For the poll above choose one of the following combination of scenarios. And please, try to explain why for each one you pick.



I know there are more apocalyptic scenarios out there but I've tried my best to generalize them into two categories. So the difference is that Scenario A denotes internal problems among our species whereas Scenario B denotes external forces/entities affecting us.

So I'll start:

More likely to happen: Infection. Because with the advances we're making in medicine and biomedical engineering/sciences, I believe it's possible that our ever increasing complexity in technology may one day have serious, inadvertent, and/or perhaps even permanent damage. This thought spurred mostly from watching movies like the ones I've listed above. Though I have very little knowledge of this profession/career, I can't help but think what if our advances in health turn out to have serious long term side effects.

Harder to deal with: Invasion. It was actually a toss up between the two, but I would say invasion mainly because it could potentially turn into something we may never be able to comprehend today. For instance, I'm sure the world "computer" or "artificial intelligence" was unheard of many many years ago so maybe in the future we may come up with technology beyond our current understanding of science and have so little time to prepare against it. We for the most part have a decent picture of what a zombie/viral infection may look like but we may never know how scary an AI/technology/alien takeover would be.

I'm going to say that Infection is more likely for the same reasons, however Infection would be more difficult to deal with.

We've successfully fended off many invasions in our time as the human race.. How many infections have we stopped that plague us today?

Infection is more likely, in fact it's already happened. Easier to deal with though, cause you can hide in the hills and use guns, and the people in The Walking Dead are still alive. Invasion is tougher to deal with, but much less likely to happen cause the universe is so freaking big. If there is a race that can find us, their capabilities are probably pretty wacky, considering how much space they'd have to look through to get us.

The strong shall survive the infection, the rest shall perish.

Dealing with it depends on the transmission of the disease. Infection through the air would be hard to deal with, but zombies through biting wouldn't work.
When you think about it.
You must be bitten in order to become a zombie. Zombies eat flesh.
The only way you can become a zombie is if they bite you and you escape or kill the zombie that bit you before it kills you.

Robot a.i.
people are already developing ways for computers to "learn" as it were. It wouldn't be artificial inteligence, but real inteligence that is stronger, immortal, and can think faster than a human can.

Pro:
http://www.cracked.com/article_15643_5-scientific-reasons-zombie-apocalypse-could-actually-happen.html?wa_user1=3&wa_user2=Tech&wa_user3=article&wa_user4=recommended

Con:
http://www.cracked.com/article_18683_7-scientific-reasons-zombie-outbreak-would-fail-quickly.html

Actually MA was referring to either a zombie(-like) epidemic or an AI/robot/alien invasion. I know enough biology and follow the news enough to know that there currently is no (discovered/semi-widespread) infection that can either dramatically alter human behaviour or take control of them as of now, and that such an infection is not going to emerge in the near future as the evolution of such an infection is going to take time (not to mention there is very few ways in which it is more beneficial for a microorganism to spread from a human to another by controlling/driving them mad than, say, making them sneeze and cough), so unless someone is or is going to intentionally engineer such a virus, we're safe. As for AI and alien invasion, the collective chance of developing a "smart" AI then having something go wrong enough to have it slaughtering up our asses and the chance of aliens attacking us is fairly high, so I'm voting for B.

An infection can be stopped by quarantine, or they could develop a cure or vaccine, or governments could go mad and start ordering genocide of infecteds, etc. So there are plenty of ways an infection can be stopped, especially one with noticeable and dangerous symptoms. As for AIs, it depends on how well the AI is programmed to fight threats, the tools the AI have at its disposal (AI + nanomachines that turn people to zombies (read that Cracked article) that can spread like flu = death to hummies), and how easy it is/whether it is possible to disable the AI/fix whatever bug caused it to go apeshit. Considering my limited knowledge of cybernetics, I have completely no idea how bad the AI's code can go once it starts killin' but I do know we already have some destructive, advanced and semi-automated WMDs, so it would not be good if an AI who controls any of that goes crazy. As for the alien invasion, it's a friggin world vs world war. Better hope the nav comps of our weapons work then. If not, gg gl hf nr and GOGO TERRA.

Fuck you guys I'm joining the machines.

Fixed.

bya'rrr.

The infection is spreading.

Infection is definitely more likely to happen, because it's happened before (plagues, 1918 influenza at a stretch) and the vectors already exist: smallpox, virulent ebola, some freak mutation of another virus like 'flu.

Harder to deal with: invasion. Once a disease has spread through an area, anyone who was susceptible is infected and struck down and the remaining population are more resistant. We also have a pretty good understanding of disease and how to prevent its spread. An invasion on the other hand doesn't end until the aggressor gives up or is defeated. If we're talking about some rogue AI that is dangerous enough to pose a threat to human civilization, then I think we're going to have a very difficult time taking it out (Terminator 3, basically) and the problem itself doesn't "self-correct" after 5-10 years like even the worst type of infection normally does.

There is really a lot of ambiguity in these choices.

For infectious diseases, there can be many pathways to and from one another. Also, depending on speed of onset, infectious diseases could wipe us out before we even know what were dealing with. If it can be airborn and stays latent in our system for several months before killing us, than this disease would probably gg most of the world pretty quickly.

Not me though.

Artificial intelligence, as an evil entity, could be bad as well. If we suddenly gave it access to nuclear weapons, good bye everyone.

Not me though.

But what about other scenarios? Like running out of oil with no backup plan sends everyone out of a job, and without a supply of food. Yeah, then it's everyone for themselves. Or elected official declares themselves emperor of the world and Nuclear Holocaust ensues (much like AI scenario...). Or asteroids/solar flares instantly fry all life.

My personal favorite might be we finally develop a stable black hole and it eats us.

"not me though"
...?

Infection. Major diseases continue to show up, but are usually dealt with before large amounts of casualties occur.

We have grown weak from various antibiotics in our foods. Once a super virus gets out, we are hit hard.

Arguably, we already have the technology to render human intelligence obsolete. It's just a matter of someone refining and putting it to use.

A passive infection is no comparison to an active will.

Nuclear winter.

Maybe a virus seems scary to you

I don't work closely with medicine, but I am quite partial to advancements in computer technology, so my answers will be generally oriented towards that.

I'd like a source on this (preferably one that spells intelligence with two L's ). As far as I'm aware, we're nowhere close to legitimately developing "learning" as we know it; we can have a computer learn by giving it a set of parameters and the good vs bad outcomes, but you may quickly realize this is not a premise for an artificial human brain.

More likely: Infection. It is way more likely to develop an infectious virus than it is to accidentally program something so brilliant and complex which also wants to be, and is capable of, overthrowing us. I imagine the infection would be developed as a biochemical weapon of war.

More difficult: Invasion. We would be overly dependent on technology, and an overthrow would mow us over, no question. Hell, some businesses lose hundreds of millions of dollars if their servers go down for a few seconds today, and some people would rather have their home taken away if they could just keep their cellphone. We're ridiculously dependent on technology now, and we will be even more dependent on it in the future.

May have been misleading.
But really, just googling self aware robots gives you this
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=automaton-robots-become-self-aware