How long is our civilization going to last?

Against:

- Mass destruction weapons
- Total idiots ruling the world
- A few elite's gettin' all the money and resources while poor  people keep increasing in number
- Rise of new international power
- Idiocy increasing among common people
- Increasing number of extremely lethal viruses
- The maya prophecy
- Asteroids?

Pro:
- Hope
- Luck

Are we going to survive another generation?

I'll be happy if I just survive my own generation.

Your comparision is not really apples to oranges, either.
It make more sense to put things like
- Increasing number of extremely lethal viruses ^{[citation needed]}
against
- Increasing scientific and technological knowledge

and
- Hope
against
- Despair

Oh, and Cheer up, Emo kid!

and 4chan in the future?

As a misanthrope, I really hope this isn't a lot of smoke everyone's blowing, and we really are headed for the gutter. But people are like cockroaches. I imagine they'll survive for quite a while.

The misanthrope is probably right.

I'm not sure the rulers are really idiots (Bush is probably exception rather than rule); most are probably smarter than they seem.  It's more a question of which of them are malicious.

The world has evolved to a balance of power between a few superpowers. As long as they maintain the balance, all should be well.  A world war among them would be catastrophic (eg WMDs mentioned in >>1).

If RedCream's vague intimations of a Zionist conspiracy in another thread are right, the world's probably even more screwed than we could have imagined.

Viruses have been around for ages.  I wouldn't be too surprised if a particularly lethal one pops up eventually.  HIV is already pandemic, and has 100% fatality in those not naturally immune to it.

We can take plenty of asteroids.  The results will be catastrophic, but we can take plenty of them on.  If they are much smaller than the moon, the earth will remain relatively intact.

>>1
Oh great, another "THE SKY IS FALLING" naive dumbshit who enjoys sucking liberal demagogue cock.

Spoiler: Everything in the "against" column has existed for 1000s of years except for weapons of mass destruction and the maya prophecy which could have easily been replaced by "the black death" or "tuberculosis" or any other number of prophecies.

Why the fuck do liberals whip up this crazy shit? Don't they realise they are acting like those "REVELATION IS COMING" christians they enjoy being bigotted towards so much. Why don't they realise they are annoying cunts and kill themselves!

I hope that there will be a gruop of Messiahs who ends the species of human-kind!

An event that ends all life of every single human on earth.

This would be equal and there wouldn't be any kind of moral-issues etc.

I hope i am one of those Messiahs!

>>6
Kill yourself.

It's really very simple.

Against:
Fear.
Bad luck.
Matrix.

Pro:
AI research

I'm sure humanity will die out. Srsly, we suck. Then, we build supersmart robots, say that these are part of our civilization, and our civilization lives forever.

I'm looking forward to 2012.  The Earth's magnetic poles reverse, causing a change in human consciousness and a new enlightenment while half the earth is destroyed by floods, volcanos and earthquakes.  It beats our current situation of bickering over petty countries.

Your fortune: Better not tell you now

>>10
I'm looking forward to 2012, so I can laugh at people like you.

as long as history lasts

Psyco Rabbits are going to kill us all! I know it for sure.. so we are fucked.. bye

People love war. One day some psycho politician will sell their people a big war, at the same time some other psycho politician is  also selling a big war. With people like Bush and Putin running the earth, ouch!

>>15
BUSH?
AFGHANISTAN check
IRAK check
IRAN on the way
NORT KOREA ????
CHINA ???
CUBA ???
0VENEZUELA ???

>>15

Operation is in prearrangement-status

>>Mass destruction weapons
Meh, everyone has a gun to everyone else's head.  I don't think that anyone will shoot.

>>Total idiots ruling the world
-For the most part, rulers aren't idiots. 

>>A few elite's gettin' all the money and resources while poor  people keep increasing in number.
-Did your teacher completely skip the chapters on Rome, the middle ages, and the industrial revolution in your history book?  These last few decades have probably seen the most balanced distribution of wealth in human history.

>>Rise of new international power
-Good, competition brings the best out of people.

>>Idiocy increasing among common people
-Are you kidding me?  Seriously, get your news from somewhere besides the Daily Show for God's sake.  Learn some history too, people have always been dumb, but for the most part they're getting smarter (America has just been in a slump for the last 10 years or so, no biggie).

>>Increasing number of extremely lethal viruses
-It's not increasing, cities are just become more and more dense, so they spread easier.  A large population drop could happen, but nothing that would ruin civilization. 

>>The maya prophecy
-lol, idiots.

>>Asteroids?
-Very unlikely, and we're at the point technologically that we could survive it (though it would set us back a few centuries, no doubt)

There are more than 6 billion humans living.  Just let that soak in for a minute.  That's an enormous number, if you think anything short of the sun blowing up is going to wipe us out then you've been misinformed.

What you need to do, is age past the age of 15.  That way, you'll have seen other U.S. presidents besides the failure that is Bush.  If one idiot being at the helm for only 8 years is enough to fuck up the world, then it wasn't to stable to begin with.  So cheer up emokid!

>>18

You forget one point, this is ME!

I could create a device that can destroy the whole planet or at least would make it 100% non-liveable for anykind of species!

>>19
Right, let me know when you accomplish that.

>>20
i will put a nuclear bomb in the center of the antartica