As others have noted, this was the world population in living memory. There would be a period of readjustment with localised significant changes (e.g. the UK housing market), but otherwise it’s no big deal. China, India, and the Far East get their population problems resolved, at least in the short term.
The UK is actually an interesting case because if you halve the population, the UK becomes able to feed itself. Until we start breeding.
Which is where Thanos’ idea fails. Mortals breed. If you cull the population, it expands back out.
My thoughts are along that line as well. 50% across the board as far as classes and skill-sets and we’ll be fine. 50% from the top, bottom or middle (or 50% but all from Asia or the Americas) and we may be screwed. You basically lose all of one type of person who makes the whole. Keep it random and I think we could go as high as 60% and still be fine.
Now the good thing is that 50% vanishes. If we woke up and 50% were laying around dead we would be totally overwhelmed and things would quickly break down. Leave the shells behind and we’re talking a total collapse at maybe anything over 20%.
outside of the immediate effects-some fraction of the cars currently in motion will crash etc. Almost all aircraft will be fine as they have 2 pilots and only the really unlucky ones will lose both, etc., I don’t see this as having much effect at all. Big cities will suddenly have ½ as many people-but all the services will continue. There will be a lot of help wanted ads around industrial sites, some houses for sale as people pair up again, but I don’t see much if any long-term effects. A bunch of special elections to fill sudden vacancies in various political bodies. Meh. Don’t see the problem.
A lot of building and business owners will go bankrupt if occupancy goes down 50% or more, and factories at 50% loss of employees and/or customers will go belly up in no time. It’s not as easy as “you only need half the employees to service half the customers” because the buildings, equipment, leased land etc. are still there and need to be paid for. Cut the profits in half, and see what happens to all that.
I was going to highjack this thread by asking how the cut would be distributed assuming it included all matter-energy in the universe. IE, would the earth be destroyed when the sun went nova because half the matter in the center disappeared and nuclear fusion stopped or would the earth escape into the galaxy because suddenly it had twice the orbital speed necessary because the sun’s gravity dropped by half?
But I checked with an expert (my son the comic book guru) who tells me Thanos only destroyed ½ of the sentient populations in the universe and it is left to the next volume to determine whether that means ½ of each population or ½ of the number of populations. Either way, not enough of a factor to matter to anyone. If you are part of the ½ of the entire populations that disappears it doesn’t matter to you any more, and as discussed upthread if ½ the population of the world disappears the loss will be made up in a few generations.
But the shock and recovery would probably take a while.
Imagine just in the context of a single family. What happens if just the children are chosen? Or if just the parents? Or the only survivor is a newborn? Or an elderly person who needs constant care? Or a hospital where it’s mostly the medical staff who suddenly disappears?
The sudden disappearance of half the population will have tack-on effects that dwarf mere traffic accidents. Ignoring the psychic horror of the instant and unexplained disappearance of half the population (disease and wars give at least some time see things coming and mentally adjust and often to physically prepare), there’s going to be a period of days, weeks, or maybe even months where more people die because caretakers and critical personnel go missing and nobody else knows to look for or care for the people most at risk from emergencies. And that’s just as we have a spike in the need for emergency medical care but only half the staff, exacerbating the issue. The true toll is going to be higher than 50%.
I still expect people to get on with it, but it’s not business as usual for a long time.
If it’s anything like what happened in The Leftovers, the sudden departure of half the world’s population will lead to a rise in religious cults, all with their own variation of what was meant by the sudden rapture. There will be suspicion surrounding some families, neighbourhoods or even whole towns that were left untouched while others were completely devastated. There will be people looking for patterns in who was taken and why. And there will be traumatized people doing their best to “just carry on” despite the annihilation that has happened. Society would have a hard time surviving and learning to trust again. What if it happens again?
I think freeways might have worse survivability than airplanes in such circumstances. With airplanes, unless you’re very close to takeoff or landing, there’s no immediate danger. You’ve got redundant pilots on all commercial flights, plus passengers who may have piloting skill. And you’ve hours for people on the ground to pull together and help you out. I’m pretty sure that most planes can land on autopilot, and that a member of the crew can be talked through doing enabling it.
On the roads, you’re probably in a major accident within seconds. And many injuries that would not be fatal in a normal car crash in a developed country will be fatal in this scenario. You will not be getting to a hospital quickly. You will not be getting a blood transfusion. You probably won’t be getting anywhere you can’t walk or ride a bike for days at least, as every road will be full of wrecks.
Even in an apocalypse, flying is safer than driving!
Who will be talking the substitute pilot in? Remember, half of airport staff will be gone also, and whatever dispatchers are left will be facing a hell of a mess.
Why, assuming there are still heirs (and estate attorneys) around. The backlog in probate would be gigantic, but assuming they ruled that the vanished were dead, no reason for the money to go to the government. Assuming an heir was left, which won’t always be true. So the government will still be making a bundle.
But half the landlords will have vanished also. It would make sense for tenants in buildings where the ownership is uncertain to move into those with remaining owners, since there will be so many empty apartments.
Which makes me think - either there will be the biggest garage sale in the history of man, or the thrift stores will do really, really, good. Lots of stuff that will be distributed over half the people.
By “unclaimed bank accounts,” I was assuming that probate had already been completed. If the bank account was discovered during probate, it wouldn’t be unclaimed property.
What happens here in Maryland after that is the bank turns inactive/unclaimed accounts over to the state (after performing a modicum of due diligence) after three years. Turns out that there is no time limit for claimants of the property to come forward. It would be interesting to know how much of unclaimed monies our little state is sitting on and for how long.
I hadn’t really thought of things in this way. But after we got through the period of emotional shock and logistical disruption (which would be pretty massive at a 50% loss rate), there would be at least a short period of plenty in certain types of durable goods. Oh, and real property, too, I guess. And we could double the number of vehicles we owned.
There really shouldn’t be much we couldn’t handle with 160 million of us still around.
