Random hypothetical

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Graham Kennedy
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Graham Kennedy »

"Every plant and animal species on Earth that's not us, rendered extinct forever." :)
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by McAvoy »

GrahamKennedy wrote:"Every plant and animal species on Earth that's not us, rendered extinct forever." :)
Splitting hairs here but animal and plant life would be living life right? Not plant cells or animal cells.

Forever part though is pretty cut and dry.

There would be countless people out there that wouldn't shut the fuck up about the planet being sterile. These people already think there should be a deadly plague to thin the population down.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Graham Kennedy »

McAvoy wrote:There would be countless people out there that wouldn't shut the fuck up about the planet being sterile. These people already think there should be a deadly plague to thin the population down.
There are a few, yes. I doubt they'd last more than a generation or two though.
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Re: Random hypothetical

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McAvoy wrote:
IanKennedy wrote: Yes, perhaps, but I would have thought that Q would destroy that too.
That wasn't clear in that somewhere in the future we could create domesticated Lions and Bears and giant dogs we could ride into battle or a Griffin.
Seems pretty clear to me:
2) Humanity will not be destroyed... but every single non-human living thing will be. Every plant and animal species on Earth that's not us, rendered extinct forever. Humanity will be given technology to enable it to produce food and other similar animal and plant products synthetically - replicators or similar. So we will continue on as a species... just living on a completely sterile planet.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Tyyr »

Teaos wrote:80 million rather that 7 billion?

The way I see it, you'd be eating each other with in a year. My country is self sufficient in food but not modern tech.
It's the 350 million people most like me, who are where I live, and whom my family are part of the population. So yeah, I pick my country, sorry rest of the world. With the way the world is interconnected there are precious few countries that could see the rest of the world disappear and it have little effect on them, and most of those are already hell holes.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Teaos »

Could America stand on its own two feet? Agriculture, raw materials ect?

I think my country would survive, but maybe not to current standards of living. We dont really have the population to go out and colonise empty countries to get their raw goods. America might... if they could co-ordinate it.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Tyyr »

We have raw materials, but that's not the important part. Well lets look at what you're after, short term could we support out current way of life? No. Short term could we keep everyone alive? No. Long term could we rebuild? Yes. Here's the problem, we don't grow our food where we live. Food is grown in other states, even other countries, and then shipped in. Not a lot of wheat or potato, or apple farms in Florida. If every other country is depopulated we'll lose out on a lot of food suppliers in the southern hemisphere. We also won't have the fuel needed to move bulk food around like we do now. Also our industrialized farming system can't be sustained as it relies heavily on oil for both work and fertilizers. So you're not going to be able to move the food that's being grown now, nor plant next years crops with expectation of the same yields. So frankly, much of the East and West coasts are going to starve. You're going to have to move from where you are to where food is grown.

And that's food, something we're pretty well off in. So much manufacturing has been outsourced, the factories where we get our clothing, electronics, and spatulas will no longer have any workers in them. We could eventually rebuild them, but you're not going to be able to go to the store and buy a dozen pairs of socks for six bucks again in your life time.
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Re: Random hypothetical

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In terms of resources, I don't see why you couldn't just go out and take what's lying around. For example the UK would struggle to feed itself... but it wouldn't be hard to go over to France and take over a bunch of their farmland. We've got ships, we've got farm equipment, and we've got the capacity to make more of both. Same for mining coal and ores, etc. You might have a tough year or two while you re-established all the supply chains and such, but I'd think it would all be very survivable.

Unless the wiping out of the rest of humanity means physically destroying the rest of the world or preventing access to it.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Teaos »

Nope everyone else just drops dead.

I dont think you'd be able to organise an effective colonial opperation to go, live, work, ship back everything you need. You dont just need people, you need skilled people, and they have to be willing to leave and work for the betterment of others. And if you dont get shit together with in 5 years or so, society would of collapsed to the point where you might not be able to get back up.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Tyyr »

GrahamKennedy wrote:In terms of resources, I don't see why you couldn't just go out and take what's lying around. For example the UK would struggle to feed itself... but it wouldn't be hard to go over to France and take over a bunch of their farmland. We've got ships, we've got farm equipment, and we've got the capacity to make more of both. Same for mining coal and ores, etc. You might have a tough year or two while you re-established all the supply chains and such, but I'd think it would all be very survivable.

Unless the wiping out of the rest of humanity means physically destroying the rest of the world or preventing access to it.
Because in about 72 hours your country grinds to a halt. Vast reserves of oil, food, and goods aren't just laying around. The problem with your idea of just going to France and taking what you need is that if everyone else on Earth dropped dead where is your fuel coming from? The rigs in the Gulf, the North Sea, Canada, Venezuala, the middle east. They've all gone dark. All the oil tankers, now just unguided environmental disasters. The oil has stopped. On average most country's have about 72 hours of things like food and fuel on hand at any given time. You can't afford to disrupt those supply chains for more than maybe 24 to 48 hours before things start to go Lord of the Flies on you. After 48 hours, they're terminal. It will be nearly impossible to restart because the supply chain is breaking down all along the route. Do you really think you could staff up every step in the supply chain in 36 hours from this event happening? Highly unlikely.

Without oil how are you going to move the food from France to the UK? You don't have a lot of time to reestablish the supply line, again, about 24 to 48 hours and that's it. You've got to get farmers into those fields and people working the supply chain from the fields to the markets right the fuck now. Oh, and to do that you're going to need oil. With all the problems of that. At some point every good you purchase traveled by truck, every good. Modern society is an incredibly complex web that's been built up over centuries to what it is now. Globalization has taken cornerstones of that web and moved them far, far away. Oil comes from other countries. Clothes are made in sweatshops in SE Asia because you can pay people pennies an hour there. This kind of event is going to completely wipe out those parts of the web and you do not have the time to salvage them.

In this kind of scenario where you've got no warning about this you're going back to the pre-industrial era. YOu can't stop it, and you're probably going to wind up with a pre-industrial sized population too. Now with the knowledge we have and the left over bits of society to put to use you could probably re-establish something roughly equivalent to modern society over the course of say a century, maybe a bit less, but you can't salvage current society. It can't handle this kind of disruption.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Teaos »

Yeah thats the issue with this senario. So while I would choose my country. I think we would handle it as well as anyone realistically could. But we would pretty quickly revert to an agricultural society with touches of modern living. Then, after we have the necessities lined up, we might send small colonies to other parts of the world and try to establish some small form of trade of resource trading. We would not maintain modern standards, but I think we would cope pretty well.
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Re: Random hypothetical

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Tyyr wrote:
GrahamKennedy wrote:In terms of resources, I don't see why you couldn't just go out and take what's lying around. For example the UK would struggle to feed itself... but it wouldn't be hard to go over to France and take over a bunch of their farmland. We've got ships, we've got farm equipment, and we've got the capacity to make more of both. Same for mining coal and ores, etc. You might have a tough year or two while you re-established all the supply chains and such, but I'd think it would all be very survivable.

Unless the wiping out of the rest of humanity means physically destroying the rest of the world or preventing access to it.
Because in about 72 hours your country grinds to a halt. Vast reserves of oil, food, and goods aren't just laying around.
The UK is an oil producing nation, with it's own refineries. We'd manage that.

And there are large amounts of food around - plenty of canned and dried food would last for years. There may only be a few days supply around at any given time, but that's a few days supply for hundreds of millions of people within easy reach.
The problem with your idea of just going to France and taking what you need is that if everyone else on Earth dropped dead where is your fuel coming from? The rigs in the Gulf, the North Sea,
Huh? The rigs in the North Sea are manned by good British stock, who all survive in this scenario. We'd have fuel. And we've almost certainly got the engineering know how to fly people to places like Saudi Arabia and restart their oil operations. Hell, British companies run a lot of those oil wells as it is. Certainly you'll easily find the skill base here to send people out to run them again.

The UK isn't some little backwards nation. There's sixty million people here in a modern industrial / post industrial society. We've got a huge range of skills to put to work. I've no doubt it would be a tough time for a few years, but I'm perfectly confident that we'd survive.

Edited to add - fun aspect of this, the oil thing works for us as the UK... but if Scotland declares independence next year then they all die when England/Wales/Northern Ireland survives, and we'd lose most of our oil expertise. Would make things a lot harder! But I still think we'd manage! :)
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Teaos »

Do you make enough food for 60 million? You population density is massive.
What does defeat mean to you?

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Re: Random hypothetical

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Teaos wrote:Do you make enough food for 60 million? You population density is massive.
As Graham said, we can restore the old Angevin Empire. That should resolve the issue.
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Re: Random hypothetical

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Teaos wrote:Do you make enough food for 60 million? You population density is massive.
We don't, though I've heard it claimed that we could.

We certainly could if we went and put a chunk of France under the plough.

Until then... all of Europe to raid for canned/otherwise preserved food. America too if you fancy a longer trip. Oh, and unlimited access to all the fishing in all the EU's fishing grounds, along with all of Europe's herds of food animals. Should be enough to tide us over until the new crops start coming in, I'd say.
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