Immortality: What Flew Over Your Head

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Humans have long pursued immortality, making it one of our enduring goals. People like Brian Johnson, a Silicon Valley millionaire, are currently striving to achieve it — not just for themselves, but for all of humanity. He discussed these efforts in a recent Fortune article.

He’s so committed to his mission of immortality that he even has a deadline set — 2039.

That’s some serious commitment, but has anyone critically examined the potential consequences of humans achieving this goal?

This is why we’re here: to delve deep and discuss some of the possible consequences humans will have not only on themselves but also on animals and the environment.

Let’s dig in.

No Resources

This one, when you think about it, comes as no shock considering humans occupy a large portion of the planet and have the nasty habit of destroying a lot of animals’ habitats to continue expanding.

Then there’s the fact that, besides taking up more and more space, humans would end up consuming an unfathomable amount of animals, vegetation, and water. And so much more.

Global warming would be moving at the Flash’s pace.

It’s a total annihilation of resources and the environment, let’s be honest.

There would be nothing left to consume; thus, everyone would eventually starve to death, but let’s not forget the people who are willing to cannibalize others in order to live. They would perish as well.

Systematic Culling

This one gets quite morbid and actually takes us back to square one when you think about it. In order to stop the human population from getting out of control, a system would have to be implemented to remove humans after a certain number of decades have passed.

A Strict Number of Births

If the majority of people who are immortal choose to have children, that would mean we’re back at square one with no resources. It would only make sense that the number of children born would be incredibly strict, such as one child per household, or they might even go further and place a limit on how many children can be born in the state or province.

What if it’s already accounted for, though, that the scientist who worked on making mankind immortal also gave it a caveat? Such as we have substantially lower fertility rates on purpose, therefore helping to decrease the likelihood of total overpopulation.

Varied Reactions

As with a lot of things, such as vaccinations and medicines, maybe every person’s body reacts differently to having just been given immortality. Perhaps it’s not compatible with everyone, or maybe it causes inexact changes. such as the person not being immortal at all, but they end up with something else. Perhaps they end up with only agelessness and a bonus ability.

conclusion

We went through some of the possibilities for what might happen if all of humanity were to become ageless, such as the impact on our environment and animals, as well as expected and unexpected changes in humans.

I hope you enjoyed this piece and that it really got your brain going as much as mine.

I would love to know what other scenarios you believe could happen that I didn’t think of.

And of course, constructive feedback is always welcome.

Sources:

Fortune, Tech CEO Bryan Johnson says he’ll make humans immortal by 2039 — first he just needs to sort out ‘buggy’ issues like ‘mistakenly causing cancer’, December 17, 2025, December 17, 2025, https://fortune.com

Kent State Online, How Do Humans Affect the Environment?, April 6, 2018, editorial staff, https://onlinedegrees.kent.edu

Science Direct, The good, bad and ugly of dispositional greed, August 2022, Marcel Zeelenberg, Seger M. Breugelmans, www.sciencedirect.com