http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/sports_nut/2012/06/long...
While we thought of early human ancestors as less intelligent versions of ourselves, the correct analogy was to a modern Velociraptor: fast to the point of running animals to death, fiercely intelligent, and with unparalleled group coordination.
Arguably the last of the giant dinosaurs was the Moa, a bird with claws that could eviscerate a human with a single swipe, and our species wiped them out as a prey animal.
We are a terrifyingly effective species.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_versus_Horse_Marathon#Winne... (might be anecdotic, but still somehow revealing)
But yep, we can actually run other animals to death.
Humans are terrifying unbalanced creatures.
As a group yes. As individuals - no. Go in alone somewhere where other big predators like wolves, bears or whatnot and hold your ground for a few weeks. I bet that unless you build some kind of fortress for yourself to sleep at night, not even firearms will help you in the long run.
"Even with stone-aged levels of technology we spread to every corner of the world, in every known climate and ecology, in large numbers, and thrived."
Actually, we've managed to thrive only in the places where there was enough air (no underwater humans), water (not many thriving communities in the deserts), food (which was a hard limit for the level of development, famine was a regular regressing factor), warmth (no people in Antarctica), and other such useful things. In this regard we are no different than other animals.
Oh come on now, dont flatter yourself so much.
No, humans cant wipe out all living things that inhabig the surface of the world.
Land-surace is about 150 square million km. Take 1.2Mt the biggest yield in US arsenal currently. That would require around 270 000 nuclear warheads to cover every square km. We dont have that many and never had.
Also that wouldnt even scratch the oceans.
And the cobalt bomb, it hasnt been built, and anyway wouldnt work its not a doomsday device.
There are also way too many caves and cave systems with ecology in them which would be largely unaffected by civilized weapons.
Sure, the earth wouldnt look like it does today, but life would still prevail - and civilization isnt really that powerful to exterminate all life.
One does not have to rake every piece of soil in order to wipe out the entire life. The oceans would get the radioactive lavement of the soil and cycle that back on the land over and over though radioactive rains. This affects especially the bottom layer of the food chain, which cause chain's partial (if not total) collapse. In the end there is the possible nuclear winter that may render almost the entire planet inhabitable for all life forms. (Spores, bacteria, algae or other microscopic life forms may resist in hibernation to thrive again someday, but that is not called "living" through the event.) The reality is that there wasn't in our planet history any extinction event that involved nuclear contamination of every available living habitat (among other hostile-to-life effects), and speculating about it and about if it would or not be destructive enough, feels to me a little bit like playing with madness here.
More seriously I suspect that short of a massive high altitude cobalt bomb detonation that some small life will survive on the surface even if all the current nuclear weapon were used.
Not that we have a lot of spare planets lying around but IMO it would be an interesting experement. Also, there is a fairly interesting ecosystem living inside the chernobil building which just goes to show how hardy some things are. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiotrophic_fungus Gama radiation as food... Yea that's a thing.
There is no way we can yet destroy all life on earth - microbial life is too tough for that, but we could destroy all macroscopic life on the surface.
At best we could destroy civilization, but probably not even humanity.
Every living thing on the planet will die as a result.
Humans have no natural predators. Zero. Think about that. Anything that may have once threatened us, we've out organized, out planned, and out thought on the way towards global dominance. Even superficially similar co-inhabitant species like Neanderthal could not survive in a world with Humans. Today, only microscopic creatures threaten us, and we once again organize, plan and think about ways to defeat these creatures.
Even with stone-aged levels of technology we spread to every corner of the world, in every known climate and ecology, in large numbers, and thrived. The only thing that is dangerous to humans is other humans. And we've even arrived at the point that, with no considerable effort at all, we're capable of wiping out every living thing that inhabits the surface of a world.
Despite having poor biting power, diminished canines, running (poorly) on our heels, lower than average strength and no claws. We are the the most dangerous creature in the known universe.