Current biological, environmental and economic models make no provision for the extinction of humans. However, it is merely necessary to contemplate the effect on our species of a global economic collapse. We ponder the hypothetical scenario where we eliminate all jobs and money with a magic wand. The agricultural corporations which heretofore produced and delivered the bulk of food to towns and cities suddenly have no further incentives to do so. Blind-sided billions are caught stranded on urban islands expecting the cyclical economy to ?pick up again' as it always has. Meanwhile, the biological clock ticks as provisions fail to appear by the same magic on supermarket shelves. Indeed, even potable water no longer flows from kitchen sinks. The last reserves run out. The last animals are slaughtered. And then the ancient ?Custom of the Sea' takes its toll. Widespread cannibalism provides the coup-de-grace, a natural mechanism that ensures the exponential self-destruction of the last of the hominids.
Further analysis reveals that a magic wand is unnecessary to trigger this unthinkable scenario. What is required is for Man to exhaust the last fiscal remedies as he is doing now. We argue that a mass extinction is not the result of extraterrestrial impacts, infighting, climate change, disease or the arrival of a formidable predator, but of a geologically sudden overturning of the ecological pyramid: the many chasing after the few. The inevitable, imminent disappearance of our species renders climate change, conservation, economic recovery, and sustainability moot.
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