Não houve confirmação explícita no universo de que Dave Lister é o último ser humano. Holly simplesmente assume (como explicado no romance de ligação Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers ') que, como a maioria das espécies não usa duram mesmo um milhão de anos, que as probabilidades são de que a humanidade tenha morrido nos três intervenientes.
The enormity of all this was slowly beginning to sink in when Holly dropped his final bombshell. The one about the human race being extinct.
'What d'you mean, "extinct"?'
'Well, three million years is a very good age for a species. I mean, your average genus only survives a couple of hundred thousand years, max. And that's with a clean-living species, like dinosaurs. Dinosaurs didn't totally screw up the environment. They just went around quietly eating things. And even then, they didn't get to clock up the big one mill. So the chances of the human race making it to the big three-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh are practically nonexistent. So I'm afraid you just have to face up to the very real possibility that your species is dead.'
Você pode querer notar que Lister é um pouco mais otimista no início de sua jornada de volta ao espaço da Terra.
RIMMER: Home? And where exactly is home supposed to be?
LISTER: Earth.
RIMMER: Earth? What makes you think there'll be any Earth, Lister? And even if there is, look what it's done to a household pet in three million years.
...
RIMMER: Can you imagine what humankind has evolved into? To them, you'll be the equivalent of the slime that first crawled out of the oceans.
...
Lister: ... Holly, plot a course for Fiji. Look out, Earth -- the slime's coming home!
E mesmo depois de passar oito temporadas atravessando os escombros das expedições da Terra para o espaço, seu otimismo só diminuiu um pouco;
LISTER: Okay, Cassandra, do we ever get back to Earth? Has the human race survived?.