# Every human disappears, except those in North Korea. How screwed is humanity? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 11, 2014, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-disappears-except-those-in-north-korea-how-screwed-is-humanity/683433 "2014-03-11T14:41:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2014, 3:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-disappears-except-those-in-north-korea-how-screwed-is-humanity/683433/21 "2014-03-13T03:28:47Z")
> [@Onomatopoeia](#): > > Scavengable food would shortly run out. Also, how would they get deeply into China, much less Siberia, on foot? Small bands of people could live for a long time on cans of food and rice. Once they get far enough away, they can settle down and do subsistence farming. As noted below, people moved all over the world long before there were airlines with security gates. You go to a town, stay for a while and then when food runs low, pack up some and move on to the next town. Why do they have to go by foot? Once you figure out how to siphon gas and bust locks, you can go from Korea to France. > [@Furious\_Marmot](#): > > Assuming they did leave, wouldn’t the average North Korean be better suited to survival in a suddenly de-industrialized world than the average South Korean? Think of the advantages that growing up in a shithole would impart. I think you’re right. I think enough small groups would branch out that someone is going to survive. It would be interesting to see what would happen after that. It’s likely to still have some sort of central government in the Korean area, and without the massive spending on the military, I think things would sort of settle down, with endless conflicts just like the rest of history. Other groups would move away and form their own counties and there would be a repeat of what has been happening for all of humanity. ---
**Author:** ![Kobal2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kobal2/32/20_2.png) [@Kobal2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kobal2)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2014, 4:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-disappears-except-those-in-north-korea-how-screwed-is-humanity/683433/22 "2014-03-13T04:14:41Z")
Well, realistically speaking it’s much, much harder to implement strict control (both thought- and freedom-) the larger and more geographically distributed a population gets. I strongly doubt a single leader or even committee could enforce rules over the whole of the planet. So Koreans spread out, start banding up into new nations for mutual protection, start dicking each other over for ownership of the good stuff and so on. Not much different from any post-apocalyptic scenario. However since Lil Kim evidently possesses the power to wish any amounts of people into the cornfield at once in this hypothetical reality, the reality-based answer might well not account for every fact. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [March 13, 2014, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-disappears-except-those-in-north-korea-how-screwed-is-humanity/683433/23 "2014-03-13T05:46:36Z")
This is an American board is it not? Tell me, what exactly did happen when people discovered a large continent full of free land? And, why would the answer be different here. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/every-human-disappears-except-those-in-north-korea-how-screwed-is-humanity/683433.md?page=1)