Ask IH: What's your personal theory on how humanity manages to end itself?

I'll bite.

Here's my thoughts: We are just going to die out due no one having kids. We're seeing that now here in the US. The birthrate has gone negative, and most people are so consumed by technology or themselves that they neither desire kids nor see any reason to have them. When everyone is choosing to not have them, we could run into a situation when there is a "last generation", and once all those people perish it'd be the last generation.

Another idea: I think we could see the United States get involved with Ukraine. After thrashing the Russian military, the United States will see an opportunity to topple the Putin regime and they will begin to make inroads towards Moscow which isn't that far from Ukraine anyways. Before they get close, they will be targeted with a miniature nuclear strike that will destroy any of those advancing forces. Upon learning of the destruction of this coalition force, the United States will be forced to retaliate with a small nuclear warhead as well, wiping out key targets in Russia. At this point, we will be in a hot war involve nuclear warheads and things will progress into destruction. I could also imagine China deciding to invade Taiwan during this time.

Another idea: The United States isn't able to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear warhead which they so desire. Iran, hellbent on destroying the Jewish state, decides to launch it. With Israel wiped off the map, the United States wipes Iran off the map. From here, the world isn't sure what to do. Either way, it'l be the end of the world at this point.

We will teach monkeys to make fire; and watch with fuzzy joy as they band together and begin burning cities. It won't matter at first because they'll be attacking our "Enemies" or at least "those deplorable people over there"... but then the Monkey Paratroops come and no one is ready.

I'm with those who think some form of evolution will happen. Likely combined with technology. Here's a nice prediction that isn't so unrealistic:

"Genetic and bionic modifications will become normal and at some point in the far future, there won't be a homo sapiens anymore. That might even get rid of certain limits of our bodies, so that a sudden extinction will be more unlikely. Can't kill what can live on almost any (solid) celestial body."

Technology || Overpopulation

IMHO, the world isn't ending via nuclear war or any kind of war. Wars are controllable. The real thread; IMHO comes from viruses getting out of control. We've experienced this in the recent times; and there's no guarantee that it won't happen in future.

End itself would have to be nuclear war. Seems the most obvious answer.

Outside of our control (and much more certain, long term), would be external dangers like an asteroid impact, super volcano eruption, or solar flare. Any of those would have the power to extinct humanity, or at least end civilization as we know it within a few hundred years.

War

Nothing will end the world. But climate change and lack of energy might end humanity as we know it.

The planet is going to warm up. This ship has sailed and we are going to have increasing temperatures. Regardless of what we do today, the planet will warm significantly (and just a few degrees have dramatic impacts). That will affect housing but more importantly food production and generally, lack of food causes revolution/fight/war (things that are not nice). Climate changes will also reshape cities (I doubt Miami will be here in 50 to 100 years) and cause migrations (aka climate refugees).

On top of that, we will not have enough energy. Oil production peaked in 2008 and we now have access to shitty oil (e.g. efficiency is lower). We are trying to sell ourselves solar /renewables as the main source but it's marginal in the world (and I doubt that we will be able to change that in the next 40 years with countries like China or India still huge consumers). Existing alternatives (e.g. electric cars) are not that helpful.

This lack of energy will also cause political tensions, wars, <insert-your-list-of-ugly-things>.

It will not end the world but these two forces will kill a significant number of human lives (we are already seeing that access to energy motivates war - see what is happening in Ukraine - revolution - see what happened in the 2010s in the middle east).

More details can be seen in this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGt4XwBbCvA

i'd say we got maybe 300 years to go.

We will become so physically weak that if technology ever fails we would just not know how to make basic living necessities.

Serious:
killing others and destroying an entire civilization is much harder than it seems and humans are quite sturdy/resilient, so I don't see a way to make humanity go extinct .

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