by inquiry » Sat 30 Dec 2006, 21:44:17
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('slick', 'T')he web is full of doomsday predictions and sites like peakoil.com that focus on the possibility of harsh outcomes, but there is a whole slew of arguments on the other side that are rarely supported by small groups of believers on the internet.
It is therefore highly unwise to make financial planning decisions on the basis of the thoughts of doomers like Jim Puplava and his hand-picked guests at financialsense.com. People like this tout commodities above all else, and that market could turn on a dime.
You have been warned!
Other scenarios that have been named are:
* Antibiotic resistance. Natural selection would create super bacteria that are resistant to antibiotics, devastating the world population and causing a global collapse of civilization.[citation needed]
* Demography. Demographic trends create a "baby bust" that threatens the order of civilization as we know it.[22]
* Mutual assured destruction A full scale Nuclear war could kill billions, and the resulting Nuclear fallout effectively crush any form of civilization.
* Dysgenics. A lack of natural selection and the tendency of the more intelligent to have fewer children would lower the average health and intelligence enough to lead to an eventual collapse of civilization, associated with controversial eugenics theories.[23]
* Ecology. Natural resources are used up, or the environment is so damaged through pollution and destruction that civilization fails.[citation needed]
* Finance. Markets fail worldwide, resulting in economic collapse: mass unemployment, rioting, famine, and death.[citation needed]
* Infertility. Human fertility continues to decline, eventually ending with no fertile humans left to continue the species.[citation needed]
* Gray Goo. Out-of-control self-replicating robots consume all living matter on Earth while building more of themselves.[citation needed]
* Overpopulation. World population may increase to such an extent in the future that it would lead to lack of space for habitation.[citation needed]
* Peak oil. Oil runs out before an economically viable replacement is devised, leading to global chaos.[24]
* Quantum energy. In the search for new quantum particles, scientists accidentally destroy the universe. This, however, is highly unlikely; a Chernobyl style disaster is much more possible.[citation needed]
* Telomere. Some researchers theorize a tiny loss of telomere length from one generation to the next, mirroring the process of aging in individuals. Over thousands of generations the telomere erodes down to its critical level. Once at the critical level we would expect to see outbreaks of age-related diseases occurring earlier in life and finally a population crash.[25