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Question: What is your new target date, if any, and what do you feel will be the final downfall of Earth.
Socratic Question: Why would a small percentage of the population devote their time to stockpiling the resources they need to survive? Do they have inside knowledge?
Preparation is a complex matter. I do private consultations for families and corporations. A full eight-hour consultation just hits the highlights.
Question two: Does our current technology actually define us as a species, if so, how do you explain everything up to about 1900?
Socratic Question: Do you ever feel that an event would have such a catastrophic reach that humanity would be unable to adapt to it's new surroundings.
It's not the technology that defines us, it's the dependence on it.
I'll use an ugly term here, and say that people have gotten lazy.
Round 1:
This round was a bit of a mixed bag for me.
Druid does a nice job of laying out any number of possible scenarios that could result in a "doomsday" type of event. However, I did not feel that Druid did a very good job of outlining what his role in the debate would be or the position he would be taking in this debate. Luckily Vkey08's response does clear things up a bit....
I found Vkey08's post to be a rather inferior argument in suggesting that if one person, or a small pocket of people, survive than there was no "doomsday". Although I agreed with many of the points made in this reply, I feel that Vkey08 undermined his own argument with this assertion.
Round 1: Druid
In round 2 Druid does a nice job of countering the points made by Vkey08 and pointing out much of what I was thinking in terms of how to define "doomsday" and how there can be a "doomsday" without a humanity as a whole being wiped out.
Vykey08's reply in this round just fell flat for me. Focusing on the load mouths of our time like Alex Jones. As this post continues with the points of how mankind has progressed I felt that Vkey08 was missing the bigger picture. How many people would be able or have the knowledge today to go hunt with stones in order to survive? Things like that were a skill set back in those days, and I would suggest that such skills for the most part are lost on a majority of society today.
Round 2: Druid
The final round....
It was like Druid had read my mind. He does a great job of pointing out humanity's dependence on current technology and how a disruption of this norm could be catastrophic for many as the majority of society no longer has the skill sets of our fore fathers and goes even further in defining a true "doomsday" type of event.
VKey08's final post again fell flat. Using his own experience as an example, I felt that he actually supported Druid's argument. How can one suggest that people will survive and make due without our current technology, then use an example to prove this point saying that people used generators to charge their cell phones for communication? So we can make due without- and to prove this point Vkeys uses an example of how people did not make due without, but found ways to use this technology they could easily do without?
Round 3 and winner: Druid.
After reading both arguments, that are excellent ones - my hat I tip to both Druid and Vkey. I am leaning toward the winner of this debate being Vkey on one premise - no one can accurately predict a date for doomsday reliably based on any external data at this time, even with the suns recent and albeit disturbing solar events and high intensity flares that have been recorded. I am throwing my two pence in as to Vkey being the winner of this debate. Both sides gave very good and educated arguments. Congratulations to both.
Both sides do a fairly good job of bringing up reasons for doomstday vs. no-doomsday. So not going by the various facts but by feeling alone, at the end of this debate I feel that vkeys ideas are more connected to reality.
I think the last post was vkeys weakest while being Druids strongest, but all in all, right after 2012 having come and gone I think we are all a little doomsday-fatigued and more likely to tip it slightly in vkeys favor.
The most interesting question brought up was how much percent of humanity would have to die for it to be considered doomsday. I dont have the answers to that but it gave me a chuckle.