Say a disease akin to Sars wiped out 80pc of the world’s population how would the survivors adapt?
For the sake of argument, an equal amount of each population was struck down and all survivors knew they were immune and, therefore, had no fear of infection.
Presumably, in the long-term humans would breed back to overcrowding levels and repeat all their many historical mistakes but in the meantime, would:
The world become less or more violent? Less competition for the world’s resources but more up for grabs for those looking for an opportunity.
The survivors become more agrarian or urban? Presumably our new-fangled farming methods would continue but what would there be to do in the cities? Systems such as airlines continue? Obviously there would be a great deal of consolidation but, in the near term, would 20pc of the population keep one or two afloat? Would anyone even want to travel?
Money cease to be as important a commodity?
I know, I know, an extremely wide-ranging topic, with many angles untouched upon: Ideal for debating, non?
There’s already a similar experience that has been studied by historians: the Black Plague that swept through Europe in the 14th century.
It killed (as I recall) two-thirds of all Europeans.
The reaction was one of, well, decadence. The peasants found that with their population decimated, the price for their labor suddenly rose. And they could afford luxuries such as chairs and utensils. And the ruling classes reacted with an appetite for fine items such as art works, castles, etc.
The Black Plague led to the Renaissance, so I’d think that we could see a kind of cultural rebirth, as well as a redistribution of wealth (with less pepple competing for the same resources). Of course, with less demand, you’d see in the short term some deflation, which wreaks economic chaos but in the aftermath of a mass human die-off as you propose, I’d think deflation would be akin to an ingrown toenail on a seriously ill cancer patient.
SARs couldn’t do it, but if somebody releases Smallpox… the effect on the Global population would be only slightly less devastating than it was to the Aztecs.
Estimates of mortality rate of Black Death range anywhere from 25% to 40%, with high rates in the more urban areas. That was in a largely agrarian civilization, with a high degree of self-sufficiency.
Personally, I think 80% would tip us over the edge as far as survival as a civilization. There is no way we could maintain the current level of technology with just 20% of the population. If it was an evenly distributed die-off, we would lose too many trained, experianced people in too many areas to be able to train adequate replacements before they died of old age. In the US, the loss of so many farmers would mean that those left in the cities would starve, having absolutely zero skills in survival. Small enclaves would spring up around resource centers, ruled by whoever managed to get to a National Guard armory first. All high-level technological systems would collapse: no airlines, no trains, no electricity, nothing. Complete reversion to savagery in less than 3 generations.
Well hopefully either the survivors know how to turn off Nuclear reactors that would be still running on automatic for a time , or there would be safegaurds in place for such a catastrophe.
Then there is the choice of where to live , Vegas or Boulder
Both , Violent at the start for people that are clustered in Groups , leading to more peaceful as the second stage of the die off continued.
Again , hard to quantify
How do you become a farmer basically over night , lots of trial and error spanned over a course of so many growing seasons. Combine that with logistics of moving lots of ag product to what market.
What may become a boom industry is hydroponics ,with the mary jane being at start a cash crop , but switching over to more basic food groups as possible.
Then there is animal husbandry , how do you milk a cow ? slaughter a cow, etc. Just by watching Paris and Nicole, its not as easy as one may think. So at least in north america it should not be a big deal to find share croppers that are now defacto owners of combine farms.
The rest of the world , I have no idea.
So North America may come out devastated but still viable and thirdworld countries may come out some what better in the short term
Depends on how many of your hypothetical 20 percenters are Pilots, odds are that anything flyable becomes a government asset, for govt use only.
Ocean liners are the thing to put money on
[QUOTE] Money cease to be as important a commodity?[?QUOTE]
Money will never go out of style for very long, sooner or later scale dictates that barter becomes to unweildy. So dont bank on the greenback going out of style.
In the short term knowledge will be king, ie milking a cow , some pharmacist cranking out heart medicine, aspirin , etc.
As for the rest of it, I recommend reading “The Stand”. If you can get past the good v. evil mumbo jumbo, it’s a great read. And quite frightening.
Yes, I would forsee a total collapse of global society. And then pockets of civilization popping up around power sources (hydro damns, oil rigs and refineries, etc).
I imagine the US looking more like 1500’s Central Europe… only better armed. Hehehehe…
Posts seem to be coming down on the bleak side.
In the OP, I did allow for 20pc survival rate throughout all populations, so wouldn’t 20pc of all current/ex pilots, groundcrew etc be able to keep at least 1/2 airlines going. I can understand short-term military requisitioning until the extent of the die-off is assessed, but after that …
Likewise for all other activities. Surely there would be enough people with a grasp of farming to keep the rest fed.
Isn’t the world infinitely better educated now than when the Black Plague struck and so better able to cope?
There is a bright spot in the accumulated knowledge present in even the tiniest of small-town libraries. In my town of 8,000 people, my local library has at least one shelf of books on homesteading, and a bunch on canning/survival/farming/building and such.
Because of that, we wouldn’t have to start from zero. Personally, thanks to my grandmother, I know chickens. I would happily relocate to a more rural setting and raise chickens for the eggs/meat and goats for the milk/cheese. Heck, it beats typing for a living, like I do now.
I can’t answer the question posed here, though I think it is an excellent one. I have always been interested in this scenario, but have never read a decent fictional treatment. The Stand deals with some of these issues, but cops out with the Good vs. Evil crap. Has anyone read something that comes close?
Fruitbat, try “Footfall” or “Lucifer’s Hammer” by Niven/Pournelle.
Marky33, 20% of trained pilots and mechanics is not gonna keep anybody in the air. Period. You are drastically overestimating the ability of the human animal to cope with a societal disaster of that scale. What short-term military? What makes you think that there will be a military? 80% losses will trash any military structure. It will be “root, hog or die” for the survivors. Small enclaves will survive, but society as a whole would be doomed. So much for Frontier Airlines riding out the collapse.
“After the disaster” type science fiction is a very popular topic. I’ve read dozens of them, and the one that seems to treat it most realistically is Earth Abides by George Stewart. At least I thought so.
The Stand–I haven’t read it, but have seen, and loved, the miniseries–did specify that only 1% of the population survived. I can’t imagine that in a scenario where 20% survive, the result would be nearly as devastating. Civilization would continue, notwithstanding a time of massive shaking out as businesses retrench to adapt to a smaller world. Still, I think there’d be enough surving, essential personnel such as engineers, technicians, and doctors to keep things going. And siince we’re not talking about a nuclear holocaust, I assume the old infrastructure would be largely intact.
In some ways, life would be better. Raw materials and real estate would cost a lot less.
One of the things that scared the willies off the folks of the Middle Ages was that the plague struck with such incomprehensible patterns. Leaving a village here, complete annihilating another just a few miles further away. One can forgive them for believing it was the wrath of God. Taking 80% of the population from everywhere is a bit of another scenario. One of the things the plague also gave many parts of Europe were a kind of peasant slavery; as the rulers tried to combat the rising labour prices with laws that forbade the peasants to move away.
I think airplanes would be one of the hardest things to keep going. Besides the pilot it needs a big support system in place – at least for the larger planes. Oil drilling, refining, airplane maintenance. What do you do when the many million small parts start to break down? But perhaps a 20% population could keep up. I think educated, and especially specialised, doctors would be a much worse problem. This is not normally something you’re simply able to learn from a book.
Don’t you think the explosion of animal wild life that would follow when man is gone could make compensate for the worst of our lousy farming skills? A bit of hunger would teach us the art of butchering real quick. Also there would be more than enough food on stock to last us through the first years.
A few books:
Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle: Lucefer’s Hammer: a meteor kills off a good deal of the world.
Frank Herbert: The White Plauge: A, man made, plague kills off nearly all women (now that’s scary!)
George R. Stewart: Earth Abides: Another plague.
Yeah and the protagonist was something of a twit. On the plus side it has something as nice a description of a perfectly normal New York couple who had never learned how to drive a car.
As the pattern of AIDS infection shows, any dieoff due to disease is going to disproportionately hit the Third World population the hardest, followed by the poor in the rest of the world, trailed distantly by the middle and upper classes of the developed world. Reason why is simple: for just about any disease, there will be a way to prevent getting it. Whether it’s surgical masks, condoms, Hazmat suits even, the First World will be able and willing to afford it.
So, you’d have lots of pilots, lots of First World farmers with First World farming skills, and so on. Civilization would survive, mostly. Some poorer countries might come close to being wiped out.
Businesses catering to the aforementioned middle and upper classes would only take a very small hit. It would be a speed bump, nothing more.
Cold-blooded, I know. But I think it’s the truth.
What happens to all of the nuclear reactors left suddenly unattended? Do reactors require day to day messing-with? If so, then that last 20% is going to have fun dealing with a couple of thousand melt-downs and/or other reactor-related problems.
Au contraire, IMHO. In Earth Abides the survivors eventually grouped, regrouped, and built self-sustaining societies. I thought it was fascinating. Of course, it was written about 50 years ago, so a lot of the details are outdated, but the basic point remains.
