Could Doomsday Happen?

There is so much frightening stuff in the news nowadays that it seems at times that we are on the verge of wiping ourselves out. Does anyone trust Trump with the nuclear code? It just takes one false step or miscalculation to do us all in.

So, what are the odds of a major nuclear disaster happening? Naturally, I first turned to AI and here is what I got:

The risk of nuclear holocaust, while historically low, is considered higher today than at any point since the Cold War, with experts estimating a 20% to 80% chance of some form of nuclear war this century. A full-scale exchange, such as between the U.S. and Russia, could cause over 90 million immediate casualties and initiate a global famine killing 5 billion people.

Five billion people represents over 60 percent of the human population on the planet. “This century” means during the next 75 years. Many of the children living today will still be alive then. Oh, my goodness!

Twenty to 80% is a wide range, but still even a 20% chance is enough to keep you awake at night. That we humans now have the capacity to wipe out most, if not all, of civilization is hardly breaking news but is still unsettling. We were making progress in reducing the number of nukes following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but a new nuclear arms race is happening, and more nations (like Iran) are aiming to join the nuclear club of nine (Russia, the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea.) How long will it be before drones carry these weapons?

And who knows where AI will take us?

That we can even raise the question of our survival puts us in an existential moment in history. For some reason, I find that at my advanced age of 84 I have been obsessed with questions about the meaning of life and the mysteries of the universe. If you have been following my blog for a while you may remember some of those posts. Here are the highlights:

• Our solar system was formed two billion years ago. It is a newbie. The Big Bang happened some 13.8 billion years ago, about 12 billion years before our solar system formed from cosmic dust. The Earth is now halfway through its useful life since our sun will give out in another two billion years though practically speaking we “only” have a billion years left before the sun turns into a red giant destroying the Earth.

• The planet Earth is a mere speck of sand on an endless beach. It wasn’t that long ago that we humans thought our planet was at the center of everything. The moon, the sun and the stars were thought to revolve around us. Then along came Copernicus and Galileo, followed by Darwin and Einstein and the Huble telescope. We now know that the Earth is part of a solar system that is part of a huge galaxy containing millions of stars and solar systems, and that there are probably trillions of galaxies. And we also know as our daughter once proclaimed when she was in the second grade, “My great, great, great, great…. grandparents were lizards!”

• Over the two-billion-year history of the planet, there have been five mass extinctions where almost all the plant and animal life were wiped out (mostly by climate change) making way for new generations of species to follow. Mass extinctions typically have occurred every 100 to 200 million years. The last one happened 66 million years ago and wiped out the dinosaurs, who had ruled the planet for over 150 million years. If an asteroid had not hit the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, the surviving creatures living on Earth today would probably all have green tails and huge claws and communicate by growling.

• Yes, we humans are superior to dinosaurs, who after all could not read and write, but just think about how short the time has been that we humans have been around to make our mark. It is less than a second on the 24-hour clock of the universe. And does anyone think that the human species will be around for another billion years? Really? While human-like creatures started to appear around 3.2 million years ago, we Homo sapiens have been around for only 300,000 years. And it took a few thousand years for us to get our act together. Neanderthals had discovered fire around 400,000 years ago, but not much else happened until around 5,000 years ago when the wheel was invented, about the same time that the first written language (Sumerian) appeared. The first religious texts are only a few thousand years old. And the Great Axial Age when most of the major religions (and philosophies) emerged did not happen until 800-300 BCE or about 3,000 years ago. The Hebrew scriptures were compiled during that time, and the Christian New Testament followed several centuries later. Most of what we might call modern inventions— cars, airplanes, factories, radios, televisions, computers, cell phones, atomic bombs, satellites, spaceships, antibiotics, and of course AI—has happened in my lifetime or the generation or two before me.

So where does this leave us? Where it leaves me is this: It is not a matter of if the Sixth Great Mass Extinction will happen on our fragile planet but when. And sadly, we Homo sapiens will likely be the culprits. We have never been able to live together in harmony and have done terrible things to one other from the very beginning of our existence. Plus, we are trashing the planet and are the major cause of global warming. Some say that we are a flawed species. Others say that we are created in the image of God and to suggest otherwise is the work of the devil. My response is that to figure this out is above our paygrade, as they say in Washington. My prayer is that when the Sixth Great Mass Extinction happens it will be far into the future. The scary thing is that given the weapons at our disposal, it could happen at this very moment.