The HBS hosts chat about our impending doom. Is the apocalypse nigh? Will it be environmental, political, technological, or biological? Can we imaging human beings existing in 50 years? 100 years? 5000 years?

This week, Leigh, Ammon, and Shannon tackle the fascinating and terrifying hypotheses concerning the Apocalypse(s). Students seem to be more pessimistic about the future than they have been in the past. Generation Z seems particularly anxious (or, perhaps, realistic?) about the future. What will the end of the world look like? What does our future look like 50 years, 100 years, 5,000 years into the future? Is pessimism warranted or are we experiencing an unnecessary sense of fatalism and doom when we should instead be working toward care and stewardship for our shared world?

For further reading, check out the links below:

• See Greta Thurnberg’s full speech to world leaders at the UN Climate Action Summit  (September 23, 2019).
• Nick Bostrum’s “Existential Risks.”
• For a criticism of this way of framing the dangers we face, see Ajay Singh Chaudhary, “We’re Not in This Together”
• Dipesh Chakrabarty also considers the possibility of species level extinction in “The Climate of History: Four Theses”
• Francoise Vergès argues that focusing on species level extinction ignores the racial and class disparities in the risk posed by climate change in “Racial Capitalocene.”
• Apocalypse Soon: 9 Terrifying Signs of Environmental Doom and Gloom as explored in Rolling Stone.
• Generation Z is filled with anxiety about climate change and their future, as Jason Plautz explores.
• Don’t worry, Elon Musk will obviously save us. 
• More on Elon Musk’s Neuralink.
• What does the bible mean by apocalypse? Angela Bardon tackles this question.
• Will having fewer children save us from the apocalypse? Vox’s Sigel Samuel argues it will not.
• Thomas Moynihan has been thinking about human extinction and the possibilities of human flourishing.