This was studied years ago.
“Naturally, they would breed prodigiously, eh? There would be much time, and little to do. But ah with the proper breeding techniques and a ratio of say, ten females to each male, I would guess that they could then work their way back to the present gross national product within say, twenty years.”
- Dr Strangelove
Ten females to each male? Now we’re talkin! Fear, surprise, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope (minus the celibacy and chastity stuff), short swords, sharp pencils and as much sex as I could eat? Deal!
Already thought out as well.
“a sacrifice required for the future of the human race. I hasten to add that since each man will be required to do prodigious… service along these lines, the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature”
- Dr Strangelove
Sacrifice is hard but if it is for a good cause I will voluntarily revert to my pre-16 yr old stage. Just to be able to dance the apoCalypso with my own eyes.
Maxim 58. The pen is mightiest when it writes orders for more swords.
Or the sword determines who holds the pen.
Does this consensus account for the millions of teenagers in developing nations who already head households, work subsistence farms etc? Are they also going to revert to a feral state for … reasons?
They won’t immediately rebuild civilization like the OP asked, but neither are they going to die out.
William Golding was a fantasist. Reality worked out differently:
They will almost certainly come out ahead in broad strokes. The thing is, this is somewhere between the kids all buckling down and maintaining those libraries and rebuilding civilization in a few generations and complete collapse into a feral state. A lot is going to be lost, but, simply, there are too many resources that will be available to the survivors for them to collapse completely. Oh, no doubt many will…many will die or be killed…but many will band together, and some will thrive, especially with access to the vast amount of resources that will be available.
Agreed, though we probably disagree on how far past ‘immediately’ we are talking about. I think SOME civilizations will reform relatively quickly, with some bands putting together a viable community and building a civilization. To get back to where we are today? I think too much will be lost in the struggle to survive and rebuild, so much will have to be relearned and we’d be looking at centuries at least to get back to anything like what we have today. But they aren’t all going to die out or go feral…there are too many of them for that to happen across the board, and too many resources available initially and even medium and long term wrt salvage for that to happen. It will be relearning the joys of 18th or 19th century living with some advances in some areas into, oh, middle 20th century or even more. Probably once the majority of the medicines go bad a lot of that will be lost for a time, but the idea that something can be done will mean they will figure a lot of that out again, and who knows, maybe some 16-year-old genius will be able to work out vertical aspects to preserve going forward until they have time to get out of survival mode and into preservation and rebuilding.
This is the point I believe that is limiting the possibilities. The 16 year olds are not going to preserve and save the world. They will grow and mature into 24 years olds who might save or terrorize society, probably both.
Hate to say but the first few years are going to be overly harder on the females. In much of the world they are still treated as second class property in this modern age. Having 16 year old boys in charge on day 0 is not going to be an improvement.
Thanks for saying this. Even as optimistic as I am, I’m sure that there will be plenty of communities where the kids will wind up eating each other, and not in a good way. The OP is about whether knowledge survives, not whether adults die and the kids never notice except for the lack of homework.
I can imagine places where gang leaders with an infrastructure in place ordering smarter kids to get the fucking lights back on.
Human DNA is still human DNA. Adaptions will be made, and almost everything non-obscure or esoteric will be likely be relearned eventually.