Civilization would collapse. People can't even handle the fact that the earth is fucking round and you expect society to just accept 50% of humans disappearing?
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So let's say 50% of Earth's population disappeared tomorrow
- Thread starter RPGamer92
- Start date
But the value of the property would be almost worthless. Flood the market with homes and the price plummets. How long would a landlord pay to maintain a property that he'll probably never sell.
The economists would have a field day trying to figure out the possible economic factors. The economy would be devastated. There would be a surplus of everything until production adjusts to the new population. I think the rich stand to lose the most because their wealth would plummet.
Why would they pay anything to maintain it? Why would they even bother to maintain it? Squatters will almost certainly happen. The question is if landlords have the ability to evict the squatters (depends on how much law enforcement remains and how much it cares about property rights.).
You can produce a deed that says "I own this property" and tell some squatters to get out. If they don't, you can shoot them. If they don't like you, they can shoot you. There is nothing to stop society from immediately devolving into might-makes-right morality.
Personally, I'm going to squat here:
You are all welcome to take any vacant apartments you want in the building.
Food, water, weapons. Whoever manages to control all three decides on how civilization is rebuilt.
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Humanity in some form would survive. Civilization as we know it? Unlikely.
You guys saying "well that was the population in [x year]" are wild. Or not thinking this through.
Yes, they had half our population, but what they didn't have was an instant where they lost half their doctors, teachers, scientists, pilots, etc. They didn't have planes falling out of the sky, 50% of the cars on the road instantly crashing and leaving an ownerless car behind, etc. etc.
Yes, they had half our population, but what they didn't have was an instant where they lost half their doctors, teachers, scientists, pilots, etc. They didn't have planes falling out of the sky, 50% of the cars on the road instantly crashing and leaving an ownerless car behind, etc. etc.
50-500 years ago, they weren't trucking in their food from hundreds of miles away, sometimes across the world. A lot of infrastructure was more local because local was the only way to do things. Now, infrastructure is global. It's not a blessing in this scenario, it's a curse.
Farms produce way more food than the farmers need to eat because they want to sell that food. To sell that food they have to transport it across the country or across the world to places that need food but have no farms nearby. Without that market and without that transport, most of the year's crops will go to waste. Most major cities would run out of food within a week because there's far more people per square mile than agriculture can sustain within traveling distance.
Gasoline would have to be rationed. A lot of people will need to walk/bike. The upper floors of a skyscraper will usually be abandoned because no one wants to walk down 60 flights of stairs, and the elevator isn't going to be regularly maintained. They will break down within a year, unless all the elevator maintenance crews happened to survive.
Farms produce way more food than the farmers need to eat because they want to sell that food. To sell that food they have to transport it across the country or across the world to places that need food but have no farms nearby. Without that market and without that transport, most of the year's crops will go to waste. Most major cities would run out of food within a week because there's far more people per square mile than agriculture can sustain within traveling distance.
Gasoline would have to be rationed. A lot of people will need to walk/bike. The upper floors of a skyscraper will usually be abandoned because no one wants to walk down 60 flights of stairs, and the elevator isn't going to be regularly maintained. They will break down within a year, unless all the elevator maintenance crews happened to survive.
People are thinking realistically. If 50% of the population dies it's going to be a plague or virus. It's not going to be half the world just instantaneously disappearing.
Fair enough! It's just not what OP asked.
Honestly, I'm not sure civilization would survive a 50% death virus, either, but that would at least have a transition (depending on how quickly it killed).
I'm not saying we don't recover, I'm saying the first decade or two will be scarred horribly. All those conflicts you mentioned SUCKED. People died. humanity survived but how much did we lose?
There's always more assholes around waiting in the woodwork for an opportunity as well as nutjobs whole will be caught up in their ideologies and find a great time to enact on them.
Yeah civilization would survive, it would be a rough few years but we'd make it. As long as enough people survive, supply chains aren't disrupted for key things, AND we don't lose major infrastructure components in a few areas of the world humanity can recover fairly quickly.
The real danger is some sort of virus or world war or something that causes huge parts of our manufacturing ecosystem to shut down for years or decades. It is possible humanity could NEVER recover from something like that. We have a very long chain of progression, say from something simple like clay to bronze to iron to steam to nuclear to nanotech in a ton of areas like power, computing, data storage, biotech, health care, on and on and on. If we "reset" some of those things back to restart, we may simply lack the resources to jump from one key step to another. For want of cadmium we couldn't build SSDs, that kind of problem.
The real danger is some sort of virus or world war or something that causes huge parts of our manufacturing ecosystem to shut down for years or decades. It is possible humanity could NEVER recover from something like that. We have a very long chain of progression, say from something simple like clay to bronze to iron to steam to nuclear to nanotech in a ton of areas like power, computing, data storage, biotech, health care, on and on and on. If we "reset" some of those things back to restart, we may simply lack the resources to jump from one key step to another. For want of cadmium we couldn't build SSDs, that kind of problem.
May I introduce you guys to the lord and saviour TV show, The Leftovers
...Humanity would lose their shit. No one would know how to cope with that kind of loss
...Humanity would lose their shit. No one would know how to cope with that kind of loss
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Is it all the worthless piece of shit hateful cunts that disappear?
If so, full steam ahead with no fucks given.
If so, full steam ahead with no fucks given.
That's not how it works! 50% Some good people and some bad people will be gone.
We had this thread when after infinity War; society would collaspe anyone thinking other wise is crazy; we'd never go back to how things were.
Nothing fundamental would change. Capitalism runs towards zero free energy in a closed system. Which means earth now gained time for TWO more generation of people being trained to bathe in consumption for consumption's sake. But in a hundred years , we would be in the same place we currently in.
This. Even if you don't really care about the premise, one of the best TV shows ever produced.
This is how it would go for real. We're talking like 50% of people required for lost industries to function.
Hell, that's assuming that it's even equal along industries. What if like 80% of all farmers and food producers just dissapeared. Ridiculous amounts of famine just like that.
The amount of opportunism and industrial failure would be crippling. The globalised world is already overextended to a level most people don't really get. Half the people.on ships dissapear, meaning they can't set out to sea. Half the people running trainyards or driving food lorries or controlling traffic or the national grid. No food, no travel, no resources and low contact. Supermarkets and shops would run out within a day and there wouldn't be anyone manning them anyway.
And that's just first world, imagine third world countries losing half their working population.
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OP, I'd suggest watching The Leftovers.
A lot of it would probably look like that from a social and trauma perspective.
A lot of it would probably look like that from a social and trauma perspective.