Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by ClumsyPilot 1175 days ago
Yeah, if we stanrt a nuclear holocaust, the planet will still be here, but all its inhabitants will be dead.

The best combination of being technically correct of missing the point.

1 comments

Actually, a nuclear holocaust would most likely not lead to all humans losing their lives. Many, if not most, would survive. Even some in the cities and their immediately surrounding areas would survive. Unless you tell everyone to go outside in the middle of their nearest city right before the bomb drops, you're going to be stuck with humans even after the dust settles.
the overall point was that the planet has survived things that humans cannot survive. There were 5 or 6 mass extinctions.

When peopme talk about the planet being destroyed, they usually mean for human life.

And my point was that neither climate change nor nuclear holocaust would be sufficient to cause a mass extinction on the scale of, say, that which eliminated the dinosaurs. In either case there will be plenty of humans remaining.
and they will live short and unpleasant lives, like they did during the ice age
Seems like a pretty unfounded assumption. Why do you think all of our knowledge and sources of societal stabilization are embedded in the communities most vulnerable to natural disaster?