It's not the risk that worries me - it's the stakes. Even the most insignificant risk level when compared with the complete eradication of all of humanity and our knowledge seems to me to be too much risk to take.
We're all renters. Something will take us out--I concur with bonisagus that it'll be some moron hitting some button somewhere well before a natural disaster.
There could be a global pandemic of a mutant flu strain a month from now, too, but I don't worry about that, either. Or a glitch in the system that leads to a nuclear ICBM exchange. I don't worry about stuff that has probabilities best measured in large negative exponents, no matter what the stakes. Especially when waiting a century will open up new options, and any large-scale effort today is more usefully directed elsewhere.
What risk? It's not like we are driving the planet around drunk at high rates of speed. The earth will go where it will go and the asteroids will do the same, if we happen to hit one that's too large well that just sucks but there's nothing that can be done about it.
Do you want to do like some crazy Sci-Fi movie and download all the world's knowledge onto a rocket and have it ready to blast off at a moment's notice incase something bad ever happens? Do you want to pay for something like that? I sure don't.
Just like the dinosaurs, if we get wiped out then something will come along and take our place. That's also assuming that there isn't already someone somewhere else gathering their own set of knowledge.
I agree that total nuclear winter is a lot more likely then getting hit by a space rock, and at least that's something we can deal with. You are stressing about something you have ABSOLUTELY no control over. Even if we manage to see something coming at us it'll hit us before we can do anything to stop it. Even if we have time we don't have the technology to either divert it or save enough of the human race and its knowledge to be a reasonable projecct.
You should live comfortably that if the earth does die all out knowledge is not lost, radio and television signals have been broadcast into the great wide unknown for decades and can be picked up by anyone with the minimal technology to do so. So even if the Earth goes boom episodes of MASH, I Love Lucy, and Law & Order will carry on our legacy.
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And what makes 'our knowledge' so special?
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Do you want to do like some crazy Sci-Fi movie and download all the world's knowledge onto a rocket and have it ready to blast off at a moment's notice incase something bad ever happens? Do you want to pay for something like that? I sure don't.
Just like the dinosaurs, if we get wiped out then something will come along and take our place. That's also assuming that there isn't already someone somewhere else gathering their own set of knowledge.
I agree that total nuclear winter is a lot more likely then getting hit by a space rock, and at least that's something we can deal with. You are stressing about something you have ABSOLUTELY no control over. Even if we manage to see something coming at us it'll hit us before we can do anything to stop it. Even if we have time we don't have the technology to either divert it or save enough of the human race and its knowledge to be a reasonable projecct.
You should live comfortably that if the earth does die all out knowledge is not lost, radio and television signals have been broadcast into the great wide unknown for decades and can be picked up by anyone with the minimal technology to do so. So even if the Earth goes boom episodes of MASH, I Love Lucy, and Law & Order will carry on our legacy.