Stephen Hawking's Doomsday Prediction Called 'Regrettable Hype'

By Robert Roy Britt
Senior Science Writer
Space.com
posted: 12:10 pm ET
16 October 2001


An expert on doomsday scenarios said Stephen Hawking's latest apocalypse prediction -- humans would not survive the next 1,000 years -- was "fatalistic and highly unlikely."


Hawking raised the threat of biological engineering in saying humans must colonize space or face an end as a species. The comments came in an interview with the British Daily Telegraph newspaper, published Oct. 16.

"I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space," Hawking told the Daily Telegraph. "There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

Hawking, 59 and considered one of the most brilliant physicists and cosmologists of all time, cited nuclear technology as one threat. But he said there is an even greater danger.

"In the long term, I am more worried about biology," he said.

The comment comes at a time when all of America and much of the world is focused on the threat of bioterrorism in the wake of several cases of Anthrax infection.

Hope for humanity

Benny Peiser, an expert in apocalyptic movements and neocatastrophism at Liverpool John Moores University in the UK, criticized Hawking for increasingly unfounded and erratic doomsday prophesies.

Peiser told SPACE.com he thought Hawking's words constituted "regrettable hype."

Peiser also provided the text of a letter he has sent to the editor of the Daily Telegraph.

"Stephen Hawking's predictions of terrestrial doom have become increasingly wide-ranging and unreasonable in recent years," Peiser writes. "They also manifest a certain arbitrariness in his choice of end-time scenarios."

A year ago, Hawking warned that global warming would make Earth as deadly a place as Venus, also saying humanity might not survive the next 1,000 years. Peiser called Hawking's latest prediction "both fatalistic and highly unlikely. It also violates scientific risk assessments commonly used for hazard estimation."

Ability to cope

Peiser said apocalyptics typically exaggerate possible future dangers while ignoring or underestimating the probability of finding a social, technological or medical remedy for any given predicament.

"The risks of genetic engineering or bioterrorism are genuine," Peiser says. "But like all the other major hazards, they need to be evaluated and weighed up against our increasing capabilities to control and influence life, nature and society."

Peiser draws on history for examples of our steadfastness as a species. "For more than 5 million years, hominids and human beings have survived recurring onslaughts of ice ages, global catastrophes due to asteroidal and cometary impacts as well as global plague epidemics," he points out.

"Technological and societal evolution has now reached a level of complexity that renders the probability of human survival for the next 1,000 years drastically higher than at any previous stage of our long history."

What I cannot understand is WHY all these overpaid
scientists, biologists, palenatologists well, you get the picture.....are bothering?

What can they DO....if and when they find out?

I am beginning to believe complexity begets complexity into oblivion.......

WE are HERE.........Watch and wait.......ENJOY~~