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Important Apocalypse Reminder: Humans & Bacteria Can Survive Even if Everything Else Dies

Just some comforting words from the co-founder of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists; even if everything else dies, humans and bacteria can make it out A-OK.

The End Times are nigh, we all know that, so everybody's imagining just how some apocalypse might kill us all off. Nuclear holocausts and big flashbang global extermination events are so 70s; these days, mass man-death comes a-creepin. We've got climate change, biosphere collapse, and diseases, mostly. Things that pick away at the ecological web that props up human survival.

In modern-day apocalypses, that web unravels–climate change wracks a region with drought or storms, we drive species to extinction, and starts a chain reaction that collapses the biosphere; our world goes to shit chunk by chunk. So perhaps some worlds of consolation are in order–and for that, let's turn to Eugene Rabinowitch, eminent biophysicist, nuclear bomb rigger, and the co-founder of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

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In 1976, at a time when scientists were extremely concerned about overpopulation, overcrowding, and species extinction, Rabinowitch offered up one of the most sinister "chill outs" I've ever stumbled across. In an essay in his publication called "Living Dangerously in the Age of Science," Rabinowitch had this soothing message to share with the doomsayers:

"The only animals whose disappearance may threaten the biological viability of man on earth are the bacteria normally inhabiting our bodies," he wrote.

"For the rest, there is no convincing proof that mankind could not survive even as the only animal species on Earth! If economical ways could be developed for synthesizing food from inorganic raw materials –which is likely to happen sooner or later–man may even be able to become independent of plants, on which he now depends as a source of food."

Just the us and the bacteria; sounds pretty nice.

Of course, Rabinowitch doesn't think it'd be nice at all. But:

It is a different question whether life in a habitat without animals and plants would be ataractic, or even psychologically acceptable, to men. I personally–and, I suspect, a vast majority of mankind–would shudder at the idea. But millions of inhabitants of "city jungles" of New York, Chicago, London or Tokyo have grown up and spent their whole life in a practically "azoic" habitat (leaving out rats, mice, cockroaches and other such obnoxious species) and have survived.

And thus an entire strain of sci-fi dystopian vision-making was born; miserable humans crowded together in urban wastelands, the rats and roaches scurrying about while we choke down our Soylent Green.

But the point is taken: man could survive as the only creature left on the planet besides bacteria. Maybe, for a while, if he didn't kill himself from the subsequent psychological despair. So yeah. No real reason to get too bummed out about the so-called end times. If the earth dies around us, on we'll go!

Hat tip to Wit's End