re: #61 sagehen

Even the worst-worst-worst case scenarios don’t posit an end to all human life on Earth. If 95% of us die that would certainly be the end of civilization as we know it, but even then it wouldn’t take more than 8 or 10 generations to rebuild to something not entirely unpleasant.

There is genetic evidence to indicate that a volcanic catastophe reduced the Earth’s human population to around 30,000 individuals: basically everyone on Earth is descended from one of the 5,000 breeding-age females who survived.