The Last Post Game!!!!

[Swatopluk]

Why not go Jules Verne and synchronize it by modifying the orbit or Earth and/or Moon?

Last _{use some* excess fossil fuel for that to make Big Energy happy} Post
*actually it would need a lot more than there is available

[Griffin NoName]

We could just dump fossil fuel into deep spaces without using it for anything. That would at least drive up prices so fewer people would use it.

Last Post

[Swatopluk]

As long as it is potentially (still) there to be used, the effect will be diminished.

Last _{and the price for fossil has stopped to be connected to actual supply some years ago} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There is a seriously scary article in the latest Scientific American about a gigantic source of methane hydrates trapped in icy structures beneath the sea floor. According to the article they calculate reserves equivalent to 2000 years of natural gas at the current consumption rates.

Last _{run for the mountains} Post

[Swatopluk]

The main dangers of these as seen by scientists are these:
1) at an unknwon tipping point those hydrates will sponataneously decompose, uncontrollably flooding the atmosphere with methane (about 20 times as powerful a greenhouse gas as carbon dioxide)
2) those hydrates are part of what stabilizes the continental shelves. A decomposition can lead to underwater landslides on a huge scale leading to tsunamis that surpass anything in written history (in extreme cases hundreds of meters high).

Last Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Why then I do see the main dangers as Exxon-Mobil, BP, R.D. Shell, Conoco-Philips, etc?

Last _{dangers? Fracking pollutes ground water and creates earthquakes, do you think they stop for one second because of that?} Post

[Swatopluk]

Big Energy is the fuse, the methan hydrates are the main explosive charge

Last _{and we are the match that lit the fuse} Post

[Griffin NoName]

We're all doomed, doomed I tell ye.

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[Swatopluk]

Well (or not), that has been the assumption for the better part of two millennia. At least since this [insert insult] bishop from Noth Africa came up with the idea of original sin (sexually transmitted btw). After that hell needed a rapid expansion to make room for the great protoplasma pool that had to hold the ca. 50% of fertilized eggs that did not implant plus any later unborn stages that did not make it to live birth. There was some relief a few centuries later when only failed stages after 40 days (male) and 80 days (female) resp. had to be kept for the eternal torture following the decree by the Ox of Aquinas.
Since the Middle Ages there has always been that idea of blackmailing G#d with a man-made end of mankind. No successes there until now. The first project (no sex until every woman on Earth is postmenopausal) never got off the ground even in Europe (let alone in pagan parts). All-out nuclear war seems off the table for the moment too (the religious fanatics never managed to get enough of the keys. They are still hoping though) but catastrophic climate change may still come to pass.

Last _{doom not with a boom but looming still} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

There is a better doom that ironically can minimize the climate one: airborne ebola. The more people get infected the higher the chances of a nasty mutation and that could half the energy demands of the world in about two years or so.

Last _{hard to tell how likely though} Post

[Swatopluk]

It would need at least two major mutations. In the current form it would burn itself out within a very short time period. The incubation period is too short. A real world killer would have to fulfill these criteria:

1) highly infectious
2) long period of infectiosity without outward symptoms (cf. Typhoid Mary)
3) can exist for extended periods of time outside any organism (e.g. as spores)
4) extreme lethality
5) no way of treatment (incurable)

It would likely take several different ones hitting at the same time to actually lead to human extinction because even a 99.9% lethality would leave millions immune and thus alive.

Last _{nonlethal ones that lead to infertility without causing other harm would be even more effective but take longer} Post

[Griffin NoName]

Don't worry. We are bombing Iraq again. All will be well.

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[Swatopluk]

As I said, why not let Ebola infected volunteers* parachute into ISIS territory disguised as American agents?

Last _{that would make their bloody antics self-defeating pretty soon} Post

*warmongering congresscritters and their ilk would be even better. Some are be dumb enough to trick them into it.

[Griffin NoName]

One reason is collateral damage. ISIL are holding women and children for raping etc. On the other hand perhaps we could seed the bombs with stem cells infected with Ebola.

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[Swatopluk]

A really cynical answer would be that those women already 'suffered a fate worse than death' but, alas, there are still people around that hold that kind of view.

Last _{and few of them keep up the contemporary male 'code of honour'} Post