JF Ptak Science Books Post 2894
"The Fate of the Last Man”is an interesting and unsigned romp into the deep future of the ending of the human species from the 31 May 1877 issue of Scientific American. It is very exceptionally long-term, looking into the future of up to a billion years hence--which is a captivating thing all on its own, using that kind of a number in the late 19th century. (Also it is interesting to note that even after all that time the author doesn't have humans flung to one place or another in the galaxy--after all, deep space flight had already been established in fiction for hundreds of years by this point...not commonly so in literature, but definitely there.) In any event the author works their way into the first of ten examples of Last Man scenarios describing that after epochs the mountains will get worn down with the solid matter flowing into the oceans, which fill the oceans, causing the continents to become islands, the islands to shrink, and so on until there is nothing there but water and a bit of the world's tallest peak with some guy sitting there on it, until even that is consumed, and our Last Man drowns.
As it turns out, the ten scenarios include the last man [sic] dying and the species becoming extinct by drowning, being gassed, gassed and/or blown up, "sunstruck", suffocated, "burned up", frozen, crushed, "killed by the crash of orbs", and then, finally, at #10, we are surprised that "there will be no last man". Its a nice piece of thinking, and pretty creative; recognizing that I've quoted some of the descriptives for how the end will come.
The surprise ending part is this: almost everyone dies, though there is a self-replicating survivor that will be a BugMan of some sort and start the whole "human" thing all over again.
[The image above and left has nothing to do with the article, but I had to include it because it is so fabulous and it appears in the same year of the SciAm as this article...and it comes close to being some sort of BugMan, or Lobster-something.]
From the Scientific American:
"One by one these [mountains] will be submerged until finally but one is left: Kunchainjunga, the loftiest summit of the Himalayas, perhaps; or more likely, some new coral reef which an insect to-day is laboring, down in the depths, to build up. Here will perish the last man, and the body of the last relic of our race will be washed away by the waves of the mighty flood. Therefore
- (1) if the last man does not starve to death he will probably be drowned.
Another theory is that of the periodicity of deluge, proposed by Adhemar, which depends on the fact of the unequal length of the seasons in the two hemispheres.
- (2) the last man will certainly be drowned. Would destroy every living thing. Such being the case, the person capable of breathing deleterious gas longest would survive the rest; and therefore
Every few years or so we have a comet scare; and when the flaming star appears in the sky...If it did, our globe would plunge into an atmosphere of gas,which, mingling with the air, say those who predict this mode of death to our planet, would produce an explosion which ...The inventor of this theory fails to consider the probability of the center of gravity returning as gradually as it was displaced:but with this defect, the hypothesis from another point of view goes to show that
- (3) if the last man is not suffocated by cometary gas he will be blown up.
It is believed by many astronomers that there is a retarding medium in space, based on the fact that Encke's comet, in thirty-three years, loses a thousandth part of its velocity. If the ether resists our earth's motion in its orbit, then the centrifugal force will be constantly lessened, while the action of gravity will remain constant: so that the earth will describe a spiral path, always approaching the sun. Finally the intense heat would turn the whole globe into one barren waste;but before then the human race would have disappeared.The probabilities in such event point to the supposition that
- (4) the last man will be sunstruck.
There are certain classes of rocks which are constantly becoming hydrated, and are thus occluding immense amounts of water. The theory has been broached that, in course of time, the seas will thus be dried up; and water being absent,our atmosphere will disappear, the earth becoming a waste similar to the moon. But before then, the atmosphere would probably become too rare for human existence. As the air pressure decreases, as M. Bert has shown, the privation of oxygen produces the deleterious effects experienced chiefly by aeronauts and mountain climbers. Consequently, in view of this theory
- (5), the last man will be suffocated.
Our sun itself may come to an end in two ways. First,as Mr. Proctor has recently very graphically explained, being but a variable star it may suddenly blaze up, and go out as other suns are known to have done. In this case, the intense heat of the colossal conflagration would destroy every thing on the earth, and perhaps even vaporize the earth itself.Should this event occur
- (6), the last man will be burned up.
Or the sun may cool down. The glacial zones would thus enlarge, the race will be crowded nearer and nearer to the equator, by the encroaching glaciers coming from the poles.The small space will no longer support the life upon it, and in the terrible struggle for existence only the fittest will of course survive. Finally, after the earth becomes covered with the vast ice sheet, man with his wonderful capacity of adaptation to surrounding circumstances will probably subsist for a certain period, but in the end the constantly augmenting coldness will assert itself, and thus eventually
- (7) the last man will be frozen to death.
It has been suggested that the cooling of the earth will lead to the production of immense fissures in its crust similar to those already visible in the moon. The surface of the earth would thus be rendered extremely unstable, while the dwellers thereon for safety would be compelled to take refuge in caves. It is possible that the troglodytic remnant of the race might meet its fate in some great cataclysm or eruption,and hence it is assumable that
- (8) the last man will be crushed tn some subterranean cavern.
Or supposing that the people adapted themselves to their surroundings and managed to live on the surface, until the time when the earth becomes so cracked and broken that, as predicted, it falls apart, flying off in fragments into space. Possibly a part may exist large enough to preserve its atmosphere. It may either be a satellite of the first larger body within whose sphere of attraction it may come: or it may fall into another world. In such case
- (9) the last man will be killed by the crash of orbs, but if he is not, and no one can tell to what extremes of resistance the race may develop, he will become an inhabitant of a new world.
Evolution does not necessarily imply progress, and possibly the race may have retrograded until the human being possesses
the nature of the plant louse; such being the case, this single inhabitant will spontaneously produce posterity of both sexes.
A new race of men will begin, to continue ad infinitum. Hence
- (10) there will be no last man."
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