The human race must begin to leave the Earth in 30 years so as not to die from overpopulation and climate change. Professor Stephen Hawking issued this warning.

Giving an impassioned speech at the Starmus science festival in Trondheim, Norway, the astrophysicist said it was vital to create colonies on Mars and the Moon, and assemble a Noah's Ark of plants, animals, fungi and insects to begin creating a new world.

Professor Hawking said that the Earth as we know it will die from an asteroid strike, high temperatures or overpopulation, and that it is only a matter of time.

According to him, there should be no “inaction in space”, since the threats are too serious and numerous.

“I am convinced that humanity must leave Earth. The earth is becoming too small for us, and our physical resources are being depleted at an alarming rate.”

“We have given our planet a terrible gift in the form of climate change, rising temperatures, shrinking polar ice caps, deforestation and the destruction of many species.”

“When similar crises arose in our history, we usually had somewhere to move, something to colonize. Columbus did this in 1492 when he discovered the New World. But now there is no New World. There is no Utopia just around the corner. We no longer have enough space, and we can only move to other worlds.”

Professor Hawking told his audience that eventually the Earth will collide with an asteroid and it will be a disaster.

“This is not science fiction, the laws of physics and probability guarantee us this,” he said. “To stay means to die.”

Context

Hawking is wrong

The Guardian 09/30/2016

Hawking: Humanity will live no more than 1000 years

El Mundo 07/03/2016

The end of the world is delayed

Die Welt 05/13/2017
“Space settlement will completely change the future of humanity. It will determine whether we have any future at all.”

“Wherever we go, we will have to create a civilization, we will have to use practical means to create a completely new ecosystem that will survive in an environment unfamiliar to us. We will have to think about how to transport several thousand people, animals, plants, fungi and insects to other planets.”

According to the professor, the Moon and Mars are the best places to create the first colonies. He believes that a lunar base can be built in 30 years, and an outpost on Mars in 50. But Hawking also proposes to get out of the solar system and go to the nearest star system Alpha Centauri, where, according to scientists, there is a habitable planet Proxima B .

Hawking said fusion-powered spacecraft, powered by Star Trek-style particle-antiparticle reactors or some "entirely new form of energy" would allow humans to travel light years.

According to the professor, Russian billionaire Yuri Milner has already taken a small first step forward with his Breakthrough Start Shot project.

It involves sending a fleet of “nanocraft” with light sails on a four-year journey to Alpha Centauri, which is the closest star system to Earth.

Miniature probes with cameras will be accelerated by ultra-powerful laser radiation directed at the sail at tens of gigawatts and will arrive at their destination in about 20 years.

“If we succeed, we will send a probe to Alpha Centauri, and some of you will still be alive to witness this event,” the scientist said.

“It is clear that we are entering a new space era. We stand on the threshold of a new era. Human colonization of other planets is no longer science fiction, it can become a scientific fact.”

“The human race has existed as a separate species for approximately two million years. Civilization arose about 10 thousand years ago, and the pace of development is steadily increasing. If humanity wants to live another million years, it needs to boldly go where no one has gone before. I hope for the best. We have to hope. There are simply no other options."

Ahead of Asteroid Day next Friday, Queen's University Astrophysics Research Center professor Alan Fitzsimmons has also warned that a major city could easily be destroyed if an asteroid hits Earth.

Asteroid Day commemorates the fall of the Tunguska meteorite in Siberia in 1908, which devastated two thousand square kilometers of taiga.

Professor Fitzsimmons said: “It is important to know that scientists and engineers have made great strides in detecting near-Earth asteroids and understanding the threat they pose. To date, more than 1,800 potentially dangerous objects have been discovered, but much more remains to be found.”

“Astronomers find near-Earth asteroids every day, and most of them are harmless. But it’s possible that the next Tunguska meteorite will take us by surprise, and although we have become good at finding large asteroids, this will not help us if we don’t know what to do with them.”

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial staff.

My stories and miniatures more than once mention hunger, lack of food and basic living conditions, starting with electricity, without which modern people can no longer imagine themselves, normal clothing, heat in the house and running water. All this is now an integral part of human existence.

But just recently, famine could cover vast areas of the globe, epidemics raged, which there was not enough strength to cope with and which claimed thousands of lives.

At present, there is no reason that the achieved standard of living can end! Man created for himself machines capable of producing a lot of food and other things and goods necessary for existence. There are, however, some fears that the earth’s energy resources for machines and mechanisms may run out, but given that solar energy reaches planet Earth tens of thousands of times more than a person can consume, these fears turn out to be groundless.

Humanity is doomed to live the rest of its life on earth in satiety. Now it is simply impossible to remain in hunger and cold even in the smallest place on earth. Modern means of communication make it possible to convey the news of a disaster from anywhere. Well, the food security of the planet with the modern development of the agro-industrial complex is beyond doubt. Therefore, cars will immediately rush to people in trouble, planes and helicopters will fly loaded with food and essentials.

And in this regard, I would like to remember our post-war childhood, when “we weeded vegetable gardens, sunbathed by the river, and collected spikelets on a large collective farm field.” They did not always eat enough to eat, they were dressed very modestly, the memory of the famine and cold war and the difficult post-war period stood in their minds.

Although they lived from hand to mouth, they lived amicably, cheerfully, and cheerfully. And it becomes a little sad that such a life will not happen again. Even among our children and grandchildren, and throughout all subsequent humanity. It’s not the hunger that I’m sorry for, no, God forbid. And those friendly relationships, when even though there were baked potatoes over a fire, they were shared equally, when we were all the same and loved each other.

The twenty-first century, with its abundance of equipment and technologies that make it possible to produce the final product with minimal expenditure of human energy, makes it possible for the entire population of the globe to live warm and well-fed.

Reviews

We lived really amicably, cheerfully, cheerfully, although we did not have the wealth that we have now.
We didn’t have the technologies and equipment that we have now.
As sad as it may be, it is an indisputable fact that it was technical progress, with all its positive qualities, that took away from people the opportunity for live communication, which implies friendship, cheerfulness and perkiness.

I once observed the following picture: I walked past an educational institution and noticed that students were standing, sitting, literally all buried in their phones or smartphones. The feeling was unpleasant, as if it were not people sitting there, but robots. There was a silence unusual for young people.
But, before, during breaks, young people talked, joked, fooled around, shouted, squeaked, and communicated live.

And in families it’s the same picture. Having had dinner quickly, everyone is in a hurry to be alone with their computer, laptop, smartphone or TV.
There is a deep MUTEness in the house. Family communication stopped.
Yes, living warm and full is great, it’s pleasant, but we, after all, are people, not robots, do we really no longer need spiritual food?
This is sad, this is sad, this will not lead to good.

And I am always haunted by the question: what will happen to us if, suddenly... there is no electricity?
Who will we be? How will we live?
And, most importantly, what will be in our heads?
We have become so dependent on this energy that we can immediately become simply NOBODY.

The daily audience of the Proza.ru portal is about 100 thousand visitors, who in total view more than half a million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.

Goatman or sub-goatman. Of the 24 billion people who lived on earth, 14 billion were killed. People will destroy themselves - it's only a matter of time. Throughout our history, we have done only one thing well and constantly improved it - killing our own kind. So, humanity is doomed. We read:

The story of a veteran of the Great Patriotic War:
"I went through the entire war. Graduated in Berlin. Already at the beginning of May, the three of us were walking through a calm city, and we saw Fraulein walking. Young, such a pure German. They grabbed her and dragged her into the house, to the fifth floor. Three of us raped. And then a telephone cord around her neck and out her window. So, at the level of the second floor, the German woman’s head will come off! So we laughed..."

In no way should this revelation undermine the victory over Hitler by Soviet troops. We will focus on the bright memories of the youth of a soldier of the victorious army. Nobody brags about killed and raped civilians in official documents. Even if this violence was a response to the horror that the Germans did in the USSR.

Nazis or communists?! And if there is no difference, then what difference does it make?

After all, this is said by just a man who simply tortured a victim who would not answer him in any way. Neither a soldier nor his relative - just an aunt in a captured country. This was not an act of dominance, about which you regularly receive photo reports in the section. This murder was natural human behavior in conditions of war and impunity. After all, a soldier under death, that is, on guard, is constantly ready to kill the enemy, punish, damn it, win... In short, the person is stressed. He is already half-human, he is guided by animal instincts, where everything is clear - either you or you. And the transition from the human-animal state is a matter of seconds.

1. Ancient Rome. Humanity became civilized thousands of years ago. However, is it really civilized? Let us remember the empire that gave rise to science, art, law, and the birthplace of spaghetti - ancient Rome. Having conquered half of the then known world, the Romans, not limited by morality and external threats, began to degrade from impunity - they feared the gods, but paid off with sacrifices, and Christians became their favorite victims in 68 AD. This is under Nero.

Ancient Rome - executions, orgies non-stop!

They sacrificed in a rich way:
For the first execution, a new circus was built (the Coliseum in our opinion, only made of wood). The handrails were lined with bronze, amber, ivory, mother-of-pearl and overseas tortoise shells. The closer to the arena, the more decent the audience and the more expensive the decoration. And along the rows they laid grooves with cold water coming from the mountains - cooling. There are incense burners between the rows, and on the ceiling there are special devices for sprinkling spectators with saffron and other aromatics.

From under the stage, chants could be heard—the condemned Christians were singing hymns. The spectators, who judged the number of victims by the number of votes, were worried that if one hundred or two hundred people were sent into the arena at once, the animals would get tired and, having had enough, would not have time to tear everyone apart until the evening. Or this: when too many people perform, attention is scattered and it is impossible to properly enjoy the spectacle.

They served soft drinks, fried meats, sweets, wine, olives and fruit. Bread and circuses. And when hunger and thirst were quenched, hundreds of slaves carried out baskets with gifts, from which boys dressed as cupids threw them into the rows. Finally, Christian men and women came out, covered in animal skins, with children in their arms. A pack of wild dogs was released after them.

In ancient Rome they killed people and made fucking statues.

Blood flowed in streams. The dogs snatched bloody pieces of human flesh from one another. The smell of blood and feces from torn entrails drowned out the incense and spread throughout the circus. New crowds of victims arrived, whom the gorged dogs did not touch.

The people, excited by the spectacle, chant: “Lvov!” Lviv! Release the lions!
Lions run out. The dogs, frightened by the big cats, whine against the walls of the arena. The lions slowly walk around the arena, inhaling the smell of fresh blood. Soon, one of the predators jumps on the crying child, killing him with a blow of his paw and tearing off his father's head in an instant. The spectators rise from their seats and applaud - the spectacle captured both the plebeians and the nobility.

Do a good deed - give a lion to an idiot. That'll be one less idiot.

And in the arena, people’s heads were completely hidden in huge jaws, chests were broken with one blow of claws, torn out hearts and lungs flashed, the crunch of bones in the teeth of predators was heard. Some lions, grabbing their prey by the side or lower back, rushed wildly around the arena, as if looking for a secluded place to devour their prey.

Many spectators went down the aisles to get a better view, and in the crowd someone was crushed to death. It seemed that the crowd, captivated by the spectacle, would eventually pour into the arena and, together with the lions, would begin to torment people. At times, an inhuman squeal and applause thundered, there was a growl, a howl, the knocking of claws, the whining of dogs, and at times - only the groans of the victims.

The well-fed lions were replaced by tigers, panthers, bears, wolves, and jackals. The entire arena was covered with an undulating carpet of animal skins - striped, yellow, gray, brown, spotted. The spectacle turned into a bloody orgy.

Ancient Roman orgies. It doesn’t matter who, it doesn’t matter who - it matters how!

To entertain the jaded spectators, the Christians were executed by burning the next day. Not at the stake - they were tied to tarred poles in the park and, after setting fire, they were used as lighting...

Humanity has always loved public executions. The infernal thirst for blood that sits in a person’s genes, like an echo of the time when he got food with his hands, killing animals and his own kind, devouring still warm flesh without frying it. Then he had not yet tamed fire. How strong is this bloodthirsty gene, since centuries of civilization and submission to religious principles have only sublimated the thirst for blood within the framework of “seizing new lands.” Or the Crusades. Or fighting those who are not like us (the main reason for war).

Everyone knows how debauchery ended for Rome.

2. Britain. Another worldwide cradle of science and progress is the British Empire. History was made in the Beatles’ homeland and this is what it is:
1) Fought poverty “Enclosure”. The Anti-Poverty and Vagrancy Acts of 1576 provided for the establishment of workhouses for paupers in the "enclosure" areas of the poorer regions of England. In workhouses where they worked seven days a week for a bowl of gruel. Those who fled from their homes were executed. Soon, the ruined peasantry was exterminated, and the lands of the peasants went to the king.

2) The Irish question. There are many times more Irish than English. And this upset the latter. In 1649, Cromwell came to deal with the overpopulation of Ireland. The cities he captured were completely slaughtered, churches were burned. And if in 1641 there were 1,500,000 people in Ireland, then in 1651 there were already 600,000 people in Ireland, and 150,000 English colonists. A reservation was set aside for the Irish on a barren part of the island of Connacht. All Irish caught outside Connacht were executed.

Moreover, the soldiers were paid 6 pounds for a killed wolf and 5 for an Irishman. How they determined his nationality from the corpse is a mystery. Until the end of the next century, the Irish were limited in their rights to education and participation in elections. The Irish owned only 5% of Irish land. And life on barren lands led to famine, from which the Irish fled to America. While there were eight million Irish in Ireland in 1841, in 1901 there were only four million.

3) Relocation to the colonies. In addition to the Irish who fled to America and India, the British populated the colonies with white slaves. Prisoners of war, convicts. In total, thirteen million people were brought to America along with blacks. At the same time, the norm for transporting slaves was three dead for one living.

The British are one of the bloodiest nations. And even “Prodigy” won’t help us forgive them!

4) English drug mafia. In the 19th century, England began supplying opium to China. In return, the British received gold and silk. The introduction of a cheap drug brought about the disintegration of the Chinese army and rulers. Finally, the Chinese Emperor began an anti-opium campaign in the country in 1839. However, England declared war on China, which it quickly won. And ships with opium went to China, returning to England with gold, silk and porcelain. Victorian England - Dickens's tales and prim tea-drinking traditions, the country's somewhat duplicitous policy abroad.

5) Concentration camps. After all, Stalin did not invent them.

Ira is such an army. The freedom-loving Irish did not immediately become like this.

The first concentration camps were created by the Anglo-Saxons in South Africa for the Boers and their families. The Boers are the descendants of European colonists who lived in the English colonies. The British decided to round up the Boers and their families on reservations - this way it’s easier to control and there’s no need to feed them. This is exactly how the British broke the resistance of the active part of the Boers, starving 15% of the population of the colonies and 70% of children.

No one counted how many Aborigines were killed due to the arrival of English civilization in India, Australia or Tasmania. And we are simply silent about the fact that there is already a bill in the US Senate “to recognize the extermination of Indians as genocide.” After all, all the conquerors of the seas distinguished themselves in the future states - the Dutch, the French, the Spaniards and even the Russians.

Then they came up with the European Union and they don’t accept “savages” there. Well, not goats? Although they will soon have more people of color there than before, maybe then they will invite us to the eurozone. But then maybe we won’t want to. So, history constantly drenches us in a bloody puddle. Humans are bloodthirsty assholes who are excellent at self-destruction.

The man killed, he still kills, only changing slogans: before - for peace, now - for democracy.
Experiments on people by the first doctors - this is how the dear Chinese doctors learned the secrets of acupuncture, and the ancient Greeks compiled an anatomical atlas of man. The Inquisition and the extermination of all strange people before and after it. Murder for a bottle of vodka and just out of boredom. Rape and incitement to suicide. Self-assertion by suppression by force or willpower of one's neighbor. Impunity of the majors and indifference to other people's problems. People, why are we such assholes?

And how many millions were destroyed in the colonies of Britain - the genocide of the indigenous population of the colonies in North America, Australia, Tasmania (the Tasmanians were all destroyed), more than tens of millions were destroyed in India (mainly through famine), hundreds of thousands, millions were destroyed in wars unleashed by London across the globe. It is clear why Hitler and his comrades were Anglophiles - they looked up to the “white brothers” from London, who long before them covered the planet with a network of concentration camps and prisons, suppressing any signs of resistance with the most brutal terror, creating their own “World Order”.

Could rapid advances in technology, genetics and artificial intelligence lead us to the point where the economic inequality that is so widespread in this world becomes entrenched at a biological level? This is the question asked by historian and writer Yuval Noah Harari.

Social inequality has its roots in the ancient history of mankind - it existed at least 30 thousand years ago. The earliest tribes of hunters and gatherers were a much more homogeneous community than all subsequent ones. They had almost no private property, which is the main precondition for inequality in the long term. However, even then there was already a social hierarchy.

But in the 19th and 20th centuries, something changed. Equality has become the main value of human culture, almost throughout the world. Why? This is partly due to the development of new schools of thought such as humanism, liberalism and socialism. However, this was also due to technological and economic changes - of course, also associated with these new ideologies.

The ruling elites suddenly needed many healthy, educated people who could serve in the army and work in factories. The state did not come up with free education and healthcare out of the kindness of its heart. The masses were supposed to benefit. But now everything is changing again.

Today, the best armies in the world need only a small number of highly professional soldiers who know how to use high-tech equipment. And factories are increasingly automating production. This is one reason why - in the not too distant future - we may see the emergence of some of the greatest inequality ever seen in human history.

There are other reasons too. With the rapid development of biotechnology and bioengineering, we may reach a point where - for the first time in history - economic inequality becomes biological. Until now, humanity has been able to influence the world around it. People could control rivers, forests, animals and plants. However, the world within themselves remained beyond their control. They could not seriously change or design their own body, brain and mind. Man could not cheat death. But this state of affairs may not continue forever.

There are two main ways to biologically improve a person. The first is to change something in their biological structure by making adjustments to their DNA. The second, more radical, is to connect organic and inorganic parts - perhaps by connecting the brain directly to a computer. Thus, the rich - by being able to afford such optimization - can literally become better than the rest: gain more developed minds, better health and longer life expectancy.

Under such conditions, it would be logical to transfer power to such an “improved” class. Think about it this way: in the past, the nobility always tried to convince the masses that they were superior to all other classes and therefore they should be the ones in power. In the future I am describing, she will indeed have this superiority. And since she will be better than us, it would be quite reasonable to let her rule and make decisions.

In addition, the development of artificial intelligence - and not only in terms of industrial automation - will probably mean that a huge number of people in different professions will simply become economically useless.

Both of these processes - the biological improvement of humans and the development of artificial intelligence - can lead to the division of humanity into a very small class of supermen and a huge lower strata of "useless people".

Here's a concrete example. Think about the transport market: there are thousands of truck, taxi and bus drivers in Britain. Each of them controls their own tiny share of the market, and together they gain political power. They can form a union and, if the government does something they don't like, go on strike - and completely stop the transport system.

Now let's fast forward 30 years. All vehicles move using autopilot. One corporation controls the algorithm that controls the entire transport system. All economic and political power, previously divided among thousands of people, finds itself in the hands of one corporation.

Once you lose your economic utility, the government - at least partially - loses the incentive to invest in your health, education and welfare. Staying out of work is very dangerous. Your future depends on the goodwill of some small elite.

Maybe such good will can be found. But in times of crisis - such as climate disaster - it will be very easy to throw you overboard. Technology development does not determine everything.

It's not too late to change something. But it seems to me that it is necessary to understand that the future option I described is one of the possible ones. And if we don't like this prospect, we need to do something before it's too late.

There is one more possible step on the path to previously unprecedented inequality. In the short term, power may shift to a small elite that controls the main algorithms and the data they run on.

In the long term, however, power may shift entirely from humans to algorithms. As soon as artificial intelligence becomes smarter than us, all of humanity may be out of work.

Yuval Noah Harari is a professor in the history department at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind.
bbc.com

Comments: 0

Last year, The New York Times named Michio Kaku one of the smartest people in New York. An American physicist of Japanese origin, he conducted a number of studies in the field of studying black holes and accelerating the expansion of the Universe. Known as an active popularizer of science. The scientist has several best-selling books and series of programs on BBC and Discovery. Michio Kaku is a world-renowned teacher: he is a professor of theoretical physics at City College of New York and travels a lot around the world giving lectures. Michio Kaku recently spoke in an interview about how he sees education in the future.

Kirill Eskov

Futurological essay “Our answer to Fukuyama.” Kirill Eskov's witty and fascinating point of view allows the reader to see both the past and the future in a completely unexpected light.

Victor Argonov Project

A symphony is not, in the strict sense, an audio work. This is a philosophical story about the past and future history of the relationship between man and technology: from naive admiration for “progress for the sake of progress”, through the rethinking of ideals, through attempts to escape from reality and a series of new discoveries - to the real spiritual transformation of humanity. The target audience is people who are interested in melodic and experimental electronic music, transhumanist futurology, philosophy of consciousness, ethics and religion, psychology of altered states of consciousness, as well as science fiction in general.

Stanislav Lem

“What, exactly, is this “Summa”? A collection of essays about the fate of civilization, permeated with a “general engineering” leitmotif? A cybernetic interpretation of the past and future? An image of the Cosmos as it presents it to the Designer? A story about the engineering activities of Nature and human hands? Scientific and technical forecast for the coming millennia? - A little bit of everything. How much is it possible, how much is it acceptable to trust this book? - I don’t have an answer to this question. I don't know which of my guesses and assumptions are more plausible. None of them are invulnerable, and the passage of time will erase many of them.” This is how the author himself defines the range of issues discussed in this book and his attitude towards them. In a fascinating way, S. Lem touches on both many problems of modern science and the problems that will face the science of the future.

families with few children care for any child, and today no more than 25% are relatively healthy in the First World; Each degenerating generation is worse than the previous one. But the cities of the First World, filled with “barbarians from the South,” will soon become their doom. This is how the futurist Igor Bestuzhev-Lada (1927-2015), one of the most significant sociologists of the Soviet era, saw the world by the middle of the 21st century. The Interpreter's blog cites his forecast, published in 2007 in the journal Sociological Research.

The Eurocentric world is ending

“In the first half of the twentieth century, the key global problem was victory in the impending and breaking out world war - the First or the Second, it makes no difference. In the second half of the same century, such a problem was the victory in the “Cold War” (aka the USSR-USA arms race), which in fact turned out to be, in fact, the Third World War, which included many quite “hot” small wars, with a number of casualties , comparable at least to the First World War, and with a similar end result - the capitulation and collapse of one of the empires that lay claim to world domination.

This war officially began in 1946 with Churchill's famous Fulton speech - a reaction to the Soviet advance along the entire southern front, from Greece and Iran to China, Korea and Vietnam. And it ended, as everyone believed until recently, with the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany, followed by the collapse of the USSR in 1991. However, the rapid expansion of NATO in the 1990s to the east, to the borders of Russia itself, and then events in Yugoslavia, Georgia, and Ukraine showed that the Third World War was by no means over, it continues by encircling and subsequently dismembering the defeated enemy in order to prevent him from get back on your feet and restore your military potential.

It is not difficult for a military historian - especially a political scientist - to make a forecast of the further course and subsequent outcome of the ongoing war: there are only two or three most probable options and very close to each other. But this is unnecessary work, because the situation is quickly complicated by events that are very indirectly related to the Third World War, but threaten to mix up all the cards for both opponents.

One of these events is the confrontation “Poor South - Rich North”, which is gaining ever greater scale and pace, essentially the Fourth World War, in which Russia and the United States are no longer enemies, but allies (the world map is so complex at the beginning of the 21st century). This war began in 1948 in Palestine between Arabs and Jews. It was followed by several more Arab-Israeli wars, then the war spread to Lebanon, and from there to the Balkans (Kosovo and Macedonia), and finally broke out in Afghanistan and Chechnya in the world. scale is only a secondary theater of military operations in this war, but for Russia it was paramount yesterday and today.

The reasons and logic of this war cannot be understood if you do not know that behind the Islamic Mujahideen there is an army of almost a billion unemployed in the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America (every third of the able-bodied). This has been the case for centuries, but the fathers and grandfathers of today’s unemployed put up with their situation as hopeless. Their children and grandchildren, who have received at least a primary education, unlike their ancestors, know that there is another world on this planet, where they are rushing by hook or by crook. Of course, hundreds of millions are torn only mentally. But tens of millions are making titanic efforts to achieve this. And millions manage to move to the “other world.” And thousands make up an army of militants who terrorize the West with their “international terrorism.”

On the other hand, in the West (including Russia this time) we see clear signs of degradation, the decay of a dying society alive. There is a complete historical analogy with Ancient Rome. And apparently, the same ending. Both for the vanquished and for the victors in the Third World War.

Developed humanity is doomed to extinction

A century ago, not to mention more distant times, only 1% of earthlings - residents of the center of a large city - led the urban lifestyle we are accustomed to today. All the rest - both in the countryside and in small towns, as well as on the outskirts of large ones - led the exact opposite rural lifestyle. Among other things, it assumes the massive spread of large families with a dozen or more children in most of them. True, infant mortality was very high, but ultimately, on average, every two parents in the next generation were replaced by three, or even four new ones. This would mean a doubling of the population every 20-30 years, if constant terrible adjustments had not been made by war , famine, epidemics. Yet steady population growth has continued almost everywhere for centuries.

In the twentieth century, especially in the second half of it, revolutionary changes occurred in this evolutionary process. Science - first of all, medicine with its sanitation and hygiene - has reduced child mortality several times. And where the rural way of life with its large large families has been preserved, population growth has increased in scale and pace. Over the century, the number of earthlings has quadrupled - from one and a half to six billion. In the next two to three decades, at least two more billion will be added to them. Continuing this trend into the future, we can predict tens of billions by the middle of the 21st century, and all twelve in the second half of it. This is exactly what demographers did almost until the very end of the twentieth century. But in recent years, data have appeared that completely negated such forecasts.

Let us note that eight and even more so ten to twelve billion mean an avalanche of the most complex global problems. In fact, these billions should have died out of starvation in the third quarter of the twentieth century. But the same science came to the rescue - in this case, agronomy - which in the 1960s produced a “green revolution” in world agriculture, increasing yields almost everywhere (except, of course, the USSR - but this was for political reasons ).

However, by the 21st century, the potential of the “green revolution” is almost exhausted, and it is unlikely to feed a dozen billion.

And a few years ago, demographers made a discovery - perhaps the most significant scientific discovery of the twentieth century - that during the transition from a rural to an urban lifestyle (and this applies to billions of earthlings today), a person loses the need for family and children, thereby cutting off the branch on which Humanity sat for 40,000 years. It was difficult to believe in this global suicide, and therefore years of painful doubts, checks and re-checks of what was open passed before analysis, diagnosis and prognosis confirmed: yes, by the transition to an urban lifestyle, humanity sentenced itself to a painful death penalty. So by the end of the 21st century, not only will there not be a dozen billion, but, on the contrary, as in today’s Russia, there will be an increasing degeneration and extinction of the world population, down to zero in the next century.

In order for two parents, on average, to be replaced by at least two new ones, it is necessary to work, rest, and generally live with the children (which is what happens in a real village). Only in this case will the child become the first assistant of the parent, the teenager - literally the substitute parent, and the married or married youth will form the disappearing relatives in the city - the most reliable stronghold in life, and in old age - a “living pension” (for lack of any other) .

In the city, such a life is impossible, so the child becomes a burden, the teenager becomes an incomprehensible beast, young people begin to live their own lives, alien to their parents, and there is a pension without children, which is a tragic mistake. As a result, young people in their third decade of life are in no hurry to start a family and children and are content with simple cohabitation (concubinage). And closer to thirty, in fear of loneliness, both a family and a child appear. But the family is increasingly childless, and for the most part - one child. And depopulation begins. In Russia - at a rate of up to a million people a year, increasing. If it were not for the intervention of other factors, then by the middle of the 21st century we would have dropped from 150 to 30 million, who in our vast expanses cannot resist the pressure of the growing billions from the south.

The quality of man is getting worse

To top it all off, the importance of not only the quantitative, but also the qualitative side of demographic processes is growing. With high infant mortality in large families, only the healthiest survived, passing on their genetics to the next generations. Today this is simply psychologically unacceptable for city residents. But in a one-child family, a genetically defective child can be born. Saved from death by medicine, he will grow up, become a parent and produce even more genetically defective offspring. According to recent estimates, in developed countries there are no more than 5% of people who are completely healthy and another 20% who are “virtually healthy,” that is, with some relatively minor flaws. The remaining 70-80% are “chronicles,” that is, with some kind of permanent, serious illness. What kind of offspring will such parents produce? It’s only getting worse—increasingly.

Today this is typical for the developed countries of the world, and tomorrow it will be characteristic for all the billions moving from the countryside to the city. For the city, like a “black hole,” sucks in those who fall into it without leaving a trace. Thus, first those who have already switched to an urban way of life will disappear from the face of the earth, and then, after just two or three generations - several decades - and all the others.