That more subtle ice age likely impacted North America and Northern Eurasia as early as and as late as Still, humanity survived.
Around the time that the Little Ice Age began to dissipate, a second supervolcanic blast thrust the world into volcanic winter. In April , Mount Tambora on Sumbawa Island in Indonesia burst, spurting smoke, volcanic ash, aerosols and pumice into the atmosphere and throughout the surrounding terrain. The event killed 10, islanders instantly. Once again, the consequences rippled worldwide. As smoke and ash spread throughout the atmosphere, they blocked sunlight, which dipped global temperatures by 5 degrees.
The Tambora supervolcano remains active to this day, but thankfully its subsequent activity pales in comparison to this blast. Register or Log In. The Magazine Shop. Login Register Stay Curious Subscribe. Planet Earth. Credit: m. Newsletter Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news. Sign Up. Already a subscriber? Want more? More From Discover. Recommendations From Our Store. Stay Curious. View our privacy policy. Different catastrophes would create different doomsday conditions for surviving human populations to endure.
For example, a nuclear war could trigger a nuclear winter , with survivors facing freezing summer temperatures and global famine, not to mention radiation exposure. However, putting some of these conditions aside and focusing on population size, the minimum number is likely very small compared with the approximately 7. And many small populations of that kind have survived for centuries and perhaps millennia," Cameron Smith, an adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at Portland State University in Oregon, told Live Science.
Related: What could drive humans to extinction? Smith's research into early human civilizations and space colonization gives him pretty good insight into our apocalypse survival hopes. He expects big cities would be most vulnerable if global civilization were to crumble , as they import almost all of their food and are heavily reliant on electricity.
Surviving populations would, therefore, likely spread out to find resources. During the early Neolithic period beginning when the last ice age ended, about 12, years ago when humans began farming, there were many small villages worldwide with populations ranging from the low hundreds up to about 1, individuals, according to Smith.
And in an apocalyptic scenario, I imagine the same thing would happen. A surviving population of just a few hundred people would need a way of maintaining a breeding system, Smith said.
Inbreeding, or breeding between closely related individuals, is one major challenge small populations face. The consequences of inbreeding can be demonstrated with the fall of the Spanish Habsburg dynasty, which ruled Spain during the 16th and 17th centuries. The dynasty regularly kept marriage in the family until , when the bloodline ended with an infertile and facially deformed King Charles II, Live Science previously reported.
A similar scenario could happen to a dwindling human population with limited breeding options following an apocalypse, unless they had enough genetic diversity to avoid closely related unions. A sufficient number of breeding-age individuals of the opposite sex, known as the effective population size, would also be required for successful interbreeding to take place.
Humans could potentially prepare populations to survive a doomsday if they saw it coming. Seth Baum, co-founder and executive director of the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, a nonpartisan think tank, looks at the risk of global catastrophes occurring.
He favors preventing potential catastrophes, which in the case of nuclear war, for example, means ensuring adequately good relations among countries with nuclear weapons.
0コメント