Population Control

[Mytical]

As a product of a family (at least on one side) that has some premium examples of people that should have won Darwin Awards but somehow survived..just because ancestors are rather..dim .. doesn't always mean the offspring are.

As to how to fix the population problem without trampling people's rights..I have no clue.

[Greenday]

War. Massive, massive war. Countries hogging overtaxed resources? Kill the bastards and take it. Off people in record numbers in the name of nationalism and the strain on resources will go down.

This is all assuming that nature doesn't solve the problem first.

[Andara Bledin]

If mother nature doesn't take care of things, human nature will?

^-.-^

[blas87]

The zombie apocalypse. Just like in the movies or like the tin foil hat folk think. The politicians and the rich will hide underground or somewhere safe while all the rest of us get infected and die or try to fight to stay alive until the "dead" are dead for good.

[Gravekeeper]

War. Massive, massive war. Countries hogging overtaxed resources? Kill the bastards and take it. Off people in record numbers in the name of nationalism and the strain on resources will go down.

This is essentially what it would come down. If nature or pestilence doesn't do it first, once basic resources start getting rationed the tribes will get restless and start looking at what everyone else has that they don't.

[Rapscallion]

I suspect the Middle East will be one of the main flashpoints. As soon as the oil starts to run dry, the states there will turn on each other - mostly with religious justification - in order to control the remaining reserves.

Rapscallion

[Mytical]

Meh if it is a zombie apocalypse people are pretty much SoL anyhow. In all these survival guides, etc a few major things are overlooked. Like the fact that rotting corpses being around will cause even more disease, and kill even those who are good survivalist. Lets not even get into insects, etc that could transmute the disease, if it is airborn or not...pretty much mankind would be a goner regardless.

It is going to be sooner then anybody thinks that the flashpoint will be reached. The financial crisis/fiasco..tensions pretty much rising all over the world. Self entitlement getting more and more prevalent...one major spark..and those that survive will be picking up pieces for a long time.

[Gravekeeper]

Meh if it is a zombie apocalypse people are pretty much SoL anyhow. In all these survival guides, etc a few major things are overlooked. Like the fact that rotting corpses being around will cause even more disease, and kill even those who are good survivalist. Lets not even get into insects, etc that could transmute the disease, if it is airborn or not...pretty much mankind would be a goner regardless.

That wouldn't be much of a problem actually, as long as you weren't in a major population centre. Which you would likely flee from the moment the horde begin to amass around you. A good survivalist would be way up in the hills, waiting the whole thing out anyway, and he wouldn't really have to wait that long. Zombie apocolypses have an extremely short shelf life from a scientific perspective. Seeing as that they are essentially slow moving meat pinatas with no survival instincts to speak of. It would be a buffet for the local wildlife.

The immediate danger would pass in about a week and the ecosystem would clean the mess up in a matter of months. >.>

Hell, if anything it seems like the best option.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Nuclear disaster. The good thing about that, only humans will be killed off; the rest of the ecosystem will soon recover and go its own sweet way.

[FArchivist]

Which, frankly, neither our infrastructure or resources can handle.

1) More and improved technology to provide better infrastructures and better and more efficient resource extraction.
2) Expansion into space and extracting the resources located there. Look, a whole moon and asteroid belt filled with transuranics and other resources to plunder! Not to mention all those planets...

Problem solved.

[Greenday]

1) More and improved technology to provide better infrastructures and better and more efficient resource extraction.
2) Expansion into space and extracting the resources located there. Look, a whole moon and asteroid belt filled with transuranics and other resources to plunder! Not to mention all those planets...

Problem solved.

The resources problem will occur long before we have the technology to mine stuff from space in a quick and efficient manner.

[Boozy]

Refer to point #1. Technological advances buy a lot of time, if not solve the problem altogether.

In the 1960's, India was heading towards famine, with uncontrolled population growth and low agricultural production. Then a few scientists invented a new hybrid of wheat and - poof! India's grain imports fall to zero. The idea that India could feed itself would have been laughable only several years earlier.

Every time we think the sky is falling, human ingenuity comes through.

[Gravekeeper]

Every time we think the sky is falling, human ingenuity comes through.

The problem with this is human greed > human ingenuity in modern society. It doesn't matter if the sky is falling, those actually in charge will plug their ears and go "La la can't hear you" rather than risk not making as much money right up until the point the disaster kicks in their door and relieves itself on their couch.

It takes so long to convince anyone with the power that a problem is on the horizon that the problem will hit us long before we've devoted sufficent resources to R&D'n a solution. We should be full tilt balls to the wall on alternative energy right now, for example. But we won't be until those in power wrangle every last precious dollar for themselves out of fossil fuel.

[KabeRinnaul]

The upward trend in population is somewhat misleading. The actual rate of growth is decreasing, and is actually currently at it's lowest point in any records I've found (only going back so far as worldwide records were kept), and is about half the rate that was seen at the peak in the 1960s.

As countries develop and modernize, the rate of growth tends to slow. As such, the greatest growth rates are seen in developing countries. If those countries can modernize, we'll see their growth rate drop as well. Combined with improved technology and resource use (as FArchivist said), we're actually probably pretty far from a crisis.

And what will do the most to spur the development of new technology such as renewable resources is probably the opportunity for greater profits there. Once efficiencies are worked out, prices come down, and demand goes up, we'll see the changes happen pretty quickly. In some cases, it might just need the right entrepreneur to kick things off.