“Commander, even if we don’t make any adjustments, nature will control population through famine, disease, war and terrorist uprisings, major volcanic eruptions, tsunamis, and so forth.”
“But it would take a heck of a natural disaster to significantly reduce the human race. The famous eruption of Vesuvius in 79 AD only buried a few thousand people under the lava at Herculeneum and the ash at Pompeii. Krakatau’s eruption in Indonesia in 1883, an eruption that had worldwide effects in terms of released ash and ocean disruptions, only killed about 30 or 40 thousand people. The Southeast Asian tsunami of December 2004 killed about 240,000 people, the earthquake in Haiti in 2010 killed 200,000, but the one a month later in Chile only killed a couple hundred even though the quake was 500 times stronger than the one in Haiti.
The people in Chile were financially better off and better prepared for the natural disaster so it did not take as much of a human toll. Then there was the Myanmar cyclone of 2008 that killed over 120,000.. But the world adds 200,000 people per day, with about 350,000 births and 150,000 deaths. The earthquake in Pakistan in 2005 killed 80,000 people. But it only took eight hours to restock the earth’s population. The earthquake in China in 2008 killed about the same number of people that are born in China in a day. So the most devastating natural disasters in memory just slowed the population explosion by less than a day and a half. It’s hard to count on natural disasters to slow our destruction of ourselves.
“Of the ten worst storms in history, six have hit Bangladesh killing over a million people, still Bangladesh is the most densely populated large country in the world with over 1000 people per square kilometer.
“Maybe a real disaster could help slow the rape of the planet. The last eruption of the currently active volcano at Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming might make a dent. Its last eruption, two million years ago, released enough ash to cover the state of California under 6 meters of ash. We are entering a geologic era where Yellowstone should erupt again. Then there is that big quake that is overdue in California. Or maybe God will send us another great flood and let us start over with a dozen or so people!”
“Commander, I’ve heard that the Earth’s magnetic field seems to again be shifting. This can have the effect of allowing harmful cosmic rays into our atmosphere. These rays can destroy our DNA and kill us all.”
“Chet we’ll never last that long. It would take many thousands of years for that to happen. We also can’t count on volcanic eruptions, earthquakes and tsunamis to do what we should do if we are really homo sapiens—thinking people.”