Reply #17: About that time line... [View All]

[Boomer]

>> IT is believed to have happened 100,000 years ago

Genetic studies have shown that homo sapiens experienced a serious population bottleneck around that time, a reduction to a small number of individuals, eventually followed by an expansion.

Which strongly suggests that such an event will have catastrophic consequences for our current population.

I suspect that the industrialized nations will actually have a harder time surviving such an event because citizens have become so dependent on a complex infrastructure to produce and distribute the basic necessities of life. Unlike 100,000 years ago, the average person living in an urban area has no clue how to grow food, store and preserve it, make tools, or just generaly survive by scrabbling on the land. If the society collapses into anarchy due to the sudden, wholesale destruction of our coastal cities, people simply won't be able to cope.