Will humans become extinct? If so, what will cause it?

As a planet with life, the Earth is rich in species. Over the past billions of years, new species have been constantly being created and extinct. Birth and extinction are just common things for this blue planet.

The main reason for the extinction of a species is the change of living environment. It will also be affected by other species. As an intelligent life, humans have a strong interference with the survival of other species. According to existing records, in the past 1,600 years, 724 species of animals and plants have become extinct on Earth. At present, an average of nearly 75 species become extinct every day around the world. Obviously, human activities have accelerated the extinction rate of species. So what about humans themselves? Humans are also one of the species on Earth. Will humans also become extinct? It is not easy to exterminate humans.

Human beings are intelligent life forms and are fundamentally different from other species on Earth. Especially with the help of modern technology, humans have acquired super strong survival abilities and environmental adaptability, so humans will not easily become extinct.

The factors that can lead to human extinction or to the brink of extinction can be roughly divided into three categories, namely cosmic factors, earth factors and human factors. Let's talk about human factors first. Humans, like other creatures, will also fight within the species because of the competition for survival resources, but the fight between humans is obviously more terrible than that of other creatures, because humans apply advanced technology to the fight, especially after the emergence of nuclear weapons, this fight is likely to lead humans to the brink of extinction. The threat of nuclear war to humans is not limited to direct lethality, but will also bring far-reaching impacts, and even climate change.

When a nuclear weapon explodes, a large amount of smoke and dust will be thrown into the sky. Since the diameter of these dust particles is smaller than the infrared wavelength, they have a strong absorption effect on sunlight. When a large number of nuclear weapons explode in a short period of time, it will change the earth's climate for a period of time, plunging the earth into a cold winter, which is also called "nuclear winter."

Of course, neither the direct killing of nuclear weapons nor the sudden climate change caused by nuclear war is enough to completely exterminate humans with modern technology, but it will definitely push humans to the brink of extinction, and only a small number of people may survive in the end. If there is no war, can humans sit back and relax? Not necessarily. The resources of the earth are limited, and the population it can carry is also limited. If the population grows explosively in the future, human society may also face collapse, pushing humans to the brink of extinction.

Although human factors are terrible, they can still be prevented, but earth factors cannot be stopped by human power.

The earth is a paradise for life, but it also has hidden dangers, such as the supervolcanoes under our feet. We have all heard of volcanic eruptions, but the volcanoes we know are completely different from supervolcanoes. Every eruption of a supervolcano in the history of the earth will lead to large-scale extinction of organisms. As of now, the Yellowstone supervolcano in the United States is an active supervolcano. Once it erupts, most of the continental United States will be covered with dozens of meters of ash, and the global temperature will drop by 5 to 15 degrees, thus triggering a sudden climate change. Most humans may die in this ongoing disaster, but with the blessing of modern technology, humans should not be completely extinct.

In addition to super volcanoes, other earth factors include epidemics.

In human history, there have been many large-scale epidemics, each of which has caused countless deaths. However, it is a bit exaggerated to say that epidemics can exterminate humans. Any epidemic needs to be transmitted between people. When the population drops to a certain extent due to the epidemic, the epidemic will naturally disappear due to the decrease in the speed of transmission. Therefore, the epidemic will push humans to the brink of extinction, but it cannot really exterminate humans. Whether it is human factors or earth factors, it is difficult to completely exterminate modern humans. What can really bring us a catastrophe is the cosmic factor.

What are the cosmic factors? Asteroids? This is just the most insignificant of the cosmic factors.

With the current technology, humans can monitor threatening asteroids. If an asteroid is heading towards the Earth, humans can try to change its orbit, or at least change the angle at which it hits the Earth, thereby reducing the impact force. Therefore, it is difficult for asteroids to completely exterminate humans. The real danger is the wandering black holes in the universe. Not all celestial bodies in the universe have stable orbits. There are wandering planets, wandering stars, and even wandering black holes. If the orbit of the solar system accidentally encounters a wandering black hole, then neither the Earth nor the Sun can resist the gravity of the black hole. By then, let alone humans, the entire Earth may no longer exist.

For more information, please follow the official account: sunmonarch