The Human Race – Finished?

Back to the Stone Age soon? It certainly looks that way, some experts are saying. The descent of the planet’s human occupants to a prehistoric level of civilization may come in the near future, perhaps in under 1,000 years’ time.

How come? Just see how fast we find new types of metals and fuels and then burn them out. In the two hundred years or thereabouts we have been living an industrial lifestyle, most of the planet’s resources have been pillaged. The rate we are burning up the planet’s resources is simply unbelievable.

It won’t be long before all liquid and gas fossil fuels are burnt out. After that the coal will run out. Then eventually, even the uranium will have gone – and that will signal the beginning of the end. When that time comes, metals will be severely depleted, and iron will be worth what gold is now.

Probably, by this time, the only power sources will be solar, wind or tidal generators, and maybe a small amount of geothermal power in one or two areas. And with no metals to build or maintain them, their lifetime will be limited to a few short years – perhaps a generation or two. In any case this shouldn’t be too much of a problem since by that time there may not be much left to power. It looks as if the seas will be a barren, poisonous soup of plastic residue and nuclear waste by then anyway.

The prospects for human life after this point look extremely grim. The best guess is that with all the earth’s easily-found resources used up, and with no fuels or metals to be found any more, life will revert back to an animal-like existence of a pre-Stone Age type. At least they had unlimited amounts of forest timber, flints, and game to hunt then. All that has gone now of course.

We can only try to imagine the grim reality of life at this time – a knife or spade will be worth about twenty or thirty cows by then; food will be whatever you can grub up with your bare hands, or with a piece of expensive wood. The currency will be cows, pigs and slaves. For as we sink back down into a Neanderthal existence once more, from which there can never ever be any escape, all the vile old ways will return. Once more, we will become animals.

Food shortages will be so severe until the population shrinks back down to the tiny fraction of its present level that the planet can support without any technology, that cannibalism will become rife. When that time returns for us, the planet’s population will shrink to about 5% of the current levels. The earth’s human population will be much larger than now when all this occurs, so that around 99 percent will die.

Naturally, regions with the most advanced use of technology now will suffer the most at this time. It is probable that rural regions in third-world countries will not see much change, and will carry on as normal. The most advanced countries will experience a return to a pre-Stone Age existence since we have removed all the resources that enabled even a Stone Age lifestyle. The implication is that life in the western world will return to the same sort of level seen in somewhere like Papua New Guinea now – but without the culture. This viewpoint should not be controversial since no one can suggest any realistic alternative.

This marks the final event in human history as there can never be any recovery – all the planet’s resources have been used up.

No energy, no transport, no power, no metals, no plastics, no industry -and that of course means no medicine. No pills, no surgery.

A Neanderthal lifestyle of an animal quality is the only option then, as timber, game and flints no longer exist. Although as the human population of the Western world gradually dies out, the future could be brighter for areas like Brazil perhaps. When the toxic urban humanity that chainsaws the trees and bulldozes the land has died out, native tribes – if any remain – should have a brighter future.

This dilemma has only one possible escape route: if before that point we have developed a space travel method that allows us to mine the planets and asteroids, to keep the supply of metals going for vital industries.

‘Vital industries’ by then will simply and only be space transport research, as the human species will become virtually extinct without it. The only way out is off – and the only way off is by finding a way to other planetary systems, where we might be able to locate another similar planet.

If we are lucky, of course. And it doesn’t take a genius to work out that will mainly be for those in power, plus the odd doctor or two.