Does this mean I can get a better apartment for less than the rent I’m paying now? Or how about a house with a big yard!
Maybe Apple will finally gain market share.
Well I’ve been talking with my alien masters, and…
HEY!!! Why is this telephone handset so dirty?
(sorry, couldn’t resist… me bad, baba chomp)
(offtopic -1… it would seem that I’m lurking a lot less lately, what the hell is wrong with me??? oh well, it’s fun)
Why would you think there’d be rioting? I think with the population thinned out, there’d be less pressure than ever for rioting. And everyone would be scrambling to do the jobs of 4 people at work, leaving them too weak to riot.
I’d think the main thing would be the massive psychological trauma of virtually every family on Earth being broken up.
The next biggest thing would be the special issue of People so we’d know which celebrities we still have.
maybe not rioting but i think there would defintly be looting.
Why would they have to do the jobs of five people? The need for people to do things increases as the population does, so a severe decrease in population would have a corresponding decrease in the need for jobs performed. Not as many services would need to be provided (anything from trash pick-up to medical care) not as many things(be it food, goods or energy) would need to be manufactured because of decreased demand…and there would be fewer traffic jams and more parking spaces once all the unused cars were abandoned along New Jersey highways, so that’d make people have even more free time. 
Though there might be a demand for people to go around and turn off things in people’s houses and move cars in the way or so on, that probably would only account for the first few weeks after 80% disappeared. After that people shouldn’t have any more work than they did in the first place.
I smell the makings of a good sciffy novel.
First, you would have a lot of people in total panic mode as they discover that many other people heard the message, so it was not their imagination, and aliens have arrived and are “in control,” so to speak. The panic increases as people discover that they are staying but most of their loved ones are not. Meanwhile, as those who did not get the message start to believe that they are about to be kidnapped by aliens, those people get really terrified (with perhaps a few exceptions among people who trust that the aliens are taking them to a better place).
After the departure, some people would go into denial, trying to continue their normal routines as though everyone would return soon. Others would figure that all the old rules no long apply, and would begin looting or worse. By the time that emergency crews or others realized that there were millions of abandoned children all over the world, thousands of them (especially babies) would have starved to death.
As time passes, the loss of 80% of farm workers, truck drivers, food processors, and the like would lead (in developed - and therefore, specialized - nations) to localized food shortages despite the over-abundance of food.
In many countries, governments would be overthrown as people blamed them either for failure to protect them from the aliens or for failure to preserve order after the departure or for past sins. (Remember, 80% of the police and the army are gone, but all those weapons are lying around.)
Services that most people in developed countries take for granted (i.e. electricity, gas, water, sewer, phone, mail) would be severely disrupted, wouldn’t they? Before worrying about recovering lost fields of science and etc. we would need to get on with day to day living. I could learn to plant a garden, milk a cow, I already know how to sew. But who is going to manufacture the material for me to sew? Will there be power to do so? How would I irrigate the garden?
Is 20% of those who maintain these services enough to keep things going?
[sub]Alright, I admit it, I am a citified wuss. Tell the aliens to come back in another century or two.[/sub]
Isn’t this just The Stand without all the dead bodies?
Many people have written apocolyptic novels, which this could be viewed as. Although technology would remain intact at the instant of separation, the sharp decrease in population would certainly cause chaos. Families torn apart, government leaders missing, etc.
The mere decrease in population would not necessarily equate it to The Stand. Just as important is how that decrease occurs. Can it be stopped? Who is behind it? Is the “random” distribution really random? Are the aliens truly doing this as a favor? A lot could be done with the premise.
All remaining Christians finally agree with me for saying that the Bible clearly states that the wicked are taken and the good are left.
Dale–go take an asprin & lie down. :rolleyes:
Well, the real estate market would go straight to hell. Think you’re gonna sell your house? Rent out your condo? Ha!
Rapid deflation of currency, as supplies (initially, at least) exceed demand?
Worker shortages.
Failure of infrastructure due to said worker shortages.
(It’ll take a while for the contraction of the economy to take up the slack.)
Food shortages as production and distribution networks are spread too thin?
Sounds like fertile ground for a fascist dictatorship.
Oh yeah, and the estate/probate lawyers who get left behind will make a killing, as the property of the “disappeared” gets divvied up among their “left behind” relatives.
>>Why would they have to do the jobs of five people? The need for people to do things increases as the population does,
Because -
>>Services that most people in developed countries take for granted (i.e. electricity, gas, water, sewer, phone, mail) would be severely disrupted, wouldn’t they? Is 20% of those who maintain these services enough to keep things going?
Take garbage collection, for example. Most of the folks doing garbage collection don’t have to plan how to collect garbage every day. A few people do forward planning and adjust to changes, but mostly the process today is the same as the process yesterday.
Now, suddenly, the whole process needs to be rethought and re-arranged. The same will be true for every service or industry. For the near term, people will take on the jobs of those who are gone while the re-structuring occurs, just because the old system worked. It collected the garbage, produced the electricity, paved the roads, distributed the beanie babies, etc.
I imagine laws on squatting and “recycling” will change. You’ll have trouble calling it looting in the first confusion, when all the owners are gone.
If delivery of birth control is disrupted, the position of women in society will change. It wasn’t enlightenment that improved the status of women, it was the medical technology that allowed women-and-children to separate from one word into three.
Did you just get whooshed by my post or are you just an asshole?
Dale --let me introduce the concept of the BBQ Pit to you. It is the forum of this Board where foul language & personal abuse is tolerated.
This is not the Pit.
If a Mod spots your post, you may get a much stronger-worded version of the polite reminder that I just gave you.
As for the “whooshed” comment, I am quite happy to admit I don’t clearly grasp what you mean by it. If you would be kind enough to explain your remark more clearly, and should I have actually misunderstood some remark you have made, I will be pleased to admit it.
I think the big problem would be orginizational. I mean you would have to poll your population to see what you had left and where they are. YOu would have to know the age sex and profession. What if you had mostly males? You may need to convince people to take a new job for the good of everybody. If the 80% is taken at random I imagine it would be pretty tramatic because family units would be torn up. There would be children with out parents, spouses seperated, and all other kinds of seperations. There would be a terrible mental health crisis that may be held off or made worse when all the food in the grocery store is gone or goes bad.