# "Last Man on Earth" scenario: Where is the best place for them to settle? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 18, 2015, 2:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748 "2015-12-18T02:05:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 8:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/61 "2015-12-21T20:42:11Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Well you could probably use coal, mind you I’ve never seen coal in my life and wouldn’t know where to find any. Refined gasoline on the other hand has a finite life span and unstabilized unleaded gasoline starts to break down and lose octane after 90 days. With a stabilizing agent you could possibly get it to last up the 3 years but that means getting the stabilizer out to all the gas pumps you can find as quickly as possible. Diesel will last up to a year depending on temperature and storage conditions I’m not sure about stabilizers but as diesel gets older a fine sediment and gum forms in the diesel brought about by the reaction of diesel components with oxygen from the air. The fine sediment and gum will block fuel filters, leading to fuel starvation and the engine stopping. Frequent filter changes are then required to keep the engine going. The gums and sediments do not burn in the engine very well and can lead to carbon and soot deposits on injectors and other combustion surfaces. > > Either way within 5 years you’d better have either developed the ability to refine crude or found a different way to power your society. Hope one of your survivors was a petrochemical engineer. Yes, gasoline “goes bad” after a while. It goes bad the same way canned food goes bad. You’re worried that old gas will be hard on the engine of your scavenged car? Yeah, that’s probably true. In which case you go find another car, one that’s been sitting in a garage out of the weather for the last decade. You might need to top off some fluids. But in any case, you’re not commuting to work every day and wanting to keep your daily driver in tip-top shape. Your car is a tool. You will be using it to explore, move heavy stuff back to base (like cans raided from a distant supermarket), quickly evacuate in the event of disaster, and so on. The survivors of the end of the world will have a different definition of reliability for vehicles than we do. Yes, at first it will be easy to get in a random car and drive everywhere, and then it will get harder and harder. But the deterioration of the road system is going to be a bigger problem than needing to change the fuel filter more often. Where I live trees fall over and block the roads multiple times every winter. At some point your survivors are going to have to get out with a chainsaw every 15 minutes if they venture out of their base area. We’re talking a “society” of a couple dozen people, at most. There’s no rebuilding. That’s a fantasy. Best you can hope for is to preserve some books and such so that in hundreds of years when populations have recovered the hunter-gatherers will have a head start. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 8:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/62 "2015-12-21T20:43:07Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Canned goods that are free of rust can last for decades. Yes, if the cans get wet then they’re going to rust out very quickly. If they are kept away from moisture then you can open that can of Pork and Beans 20 years later and it will be mostly OK. Check out the can from the inside to make sure there are no rust spots inside or punctures, then go ahead. Big problem will be the labels falling off. > > I do agree that stocks of canned food will be most useful in the first decade, the survivors better get used to foraging soon. I found some cans of tomato paste or tomato sauce in the back of the cupboard that were years past the expiration date. They looked like the acid in the tomato was starting to eat into the container. ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/63 "2015-12-21T20:55:58Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Yes, gasoline “goes bad” after a while. It goes bad the same way canned food goes bad. You’re worried that old gas will be hard on the engine of your scavenged car? Yeah, that’s probably true. In which case you go find another car, one that’s been sitting in a garage out of the weather for the last decade. You might need to top off some fluids. But in any case, you’re not commuting to work every day and wanting to keep your daily driver in tip-top shape. Your car is a tool. You will be using it to explore, move heavy stuff back to base (like cans raided from a distant supermarket), quickly evacuate in the event of disaster, and so on. > > The survivors of the end of the world will have a different definition of reliability for vehicles than we do. Yes, at first it will be easy to get in a random car and drive everywhere, and then it will get harder and harder. But the deterioration of the road system is going to be a bigger problem than needing to change the fuel filter more often. Where I live trees fall over and block the roads multiple times every winter. At some point your survivors are going to have to get out with a chainsaw every 15 minutes if they venture out of their base area. > > We’re talking a “society” of a couple dozen people, at most. There’s no rebuilding. That’s a fantasy. Best you can hope for is to preserve some books and such so that in hundreds of years when populations have recovered the hunter-gatherers will have a head start. The point is if your survivors want electricity then solar/wind is their best bet. Coal and Gas just aren’t going to cut it. Also the amount of driving you do is immaterial when the gas breaks down and becomes unusable. ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 8:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/64 "2015-12-21T20:58:02Z")
> [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > I found some cans of tomato paste or tomato sauce in the back of the cupboard that were years past the expiration date. They looked like the acid in the tomato was starting to eat into the container. Fun fact about MREs they have a one year shelf life after which the military requires a veterinarian to inspect the boxes and declare that they’re good for another year. (the boxes have heat sensitive stickers on them.) ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/65 "2015-12-21T21:40:52Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > An island in the Pacific. One normally reached by setting out on a 3 hour tour. That’s what this show is about isn’t it? I realized this during the last episode, wondering why I kept watching. It really is Gilligan’s Island all over again, a group of people isolated from the rest of the world, in this case they are isolated from humanity because the rest of the world is dead. (What happened to all the bodies?). > > Anyway, more directly to the point of the OP, Malibu is a pretty good idea. Decent weather, very near to a large metropolitan area where there are plenty of stores full of goods to survive on. Probably better would be somewhere in the southeast because the fresh water supply to SoCAL won’t last, and there isn’t enough rain to support much agriculture. All those avocado trees must be dead already. Malibu Creek runs year around. Even has steelhead. What show is this? ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/66 "2015-12-21T21:51:25Z")
Humans can theoretically survive almost anywhere, but there’s an ideal band of temperate climate where it’s easier to thrive. Too hot and dry and you’ll run out of water for at least part of the year. Too hot and wet and you’ll suffer from tropical diseases and rotted supplies. Too cold and your growing season is too short to be practical. A skilled survivor can overcome these obstacles, but given we’re talking about random apocalypse survivors, I’d say start with these [green zones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperate_climate#/media/File:Klimag%C3%BCrtel-der-erde.png). Pick a spot near a major city for looting the remnants of civilization. Avoid nuclear plants or any other looming environmental catastrophe. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/67 "2015-12-21T22:20:35Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > The point is if your survivors want electricity then solar/wind is their best bet. Coal and Gas just aren’t going to cut it. Also the amount of driving you do is immaterial when the gas breaks down and becomes unusable. Yes, if they want electricity they’re going to have to improvise something. Which means they’re not going to have electricity. And I’m saying, yes, gasoline breaks down over time, but it doesn’t become “unusable” that quickly. Will it impact engine performance as it gets older? Yes. Will it gum up your engine with crud as it gets older? Yes. Will your car’s fuel lines eventually get clogged? Yes. Will water collect in your engine? Yes. Will it get harder and harder to find gas that’s been stored properly? Yes. That’s different than “unusable”. Same with canned goods. Cans exposed to the weather will rust in months. Cans that fall off and shelf and get dented can go bad. I’ve had a can or two that’s been sitting in the back of the pantry on the bottom shelf start to leak, and it turns out those cans were many years old, and would be unsafe to eat. But the insistence that cans over two years old will have to be thrown out is just nonsense. If the can is intact, then the contents are still good. Yes, even after decades. How many cans will still be intact after decades? Probably not many, people will eat them, they’ll be stored in places that will eventually let in water, earthquakes or wind will topple shelves, and so on. But what matters is that the can remains intact. If it’s intact, the food inside is good. Yes, botulism. Inspect the inside of the can for blemishes. Any doubt, throw out the food. Or feed some to the dog. If the dog dies, then the can had botulism, so don’t eat the rest. The point is, after the collapse of civilization our standards for food safety are going to be radically re-calibrated. It’s not worth it to eat a 10 year old can of beans that cost 99 cents, even if the risk of food poisoning from that can is extremely low, because it’s 99 cents and they’re making more every day. When you’re scavenging in the crumbled ruins of the monuments to Man’s hubris, your risk assessment is different. Either get used to hunting and gathering, or get used to subsistence farming, or get used to eating out of really old cans of food. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/68 "2015-12-21T22:37:51Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > But the insistence that cans over two years old will have to be thrown out is just nonsense. If the can is intact, then the contents are still good. Yes, even after decades. How many cans will still be intact after decades? Probably not many, people will eat them, they’ll be stored in places that will eventually let in water, earthquakes or wind will topple shelves, and so on. But what matters is that the can remains intact. If it’s intact, the food inside is good. Yes, botulism. Inspect the inside of the can for blemishes. Any doubt, throw out the food. Or feed some to the dog. If the dog dies, then the can had botulism, so don’t eat the rest. . Mostly. Find a old guy. Ask him to show you how to test a can by bouncing a quarter off it. But yes- if the can is intact- and not bulging- it’s very likely safe. ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [December 21, 2015, 10:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/69 "2015-12-21T22:40:28Z")
You also get used to being a shitting, puking mess after you eat a lot of the time too. Until you eat that can that kills you. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/70 "2015-12-22T00:37:05Z")
Well then, better get started teaching yourself to hunt and gather. It won’t be that hard, animal populations should explode in a few years, and if you’ve got a couple of reliable firearms a big stock of ammunition should keep you in meat for a long time. Yes, after ten years of cans sitting on shelves it’s going to be harder and harder to find good ones. But again, what causes food poisoning is failure of the can, not some mysterious aging process. It’s not aging of the food inside an intact container that causes food poisoning, it’s failure of the container. ---
**Author:** ![drewder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/57b2e6/32.png) [@drewder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drewder)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/71 "2015-12-22T01:38:42Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Well then, better get started teaching yourself to hunt and gather. It won’t be that hard, animal populations should explode in a few years, and if you’ve got a couple of reliable firearms a big stock of ammunition should keep you in meat for a long time. > > Yes, after ten years of cans sitting on shelves it’s going to be harder and harder to find good ones. But again, what causes food poisoning is failure of the can, not some mysterious aging process. It’s not aging of the food inside an intact container that causes food poisoning, it’s failure of the container. I think you’ll find without hunters managing the animal herds their population will actually decrease. There were fewer deer and elk in Idaho when Luis and Clark came through than today because of disease and other problems. ---
**Author:** ![chacoguy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/50afbb/32.png) [@chacoguy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chacoguy)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 1:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/72 "2015-12-22T01:38:57Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > Fun fact about MREs they have a one year shelf life after which the military requires a veterinarian to inspect the boxes and declare that they’re good for another year. (the boxes have heat sensitive stickers on them.) Veterinarian? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Scumpup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ce73a5/32.png) [@Scumpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scumpup)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/73 "2015-12-22T01:55:05Z")
Yes, veterinarian. The military employs numbers of them as, basically, highly skilled health inspectors. This news to you? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/74 "2015-12-22T02:55:47Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > I think you’ll find without hunters managing the animal herds their population will actually decrease. There were fewer deer and elk in Idaho when Luis and Clark came through than today because of disease and other problems. And also thousands of hunters who were eating them. It wasn’t like the continent was empty of people back then. ---
**Author:** ![Arrendajo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e0b2c6/32.png) [@Arrendajo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Arrendajo)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/75 "2015-12-22T02:58:34Z")
All this talk about how long gas will be usable to drive your cars around overlooks the fact that without humans around maintaining the roads, they will be virtually undrivable in a year or two. Landslides, rock rubble, bridge and culvert wash-outs, cracks and holes from freeze/thaw cycles, trees and branches over the road… a vast amount of human effort goes into keeping roads open. I know where I live after the first winter the roads over the Cascades, Coast Range, and mountainous areas south of the valley would be impassable. Many of the secondary roads would be washed out after a year. I-5 would probably be OK for some time, so that would be a way to travel around the Willamette Valley, but basically your vehicle travel is going to be very close to home. Horses will be popular. ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 3:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/76 "2015-12-22T03:15:15Z")
> [@drewder](#): > > I think you’ll find without hunters managing the animal herds their population will actually decrease. There were fewer deer and elk in Idaho when Luis and Clark came through than today because of disease and other problems. Cite? There were also a lot of Native American hunters as well as predators like wolves. ---
**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:** [December 22, 2015, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/77 "2015-12-22T05:24:57Z")
There are two different issues here, the short term and then several hundreds of years down the road, the time required to have a population sufficient enough to do more than small sized projects. Looking at cans or no cans misses the point that if you are interested in growing a population, as is the given in this OP, “reinventing” older technology or methods or in order to utilize them will be required. My parents would have been much better off in this scenario than I would, and being left with 1950s stuff would have been much better than 2015 things. My father learned how to be a mechanic growing up on the farm, as well as planting and all, where I am totally lost. He knew how to work on older cars, but the current electronic aided ones would be much more difficult. That said, trying to maintain modern machines for hundreds of years would simply not work out. ---
**Author:** ![Urbanredneck](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ea5d25/32.png) [@Urbanredneck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Urbanredneck)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 7:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/78 "2015-12-22T07:30:15Z")
Why not Hawaii? On the different islands there is game and good land for farming. Heck plenty of stuff grows wild like bananas and coconuts. Plus their is always fishing. On the mainland I’d go looking for an old Amish farm and as long as you have horses and know how to use them, you should be fine. ---
**Author:** ![Doctor\_Jackson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doctor_jackson/32/32_2.png) [@Doctor\_Jackson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Doctor_Jackson)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/79 "2015-12-22T13:42:07Z")
> [@Colibri](#): > > I think you may be misunderstanding the significance of MVP. My point is that the minimum viable population is one that will ensure survival _at that level_ for a particular amount of time (often 100 to 1000 years) in the future at a 90-95 percent probability. It is _not_ the minimum level to which population can be reduced for a single generation, which is much smaller. Therefore the estimate of a MVP of 160 individuals is irrelevant to what initial starting population would be the minimum. In fact, the minimum can be as low as two, depending on how much of the total species variability those two individuals encompass and how quickly the population can increase. > > Lets’s assume an initial population containing five fertile women, and adequate food and other resources so that childhood mortality is not excessive. If we assume that each woman produces three female offspring and a generation time of 25 years, the total population will be well above the estimated MVP within a century (and will continue to increase after that). > > The MVP is a figure relevant to a stable population, not an expanding one. I understand MVP just fine. Do you have any studies that I can read that support your assertions, or am I stuck with the ones I found? That’s all I was asking. Cheetahs, and [Teddy Bear hamsters](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hamster), are on one extreme end of the bell curve. [Passenger Pigeons](https://www.audubon.org/magazine/may-june-2014/why-passenger-pigeon-went-extinct)are on the other end of the curve. Where do humans fall on the curve? It depends on a bunch of variables, but the studies I have seen and cited indicate an MPV of 80-10,000. ---
**Author:** ![puzzlegal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puzzlegal/32/3827_2.png) [@puzzlegal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puzzlegal)\ **Post date:** [December 22, 2015, 2:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748/80 "2015-12-22T14:40:37Z")
I think you can assume that stuff like cars and power plants will be gone within a few years. We’re looking at hunting/gathering/scavenging without power tools. > [@Dewey\_Finn](#): > > It’s one thing to support a hunter-gatherer lifestyle when that’s what your people have done for generations. But this scenario assumes that a small number of modern people have to suddenly live without all of the support that civilization provides. That’s really difficult. > > Many of us have no clue, for example, how to start a fire or ride a horse. Many have never had to hunt or fish and then prepare the game to eat. For example, one episode of the show that inspired the OP started with a live bull. Later the characters accidentally killed it. The next scene showed them sitting down to a steak feast. How many of us know how to butcher a cow? Starting a fire is hard. Maintaining a fire isn’t hard. I’ve done it for days, and the only reason I stopped is because the vacation was over and we went home. Preparing game is likewise easy enough, especially if you have plenty of game to experiment on. You try to remove the viscera intact, to avoid fecal contamination, then then you remove the skin and then you cut it up however you feel like. Many animals have pits and pieces that taste nasty (scent glands and such) that will contaminate a small portion of the meat until you learn to recognize and remove those parts. But stuff like puffer-fish poison are extremely rare in animal. The hardest part may be finding and maintaining sharp blades. Preparing wild plants is harder, because many have toxic parts and the edible parts need to be cleaned and/or processed. But except for some mushrooms, most don’t kill you in small doses, so you can experiment with eating a little. And lots of places would have leftover gardens with descendants of domestic plants. I get a few “volunteer” tomatoes every year. They aren’t as good and don’t yield as much as select hybrid tomatoes, but they are perfectly edible. Apples and pears rotting in the abandoned markets contain viable seed. It will take years for them to produce, but once they bear, they produce a lot of fruit, and the only real effort you need is to keep other fruit-eaters away. If you like to eat other fruit eaters, that makes it a little easier. I think the best place for the survivors to go is far away from whatever killed everyone else. Nukes? Avoid the radiation. Disease? Avoid anyplace where there might be infectious dead people. Humans are quite adaptable, and could probably survive in most parts of the country. The only places that might not support a low population density are deserts, like the LA area. Cold weather has costs and benefits. Food keeps when it is below freezing. There are lots of parts of the country that are cold but could support adequate game meat and fish for human survival. There are lots of fruits and some grains and tubers that grow fine in short seasons. Sure, if they aren’t contaminated with whatever killed everyone else, there are some especially rich parts of the world, like the Pacific Northwest. But most anywhere could support humans at low density. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/last-man-on-earth-scenario-where-is-the-best-place-for-them-to-settle/740748.md?page=3)