Preserving Humanity

= Preserving Humanity =

About This Wiki
The Preserving Humanity Wiki is a resource for those interested in identifying threats to humanity as well as potential strategies for avoiding or limiting those threats. By humanity, we refer both to the human species and to what are typically seen as the more positive attributes of the species: that is, the quality of being humane. By preserving, we refer to the long-term survival of what remains a still-young species.

The rationale for this wiki is that, although human beings are currently the dominant species on the planet in many respects, like other species we exist in a vulnerable state. The quickest way to extinction, of course, would be via a cataclysmic event. Natural species-threatening catastrophes include events such as the impact of large meteors, the eruption of so-called super volcanoes, and cosmic radiation events. Potential human-made catastrophes include events such as nuclear warfare, biological attacks, environmental degradation and - further into the future - the possible misapplication of technologies such as nanotechnology, particle physics, artificial intelligence and robotics, and new genetic and biotechnological advances.

But the focus of this wiki extends to A) major cataclysms that threaten large swaths of humanity even without threatening the actual extinction of the species, and B) extinction processes that are not the result of a single event. After all, not all species disappear as the result of sudden catastrophes. Indeed, such catastrophes might be the exception rather the rule when it comes to extinctions. Therefore, this wiki also examines other reasonable theories of extinction.

Unlike any other Earth species that has come before, as far as we know, humanity has the ability to foresee, plan for, and possibly even forestall threats to its future. We hope that this wiki will serve as a kind clearinghouse for rational ideas and accurate information about how to preserve the species. The focus is intended to be empirical, scientific or futuristic rather than mystical, religious or gratuitously apocalyptic.

It should be noted that, despite facing a number of serious challenges and dangers, the human species is thriving. This wiki is intended to function as just one tool for trying to ensure that this trend continues even as we find ways of intelligently coexisting with the other species on the planet. In short, the goal is to help make humanity more resilient in a sometimes hostile universe.

We must accept, however, that many suggested untried remedies, preparations, or ameliorations could seem naive or preposterous. Some, in fact, will be. Other ideas might simply be unfinished or ahead of their time. There's little doubt that our own ancesters would considered descriptions of the modern world proposterous. The very notion of an automobile, television, plane or computer would have been beyond belief. Therefore, we shouldn't be afraid to imagine potential remedies that are not yet possible. Humankind must envision innovations and strategies before it can implement them. It's time we started developing visions for how we'll address the inevitable dangers of the future.

The Current State of Humanity
There are over 6.5 billion people on the face of the planet, according to the World Population Clock of the U.S. Census Bureau. This is quite a number considering the fact that our species is only thought to be about 150,000 years old. Not only there are more humans than ever before, but recent progress in terms of agriculture, sanitation, medicine and other sociotechnological systems allow many people to live longer, healthier lives than their forebears did. Over the last half a century, life expectancies have risen from 48 to 67 years for women and from 45 to 63 for men, according to data from the International Labour Organization. A recent article in the New York Times (Kolata, 2006) notes that humans in industrialized countries have physically changed quite dramatically over the last 100 years. They tend to be taller and sturdier than before, with certain chronic diseases such as heart problems and arthritis occurring a decade or more later than they did among relatively recent ancestors. Average I.Q.s have also been on the rise.

In many ways, of course, this is all excellent news. It means that human beings are an astonishing successful species, able to simultaneous increase both population and health. But an increasingly large global population of increasingly large individual mammals who are living in high concentrations in most of the habitable world can also be viewed as vulnerable, from an ecological point of view. That is, sudden disasters can produce can produce terrible famines because of the extend of the population. Disease can be spread more easily from person to person due to high population densities and modern transportion technologies. Moreover, the powerful technologies that allow humans to thrive can be turned against the larger ecosystem or, indeed, against other human beings, creating proportionately greater risks to the species. Although people tend to have some vague awareness of these dangers, they also tend too busy with their day to day lives to pay much attention to the matter.

The Hurricane Katrina disaster in New Orleans or the tsunamis that ravaged parts of Indonesia in 2004 are examples in microcosm of how people can exist in even the most vulnerable of circustances and yet somehow fail to prepare for an all-too-likely event. Unless we demand more from our leaders and ourselves, the whole of humanity could likewise fail to prepare for the predictable disasters that could deliver a terrible - and perhaps mortal - blow to humanity.

Theories About Human Extinction
"Some say the world will end in fire, some say in ice." -- Robert Frost

Despite the success of the human species, some observers believe there may well be an increased likelihood of some extinction event occurring in the relatively near future. There are at least two schools of thought that concern themselves with, in the words of author and philosopher John Leslie, "doom soon." The first school looks at the question though a probalistic lens. The idea seems to have sprung from the mind of astrophysicist Brandon Carter and was then picked up up by John Leslie, who discussed the idea in a book called The End of the World. The "doomsday argument" is that the very fact that we are alive at this moment increases the chances that the species will become extinct in the not-so-very-distant future.

Imagine, for example, that you're in a kind of lottery draw. The Powers That Be wind up choosing your ticket out of a bin in the second try. What are the chances that there are few or many tickets in the bin? It's more likely that there are few tickets, of course. By the same argument, it's more likely that we are not at the beginning of humanity's existence on Earth but that we're alive at the same time as a sizable portion of the rest of humanity - let's say 10%. This implies that humanity will not be around for millions or billion more years (McGuire, 2002). There are various explanations as well as refutations of the doomsday argument, but it remains a compelling idea in the literature.

A second school of thought is less concerned with abstract probabilities and more concerned with threatening tendlines. It might be called the "frightening future-tech argument." In 2000, Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy published an influential article called "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" in Wired magazine. He wrote, that "we have yet to come to terms with the fact that the most compelling 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotechnology [GNR] - pose a different threat than the technologies that have come before." He argues that such technologies will potentially be able to replicate and will be within the reach of individuals or groups who are bent on large-scale destruction or even global annihilation. Unlike would-be nuclear terrorists, such people would not require access to mined and refined nuclear materials. Joy describes these GNR technologies as potentially leading to "knowledge-enabled mass destruction" (KMD). This is not to say that Joy or those who share his views believe in the inevitability of human extinction, but Joy outlines just how difficult it might be to prevent future GNR-related disasters.

Neither the "doomsday" nor the "frightening future-tech" arguments lead to a case for the inevitable extinction of humanity in the short-term, but they do represent cautionary tales. Perhaps, through sufficient presence and prescience of thought, humanity can boost the probability of long-term survival. But there are no guarantees, and the chances might even be against us.

Natural Threats and Possible Solutions
There are many potential threats to humanity, some more likely to occur than others. The goal here is to describe the potential threat and then suggest possible solutions, preparations or ameliorations. We've divided the threats into three categories: natural, human-caused, and other. In truth, though, categories can blur. Global warming can be a natural phenomenon, but these days it may well be influenced by human activity. Ice ages have come and gone throughout Earth's history, but a nuclear winter might spark the next one.

(NOTE TO POTENTIAL CONTRIBUTORS: we've begun by putting in links to sources that might be helpful to writers in describing the phenomena outlined below. As the sections are filled in with research prose, the URLs will disappear, be incorporated into the prose, or be transferred to the reference section of the wiki.)

Description
Among the culprits that are often deemed most likely to result in extinction events are asteroids and comets. Some research suggests that one of these was responsible for the biggest extinction event in the world's history. It occurred about 251 million years ago during the Permian-Triassic period, killing off 70% of land species and 90% of ocean species. One line of evidence is the discovery of an impact crater about the size of Ohio that's been found in Antartica. It's estimated that this crater, which is about 300 miles wide, was caused by a space rook that was up to 30 miles wide. Another line of evidence is research that analyzed deposits of deposits of "Buckyballs," which are a type of carbon that contain a cavity within. Researchers apparently found a helium isotope of extraterristrial origin inside the cavities of the Buckeyballs.

Even if there was a huge impact during the Permian-Triassic period, however, the impact of the object alone was probably not the sole cause of the extinctions. The impact likely triggered other major events such as massive volcanic eruptions, changes in sea levels and ocean oxygen, and climate changes (Stricherz, 2001).

Researchers also believe, of course, that a comet or asteroid was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs, which occurred some 67 million years ago (Recer, 2001). It's believed that the crater for that impact is in the Yucatan peninsula. The evidence for this Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event impact is stronger than for the Permian-Triassic event. It's not known if the other three major extinction events were were caused by massive space rocks, but some circumstantial evidence exists that they were.

Thanks to various Hollywood movies, the idea that another asteroid or comet could drive humans into exinction is probably the most well-known danger of all those listed on this wiki. It may be also be - based on the historic record - the most realistic threat of all. Perhaps the combination of these two factors helps explain why humanity is beginning to take this threat seriously.

Watch and Learn
The first step toward avoiding asteroids and comets is tracking and otherwise gathering knowledge about them. The experts are, in fact, already tracking what are commonly known as near earth asteroids, or NEA. The following text is adapted from a Wikipedia entry on the subject of minizing the threats of NEAs.

In recent years, astronomers have been conducting surveys to locate NEAs. One of the best-known is the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project (LINEAR), which began in 1996. By 2004, LINEAR was discovering tens of thousands of objects each year and accounting for 70% of all asteroid detections. LINEAR uses two one-metre telescopes and one half-metre one based in New Mexico.

Spacewatch is another project that surveys the skies for intruders. It uses a 90 centimeter telescope sited at the Kitt Peak Observatory in Arizona, updated with automatic pointing, imaging, and analysis equipment. The promise to increase the rate of NEA discoveries by Spacewatch from 20 to 30 a year to 200 or more. Other near-earth asteroid tracking programs include Near-Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT), Lowell Observatory Near-Earth-Object Search (LONEOS), Catalina Sky Survey, Campo Imperatore Near-Earth Objects Survey (CINEOS), Japanese Spaceguard Association, and Asiago-DLR Asteroid Survey.

"Spaceguard" is the name for these loosely affiliated programs, some of which receive NASA funding to meet a U.S. Congressional requirement to detect 90% of near-earth asteroids over 1 km diameter by 2008. A 2003 NASA study of a follow-on program suggests spending US$250-450 million to detect 90% of all near-earth asteroids 140 metres and larger by 2028. The fact that an impact of an NEA a kilometre or more in size would be a catastrophe unparalleled in human history has kept the idea of a defensive network alive.

Detecting NEAs is, however, only the first step. The next step is learning how we can deflect such objects away from the planet. Wikipedia] notes that almost any deflection effort would require years of warning. It has been estimated that 10 years or more of advance warning would be needed to deflect an asteroid larger than 200 meters across. Below are strategies outlined in Wikipedia's Asteroid Deflection Strategies page:

Deflect or Destroy
Using Nuclear Weapons

One of the most often proposed solutions is firing nuclear missiles at the oncoming asteroid to vaporize all or most of it. While today's nuclear weapons are not powerful enough to destroy a 1 km asteroid, theoretically, thermonuclear weapons can be scaled up to any size so long as enough raw materials are available. If not completely vaporized, the resulting reduction of mass from the blast combined with the radiation blast could produce positive results. The largest problem with this solution is that if the asteroid breaks into fragments, any fragment larger than 35 m across would not burn up in the atmosphere and itself could impact Earth. Tracking of the thousands of fragments that could result would prove daunting.

Another proposed solution is to detonate a series of smaller nuclear devices alongside the asteroid, far enough away as to not fracture the object. Providing this was done far enough in advance, the relatively small forces from any number of nuclear blasts could be enough to alter the object's trajectory enough to avoid an impact.

Dan Durda (homepage) has argued that if an asteroid was a "rubble pile", had a low enough density and was porous enough, it could absorb enough energy from a stand-off explosion to not be deflected. The idea of deflecting an asteroid through the use of a nuclear weapons would, however, require testing nuclear devices in space, which is illegal for any country that signed the Outer Space Treaty.

Detonating Internally

Another strategy is to plant powerful explosives inside the asteroid, detonate them and break the asteroid into pieces. This technique, as with launching nuclear weapons from Earth, might cause subsequent impact events of large fragments of the asteroid. A large asteroid could be blown apart by a nuclear device detonated in its core only to have gravity draw the asteroid back together, essentially nullifying the effect of the explosion. The explosion would have to be large enough to not only split the asteroid but set the fragments on an expanding trajectory such that most of the debris missed Earth.

Kinetic Impact

An alternative means of deflecting an asteroid is to attempt to directly alter its momentum by sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid. In the case of 99942 Apophis it has been demonstrated by ESA that deflection could be achieved by sending a simple spacecraft weighing less than one ton to impact against the asteroid. During a trade-off study (carried out by the Advanced Concepts Team of the European Space Agency) Dario Izzo (homepage) argued that a strategy called 'kinetic impactor deflection' was more efficient than others.

Asteroid Gravitational Tractor

The major alternative to explosive deflection is to move the asteroid slowly over a period of time. Tiny constant thrust accumulates to deviate an object sufficiently from its predicted course. Edward T. Lu and Stanley Love have proposed using a large heavy unmanned spacecraft hovering over an asteroid to gravitationally pull the latter into a non-threatening orbit. The spacecraft and the asteroid mutually attract one another. If the spacecraft counters the force towards the asteroid by, e.g., a nuclear electric rocket, the net effect is that the asteroid is accelerated towards the spacecraft and thus slightly deflected from its orbit.

While slow, this method has the advantage of working irrespective of the asteroid composition or spin rate — rubble pile asteroids would be difficult or impossible to deflect by means of nuclear detonations while a pushing device would be hard or inefficient to mount on a fast rotating asteroid. A gravity tractor would likely have to spend several years beside the asteroid to be effective.

Use of focused solar energy

H. Jay Melosh proposed to deflect an asteroid or comet by focusing solar energy onto its surface to create thrust from the resulting vaporization of material, or to amplify the Yarkovsky effect. Over a span of months or years enough solar radiation can be directed onto the object to deflect it.

Other proposals
 * Setting up an automated mass driver machine on the asteroid to eject material into space thus giving the object a slow steady push and decreasing its mass
 * any spacecraft propulsion device would have a similar effect of giving a steady push
 * Wrapping the asteroid in a sheet of reflective plastic such as aluminized PET film (biaxially oriented)PET film, or dusting the object with titanium dioxide to alter its trajectory via radiation pressure
 * Dusting the object with soot to alter its trajectory via the Yarkovsky effect
 * Attaching a large enough solar sail directly to the object, thus using solar pressure to shift the object's orbit
 * Chapman, Durda & Gold's white paper calculates deflections using existing chemical rockets, delivered to the asteroid, then push it sideways, assuming sufficient fuel also delivered

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/

http://www.earthsky.org/shows/astrophysics_interviews.php?id=49241

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/impacteffects/

Super Eruptions
http://www.livescience.com/forcesofnature/050308_super_volcano.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4326987.stm

http://www.iee.org/OnComms/Circuit/benefits/Editorials/Features/super_eruptions.cfm

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/nature-online/environmental-change/asl-2005/html-version/volcano/volcano-past.html

http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040112/pf/040112-17_pf.html

Gamma-Ray Bursts
http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/newsdesk/archive/releases/1998/17/

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4433963.stm

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/astronomy/gammaray_bursts_010522-1.html

http://www.physorg.com/news3625.html

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3900550/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_ray_burst#Mass_extinction_on_Earth

Ice Age
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/11/1112_overkill.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowball_Earth

http://www.snowballearth.org/index.html

http://www-eps.harvard.edu/people/faculty/hoffman/snowball_paper.html

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa4136/is_200401/ai_n9355163

Mega-Tsunamis
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,1279710,00.html

Global Warming
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1040_22-5544264.html

http://dc.indymedia.org/newswire/display/114245/index.php

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/14834318/

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/19/1055828440526.html

http://www.cgfi.org/materials/articles/2003/sept_14_03.htm

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/01/21/mass_extinction_theory_blames_global_warming/

Transhumanism
http://genetics-and-society.org/events/20030430_mckibben.html

Scenarios
The Global Business Network, a scenario consultancy, notes that "scenarios are tools for ordering one's perceptions about alternative future environments in which today's decisions might be played out." Scenarios are are a tool used by various businesses to gain insights into possible futures and potential responses to those futures. Shell, for example, is a corporation that has pioneered this techniques of futures thinking. Shell produces a set of global scenarios, making summaries and excerts available to the public. Wired.com also provides information on scenarios and how to build them.

We invite authors to craft detailed scenarios that focus on the challenges that humanity may face in coming years and how it may deal with these challenges. Scenarios can focus on a specific problem or a series of related problems, and they can be set various time frames. Generally speaking, the further into the future a scenario is set, the less likely it becomes. But scenarios are not as much about "predicting" the future as they are about allowing us to make better, more-informed decisions in the present. After all, although a cliche, it's largely true that what we decide as a society today will help shape the world of tomorrow.

(Note: Currently, these are just idea titles for scenarios)

Relevant Links
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html

http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1511/is_10_21/ai_65368918/pg_1

http://www.answers.com/topic/human-extinction

http://www.well.com/~mb/scenario/

http://scenariothinking.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scenario_planning

http://www.monitor.com/cgi-bin/iowa/ideas/index.html?article=207

http://www.monitor.com/binary-data/MONITOR_ARTICLES/object/207.PDF

http://www.gbn.com/GBNDocumentDisplayServlet.srv?aid=34550&url=%2FUploadDocumentDisplayServlet.srv%3Fid%3D35520

http://www.swemorph.com/pdf/cornwallis3.pdf

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Huebner