Adapted for the Internet from:     Why God Doesn't Exist

    Summary

    Extinction is a law of life: every species  is guaranteed to disappear the moment it is born. Mother Nature
    plants the seed of death in each of her scions the moment she is pregnant. There are no exceptions. Over
    99% of the species that ever lived on Earth are no longer around. This is as close as it gets to a biological
    law. The notion most people have that, unlike the rest of nature, Man can escape this fate borders on the
    ridiculous.

    The establishment holds that extinctions are the result of climate change, extraterrestrial or earthly
    catastrophes, infighting, competition, disease, or new predators. Unfortunately, none of these mechanisms
    explains pervasive selectivity [1] [2] [3] and thus cannot be used to justify a single extinction event in the
    history of life on Earth.

    Here, I propose two models that are above all selective. They explain extinctions in any epoch or habitat. A
    natural background extinction results when the population pyramid of a species overturns. I show that it is
    impossible for any species of plants or animals to avoid this natural process. Neanderthal and Woolly are
    perhaps the two most noteworthy examples that succumbed in a background extinction. A natural mass
    extinction results when the ecological pyramid overturns. An entire food chain comes to an end as the
    island shrinks and the many end up feeding on the few. A mass extinction is a sudden economic collapse,
    the last stages of an exponential process where the carrying capacity disintegrates for a group of
    interdependent species. The dinosaurs are the most famous case. The last Neanderthals died of old age.
    The last of the T-Rexes starved to death.

    Man won't go quietly, unnoticed, the way of Neanderthal. Man is destined to go with a bang, the way of         
    T-Rex, in a geologically sudden economic collapse. We are among the last of the mammals and certainly the
    last of the hominids. Only the last of each family tree have the privilege to participate in a mass extinction.
    Our time is up! We can go at any moment now. Ironically, forewarning can only accelerate our schedule.
    Extinction is a problem technology and intelligence can do nothing about.

    The reason for Fermi's Paradox is that advanced intelligence necessarily has a very short geological
    lifespan. The planets where humans evolve are simply too few and too far apart in distance and in time.

    Module main page: Home

    This page: We are the last generation of humans on Earth!

    Pages in this module:
We are the last
generation of humans on Earth!

    ________________________________________________________________________________________


     Home                    Book WGDE                    Glossary                    Extinction   

    Last modified 05/21/08


        Copyright © by Nila Gaede 2008
Holy Bill
Baaad Bill
Pie-in-the-sky future
that Mathematical
Physics,
post-humanism, and
traditional religion
promise you.
What Bill
guarantees
you!
"What a deal, Bill!"
    Executive Summary
    (Mass Extinction)
    All species undergo a long term, demographic S-curve that invariably leads to extinction. Every species
    necessarily attains ZPG, a historic milestone where its population reaches a maximum. Population expands
    geometrically and climbs to ZPG after a species conquers or adapts to its last invisible enemies. Humans
    brought viruses and bacteria under control during the 19th and 20th Centuries and, predictably, population
    expanded exponentially.

    Since 1963, however, the global birth rate has steadily declined. This is not a result of the education of
    women or of government programs, as economists and demographers would lead you to believe. It is the
    result of urbanization. Man does not live spread out evenly across the planet. Man lives like ants, in urban
    mounds: one ant hole here; another one there. All species are subject to density dependent birth rates,
    especially those that develop to become top predators. Density is not a function of space, but of food
    (carrying capacity). Humans are so efficient that they produce food almost upon demand. When plants or
    animals are corralled into tight spaces and provided with just enough food, the population miraculously
    stops growing. The day we migrated from the farms to the cities, we guaranteed that population would
    eventually grind to a halt. Globally, our demographic history resembles that of bacteria which have
    multiplied on a finite piece of bread.

    The trouble is that our artificial economy is an inverted pyramid scheme. It is founded on the expectation
    that there will be more demand (i.e. humans) tomorrow. The Service Economy cannot run on a constant
    population. When population grinds to a halt, demand grinds to a halt, and the Service Economy is exposed
    for what it is: a mirage. The Service Economy is all verbs and no nouns: a series of relations which vanish
    when you wake up. The veil is finally removed and Man suddenly finds himself living in a natural economy
    (based on food). We return to our hunter-gathering days albeit under radically different circumstances.
    Without economic incentives, the agricultural corporations which produce most of the food today have no
    reason to plant crops, grow livestock, process food, or distribute it. Billions suddenly find themselves
    stranded in cities and towns with nothing to eat. The day we migrated from the farms to the cities, we
    isolated ourselves from the only thing we need to stay alive: food. These are problems intelligence and
    technology can do nothing about.

    The only economy that needs to collapse is the US Economy. Globalization guarantees that all other
    economies tumble right behind it. And it doesn't require a stock market collapse, although this is the likely
    trigger. The real problem is unemployment. Without jobs, nothing else matters. Once the US Service
    Economy disintegrates, millions of destitute urbanites will first vandalize local supermarkets. Next, they will
    migrate to the surrounding countryside and pick the fields clean. After that, it's a dog eat dog world. Nothing
    will remain.

    Population will not rebound after the collapse. Adam and Eve are not in the cards. Sorry! No one will even
    know that there had ever been humans living on Earth.