What if all currently living, nonbanned Straight Dope Message Board members were the only people on Earth and everyone other human being disappeared? Would we be able to make contact with each other and establish a functioning society?
Could we ban a few people at the last minute?
What are the circumstances of the demise of everyone else? Do they all go all at once? And do they just vanish, or are there corpses all over the place? Do they leave behind all their stuff?
I imagine that the electrical grid and Internet servers would stay active for a few hours or so, so we’d be able to post on this board to coordinate whatever the next step would be. And those of us who are pilots could probably arrange to bring everyone to a few centralized locations, which would be an essential first step. The roads might be difficult, though, if all of the cars just suddenly stopped right where they were.
Very cool OP, Curtis.
I don’t know what the first step would be. I guess, if we have, say, a day before the site goes down and everyone who’s a member knows to log in, I’d try to meet up at some landmark location with all my fellow AZ dopers. From there we could trek out to whatever the chosen national meetup location is.
You’re suggesting that at least some of us … have sex with each other? :eek::eek::eek:
Assuming the desire is to meet up and form a society we’d need to choose the meeting point. Seattle is ideal, because it’s an easy commute for me :D, is a major metro city, gets plenty of clean water dumped on it and it generally isn’t snowed upon. Also, it’s sea adjacent, so fishing is possible.
We’d need to devise plans for long term living. Agriculture and scavenging teams would need to be set up. As much data as possible should be collected for future generations. If we have the appropriate skills we should set up long term engineering and machining facilities.
Since the SDMB is largely free of organized religion, we should probably stamp that out once and for all. Someone would have to make healthcare a priority. With so very few humans left, there would need to be universal access. We’d have to elect leadership, although maybe the citizens of *Dopertopia *could override him or her with a 2/3rds vote… the initial numbers are so small the need for layers of representatives is low.
We’d need to encourage babies and establish law and order. I imagine we’ve got a reasonable supply of social deficients, this being an internet site after all. We’d need to help get those worthies out of their shells and make sure they can contribute to the overall society.
I got dibs on Nzinga, Seated!
Hrm… Sadly, my wife posts here. Which would limit my access to apocalyptic strange.
I wonder how many actual pre-menopausal women we have. If it’s too few the future of humanity might look a little grim.
That’s a tricky position.
Since you are including inactives/lurker types in addition to frequent posters, I think you would have quite a number of people to draw upon. I am not sure where to find the numbers of board members, but I would not be surprised if it numbered in the tens of thousands. If even 10% of these were viable females (such as my wife, who is a member but doesn’t post much anymore) the human race would be safe.
Great. Now I have to keep posting here, just to make sure I survive the Dope-acolypse.
No way, we would have almost every skill and expertise you could ask for but to many of us are ego maniacs and narcissistic. To many people would want to lead
Would we be able to call them trolls and socks in person?
Obviously, we would have to dig a pit first. And then, when the insults were done, I suppose we could barbecue in it.
Well, some of us would dream of an elderly black woman in Nebraska while others would dream of a dark man in Las Vegas. 
Seriously…
I think that prior to this, we’d somehow coalesce into groups based on location. For example, to the best of my knowledge, I’m the only Doper in my little city; I’d first head to Calgary if I knew the only people left on the fact of the earth were Dopers–and the nearest ones to me really are in Calgary.
Once this happened, then somehow, we’d make contact with the Seattle group, the Toronto group, the Chicago group, and so on. These small starting groups might move and become larger groups (for example, Northwestern North America based in say Seattle, Southwestern North America based in say Los Angeles), and so on. Overseas Dopers would do the same thing: groups to which Dopers would travel might be based in London, Sydney, Bangkok, and so on.
Contact might be made via road, but we do have a few aircraft pilots here, and IIRC, some railfans who might be able to understand railway maps and signalling/switching and who can operate a train. Of course, ham radio enthusiasts and similar radio-knowledgeable Dopers would be trying to reach others at a distance too. But anyway, to answer the OP: yes, I think we’d find each other.
There aren’t enough fiscal conservatives here for straight dope members to create a functioning society.
You can finally achieve your dream and go Galt. As a bonus, you’ll leave the rest of us alone. It’s win-win.
This isn’t one of those ‘need answer fast’ things, is it?
When actually faced with life and death decisions, actually caring about reality is helpful. We’d stand a greater chance at survival specifically because most of us are smart enough to see through right-wing lies and wishful thinking.
That said, we’d still help you out, Rand.
What do you mean by that?