A worldwide pandemic or nuclear warfare?

[Matteo]

If you had to put your money on one of these scenarios wiping out a majority of humanity, which would it be? I think that, despite the widely accepted doctrines of MAD and nuclear deterrence, the threat of nuclear warfare still poses as the greatest threat to mankind. They've only been around for 60-70 years and we have already come close on a few occasions. They'll stick around for the rest of civilisation, so the chances of an all-inclusive thermonuclear war are higher than what we think.

How about you?

[ShaneOfan]

I don't think nuclear war will wipe out civilization ever. That said I do expect a nuke to be set off on a population at some point in the future. Be it India/Pakistan, Israel/a middle eastern nation, or a terrorist organization, or someone else. It's not that I think those countries WILL or that I truly think someone somewhere at some point WILL, it is just that I can't say it WON'T happen ever.

Pandemic would be a tough one, because every time we have an "outbreak" of avian, swine, or octopus flu, it is taken out almost right away in the scale of things. That does not mean someday a lady on vacation in the Amazon won't start coughing and becoming patient zero. It could happen. Of the two I'd say that this is more likely but even at that not very.

My bigger worry would be the environment. At this point we know we have fucked it up be we really don't know how bad we have fucked it up. We rely to much on oil. And we don't just use it for fuel, we use it in plastics and fertilizers as well. Sure we can figure something to make cheap McDonald's toys out of but the fertilizer could be an issue. We need to work out a better source or we are going to have a real problem. I mean I know people have been using non oil fertilizers for hundreds of years (honestly on a world wide scale we have really only been doing it since the 1700's) but not having the ability to use wide spread fertilizers well be a big issue. We need to switch to sustainable energy. Nuclear is perfectly safe when maintained. Solar is amazing and we make progress on having smaller cells giving more power almost every day. Wind is great and does not take as much wind as one would think. Hydroelectric is great but can cause agriculture problems for the people down stream. Geothermal is an interesting one but is not easy to use everywhere. Yet even if the west switched to 100%renewable energy tomorrow, there is so much of the world that still runs of horribly inefficient and environmentally damaging fuels. We can't afford to keep destroying the ozone... at least not if future people want to do weird things like ever go outside.