‘Doomsday Argument’ Resurrection: One In 500 Chance Human Race Will Be Wiped Out This Year, Mathematician Warns

The human race is very close to extinction, and the odds are not so great that humankind will survive until the end of the year, or so says a leading mathematician. In fact, according to calculations based partially on a theory known as the “Doomsday Argument,” humanity has a one in 500 chance of being wiped off the planet this year. This year. That leaves less than two months survival time for the entire human race. And the odds will not become more favorable next year, either.

The Sun reported this week that Fergus Simpson, a statistics mathematician at the University of Barcelona, has published a report that mathematically projects that an end of the world catastrophe has at least a one in 500 chance of occurring this year. Unfortunately, surviving until the next year does not increase humanity’s odds of survival.

“Our key conclusion is that the annual risk of global catastrophe currently exceeds 0.2 percent.”

Simpson noted that the unlikelihood of something occurring — the fact that there might be extreme odds against such an occurrence — is not a guarantee that it will not occur. He pointed to the long odds of winning championships that sometimes face sports teams.

“In a year when Leicester City F.C. were crowned Premier League champions,” he said, “we are reminded that events of this rarity can prove challenging to anticipate, yet they should not be ignored.”

Leicester’s unlikely winning season came in the same year that Major League Baseball’s Chicago Cubs won the 2016 World Series after 108 years, and the National Basketball Association’s Cleveland Cavaliers pulled off a comeback three-game victory march (after being down three games to one) to become the NBA Finals champions, a feat never before accomplished in the history of the NBA. In short, long odds do not make an actuality an impossibility.

Fergus Simpson’s end of the world calculations were based on the Doomsday Argument, a theory that the Daily Mail defined as “a probability-based theory that aims to predict the number of future members of the human race based solely on the number of humans born so far.”

Simpson told the Sun that roughly 100 billion people have already been born and a somewhat equivalent number will come into existence prior to our species eventual demise. He said that the human birth rate is higher than ever and humans are accelerating toward their collective end. Overpopulating the planet, he explained, was worrisome in that continuing to add to the population growth was suggestive of further limiting humanity’s time on Earth.

Still, even though Simpson’s doomsday calculations suggest those one in 500 odds reapplies on a yearly basis, the mathematician also found that research suggesting that the human race would not last beyond the 21st century as a bit pessimistic. According to the Sun, prior research gave humanity a 50 percent chance of surviving past the year 2099, but Simpson’s math accorded humanity an 87 percent chance of reaching the 22nd century. His calculations are in agreement with the “longevity of historical civilizations” and, therefore, suggest that humankind should continue to remain extant for another at least another 700 years.

The mathematician admitted he found all the doomsday equations a bit “depressing,” but his background in cosmology has him resigned to the idea that “existence is finite.” At the same time, he advised against a dismal outlook toward the future.

“We should try and make an effort to be a long-lived civilisation, just as individuals try to be a longer-lived person,” he suggested. “We should look after our civilisation in the same way people look after their health.”

As apocalyptic scenarios have become commonplace, it should be noted that Fergus Simpson’s dire calculations are not unique in warning that humankind is never far from extinction. Each year the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists release a report on the nearness humankind is to a global catastrophe and/or possible nonexistence. Called the “Doomsday Clock” and using the hands of a clock as a metaphor for the proximity of the aforementioned catastrophe (striking midnight signifying the end of the world), this year’s clock stood at three minutes to midnight, unchanged from its position from last year. As reported by CNN, the Science and Security Board stated that the report was issued with “an expression of dismay that world leaders continue to fail to focus their efforts and the world’s attention on reducing the extreme danger posed by nuclear weapons and climate change.” The Doomsday Clock has stood at three minutes to midnight since 2012, when the clock’s hand was moved up (signaling that the world was closer to catastrophe) two minutes.

[Featured Image by Igor Zh/Shutterstock]