Hmmm now that I think about it, the Cons article brings up many great points. If a zombie apocalypse implies dead people walking around, then sure that will not last at all. I guess the more realistic scenario would be people who are still alive and fully sentient but because of some genetic disorder or virus or something, they all have twisted mindsets or something (sort of like what the pros article points out).

I made it clear in the OP that there are many possible scenarios out there and that they're purposefully "broad" but somewhat focused on two general categories. As for your scenarios, the Nuclear Holocaust and asteroids/solar flares stuff would fall under the "Invasion" category since it implies our creations (i.e. nukes) and external forces (asteroids and all) dooming us all.
Well actually, all of your scenarios could belong to the "invasion" category since they all have to do with stuff men formulated and invented. Well one could argue that "Infection" could also deal with our creation but let's try to draw the line somewhere ;P.

That article was describing exactly what I was talking about as far as our advancements in artificial intelligence. I made a simple program that played a nim game (if you're unfamiliar with the game, check out this flash game). The AI was basically designed to record the moves players make and which player wins in the end. If it had no knowledge of the best move, it would make a random move (a more sophisticated version chose a move it hadn't seen in the past, or an uncommon move if there were no good moves). Eventually, if it plays enough games, the AI learns the best move to make in any given game state. It was a fun project, but it also taught me a lot. The scenarios given in the article are very similar in structure, and they ultimately seem to reach the same conclusion: this method of learning is not very scalable.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 6 2011, 4:14 am by Roy.

Infection is much more likely considering the amount and variety of biological weapons developed.

Scenario A/Scenario A. We're constantly fucking with so much shit, it's bound to happen eventually. All we need is some crazy ass scientist (hi) and some genetic know-how, and a large majority of the population can easily be killed.

I'd like to be the first to obtain a vaccine or antidote, if you don't mind.

A zombie virus would have to make the human saliva producing glands to produce a venom that would send the virus to the next host. It would then have to include a method of killing the person by including a high fever, or other death inducing thing that probably could be countered by todays medicine.

Yes, Im saying Aspirin would slow the zombie virus from taking over you. The Walking Dead has one of the more realistic zombie viruses in it, minus the part where they dont try to save a few people by giving them aspirin and trying to see if it actually worked. Aspirin = Red Herbs.

Now Invasion on the other hand, I figure is more likely to happen, but would be easier to deal with. Invasion has been said time and time again to be a failure most times. See War of the worlds. Trust me, if we could figure out how to pilot one of those son of a bitching machines, we probably could take out 2 or 3 other walkers before the aliens even knew it was happening. Point is, when you invade, you directly inject your weaponry into your opponents arsenal, if you arent 100% perfect when using it and making sure it doesnt fall into the wrong hands. One mistake? BOOM we got our own AT-ST to start bombing those imperial bastards with.

Only one problem, if the aliens control it with psychic powers, shit. But Im sure we'd crack that radio frequency quickly.

Quote from Lingie

Quote from poison_us

Scenario A/Scenario A. We're constantly fucking with so much shit, it's bound to happen eventually. All we need is some crazy ass scientist (hi) and some genetic know-how, and a large majority of the population can easily be killed.

I'd like to be the first to obtain a vaccine or antidote, if you don't mind.

You don't have to worry, my forte is Chemistry.

Quote from Riney

A zombie virus would have to make the human saliva producing glands to produce a venom that would send the virus to the next host. It would then have to include a method of killing the person by including a high fever, or other death inducing thing that probably could be countered by todays medicine.

Yes, Im saying Aspirin would slow the zombie virus from taking over you. The Walking Dead has one of the more realistic zombie viruses in it, minus the part where they dont try to save a few people by giving them aspirin and trying to see if it actually worked. Aspirin = Red Herbs.

Now Invasion on the other hand, I figure is more likely to happen, but would be easier to deal with. Invasion has been said time and time again to be a failure most times. See War of the worlds. Trust me, if we could figure out how to pilot one of those son of a bitching machines, we probably could take out 2 or 3 other walkers before the aliens even knew it was happening. Point is, when you invade, you directly inject your weaponry into your opponents arsenal, if you arent 100% perfect when using it and making sure it doesnt fall into the wrong hands. One mistake? BOOM we got our own AT-ST to start bombing those imperial bastards with.

Only one problem, if the aliens control it with psychic powers, shit. But Im sure we'd crack that radio frequency quickly.

Ever seen Transformers, minus frozen Megatron?

An alien invasion would be like Cortez conquering the Incas. The aliens would have superior technology (they crossed the galaxy, remember?) that could kill us from high orbit.

Also, they could have the Death Star.

Ray makes a good point. The only thing that stopped the aliens in war of the worlds was the bacteria that infected them. And if they have the technology to come to our planet, wouldn't they have the technology to stop themselves from becoming infected?

What's to say they wouldn't bring their own kind of deadly bacteria and viruses too?
It would be like both scenarios in one.

Remember Smallpox decimating the natives Europeans tried to make friends with?

Hmm, I know some people thought "War of the Worlds" was stupid because of this very point - how could they have such fine technology and yet not be able to fend themselves against our bacteria.

My defense/reasoning is that these aliens come from a world that's vastly different from ours. How could they anyone prevent themselves from stuff they've never encountered before? IMO that's the genius of this movie, sure your immunity or technology/medicine can be 100% safe proof against your local bacteria and viruses but how could you possibly be 100% protected against a nonexistent something your body/immunity was never meant to or needed to be protected against?

But say they do come from a world with similar bacteria and viruses as ours, in fact they may have more which we don't. So yes it's possible it could be a two in one scenario but considering how ridiculously small P(A∪B) already is, imagine how much smallerP(A∩B) would be.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Dec 7 2011, 8:11 am by MillenniumArmy.

Considering the diversity of chemical compounds on Earth, it would be curious how any one of them would affect an alien. And I don't think their future technology would somehow render them immune to ours.

Even if wars were eradicated, I wouldn't mind keeping around an Earth defense force, as well as some planetary defenses.
---

Then again, once the singularity occurs, who knows what our evolved selves will do. Maybe we'll be the ones conquering at that point.

Quote from MillenniumArmy

So yes it's possible it could be a two in one scenario but considering how ridiculously small P(A∪B) already is, imagine how much smaller P(A∩B) would be.

Generally any two sets of real numbers that are nonzero and have at least one different number within the set have a higher number in a set that is the union of the two than in an intersection of the two. For example, if A = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9} and B = {1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256}, then A∪B = {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256} and A∩B = {1, 2, 4, 8}.

P(A) and P(B) are probabilities of events A and B (i.e. Infection and Invasion) occurring respectively, not sets of numbers. P(A)+P(B) - P(A)*P(B) > P(A)*P(B)

You shoulda said it like that then, not using set union/intersection notation ;o