Duke University Trinity College of Arts & Sciences
CURRENTLY
THE GREATEST THREATS TO HUMAN SURVIVAL ON EARTH
JJ Liao
Math 89s: Mathematics of the Universe
Professor Hubert Bray
2-15-2016
In the 2015 movieKingsman: The Secret Service, the main antagonist reasons that human beings will bring an early end to the homo sapien race by overpopulating the earth to a point of unsustainability. Popular culture and the media has been tackling the question of what will ultimately cause extinction of the human race for decades now. There are fantastical interpretations involving alien invasions and zombie apocalypses like that in the TV show, The Walking Dead, as well as the more likely global climate change endemic or by bacterial strain. With so many possible threats to life on earth, what are the most pressing matters humans need to be fearful of, and how should we be allocating funds to prevent such?
Global Warming, Climate Change, Loss of Biodiversity, Natural Disasters
Global warming, climate change, and the loss are biodiversity are likely the most gradual threats on this list. It is also possible to diminish this risk enormously simply by acting now. According to Duke Lecturing Fellow Professor Tara Kelly and climate change expert and author Naomi Klein, the world currently possesses the technology to reduce carbon emissions to sustainable levels, but there lacks the willpower to properly enforce a switch to renewable energy in order to save the planet.
Climate change is becoming an increasingly large problem as the population continues to grow at such exponential levels. All this is combined with an ever larger carbon footprint as more and more countries industrialize and begin to increase their own emissions, while already developed nations find it challenging to reduce their levels of production to more sustainable levels. This is heighted by the “farting cows emitting methane” and the “giant well of methane lurking under the Arctic ice” releasing into the atmosphere as a result of the melting of the poles and the rising temperatures all over the globe (Schwartz, 2014).
Holli Reibeek of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) explains the problems global warming will cause (2010). “[P]eople…will suffer from increased heat waves, coastal erosion, rising sea level, more erratic rainfall, and droughts.” But global warming always affects humans in a more drastic way. “[C]rops, natural vegetation, and domesticated wild animals (including seafood) that sustain people in a given area may be unable to adapt to local or regional changes in climate,” causing decreases in biodiversity. Famines may be more frequent, leading to a decrease in food security. Eventually, this could get so bad that life on earth may not even be possible anymore, if human beings are able to get the nutrition they need to bring them throughout their lives.
Additionally, global warming and human impact can also increase the occurrences of natural disaster and their intensity. The act of hydraulic fracturing for natural gas has already induced earthquakes in parts of Oklahoma and Texas, and the intensity of weather patterns like storms can be heightened.
The severity of global warming and climate change is already recognized. At the 2015 Paris Climate Change Conference, world leaders agreeing that climate change has to be curbed reached the Paris Climate Deal. This deal involves a global commitment to hold the “global average temperature to well below 2-degrees C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5-degrees C above preindustrial levels” (Davenport, 2015).
However, the clauses contained in this deal might never be fulfilled. The United States Supreme Court voted to “halt President Obama’s plan for restricting emissions from coal-fired power plants” (Davenport and Yourish, 2016). This follows Obama’s “assurance that the United States would carry out strong policies to significantly cut carbon emissions” when the deal was reached. In the United States, a greater proportion of states supported this Supreme Court decision than opposed it, showing that there are many players who don’t view climate change and reducing emissions as vital as it is, often viewing the economic costs of cutting production too great to put these reduction measures into play. Figure 1 shows how with regulation, carbon dioxide emissions can be drastically decreased.
Figure 1
Author Naomi Klein argues in her 2015 book, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, that although the initial loses in production with definitely be detrimental to economies and producers seeking profit, there are many benefits to changing the world’s economic systems to properly adapt to the climate change epidemic. She argues for more localized economies, to reduce the environmental harms from the transportation of resources far distances.
Pandemics & Infectious Disease
Globalization of the late 1900s has connect so many countries and so many economies. Nations rely on each other for the trade of resources. As a result of this trade, diseases have the ability to spread rapidly and cause significant damage. The potential for an infectious disease to spread and transform into epidemics or even pandemics is very real and should be a major source of concern for human life on Earth. Via the news outlet Vertical News Health & Science (2016), an independent Commission on a Global Health Risk Framework for the Future states that “pandemics can kill millions of people and cause trillions of dollars of damage to economic activity…. Few other risks pose such a threat to human lives, and few other events can damage the economy so much.”
This Commission “estimated the global expected economic loss from potential pandemics could average more than $60 billion per year” and recommended an “investment of approximately $4.5 billion per year…to enhance prevention, detection, and preparedness.” In the past 15 years alone, the world has already faced scares by “Ebola, Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS)…the influenza virus known as H1N1,” avian flu, and currently, the Zika virus raging in South America. Currently, nations are only devoting fractions of their budgets and resources to preparing to ward off diseases in crisis, but the Commission estimates that “at least one pandemic will emerge over the next 100 years, with a 20% chance of seeing four or more.” Because of the nature of disease, it is much easier to prevent an epidemic before it occurs than to deal with it after the fact and clean up after one should one ever occur. The chairperson of this commission argues that people should all have a common interest in preventing the spread of disease, as “pandemics don’t respect national boundaries,” although there are certain factors that might increase the risk for disease in certain areas of the world.
Recommendations by the Commission include for governments to prioritize investments on health systems “as part of their fundamental duty to protect their people,” and calls upon communities to remain vigilant in their duty to detect, respond, and report outbreaks. It also recommends accelerating research and the development of medical products such as vaccines, personal protective equipment, and instruments.
Infectious disease is unlike global warming in that there are very little human beings can do to stop diseases from break out. Different strains of bacteria continue to mutate and adapt to the defenses we currently have against them, and our continued reliance of antibiotics has only accelerated this process. There might be one day where we don’t have the medical resources or the manpower to cure, treat, or contain outbreak. With more measures in place and increased awareness, it is possible to prevent the spread of disease before it reaches a global level and threatens massive scores of people. With a very immediate threat of pandemic, likely that one would break out within ours or our children’s’ lifetimes, it is pertinent to allocation proper resources to prevent the spread of disease and to improve reaction to such outbreaks.
When analyzing the weight of possible disease pandemics, its also important to remember that pandemics likely won’t wipe out the entire human race. Although the Commission is careful to point this out, it also notes that disease can cause such high death rates and damages that they should not be ignored. Even so, in history, disease has never wiped out the entire human race. On Heathline’s list of the “Worst Disease Outbreaks in History” (2013), only one on the list, HIV/AIDS, occurred in the days of modern medicine. This shows that tragic though it may be, humans can carry on and rebuild following a massive disease outbreak.
Chemical, Biological, and Nuclear Terrorism
Chemical and biological terrorism seem to be a much greater threat in the past. Back in 1999, John Diamond via the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that “the CIA sees the threat of biological warfare and terrorism…rising,” but there have been few updates on this fear since the early 2000s. This might be related to the CIA’s assertion that “experts may be exaggerating the ease of developing effective weapons.”
Biological war agents are “living organisms, whatever their nature, or infected material derived from them, which are used for hostile purposes and intended to cause disease or death in man, animals, and plants, and which depend for their efforts on the ability to multiply in the person, animal, or plant attack,” (Beeching, 2002). In 1980, the threat of smallpox being used as an agent was declared over, yet Russia and the United States still hold viral stock in their laboratories.
Biological warfare is dangerous as it involves artificially releasing a pathogen into the environment to create an epidemic or pandemic. It is even more dangerous because “genetic engineering…can alter their pathogenicity, incubation periods, or even the clinical syndromes they cause,” so there is always the possibility of creating a super virus.
However, as science progresses and technology continues to improve, the threat of nuclear terrorism is ever growing. The greatest threat of nuclear war currently is with North Korea. As its technology begins to catch up with the rest of the developed world, North Korea has been testing nuclear weapons since October 2006 (BBC, 2016). Most recently, on January 6th, 2016, North Korea “announced that a successful test of a hydrogen bomb had taken place.” Although “[l]ittle data has been collected so far from this test” and “experts are sceptical about this claim” [sic], the world is nonetheless on high alert as result of this.
At the same time however, chemical, biological, or nuclear warfare and terrorism to such an enormous extent that it would end the human race is not likely.
Asteroid Impact
Scientists agree that the treat of an asteroid striking Earth some time in the near future is nothing to joke around about. The last time this happened to such a large extent was 65 million years ago when a “5-mile-wide asteroid, now known as the K-T Impactor, blasted a crater about a hundred miles across and sent out shock waves that killed everything within a thousand miles” (Parker, 1994, p.1). Even worse, this asteroid, which was responsible for the great extinction of the dinosaurs, “produced an enormous ball of red hot, glowing rock that flew back into the atmosphere…[which] disintegrated, raining down sparks and molten materials that ignited forest fires on the planet’s surface. The resulting soot blanketed the Earth and blocked sunlight, killing plants all over the world” (Parker).
According to Parker, “the technology already exists to protect the Earth from errant asteroids and comets, but the decision still must be made whether the risks justify the cost [of] about $50 million to $100 million per year.” The United Nations (UN) has also recognized this threat when in 2007 it called upon the works of a UN-based treaty with a goal “to reach international agreement on how humanity would respond should an asteroid or comet threaten life on the planet” (Ahlstrom, 2007, p.1).
Although UN leaders do agree that an asteroid will almost inevitably wipe out the human race if it were to hit the Earth, the tens of millions of dollars needed each year to be spent in order to protect the planet don’t seem to justify the risk, especially when scientists continue to rule out the possibility of asteroids hitting the Earth within the next 40 years. In 2002, the Ottawa Citizen reported that professional and amateur scientists alike have ruled out the threat of an asteroid striking Earth in 2017, and it seems very likely that they will rule out the potential for an asteroid to strike Earth in 2060 as well.
Executive Summary
The threats we have to human survival break down into four categories: global warming and climate change, disease, terrorism by means of biological, chemical, or nuclear agents, and asteroid attack. The events discussed here only pertain to events that have probability of eliminating a large proportion of the population.
Although there is currently no way to quantify the risk of each of these events, and experts in these fields all believe their own field to be the most life-threatening, each category has its own characteristics. Global warming is a gradual effect that will change Earth over time. Global warming knows no national boundaries, and will affect human beings alike. However, since global warming is also more gradual, it is not as immediate as the threat of an asteroid attack. But an asteroid attack has already been deemed very unlikely by most scientists, at least within the next 50 years, though an asteroid attack will almost undoubtedly end life on earth as we know it. Disease is another source for concern, but even pandemics don’t have the same killing power as an asteroid. And finally, terrorism through chemical, biological, and nuclear is a very real threat that will be costly to human life, but the threat of these attacks has been diminishing with the turn of the century.
Ultimately, humans face threats from aspects of all walks of life, and although it is nearly impossible to measure these threats against each other, it seems more efficient to deal with the more immediate threats, such as that of climate change and global warming, first.
Works Cited
Ahlstrom, D. (2007, Feb 19). Efforts begin to agree UN treaty on asteroid threat.Irish TimesRetrieved from
Beeching, N. J., Dance, D. A. B., Miller, A. R. O., & Spencer, R. C. (2002). Biological warfare and bioterrorism.British Medical Journal,324(7333), 336-9. Retrieved from
Davenport, C., & Yournish, K. (2016, February 10). Did the Supreme Court Just Kill the Paris Climate Deal? Maybe. We Explain. InThe New York Times. Retrieved from
Davenport, C., Gillis, J., Chan, S., & Eddy, M. (2015, December 12). Inside the Paris Climate Deal. InThe New York Times. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
Diamond, J. (1999, Mar 07). Panel assesses threat of biological warfare danger exists but ease of making weapons may be exaggerated, experts say.Milwaukee Journal SentinelRetrieved from
Infectious diseases; new report: Future pandemics pose massive risks to human lives, global economic security. (2016).NewsRx Health & Science,, 667. Retrieved from
Klein, N. (2014). This changes everything: Capitalism vs. the climate. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Krucik, G. T. (2013, January 20). 10 Worst Disease Outbreaks in History. InHeathline. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
North Korea's nuclear tests. (2016, January 6). InBBC News. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
Parker, K. (1994, Mar 06). PHYSICIST: THREAT OF ASTEROID IS REAL.The Santa Fe New MexicanRetrieved from
Relax, asteroid won't be threat until 2060: 2017 impact ruled out by professional, amateur astronomers. (2002, Jul 30).The Ottawa CitizenRetrieved from
Riebeek, H. (2010, July 6). Why is global warming a problem?. InNASA Earth Observatory. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
Schwartz, L. (2014, July 28). 10 Biggest Threats to Human Existence. InEcoWatch. Retrieved February 22, 2016, from
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