Would humans survive another ice age?

An ice age happens when the planet receives varying amounts of sunlight on its northern latitudes, causing the temperature to drop and the seas to form into ice, which in turn cools the rest of the planet. The axis of the planet tilts slightly so that the southern end is facing more toward the sun, leaving the Northern Hemisphere void of light and warmth, while the southern end heats up slightly.

(A photo from the frozen wastes of Antarctica, but this could easily be a country like the US during the next glacial period)

Did you know we are in an ice age right now?

When the planet freezes, it does so very slowly and parts of the earth remain unfrozen. But the planet doesn’t just flash freeze for an amount of time and then thaw again, instead, it will experience glacial and inter-glacial periods throughout the lifespan of that particular ice age.

The current ice age began around 34 million years ago and has experienced dozens of interglacial periods where the earth heats up enough for life to flourish. Due to the length of an ice age, which can last over 100 million years, these interglacial periods can also last for a very long time, but rarely longer than 30,000 years.

(During the last ice age, humans had to deal with creatures like mammoths and wooly rhinos, but in the next one we won’t have such dangers, or sources of meat)

How long until it gets cold again?

The common belief is that the ice age ended around 12,000 years ago, but that was only the end of the last glacial period. When the earth warms up, it doesn’t usually make it past 15,000 years on average until it gets cold again, and most researchers predict we have around 1,500 to 2,000 years before the earth plunges back into a frozen wasteland.

When this eventually happens, there will still be areas of the world that won’t be covered by ice, but most of the Northern Hemisphere will be a no-go zone for anyone and huge sheets of ice will be crushing the earth below it into a new shape. Ice sheets over northern Russia and Canada were up to two miles thick during the worst glacial periods and contained enough weight to shove entire mountain ranges across the land.

(Huge icebergs will slowly travel south and melt as they go, but will also cool the waters and chase the sealife south with it)

So could humans actually survive another glacial period?

Technology will be much more advanced when the next glacial period hits, but assuming it hasn’t evolved to a stage where we could stop an ice age, we’d still be able to survive as a race, but at a tremendous cost. All the ice that would cover most of the Northern Hemisphere would have to come from the oceans, which means the seas would be much lower around the world, and countries with low-laying regions would see their land increased by millions of acres. This may sound good, but it would create more problems than it would fix, the worst of which are listed below:

War

Canada, The United States, Russia, China and all of Europe that wasn’t right next to the Mediterranean would have no choice but to move south. Their countries would be covered in ice too thick to break through, and they would literally be forced to relocate their entire population further south, into lands that already have their own people and problems. War would be inevitable because no country could support the extra population, but the people moving away from the cold zone would have the choice of take somewhere by any means or freezing to death

Useless ground

When the sea levels go down, there will be countless acres of new land around the thawed part of the world, but all this ground would have been under saltwater for thousands of years. It will be sand and rock that is completely void of the necessary nutrients needed to grow crops, It could be built on to house people but wouldn’t provide a way to feed them.

Danger of making fish extinct

Around 150,000 years ago when humans started to become “human”, there was an estimated global population of less than 200,000 people. The thawed areas of the world back then would have provided more than it would be possible to consume. Today, there are currently over 7 billion people on the planet, which is about 35,000 times as many people who also have advanced fishing technologies. With so many people needing food that can’t be grown on the new lands, everyone would be forced to turn to the seas.

The main problem though is that half the seas would be frozen, and the other half would be much smaller due to all the ice moving onto land. It would be the equivalent of everyone on earth only fishing in one ocean, and with certain species of fish already starting to be wiped out, it would be 100 times worse during a glacial period.

Starvation

There wouldn’t be anywhere near enough ground to grow food for everyone on earth in the Southern Hemisphere alone. People would starve to death by the millions and would make every species they could get their hands on extinct in the process. When there is no more food to buy, people will forage anything edible, followed by eating anything they could hunt or trap, or even their own pets. When things get desperate enough they will either starve or eat each other, but whatever happens, the human population will decrease to a level that can be supported by the farmland available.

(For hundreds of miles south of the frozen zone, huge sheets of ice will make the seas impassible to all but the toughest ships)

There is some good news, a new continent will be created

An ice age generally happens when the earth tilts enough so the majority of sunlight lands on the Southern Hemisphere, and the lack of light in the north causes the cold to form. The continent of Antarctica is huge, currently at 14.2 million km², but a large portion of this is made up of ice sheets which would melt. Even if the land mass ended up around the 10 million km² mark, that’s still bigger than either the US or China. This new continent would be able to provide a huge amount of new farm land and resources, but it would also have the most powerful nations on earth fighting over it.