Will humans become extinct? 6 Minute English

Hello. This is 6 Minute English from BBC Learning

English. I’m Neil.

And I’m Sam.

In this programme, we’ll be looking

at some of the many dangers facing

humanity, from climate change and global

pandemics to asteroid impacts and

nuclear war. We’ll be finding out whether

human civilisation can survive these risks

and looking at some of the related

vocabulary as well.

Do you really think humans could become

extinct and end up as dead as the dodo?

Ah, so of course you’ve heard of the dodo?

Yes, dodos were large, metre-high birds which

died out in the 1600s after being hunted

to extinction by humans.

That’s right. Dodos couldn’t fly and weren’t

very clever. They didn’t hide when sailors

with hunting dogs landed on their island.

The species was hunted so much that

within a century, every single bird had

died out.

But do you know which island the dodo

was from, Sam? That’s my quiz question

for today. Was it:

a) The Galapagos, b) Mauritius or c) Fiji?

I’ll guess the Galapagos, Neil, because

I know many exotic animals live there. By

the way, that’s also cheered me up a bit

because as humans we are much smarter

than the dodo! We’re far too clever to die

out, aren’t we?

I’m not sure I agree, Sam. Lots of the

existential risks - the worst possible

things that could happen to humanity,

such as nuclear war, global

pandemics or rogue artificial intelligence,

are human-made. These threats could

have catastrophic consequences for

human survival in the 21st century.

That’s true. But existential risks don’t

only threaten the survival of the human

species. Instead, they could destroy civilisation

as we know it, leaving pockets of

survivors to struggle on in a post-apocalyptic world.

And it wouldn’t be the first time that has

happened, as the BBC World Service

programme The Inquiry found out.

Simon Beard of the Centre for the Study

of Existential Risk at Cambridge

University explains:

The historical record suggests that about

once every thousand years an event

occurs that wipes out about a third of the

human population – so in the Middle

Ages, this was the Black Death - huge

plague that covered Eurasia, while there

was also dramatic global cooling at that

time which many people think

was related to volcanic eruptions and

about a third of the global population died.

So, humanity has been facing these risks

throughout history, according to the

historical record – the collection of all

written and recorded past events

concerning the human race.

Yes. Wars and plagues – infectious,

epidemic diseases which spread between

countries can quickly wipe out – or

completely destroy, millions of people.

And there’s not much we can do to stop

disasters like that!

True, Sam, but what about individuals

who actively work to bring about the end

of the world - like apocalyptic terrorists,

rampage shooters and fundamentalist

cults like those who organised the

poisonous gas attack on the Tokyo subway.

Those are people who want to end human

life on Earth and bring about Doomsday -

another word for the final, apocalyptic day

of the world’s existence.

Right. And things got even scarier in

modern times with the invention of

nuclear weapons. During the Cuban

Missile Crisis between America

and the USSR for example, risk experts

estimated a 41% probability that human

life would be completely wiped out!

Seth Baum of New York’s Global

Catastrophic Risk Institute explains

how human error almost brought about Doomsday:

There are some ways that you could get

to a nuclear war without really intending to,

and probably the biggest example is if you

have a false alarm that is mistaken as a

nuclear attack, and there have been a

number of, maybe even very serious false

alarms, over the years, in which one side

or the other genuinely believed

that they were under nuclear attack, when

in fact they were not at all under nuclear

attack.

One such false alarm - an incorrect

warning given so that people wrongly

believe something dangerous is about to

happen, came about in

1995, when the US sent missiles up into

the Earth’s atmosphere to study the

Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights.

Soviet radars picked up the missiles, thinking

they were nuclear warheads and almost

retaliated. Nuclear Armageddon was only

averted by the actions of one clear-thinking

Russian general who decided not to push

the red button.

Phew! A close shave then! Well, Neil, all

this doomongering has made me want to

just give it all up and live on a desert island!

Like the dodo eh, Sam? So, which island

would that be? If you remember, today’s

quiz question asked where the dodo was

from.

I said The Galapagos.

And I’m afraid to say it was b) Mauritius.

So, to recap, in this programme we’ve

been discussing Doomsday – the final

day of life on Earth and other existential

threats - dangers threatening the survival

of humans on the planet.

We looked back throughout the historical

record - all recorded human history, to see

examples of threats which have wiped

out, or killed millions of people in the past,

including wars and plagues which spread

epidemic diseases between populations.

And we’ve seen how modern dangers, like

nuclear war and climate change, further

reduce the probability of human survival.

But Sam, it’s not all doom and gloom! The

same scientific intelligence which spilt

the atom could also find solutions to our

human-made problems in the 21st century,

don’t you think?

So, the end of the world might be a false

alarm – or unfounded warning – after all!

Let’s hope we’ll all still be here next

time for another edition of 6 Minute English.

Bye for now!

Bye.