr Strangelove or how I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb’ (1964) – FILM
• This was a dated movie which focused on the frightening but completely possible idea of a nuclear war
• One of the closet threat mankind has had to do with nuclear war was the Cuban missile crisis in 1962
• Basically it was a war between America and Russia about the possibility of Russia hiding nuclear weapons on Cuba, which is extremely and dangerously close to Americas soil
• Nick Cook is a write and defence analyst who is the studying the different possibilities for nuclear war and how it could happen
• Nuclear conflict is a constantly growing threat and ranks the highest in a scale of what event will most likely wipe out mankind as more and more countries are constantly adapting and enhancing their nuclear arsenal for possible use against their enemies
•  Pure luck has kept this nuclear away so far and no one can predict when it could happen which is one of the things that makes it so terrifying  

Overall I found the programme really interesting to watch but, to be honest, also quite morbid as it went into a hell of a lot of detail about the many different ways in which man kind could possibly become extinct, either in a few centuries time or as a year. This was pretty frightening to hear and learn about but I found all the information that was relayed really helpful as I now have more detail on each situation I was thinking about creating designs for, such as a pandemic or nuclear war, instead of just a vague understanding. My next stage of the research process now is to look into each topic that was covered in this programme in more detail, making sure I learn as much as possible so that I have properly influenced and sensible designs later on in the project.