r/collapse • u/Acrobatic_Bit_8207 • 8h ago
Science and Research Human extinction 'now possible' doctors warn
https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/10/human-extinction-now-possible-doctors-warn/SS: Obliteration of the entire human species is now a distinct possibility, according to the latest medical report card on our state of health worldwide.
A major new Lancet commission is the first international scientific study to project, based on current data, the likelihood of a human wipeout within the present century. Others, so far, have mainly treated it as a dangerous risk, though many scientists had sounded personal warnings based on their own research.
The threats referred to by the Lancet Commission include nuclear war, malicious use of AI and biological weapons, pandemics, obesity, child malnutrition, antimicrobial resistance, conflict, inequality, bad education and cuts to international health aid.
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u/eliquy 8h ago
Lol "climate change is definitely only a worry for future centuries" seriously
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u/sadsleuth 8h ago
Absolutely hilarious considering it's the gravest and the most imminent threat and almost everything mentioned here is a direct consequence of anthropogenic climate change.
Obesity, really ffs.
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u/VoDoka 8h ago
I think, they look at risks of total extinction of humanity. While climate change could wipe us all out and many other risks listed are derivative, humanity is unlikely to go extinct entirely from climate change before 2100, compared to the consequences of a global nuclear war, for example.
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u/GenuinelyBeingNice 5h ago
nuclear war is a lower risk to humanity that biodiversity collapse.
I'm not exaggerating.
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u/sadsleuth 8h ago
But the risks of a global nuclear war are exponentially rising precisely because of human induced climate change.
That is at the heart of every single thing wrong with the world today. Almost every single thing.
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u/zapatocaviar 6h ago
I disagree. Stupidity and greed (hyper consumption) are also root causes. Income inequality is underrated as a destabilizer and will lead to unrest, hunger and population movement like climate change - not on the same scale necessarily, but significant and on a different time scale.
It’s the poly crisis that we should be worried about. People without work moving i n mass because there is no work and the water ran out…
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u/Kaining 3h ago
Stupidity and greed (hyper consumption) are also root causes.
If we're going there then no. It IS the root cause of climate change. No stupidity and greed unchecked, no climate change. Then all the rest follow in whatever order.
Also, lol for the AI. You listen to those techbroes monsters and it's "yeah, we're likely all gonna die in 6 month but if don't build it, CHINA will so i'm building the "let's all die machine" myself".
MOTHERFUCKER THAT'S NOT HOW IT WORKS, THAT'S NOT HOW THE WORLD WORKS AT ALL.
Diplomacy ? Nope, the word don't exist, never has, the concept is absolutely made up. We didn't manage to survive anything during the cold war using it.
The dudes never opened a single history book in their life, weren't taught anything but to code and watch terminator so now their persuaded by their own bullshit. It's exhausting.
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u/Spindeki 3h ago
What do you disagree with? The cause is human induced climate change? What do you think this means? Climate change is because of stupidity and greed, so I'm failing to see what you disagree with.
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u/zapatocaviar 59m ago
“The heart of everything wrong with the world is climate change”
Generally we’re on the same page is my guess. It was just that.
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u/new2bay 6h ago
But the risks of a global nuclear war are exponentially rising precisely because of human induced climate change.
Show your work, please.
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u/sadsleuth 6h ago edited 3h ago
The initially suppressed report - that is out now in the public domain - prepared by the British intelligence services explicitly links the threat of nuclear war to ecosystem collapse brought about by human induced climate change.
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u/BusyEquipment529 2h ago
Honestly obesity certainly doesn't help anything. Having a lazy, out of shape populace who doesn't know anything about nutrition is only going to accelerate deaths when other conditions make life difficult
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u/sadsleuth 20m ago
Agree with all of it, but this is the first time I'm hearing it mentioned as an extinction threat.
While the literal elephant in the room sits ignored, at that.
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u/BusyEquipment529 17m ago
Oh I agree I don't think it's an extinction level threat lol, but it's going to accelerate the real threats by a million. We're gonna send our Gravy Seals to fight the water wars? We're gonna drag our fat ass parents and grandparents into the woods to survive off the land? Lol
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 7h ago
Go look at the sea surface anomaly in zone 3.4 and tell me that's a "future centuries" problem. It's demonstrably going to look a whole lot like the apocalypse in South America. Shit, the Langtang Lirung glacier collapse probably felt pretty biblical as it annihilated over 7,000 structures, but I guess they're just living in the future centuries we keep hearing about.
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u/GloriousDawn 8h ago
They also forgot about microplastics in our bodies, their effects being difficult to measure as there isn't any control group free from them on the planet anymore.
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u/fattmarrell 3h ago
My mom is a Geologist. I sent her a book about climate change for her birthday. She told me that it wasn't great because she's not going to be impacted
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u/totalwarwiser 1h ago
That is what they said in the late 1800s.
We are like in the final 5% of a centuries long process and people think they have time. Maybe 20 years ago.
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u/Mike-Banachek 8h ago
I wonder how the world will be if extinction becomes a for sure thing. Will it cause people to act more violently or consume even more (because they have nothing to lose)? Every year the PPM of carbon dioxide goes up, up, up and it’s hard to imagine it going down.
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u/elafave77 8h ago edited 4h ago
You're witnessing it. It's been like this since we gained consciousness. Some people will cope with sublimation, religion or denial. There is no question that humans will become extinct.
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u/alphaxion 3h ago
Even without climate change and warfare, the sheer mechanism of evolution means what we are today will cease to be at some point and a different us will exist.
That will continue for a billion or so years until the sun brings the final curtain down on all life on this planet.
When you think about it, even if life were to survive our actions, it's unlikely another species like us will have the time to emerge on this planet. Our deeds and our stories will slip into the very cosmic night that we came from.
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u/elafave77 3h ago
Yep. And we are reaching the only outcome of the crafting simulation that we live in that is possible. This was all predetermined from the start. Some think tank ran some simulation of humanity(I don't know by what peramiters) 1 million times, on the planet earth from the dawn of time and it always gets us to this point. Agriculture, fossil fuels, synthetics, computers.
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u/Vikkio92 4h ago
It's been like this since we gained consciousness.
I keep reading this online and I still have no idea what this means? What is "gaining consciousness"?
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u/elafave77 3h ago
I mean. I kinda' winged this sentence but what I meant was that since we became self aware, basically.
But... the gradual process by which early hominins transitioned from acting purely on basic instinct to developing complex self-awareness, symbolic thought, and abstract reasoning. This shift is widely known as the Cognitive Revolution, which peaked roughly 70,000 years ago in Homo sapiens, though its evolutionary roots stretch back millions of years.
And what I was alluding to is that EVERYTHING is uncertain. We've realized that since day one which is why we have all of these varying ontological outlooks. One thing is certain though, our personal stay here is finite, we don't know what happens afterwards and it is reasonable to assume that human kind will one day disappear.
Kinda' abstract and existential but extinction is a sure thing for the individual so it bleeds over into everything else like into the collective as well.
Hope I explained what I was trying to say decently enough.
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u/gnostic_savage 1h ago edited 1h ago
Even magpies have self awareness (as we see it). Dolphins have self awareness. All of the other great apes have self awareness. Why wouldn't early human ancestors have it from the very start?
The idea that any animal acts on pure instinct is so cartesian, and it's been shown to be false repeatedly over the past three to four decades. It was actually proven false earlier by a few scientists, like Jane Goodall, but that proof has only become more mainstream science since about the 1980s. It has really been upended since the 1990s.
Even bees can count to a certain degree. Apparently, using chemicals, even trees respond to each other. https://www.nps.gov/articles/species-spotlight-tree-and-plant-communication.htm We think the whole of reality is cause and effect, but when it comes to biology it's change and response.
I think the biological world is far more conscious and far more intelligent that western anthropocentrism has given it credit for. Not only do other animals "reason," have real cultures, deep devotion to each other, compassion, and empathy, chimpanzees have real language and dogs understand symbols. I'm not convinced that humans are anywhere near as "reasonable" and unique as we've held since Christianity put forth that we're at the top of the biological pinnacle, made in gawd's image, and special among all creatures that exist. I don't deny our exceptional talents, but when it comes to living creatures acting only on pure instinct, that is a failed idea. Many people who lived and worked closely with animals never believed it.
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u/Vikkio92 3h ago
Ok but the point they were making that you were replying to is whether people will act more violently or consume even more because they have nothing to lose. Don’t think that’s been happening since we developed abstract reasoning.
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u/elafave77 3h ago
My point was people are just doing what they do because the end is always near and that's how people behave by default. Nothing would get worse and people wouldn't consume more or be more violent unless we were on a diffinative at end date and I'm kind of different about that unless it was sine 20 year thing where stockpiling resources to ensure living in comfort until the day comes congress into play.
But thinking about the future and not caring are what got us here in the first place and honestly it's the only physical conclusion that become of humanity. We live in a "crafting simulator" essentially and this outcome was inevitable since the day we were cuddling in caves and fires.
wood>stone>pottery>steel>oil>electricity>rubber/plastics/synthetics>computers>planet fucked up = game over.
There is no way humanity takes on another trajectory with the building blocks we had to build with.
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u/Acrobatic_Bit_8207 8h ago
It would be chaos
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u/RammerRod 8h ago
The pinnacle hasn't begun...or has it?
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 5h ago
The pinnacle was the 2022 heatwave, if there are historians around to historize that will be remembered as the first moment of the downfall of what we know as contemporary humanity. At least that's what I think, I certainly felt that way when I was at the same state park that same time of the previous year. I was totally acclimated to what Tennessee considers "hot" in 2021 because I spent the previous 22 years living in Florida, but I heard everyone who lived there moaning about how hot it was. The heat of 22' was absolutely oppressive. Previously alive wooded areas of the park were alive with birds making noise and crickets trying to fuck; 2022 was dead silent, the only noise was me realizing that a tick tried to crawl into me arse.
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u/alphaxion 3h ago
The UK hit over 40c for the first time in recorded history.
That just shouldn't happen and should have sent alarm bells ringing, if not everywhere then certainly in the UK.
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u/Timely-Assistant-370 3h ago
instructions unclear, we blamed it on the removal of sulfur in maritime commerce vessels (still a good thing, still contributed to warming, but a convenient excuse was just what humanity needed, like a fking drug addict living paycheck to paycheck; can't stop taking the drugs because he needs his job.)
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u/alphaxion 3h ago
I wouldn't say it contributed to warming, it was masking the warming that was already present.
Kinda like plopping a couple of ice cubes into your drink; it'll give temporary reprieve from the warmth in the air heating your drink but once fully melted that regression to the mean will happen.
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u/filmguy36 3h ago
The night the CD in the atmosphere, the lower the nutritional value of vegetables and brain development will decrease in utero. Just two things off the top of my head.
Under nourished, and lower IQ will be the future trend
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u/Mostest_Importantest 7h ago
Already nobody plans for retirement, nor will any country's economy permit retirements, currently or progressively.
This is it.
What is happening is what will be happening.
We're Venus.
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u/intrusivelight 4h ago
Absolutely more violent, we’re an inherently selfish species especially if you’re an American
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u/BlackMassSmoker 8h ago
Remember when The Workers Handbook said human population will be below 2 billion by 2050 and extinct by the end of the century? The guy could be right on the money.
Since becoming collapse aware I figured near term human extinction should be in the conversation these days but then again the mainstream conversation is still stuck in soft denial over climate change.
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u/Potential-Profit1151 4h ago
The Workers Handbook was what made me collapse aware almost a whole year ago now. I shared a post about it in here or maybe collapse support (deleted now I think) and I got told by a bunch of people that he was over-exaggerating and it won't be that bad. But I had a feeling he wasn't far off being correct right from the first time I read it and I've watched things get progressively worse and worse at a faster rate over the course of the year and its been terrifying quite frankly.
Edited for clarity at the beginning
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u/Odd-Tourist-80 2h ago
Guy McPherson in his debate with Paul Beckwith in 2016... Now he has a substack 'Nature Bats Last '
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u/TheHistorian2 7h ago
Modern civilization is toast. Massive population reduction will go along with that.
But extinction is a specific incredibly high bar. Even with all those threats, getting to human population zero will be pretty hard.
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u/HoosegowFlask 2m ago
Yeah, I think human extinction is often a bit of a red herring when talking climate change. Societal collapse is a much more immediate and likely threat than human life completely dying out. A loss of 99.5% of the global population still leaves more people than existed during the stone age. Whatever bleak future awaits life on this planet, I imagine some humans somewhere will claw on to existence for quite some time.
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u/Bjbttmbird 8h ago
Ya think the lancet commission would have better jargon and possibly use more realistic possibilities ie loss of gebtic diversity the drop in sperm count microplastics & planetary degradation, famine not “bad education, conflict, and inequality” sound more like a political campaign promise than anything scientific
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u/Thor4269 54m ago
Meaning they knew 30 years ago but were told it was bad for profits
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u/AccumulatedFilth 4h ago
Maybe if we have more taxes, billionaires, wars and space races we could save the planet?
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u/GenuinelyBeingNice 3h ago
Human extinction now possible
like
was it not a certainty already? Is extinction not the standard eventual outcome for the crushing majority of species?
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u/chota-kaka 3h ago
Humans are already going extinct. Even if all the factors mentioned by the Lancet Commission didn't exist, human being would still go extinct. The Commission have left out the population decline which is happening; it is irreversible and will eventually lead to the humans going out with a whimper.
P. S. I am a demographer
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u/krichuvisz 2h ago
Why is the population decline irreversible?
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u/Straight-Razor666 worse than predicted, sooner than expected™ 1h ago
the ecological destruction has become so dire that the effects cannot be reversed even if humans disappeared today. The consequences are that a whole lot of life will die and go extinct, and this includes humans.
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u/krichuvisz 1h ago
Hmm, but it might be possible that after a population decline that it will grow again, even with less resources available. I guess OP had another reason in mind, though.
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u/spacestationkru 6h ago
Just to share what I think about human extinction.. maybe we've run our course.
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4h ago edited 42m ago
[deleted]
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u/oxero 1h ago
I think one catastrophic use of AI or trusting AI with important military goals could easily cause more destruction within the next 5 years than climate change. It's a sprint race compared to a marathon, only difference is the speed and time at which it finish line is hit.
Climate change is like the walls slowly closing in with no escape while everything else kills most of the population first. Incorrect usage of AI is up there. I've already seen idiots lose entire hard drives because they for some reason thought it was a good idea to give an agent access to their entire PC. We also saw those catastrophic strikes on a school in Iran which was supposedly determined as a target by AI.
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u/Frenchieguy2708 1h ago
Why? AI could be god-like intelligence that kills us immediately once smart enough. Climate change will take at least 50 years.
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u/oxero 1h ago edited 1h ago
We aren't going to make a god-like intelligence.
More likely we make a machine sophisticated enough to complete complex tasks and someone stupid enough to give it a vague goal and access to things it shouldn't have at all, much like how the US military gave it control to missile strikes which ended up blowing up school children.
During a task it could decide the quickest way to solve it's problem is by doing something catastrophically bad like obtaining information it should have, deleting important databases, launching nuclear strikes due to a false error like a flock of pigeons tripping some sensor, etc.
It's more we made the paperclip machine and it decided to turn everything into paper clips than we built Ultron.
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u/Frenchieguy2708 1h ago
I think the jury is really out on that.
I agree that human-directed disaster with these tools is the most likely scenario. Honestly I would prefer that too if compared to the ramifications of permanent disempowerment to an AI.
That said, why do you doubt gen AI will reach superintelligence? Look at the maths problems it solved recently and rate of advancement. It’s so much more capable than just a few years ago.
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u/oxero 51m ago
It's not super intelligence because it's not intelligent. It supposedly solved those math problems because OpenAI was purposely stealing user information from professors already working on the problems using their service. They were attempting to undermine them for recognition and clout just like every other AI bro grifter. Everything the AI knows is just stolen human intellectual properties. These machines are nothing without the real intelligence.
Theoretically we could build the same machines running right now out of common materials like steel and ultimately get the same results as we are getting now, but the problem is this machine would span gigantic distances and require materials we'd never be able to gather. It's only because we build microprocessors with transistors so small that any of this is remotely possible, but at the end of the day it's still a machine solving extremely complex matrices till it finds and answer. That's not intelligence, the intelligence is us making the machine that appears to be mimicking intelligence.
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u/Momik 1h ago
Well for now, god’s still giving me dumbass answers on Google’s ai results
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u/Frenchieguy2708 1h ago
Look I hope it’s climate change but I don’t think we really have that luxury now
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u/Momik 1h ago
Why do you assume it’ll somehow get god like intelligence?
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u/Frenchieguy2708 1h ago
Look at the acceleration. Have you ever spoken to Astra on voice call mode? Genuinely mind blowing. I honestly fear this is our next evolution.
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u/ericvulgaris 6h ago
Malicious AI wiping out humanity is one of their threats. Which goes to show you how unserious this report is, unfortunately.
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u/Ree_For_Thee 2h ago
<Some guy pulls plug on AI datacenters>
"He saved the world!"
As long as an actual super-intelligence doesn't have full control over at least a billion robots to act as "reality manipulators", it's not a threat.
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u/jbond23 4h ago
"bad education" ?
How do we get from here to less than 2000 breeding pairs? In 73 years?
I'm very uncomfortable with people talking about short term Gigacide. I know it's /r/collapse but still.
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u/palwilliams 2h ago
Doctors have literally zero expertise in this area so if you read and believe this, you deserve it
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u/Girafferage 1h ago
How is obesity a threat humanity as a whole?
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u/ieatedcrayons 1h ago
There are 8 billion people. Too many tubbies and the mass collapses in on itself and forms a black hole. Goodbye earth.
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u/uninhabited 8h ago
lack of fresh water. Loss of oceans for sustained protein. failure of food distribution systems (diesel) . more civil wars to add to the list