We are the last generation of humans on Earth, Proc. Int. Oxford Apocalypse Conf., Prague (2016)

Proceedings of the Oxford University Apocalypse Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (May 8, 2016) We are the last generation of humans on Earth Bill Gaede Abstract — Mainstream proposes that catastrophic and environmental mechanisms such as extraterrestrial impacts, supernovas, volcanism, super-plumes, earthquakes, and climate change trigger mass extinctions. Here we argue that such extrinsic agents cannot in and of themselves account for these periodic disasters. The common denominator of all mass extinctions is starvation. By definition a mass extinction is the disappearance of an entire food chain. Therefore, the Third Horseman plays a central yet inconspicuous role in any mass extinction theory; no theory can do without him. We propose that a mass extinction occurs when the Ecological Pyramid overturns, reversing the quantitative relation between trophic levels. This is what Man is about to experience. The gradual, inevitable and irreversible slowing down of global economic growth conduces to a dead end for our species. The complete disintegration of our global economy results in spiralling layoffs and the end of money. Agricultural companies no longer have pecuniary incentives to produce essentials or to distribute them to the masses. Billions of unemployed find themselves stranded in cities, towns and villages with nothing to eat. Man’s Ecological Pyramid overturns on him just like it did on the dinosaurs. Technology and intelligence are powerless to resist these imminent events; neither serves as an antidote to extinction Keywords - Mass Extinction, Cretaceous, Dinosaurs, Permian, Economic Collapse, Overturning of the Ecological Pyramid, Man I. PROBLEMS WITH CONTEMPORARY THEORIES OF developed into large sizes toward the end of the period. The EXTINCTION less conspicuous plants and animals that survive tend to be evolution’s latest inventions. It is estimated that over 99% of the faunal species that ever A second false sense of security with catastrophic lived are now extinct. 1 Here we will attempt to determine theories is that the proposed agent cannot do the job by itself. what caused these extinctions with the intention of It must necessarily invoke secondary, ad hoc mechanisms in extrapolating the mechanism to our very own species. If we order to cover all the bases. Asteroids and volcanoes have conclude that despite his intelligence and technology Man is little authority to discriminate between habitats. powerless to avoid that same agent, we can be confident that The inability to discriminate leads the catastrophist to a no other species could have done so either. We thus confirm third conceptual hurdle: the disaster results in total in retrospect that we have indeed discovered the universal annihilation. Not a single species would remain alive if we weapon Mother Nature uses to eliminate species. follow specification to the letter. Take for instance the Catastrophic agents and mechanisms are ubiquitous in Cretaceous extinction. The asteroid impact vaporizes plants all contemporary mass extinction theories. Leading and animals within a certain radius of ground zero. However, proposals include asteroid impact 2 3 and volcanic eruption 4 the rumblings fail to reach the dinosaurs on the other side of for the two most popular extinctions (Cretaceous and the planet. The theorist is forced to introduce tsunamis Permian), and a supernova 'death ray' is the rising star for generated by the explosion which now flood the surface of the third (Ordovician). 5 Lesser extinctions are also the Earth. Everything on land – both green and red blooded – attributed primarily to environmental catastrophes. 6 7 drowns. And yet the process is not finished. The boulder There is, however, an uneasy feeling with catastrophic explodes into a million sizzling pieces that begin to rain theories because they have trouble explaining the only thing down from the sky. Whatever survived the flood is definitely fried at this point because the fires are said to engulf the that a mass extinction theory has to address: selectivity. entire planet. Indeed, the script has it that ancient mammals How does Mother Nature target one species and spare its and other survivors relied on detritus for years on end. 8 And neighbours? More to the point, it would have to be quite an we’re still not done. An ‘impact winter’ sets in to finish the intelligent asteroid or volcano to have the ability to select job. Dust from the pulverized asteroid encapsulates the Earth chronologically. What dies in a mass extinction are the ancient species of plants and animals, the entities that have  Proceedings of the Oxford University Apocalypse Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (May 8, 2016) and denies any plant that miraculously survived the first two Figure 1: Inversion of the Ecological Pyramid calamities the ability to photosynthesise. Like the Cretaceous asteroid, a catastrophic agent is also said to trigger the Permian extinction. The leading theory proposes that the Siberian Traps oozed lava from Russia all the way to the Karoo Basin in South Africa. 9 The disaster requires the aid of subsequent events without which the job cannot be completed. CO2 emissions raise global temperatures 5% which in turn enable the release of methane buried underneath the sea beds. This event adds another 5% for a total of 10%. 10 In other words, it will ultimately be global warming which claims the lives of most terrestrial and The disintegration of the food chain has a much easier marine species. Those that survived are later killed by time simulating selectivity and can be applied to any period freezing weather. Volcanic ashes envelope the Earth and or habitat. The agent is food. The mechanism is starvation. prevent the Sun from shining through. Temperatures drop The result is the collapse of the entire pyramid whose and photosynthesis ceases. We have a rerun of the members are the last, large, dominant dynasties, meaning Cretaceous theory. that they are the more ancient ones. They had millions of The NASA-funded extraterrestrial catastrophe proposed years of evolution behind them and have become overly for the Ordovician extinction is yet more fantastic. The specialized. The latest inventions of Mother Nature – the theory suggests that gamma rays from a nearby supernova small creatures waiting in the wings – are now able to radiate zapped the Earth for 10 seconds, blowing the entire once these formidable competitors are out of their way. They atmosphere literally into space. All components of the carve niches in the expanding vegetation. phytoplankton are starved of air and the entire food chain Support for the overturning of the ecological pyramid collapses. comes from the seminal 4-year study known as the Gargantuan catastrophes certainly make for flashy Cretaceous Terrestrial Revolution. 13 It suggests that Hollywood special effects, but do they explain selectivity? angiosperm squatted territory as gymnosperms receded Can they avoid decimating all plants and animals? If not, we (Figure 2). The staple of the dinosaurs – conifers, need to erase the board and start brainstorming all over. specifically cycads – gradually disappeared in the last few million years of their existence. In contrast, no evolution timeline published by any author illustrates that all plants II. THE BLACK HORSE OF THE APOCALYPSE died at the K-T boundary There is, however, a common thread in all contemporary mass extinction theories. Whether we talk about the Cretaceous or the Permian Extinction, all theories make Figure 2: The rise of flowering plants at the expense of allusions to the food chain. The triggering agent attacks the conifers most basic trophic level and the entire ecological pyramid disintegrates. It is primary production which suffers the first blow. Herbivores that depended on that source of food die next followed by the carnivores. 11 12 The common denominator of all mass extinction theories is the ubiquitous ‘food chain collapse’. No theory seems to be able to do without it. All theories mention it. This insight enables us to define the term at the centre of our inquiry… mass extinction: the disappearance of a food chain What disappears in a mass extinction is an entire food chain. One trophic level free falls as the one under it disintegrates. The Permian and Triassic boundaries reveal similar In essence, the ecological pyramid overturns (Figure 1). We evidence. Glossopteridales ruled Gondwanaland and in end up with the many chasing after the few. Meanwhile, a some regions were the only source of food available. parallel food chain of tiny animals dependent on an Another order of seed ferns – Dicroidium – replaced the alternative source of food is unperturbed by what is Glossopteridales and went on to dominate the Triassic. happening to the giants around them. Cynodonts which made it across the P-T boundary had no choice but to depend ultimately on the Dicroidium forests 2  Proceedings of the Oxford University Apocalypse Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (May 8, 2016) and jungles because in some places it was also the only food available. 14 Contemporary theories make no provision for Figure 4 a: The Chain of Money the predictable process where advanced plants will What happens to food production and delivery when periodically replace the more primitive ones. money disappears? The lesson here is that we don’t need catastrophic or climactic agents or disease vectors to eliminate the bottom of the food chain. If we were standing at the starting line of the Cambrian, we can predict that major plant categories are periodically going to disappear and be replaced by more advanced ones. The first terrestrial plants were non-vascular and lasted for millions of years until they were displaced by the more vibrant ferns. The ferns were masters of the Earth until they were dethroned by the conifers. And these gave up the sceptre when the flowering seed plants muscled them aside. No asteroid or volcano is intelligent enough to generate such patterns. The 'Big Picture' is that the major categories of animals disappeared when the major families and orders of plants disappeared (Figure 3). Whether we agree that this is what actually happened is ultimately a matter of personal opinion. What is not an opinion is that we have before us a new theory of extinction. Figure 4 b: The Chain of Faith III. MAN’S ECOLOGICAL PYRAMID OVERTURNS We have argued that food is the agent and starvation the mechanism responsible for a mass extinction. We now make a radical assumption. We will assume that humans are mammals, a species of omnivores that belongs to the order of primates and the family of apes. This clarification would seem to be unnecessary; it offends intelligence to even mention these facts. Yet we seem to forget and perpetually need to be reminded that Man is a member of the Animal Kingdom. We regard ourselves as caretakers of Eden, as being above the laws of nature. If extinction is universal and touches all species, we must conclude that Man will face the same fate as all other species before us. And if, as we have just argued, what ultimately killed all prehistoric species was starvation, we have our work cut out for us. No longer The sceptic replies that money will never disappear, in do we need to be distracted by asteroids, volcanoes, climate great measure because of self-interest. It would take an act of change, diseases or any other agent or mechanism that the God Almighty Himself to make money disappear! palaeontologists have considered so far. We need to In order to address the issue raised by the most concentrate our attention on a single secret agent: food. recalcitrant devil’s advocate we must analyse the question The devil’s advocate may argue that we produce as carefully and in steps. It is a fact that Man belongs to the much food as we want. How will food trigger the extinction Animal Kingdom and a fact that he requires food. Without of Man if technology and our advanced level of organization food our species disappears. We have with these two simple enable us to distribute food to 8 billion people on the planet? facts established our first point. The usual suspects that Yes. We produce all the food we want, but only because of people improvise when asked about the extinction of Man money. If money disappears, so does food. Figure 4(a) include: nuclear weapons, climate change, disease and briefly summarizes the chain of money in relation to food. extraterrestrial agents. Now we can add food to the list. It is Money flows in the direction of the arrows: from consumers never mentioned. Actually, if past extinctions occurred to supermarkets to transporters to processing plants to because of food and starvation, then food should be at the top of the list of causes. As a minimum we should at least agricultural corporations and independent farmers. Food consider food as a potential agent because it is clear that flows in the opposite direction. What would happen if we without it we die. In contrast, we may never throw the bombs eliminate the chain (Figure 4b)? or be struck by an asteroid. If these catastrophes never visit us, does Man get to live forever? 3 Proceedings of the Oxford University Apocalypse Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (May 8, 2016) Figure 3: The Big Picture Major categories of animals became extinct when the major categories of plants went extinct. Figure 5: From real to abstract 4  Proceedings of the Oxford University Apocalypse Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (May 8, 2016) The next issue we need to address is whether we need a. Governments make everyone rich: they give money to produce and distribute food. This is not a totally all individuals 10 million dollars. This would at trivial question because we certainly did not need money to least guarantee that half the global population produce food during our early subsistence agriculture phase. doesn’t go to work tomorrow morning. We stop Money came into being with commercial agriculture and being producers and become full time consumers. division of labour, a period that started perhaps around b. Corporations make everyone poor: they lay 4,000 B.C. Indeed, money has changed dramatically over off every worker. What is the purpose of money in the centuries, becoming ever more abstract (Figure 5). The that scenario if money is what we pay the worker first money was food itself. The Code of the Nesilim in order for the worker to turn around and become specified wages in terms of ‘pecks of barley’ as late as 1500 a consumer? B.C. 15 and Ruth is paid for her work with barley. 16 About 6000 years ago we introduced gold and silver and by the c. Governments run global debt to the point 17th Century paper money became popular. The Internet where it is 10,000 % of global GDP. What is the enabled us to replace all these types of tangible currencies value of money under such circumstances? with digital money. The trend toward ever more abstract Therefore, yes, we can dilute the value of money until it money eerily parallels the trend toward an ever more has none or eliminate it altogether today at the swift stroke of abstract economy. We went from producing goods a key if we wanted to. (agriculture/manufacturing) to providing services. We have now made our case for a new extinction There should be no question at this point in any rational theory not only for species that died in the past, but also for person’s mind. A sceptic would be hard-pressed to defend our very own. If we can eliminate money (if it is physically the notion that in our contemporary service economy we can possible), if we need money to produce food, and if we need dispense with money for any kind of production. We cannot food to stay alive, then whether we believe that the feed 8 billion people on the planet with subsistence elimination of money and the subsequent starvation process agriculture methods any more than we can with hunter/gathering. Those days are gone. We absolutely need will happen is a secondary matter. We can conceive of the money to fuel the production and distribution of food today. mass extinction of humans due to the elimination of money Without money the system relies entirely on faith, and how and food alone. We have a new theory of extinction for much is that worth? Why would a farmer take the trouble to people to ponder. As a minimum, conservationists, produce food for the cities? Why would the truck driver environmentalists, extinction theorists and palaeontologists make the effort to deliver food to the supermarkets? should from now on factor food in their analyses. A realization just as disquieting is that the creation of abstract digital money requires nothing more than entering ones and zeroes in a database. The smooth running of our IV. THE PROBABILITY OF OVERTURNING ecological pyramid depends on a fragile electronic system THE ECOLOGICAL PYRAMID few people have any control over. We have gone from using food and gold to Internet accounting. It is this abstract Lastly, we analyse two scenarios that address probability. scheme on which our very lives depend. Figure 6 shows that global debt has risen meteorically in the The last question we need to answer in order to make last decade and today stands at 300% of global GDP. Figure our case hermetically tight is whether it is possible for 7 shows that global unemployment also continues to rise and money to end up having no value. Unfortunately, most is projected to continue to increase in the coming years. All readers tend to confuse possible with probable. Possibility is countries in the world, especially the developed nations, are a yes or no, qualitative type of issue. Probability is a facing these intertwined maladies. Incumbents postpone the quantitative issue. If something is impossible, there is no day of reckoning by printing money and leave it up to need to ponder whether it is probable. For instance, is it incoming politicians and economists to deal with the possible for us to throw nuclear weapons at each other? The consequences. No economist or politician has yet come up answer is clearly yes. All we have to do is press the red with a solution to these negative trends. The most alarmists buttons and the nukes start flying. Will we ever do it? That’s among them warn of an impending collapse. Add to this the a different matter. The difference between possible and humongous 700 trillion dollar Derivates Bubble (Figure 8) probable is the difference between can and will. Likewise, created by the global financial system. If it were to pop, the the question is not whether we will eliminate money consequences would be unthinkable. 17 18 (probability), but whether we can if we wanted to Therefore, the task of the devil’s advocate is not to state (possibility). Is it physically impossible to destroy money? his unsubstantiated opinion that he doesn’t believe that Yes or no? money will surreptitiously disappear or gradually decline in As far as possibility is concerned, we can come up with value until it is no more. His job is to explain how these all sorts of scenarios for eliminating trust in money short of negative trends will be reversed before the global economy pushing <delete> on the keyboard: crashes. The sceptic might even come up with a personal solution that actually works, but that isn’t enough. He has to 5  Proceedings of the Oxford University Apocalypse Conference, Prague, Czech Republic (May 8, 2016) show in addition that it has a chance of being implemented. Figure 8: Dot Com, Housing and Derivatives Bubbles For instance, let’s assume that communism is the solution. That’s what intelligence orders us to implement in order to extend the life of our species. However, there is bound to be immeasurable resistance from very influential groups and the ideal solution never comes to fruition. Interest ends up trumping intelligence. The reality is that we move forward through compromise, not through what intelligence tells us. We get less than the ideal world we dream of. Until the sceptic can explain how we will reverse these trends, the rational individual should sleep with one eye open. If the experts cannot come up with a solution soon, we may not need God to wave His magic wand in order to rid the world of money. Figure 6: Global debt by far exceeds GDP and is continuing to rise. REFERENCES [1] D. Raup, The role of extinction in evolution, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci 91 (1994) 6758 – 6763 [2] L. Alvarez et al., Extraterrestrial cause for the Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction, Science 208 (4448) (1980) 1095–1108 [3] P. Schulte et al., The Chicxulub Asteroid Impact and Mass Extinction at the Cretaceous-Paleogene Boundary, Science 327(5970) (2010) 1214-1218 [4] A. Saunders, M. Reichow, The Siberian Traps and the End-Permian mass extinction, Chinese Science Bulletin (Springer) 54(1) (2009) 20–37 Figure 7: Author's estimates based on Federal Reserve, [5] A. 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