Sometimes, the best innovations come out of nowhere. In the case of the N95 mask, that’s exactly what happened.
This particle-filtering mask has become even more popular due to the coronavirus pandemic. Due to its ability to block out 95 percent of airborne particles, it’s a staple in surgeries and other medical areas.
Turnbull worked for the 3M company back in the late 1950s. During that time, she worked with Shapeen, which is a non-woven material made of polymers typically used for decorative ribbons. She utilized this material to create the first-ever pre-made bows used for wrapping gifts during the holidays.
A true innovator, Turnbull came up with a ridiculous number of ideas. She presented 3M executives with a lengthy overview of her lineup. They liked her work enough to get Turnbull started on designing a molded bra cup.
However, with three sick family members, Turnbull spent a ton of time in medical environments. She realized that medical workers needed a better solution than the thin masks they often worked with.
By 1961, they introduced a non-woven lightweight medical mask based on her concept, with elastic bands instead of strings, an aluminum nose clip, and a form-fitting “bubble” shape. (The bra patent was approved in 1962.)
Though innovative, the mask couldn’t block pathogens for medical use and was marketed for dust filtration instead. An improved respirator hit the market in 1972 that was suitable for other industrial purposes. As the mask’s filtration evolved, so did its usefulness.
In 1995, the N95 respirator was introduced in the health care field, fulfilling Turnbull’s original ambition.
Sara Little Turnbull passed away in 2015. But during her lifetime, she proved to be a creative thinker who inspired a key piece of protective gear utilized more than ever today.
If you could create a new design to help fix a problem, what would it be? Tell us about your creative ideas in the comments below!
These days, a lot of people live in complete echo chambers and they never hear any dissenting opinions or information AT ALL.
And sometimes those echo chambers are filled with misinformation, lies, fake news, and absolute BULLSHIT.
But that’s how propaganda works.
And that’s just the world we live in right now.
Let’s hear from some AskReddit users who talk about how they used to buy into certain propaganda only to later learn that it was total BS.
1. YOU’RE the idiot.
“When I was a teenager I thought that everyone over 30 is old and doesn’t understand me.
I was a fucking idiot.
It’s something in the brain chemistry but to the teenager, life experience is irrelevant because that life took place before I was born and therefore is now out of date and not in the slightest but applicable to me.”
2. Pretty rare, actually.
“That most people achieve success in their lives during their 20’s. This is bullshit in the grander scheme of things. Lots of super talented people end up becoming successful in their late 30’s, 40’s, and even 50’s.
The same goes for the concept of “If you want to get good at something, you have to start super young..” Which does SOMETIMES work. But a lot of people can actually get good at a skill in older ages.
You can learn the Piano in your 30’s, and get really good at it. But you’re not going to be doing concerts or anything. But it doesn’t mean that you’re not good/great/exceptional at it.”
3. Not true!
“That carrots give you exceptional night vision.
I later found out that that particular belief became widely accepted due to a British propaganda campaign from world war II designed to hide the invention of radar from the Germans. They claimed that the reason their air force pilots were so effective at night was due to them being fed carrots to increase their night vision. It was so effective that people still tout that particular benefit of carrots years after the war ended.
Edit, a couple corrections: While carrots are rich in vitamin a which helps prevent your eyesight from deteriorating, they still do not give superhuman vision like the propaganda claimed. The myth isn’t that they are good for your eyesight. It is an exaggeration of how effective they actually are.
Also I was incorrect when I said that the British were trying to cover up the invention of radar. They were in actuality trying to cover up an an advancement in radar technology that they didn’t want the Germans finding out about.”
4. Cult life.
“I was born into the cult of jehovahs witnesses. I left at 25 when I found out the leaders were covering up child abuse and then instead of changing their rules to protect victims they enforced their archaic rules and then told elders to burn and delete any evidence relating to past cases.
Sick bastards, but Ofc I get shunned and disowned and called a worker of Satan, an agent of the devil, a spiritual warrior committing acts of warfare against god sent to dissuade gods chosen people from the one true god….(who’s chosen peoples leaders cover up child abuse. ) when all I did was try to show my friends and family the multitude of court cases against them
Least I got a badass title.”
5. Accept it.
“Trivial but I bought into the lie that the more you cut hair, the more it grows. I’ve been shaving my beard for years hoping to get a nice thick bush to no avail.
I just have to accept that nature played me and deal with my patchy face hair.”
6. Imagine that! Reading!
“Anti-vax. At one point I was completely sold on the whole “how can you inject infants with dangerous chemicals” thing.
Then I read up on the actual science and realised how uninformed I was.”
7. GMOs.
“GMOs are dangerous for your health.
Not only is the idea that they’re bad bullshit, the global food supply would be more expensive, less plentiful, and poor parts of the world would experience more frequent, prolonged shortages of crucial items if it weren’t for GMOs.”
8. Not for everyone.
“That the only way to achieve success in life is to study hard, get top grades, and go to university and study something like law or medicine.
Plenty of people I know have achieved success and happiness without top university education. I also believed the idea that the career you study for is for life.”
9. Conspiracy theory.
“I totally bought into that ridiculous Denver airport conspiracy for a few months after a friend showed me it in high school.”
10. Going on a mission.
“Mission trips are for helping others…. really it’s just a huge ego boost for many people who want to exploit people’s needs to feel better about themselves.
Plus the whole part where it might actually be more harmful than helpful…”
11. Chiropractors.
“I had always thought chiropractors were bullshit, but what confirmed it for me was when one day after hurting my back a friend recommended I try it and I thought “meh I guess it’s worth checking out at least.”
So I called but forgot it was a Sunday and they were closed, but I left my name and number saying I was interested in making an appointment. While I was at work the next day and couldn’t answer, the chiropractor left me about 7 or 8 voicemails, each one sounding like one of those gym sales people trying to get you to join.
After that I was like yeah no legit healthcare place would be trying to sell me this hard on making an appointment offering this discount or the other just to get me in the door.”
12. Just say no!
“The anti drug campaigns we all had to listen to as a kid.
The cop that came to my school to give our anti drug talks ended up drinking himself to death at 51.
Guess no one told him alcohol was more dangerous than what he was telling us not to take.”
13. Total fiasco.
“Iraq had WMDs.
I believed it well before Bush came into office. I would read in the paper how even during the Clinton era that Saddam would block actively block weapon inspectors. To me, that sounded like he was hiding something. I still believed it months after the invasion.
Then the truth started coming out, ‘Curveball’ was some taxi driver that made shit up, Cheney outed a CIA agent because she found out that Iraq wasn’t going for nuclear material and it went against their narrative. It would be one thing if they have bad intel, but this was intentionally falsified intel to justify their war.”
14. Too bad a lot of people still believe this shit.
“I used to be big into conspiracy. Alex Jones was right, Clinton’s are actually alien lizard people, and all sorts of crazy stuff.
I even believed Obama was a secret agent Muslim going to install martial law and kill all non muslims. It got to the point I was even considering grabbing guns, I even thought about if I attacked a mosque that I could help stop the Muslim takeover.
It took so long to get my mind straight. It’s a slippery slope, and it’s not something I want anyone to go down on.”
15. Not getting laid.
“I bought into the abstinence-until-marriage crap in middle school, when they made you sign all the fancy pamphlets about why it’s the right thing to do. Really felt it would stop my fellow classmates from having sex until marriage.
My belief in that fell apart in high school. A teammate on my football team would tell stories in the pregame time for JV games about how he had banged some girl the other week. I can still remember 3 specific stories, one of which was how he had sex while wearing a ziplock baggie instead of a condom.”
16. Politics as usual.
“Everyone on my political spectrum are all good and everyone on the other side are terrible people who have absolutely nothing to offer in a discussion and no valid opinions”
In middle school, they made us take political party quizzes to see what we would vote. It became this whole us vs them atmosphere. This only became worse when my parents would be talking about the other side like they were all idiots.
I firmly believed growing up that anyone opposite to me on the political spectrum are evil, dumb people and any points that may align with them are bad. I believed you had to be all or nothing. I was very closed minded.”
Very interesting perspectives in there, that’s for sure.
How about you?
Did you previously believe wholeheartedly in things that you later realized were not true or even total BS?
If so, please share your stories with us in the comments.
We usually go about our weeks and days not thinking all that much about the federal postal service. Sure, we might crab about the lines at the post officer or the lack of employees there to help, as long as the mail is coming fairly regularly and we have somewhere to buy stamps, it kind of slides to the back of our minds, which is normal.
Sometimes, though, like when our illustrious leaders are taking about doing away with an institution established in the Constitution, the post office centers itself in a national debate.
Before you decide which side you want to come down on in this debate (or any debate) it’s a good idea to educate yourself on the issues. So, without further ado, here are 10 things you need to know about your federal postal service.
In Michigan, a 45-foot mail boat called the J.W. Westcott II delivers mail to ships passing on the Detroit River.
The post office has a legal obligation to deliver mail to all Americans. Boats also deliver mail on Alabama’s Magnolia River.
1. It’s part of the Constitution.
Benjamin Franklin was the country’s first Postmaster General, and when the Constitution was ratified in 1789, part of it gave Congress the ability to “establish post offices and post roads.”
In 1792, President Washington signed the Postal Service Act, which created the Post Office Department.
Today, it employs more than 7.3 million people.
I have to admit, I either didn’t know these things, or I never really considered them until now.
Did any of these surprise you? Which ones? Tell us in the comments!
There’s a fairly common saying: history is written by the victors.
Well, as a historian in another life, I can tell you that not only is it written by the victors, but it’s also almost always written by the rich and the European (in the case of Western history) – the traditionally educated, basically. The people who were allowed to read and wrte.
This means that, the farther back you go, the harder you have to dig to find the stories about people of color, women, indigenous people, enslaved people, et al who, in another world, would have dominated the history books.
Even so, there are surely hundreds, thousands of stunning stories that have probably been lost forever.
One story that I’m so glad has survived belongs to one Benjamin Banneker, a highly accomplished mathematician, astronomer, and scholar who was also Black at a time in America when it was quite dangerous to be born that way.
Washington D.C. was styled after famous European locales first by architect Pierre Charles L’Enfant, then completely by Andrew Elliot after L’Enfant was fired in 1792. Sometime after, a Black man stepped up and forced even the likes of Thomas Jefferson to recognize that he had something to say.
According to oral histories that are much-debated, both sides of the Banneker family suffered under enslavement in the pre-United States. Most believe that Benjamin’s maternal grandmother, a woman named Molly Welsh, was (possibly falsely) convicted of theft in England and banished to the servitude in the fledgling colonies. She landed in Maryland, earned her freedom, rented land in Baltimore County, and purchased two slaves to farm it.
Several years later, after she’d established herself in the farming business, she freed both men – one of whom was said to have been abducted from a royal African family earlier in his life. His name was either Bannake or Bankka, and he and Welsh married despite the laws that forbade it. Their daughter Mary and her husband (also a freed slave baptized as Robert) adopted the surname Banneker and purchased a 100-acre farm.
Benjamin was their son, and grew up as one of only 200 free African-American people in Baltimore County. He attended a one-room, mixed-race Quaker schoolhouse and, with his doting grandmother Molly’s help, learned to read. At an early age he began to excel in mathematics and mechanics, spending time crafting experiments on his own.
In his mid-twenties he was forced by his father’s death to focus on the family farm, but even there, he put his brain to work. Their farm employed crop rotation and irrigation techniques that didn’t widely catch on in the States for many decades, and managed to grow a profitable tobacco crop that he swapped out for wheat when American soldiers needed food during the revolution.
He still found time to read and continue his education, becoming well-versed in topics that ranged the science and humanities, a man regarded as one always soaking in knowledge from watching those around him.
This 1979 journal entry is a sample of those thoughts:
“Standing at my door I heard the discharge of a gun, and in four or five seconds of time, after the discharge, the small shot came rattling about me, one or two of which struck the house; which plainly demonstrates that the velocity of sound is greater than that of a cannon bullet.”
He was a capable astronomer, but math was where he really shined – and, according to a 1912 article, what he was known for in the region. Benjamin traded problems with other mathematicians, near and far, and maintained a constant correspondence.
In 1772, a Quaker family, the Ellicotts, bought the land next door and built gristmill facilities. Fascination with the mechanisms led Banneker to visit often, and the Quaker tradition of believing in racial equality led to Benjamin and George Ellicott becoming friends.
Ellicott was also a student of astronomy, and he and Banneker shared resources, tools, and deep conversations on the topic for years. Banneker predicted a near-solar eclipse in 1789 and began writing technical treatises and building atlases of his own.
In 1789 he was thrust onto the national stage when George Elicotts cousin, Major Andrew Ellicott, needed help with a new job – surveying land along the Potomac River that would become the nation’s new capital.
L’Enfant, as previously mentioned, planned and laid out the city, but he took those plans with him after he was fired over a lack of progress in 1792.
At least, that’s what some believe. Others believe that he continued to work with both Banneker and the Ellicotts as they took over the project – which was unnecessary if you also believe Banneker had the city’s layout completely committed to memory.
The “Georgetown Weekly Ledger” noted Banneker’s achievements and contributions, pointing out that as “an Ethiopian whose abilities as a surveyor, and an astronomer, clearly prove that Mr. Jefferson’s concluding that race of men were void of mental endowments, was without foundation.”
In a 1791 letter, Banneker challenged Jefferson’s beliefs directly, after he had completed a table of the position of the celestial bodies for publication.
“Sir, I have long been convinced, that if your love for yourselves and for those inestimable laws, which preserved to you the rights of human nature, was founded on sincerity, you could not but be solicitous that every individual … might with you equally enjoy the blessings thereof, neither could you rest satisfied [short of] their promotion from any state of degradation, to which the unjustifiable cruelty and barbarism of men may have reduced them.
Sir, I freely and cheerfully acknowledge that I am of the African race … and it is under a sense of the most profound gratitude to the supreme ruler of the Universe, that I now confess to you, that I am not under the state of tyrannical thraldom, and inhuman captivity to which many of my brethren are doomed, but that I have abundantly tasted of the fruition of those blessings, which proceed from that free and unequalled liberty, with which you are favored, and which, I hope you will willingly allow, you have received from the immediate hand of that being … [and] that the present freedom and tranquility which you enjoy, you have mercifully received, and that it is the peculiar blessing of heaven.”
Jefferson responded, though probably not exactly as Banneker would have hoped:
“SIR, I THANK you, sincerely, for your letter of the 19th instant, and for the Almanac it contained. No body wishes more than I do, to see such proofs as you exhibit, that nature has given to our black brethren talents equal to those of the other colors of men ; and that the appearance of the want of them, is owing merely to the degraded condition of their existence, both in Africa and America. I can add with truth, that no body wishes more ardently to see a good system commenced, for raising the condition, both of their body and mind, to what it ought to be, as far as the imbecility of their present existence, and other circumstances, which cannot be neglected, will admit.
I have taken the liberty of sending your Almanac to Monsieur de Condozett, Secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Paris, and Member of the Philanthropic Society, because I considered it as a document, to which your whole color had a right for their justification, against the doubts which have been entertained of them.
I am with great esteem, Sir, Your most obedient Humble Servant,
THOMAS JEFFERSON.”
Banneker never shied away from defending the others in his race from the assumptions and cruelty that resulted from those assumptions in America.
He appears to have been the pioneer in the movement in this part of the world, toward the improvement of his race; at a period of our history when the negro occupied almost the lowest possible grade in the scale of human beings, Banneker had struck out for himself a course, hitherto untravelled by men of his class, and had already earned a respectable position amongst men of science.
Banneker himself surely suffered discriminated in his life, having his great achievements dismissed and belittled by people who couldn’t probably have understood them but still considered themselves superior because of the color of their skin.
All records indicate, however, that Banneker never let them get him down.
“His equilibrium was seldom disturbed by the petty jealousies and inequalities of temper of the ignorant people,”A Sketch of the Life of Benjamin Banneker notes, “with whom his situation obliged him frequently to come in contact.”
Benjamin Ellicott, who knew him personally, remembered him similarly in a letter:
Although his mode of life was regular and extremely retired, living alone, having never married,–cooking his own victuals and washing his own clothes, and scarcely ever being absent from home, yet there was nothing misanthropic in his character … [He was known as] kind, generous, hospitable, humane, dignified and pleasant, abounding in information on all the various subjects and incidents of the day; very modest and unassuming, and delighting in society at his own home.
If he could visit one place named for him today, though, he might choose Maryland’s Banneker Planetarium, where he could once again muse about those celestial bodies hanging in the heavens.
The next time you and your family visit D.C., check out one or more of these places that celebrate a man without whom the city under your feet might not have existed in its intended form at all.
We love a good rivalry. The Capulets and the Montagues. The Avengers versus Thanos. Harry Potter versus Voldemort. The list goes on.
Apparently, the art world has one of the best rivalries of all time. This petty feud is truly next-level, and if you haven’t heard of it, you’ll be super familiar by the end of this Tumblr thread.
The feud is between two artists: Anish Kapoor and Stuart Semple. Here’s how it gets started:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
The Bean, aka Cloud Gate, in Chicago was created by well-known artist Anish Kapoor. He’s not all that well-liked in the art world apparently.
Photo Credit: Tumblr
The drama continues:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
But don’t think the story ends there:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
Sample, of course, has to pour salt in the wound:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
He’s a cheeky fellow, isn’t he?
Photo Credit: Tumblr
But wait, there’s more:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
And then there are the counter-strikes:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
And then counter-counter-strikes:
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And then there’s Halloween Bean:
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Ouch, let’s go easy on the little guy, OK?
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Gotta love Guy Fieri!
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And this one really speaks to those frigid Chicago winters:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
And then there’s this gem of an event:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
And apparently Stemple is just a badass, because he’s also willing to use his art to stand up to other inequities:
Photo Credit: Tumblr
Well, there you have it, the most epic feud in the art world. Using pigments and Facebook events to get revenge — now that’s something we hadn’t considered before!
What’s your favorite rivalry? In pop culture, sports or otherwise?
It’s very unpleasant to think about death, extinction, or the world coming to an end, but I will say that it definitely makes for some good conversation.
Will it be a nuclear war? A plague? An asteroid that hits Earth and wipes us all out?
“I have a feeling we’re eventually headed towards nuclear fallout or chemical destruction.
I believe it is inevitably China Vs the United States (and allies like Australia).
I also believe Putin is sitting back with the popcorn at the moment.”
2. Sickness spreads…
“I think it will be a pandemic, much like we are having now, only more lethal.
I’ve heard several people say that COVID isn’t the big one, but it’s going to expose how unprepared the world is for the big one.”
3. Poetic justice.
“Because the majority of the population choose to believe oil CEOs with everything to lose instead of scientists with no reason to lie.
Pretty fitting way to go honestly, I hope the climate change deniers keep on denying it up til the very end, that’d be poetic justice for humanity.”
4. Inching closer to it.
“Depletion of resources, destruction of the environment, and the wars that will result from those things.
I don’t think humanity will ever get to a sci-fi future where we’re exploring the stars and colonizing other planets. The resources on this planet are very finite and they will not last thousands of years at the rate we’re using them. Even 10,000 years is less than a blink of an eye on a cosmic scale.
I think the next 100, maybe 200 years are going to be the peak for our civilization. As the critical resources necessary for technological advancements dry up and environmental destruction creates refugees/migration/starvation on a global scale, we’ll basically destroy ourselves in the resulting wars.
We might not actually go extinct until many millennia after that, but civilization as we know it will be over.”
5. All kinds of calamities.
“Absolutely we will go extinct.
Rising temperatures will eventually push many places around the earth to be uninhabitable. Combine that with the decreased ability to grow grains at scale needed to sustain the over-bloated human population, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster. Eventually large wars will break out over the very scarce resources that the earth is able to provide.
It’s called loss of habitat due to resource exhaustion. Many species experience it and it leads to their extinction, and humans are just another species.”
6. Poisoning ourselves.
“Pollution.
Especially the hormone disruptive ones. They won’t kill us instantly, but each generation will be more affected by them than the last, making it harder and harder to reproduce.
Might not happen this century or even the next few centuries, as there’s still plenty of people to reproduce, even at a lower rate. But it’s already affecting people , and the problem will worsen generation by generation.”
7. A simple act.
“Through some act of stupidity in all honesty.
With all the dangerous diseases and viruses various governments all over the world are experimenting with at any given moment, all it takes is one screw up to have some catastrophic results
And the current pandemic has shown that the general population is either unable or unwilling to respond to a disease or virus of significance.”
8. The crazies.
“Most likely nuclear war or some other form of military action.
Mutual assured destruction only applies to people who are afraid to die.
Once the crazies figure out how to build something extremely destructive, they will set of a chain of events that can’t be undone.”
9. Stupidity.
“Our own stupidity (in America anyway).
Too many think covid-19 is a hoax by (all?) The government(s) to remove our freedoms….the whole world is going through this, idiots, not just one country.
America’s President didn’t get with all the leaders of the world and convince them to shut down absolutely everything worldwide just to take American freedoms.
But yes, some of our rights are being trodden on, I’m not saying its not happening, but it’s a side effect, not the cause.”
10. Hell hole.
“Overpopulation, honestly.
The insane amount of people will outnumber the amount of food the earth can produce and it will become a hell hole.”
11. Keep an eye on it.
“Let’s watch out for South Korea.
They made a study and it says Korean people will be extinct in 300 years because newer generations ditch marriage and having a family.”
12. Scary scenarios.
“We will either kill ourselves in war or burn out the Earth’s resources and cause such heavy global warming and pollution that life at our level cannot physically survive anymore.
Slowly, people will be unable to successfully raise children until we all filter out.”
13. Could happen…
“Unpopular opinion: I don’t think it‘s gonna be our fault.
More something like a comet hitting us, the sun exploding or something like that.”
14. Uh oh…
“Genetic manipulation will become popular in the future and we accidentally or purposefully create a new species that is better than humans.
I expect it will be a human that makes the modification to themselves to create the new species.”
15. The end of days.
“It will probably not be war because we are to smart for that so maybe something from space like a huge meteor or the sun turning into a red giant if we are still on this planet in the next billions of years.”
Well, that was certainly uplifting!
How about you?
In the comments, tell us how you think human beings will become extinct.
It’s kind of scary, but you’ve probably considered it at one point or another.
How will human beings become extinct?
What will be the final catalyst that wipes us off the planet for good?
Are you ready to do a little thinking about our existence?
Here’s what folks on AskReddit had to say about it.
1. Oh, boy…
“A highly contagious virus designed to make its host infertile without presenting any other symptoms escapes from a lab and infects everyone.”
2. A hot take.
“As a long term optimist, my favorite is evolution.
As we expand out into space through the eons eventually we diverge and evolve into new species, and what we consider human is extinct.
You can also view AI as a version of evolution and count that as well, but I personally think we can coexist with an AI we create.”
3. WAR.
“It’s got to be war.
We literally have a weapon that can wipe out an entire country, now multiply the amount of that weapon by thousands.
One day countries and leaders will face a breaking point through clashing ideologies and before we even knew it, we already fucked ourselves over.”
4. Irreparable damage.
“By irreparably damaging our biosphere.
Takes a biosphere to evolve and sustain a complex living organism like us, destroy that and we probably won’t last long.”
5. That’s not pleasant.
“Slow and painful.
Slowly losing clean water until we’re a desert planet and we die.”
6. That’s not good.
“I’d say we’ll either kill each other for resources due to overpopulation or (which by now I think is more likely) a pandemic worse than the coronavirus will collapse health and economic systems throughout the world which will lead to supply shortages then maybe to war.”
7. Something to think about…
“Humans will biologically die out. I think at we could maybe reach a point where sentimental value of being a human is slowly gone in favour of something else, like being a machine, uploading consciousness.
We may be our real selves but digital, or just a program with personality effectively killing the host and stealing their memory, while retaining their information, soulless.
Either way, it won’t be human.”
8. Human error.
“I think we will make a mistake. Something like, we send the majority of the population to another planet, but they crash. Or, we couldn’t get to another planet in time.
Humans make mistakes. It’s about time we make a big one.”
9. Or maybe a machine?
“It could even be machine error. In 1983, at the height of the Cold War (during Reagan’s era), the USSR detected multiple incoming ICBM missiles allegedly launched by the US.
Turns out the system mistook a particular alignment of sunlight for nukes. Had it not been for Stanislav Petrov, a USSR officer who decided against retaliation despite all evidence pointing towards an attack, we would have had full blown nuclear war and humanity may very well be extinct today.”
10. This is scary.
“Honestly, a massive asteroid. (I’m talking miles in diameter).
I mean nuclear war is devastating but just think about the colossal amount of energy released during such an impact event (billions of nukes).
The worst part? There’s pretty much nothing we can do about it with our current technology.”
11. Our fault.
“We’ll probably damage the environment to a point where we can no longer live in it.
In the last 100 years we’ve been burning through Earth’s resources like we have another planet to move to.”
12. Two theories.
“Two likely options:
Climate collapse.
Might not be the direct cause of human extinction, but it would certainly prompt a lot of candidates for human extinction.
Nations going to war with each other as their land goes underwater or becomes otherwise uninhabitable, wars over the last remaining resources, increased temperatures across the globe result in more heatstroke deaths and tropical diseases spreading across the globe.
In that scenario, either nuclear war or uncontrolled disease kills us all.
Massive collapse of technology.
A coronal mass ejection cripples all technology on Earth- life support systems, planes, power plants, anything more complex than a radio is rendered unusable. Within hours, millions are dead. As supply chains collapse across the globe, famine becomes a part of life for many.
With today’s level of dependence on technology, it would knock us back to being an agrarian species. And the more technologically advanced we get, the worse a coronal mass ejection becomes.
Imagine a time when most humans have complex cybernetics- a coronal mass ejection would literally kill billions as their body’s electronic components failed. It would deal us a blow we could never recover from.”
13. As simple as that.
“Stupidity.
Or I should say the rapidly increasing gulf between common and academic knowledge.
Science is moving faster than the average person’s intellect because we have coddled being fucking morons for decades now.
Look at how Covid has been handled in the scientific vs. common communities and imagine that level of dissonance in an even greater threat.”
14. I’m sorry I’ll miss this.
“An asteroid composed of dinosaurs will crash into the Earth and they’ll eat us all.”
People sure are creative, aren’t they?
Okay, now we want to hear from you!
If you had to guess, how do you think human beings will become extinct?
The press loves a titillating expose about a famous person. As far back as the Roman Empire, writers were penning books revealing all of the rumors and secrets behind palace doors – people just love to read about famous people’s kinks and quirks.
You’ve probably never thought about Marie Curie as anything other than a scientific genius, discoverer of radium and polonium, and two-time Nobel Prize winner, but that’s only because your high school history teachers only relay that sort of important-but-boring information.
Image Credit: Public Domain
If your history class was being taught by a reporter from TMZ, you would have heard about how, in 1911, the Polish born mother and scientist found herself smack dab in the middle of a sex scandal.
Her husband, Pierre Curie, had perished in a carriage accident in 1906. Marie had taken up with one of his former students, a married physicist named Paul Langevin. They were holed up in a Paris love nest when his wife had one of those feelings and hired an investigator to break in and steal letters that ended up being incriminated.
Image Credit: Public Domain
They leaked them to the press, and the French newspapers could not get enough. Xenophobia ran high at the time and they painted her as not only a home-wrecker, but a Jew (she wasn’t), and things got quickly out of hand. When she returned home from a conference in Belgium to find her home surrounded by an angry mob, she packed her daughters and fled to a friend’s.
Langevin was keen to defend his lover’s honor. He challenged one of the newspaper’s editors to a duel, though no shots were fired at their meeting.
Albert Einstein weighed in, arguing that Curie “has a sparkling intelligence, but despite her passionate nature, she is not attractive enough to represent a threat to anyone.”
That same year, at the height of the scandal, Marie won her second Nobel Prize. She attended the ceremony even though the committee suggested she skip it. Through it all, she remained dedicated to science, and eventually the whole melee died down.
She died in 1934, succumbing to illnesses caused by her continued exposure to radioactive materials. Almost 100 years later, her notebooks and other belongings are too radioactive to touch – and scientists estimate that will be the case for another 1500 years.
Personally, I think she would appreciate us remembering her entire life, and not just the work that she lived and died for. Telling stories like this one are important reminders that people are humans, as well as historical figures, and that even though she contributed enormously to science, she was also a woman.
More history teachers should get on board, I swear.
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