So an asteroid hits the Earth and 99% of humanity is killed. Boom.
The people who survive are living in squalor and chaos, obviously.
If you were one of those survivors, would you be wanting to have children in order that the species may survive?
Or would you refuse vehemently to bring any kid into that world?
I like humanity and I would want civilization to exist, but if some monumental catastrophe were to happen, I wouldn’t be interested in trying to rebuild. Am I alone in this?
Is birth control still available? If so, then I’m all for not having to repopulate the earth. If not, I’ll take my chances and continue to be deathly afraid of all the weird stuff that’d happen to my body if I became pregnant.
I can’t think of any catastrophe big enough to wipe out the world supply of Ortho-Evra, but you might have to do a lot of hiking to find it. 
They’d better not rely on me anyway, since I’ve had the… you know… snip snip.
I’d be interested in building innovative survival solutions for myself, and indeed for a small community or something, if I happened upon one, and they were nice enough to make me want to help them, but I wouldn’t be interested in the reproductive part of it all. Sex, possibly, reproduction, no.
But if everyone doesn’t start reproducing like bunnies, humanity will die out! Doesn’t that matter to you? Assuming you could reverse your surgery with duct tape and a McDonalds straw, would you?
(Honestly, I don’t know how many survivors it would take before humanity would have a good chance at surviving. Dozens? Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands?)
I wouldn’t even want to personally survive in such a world, much less bring more victims into it. Life is generally barely worth living even these days, under modern, civilized conditions. Life in a post-apocalypse wasteland and anarchy would be a very good imitation of Hell.
What do I have to work with, give me even a small chance to restart a civilization and I would go for it. I figure we have to have stuff left to scavenge. I would have a go at rebuilding.
If it looked like we could build a small stable community and retain at least 1800’s tech and some books for the future, I would help restart the human race.
We would still be far better off than the humans of the fifth century AD. Why not try and form a new society.
Jim
I always figured I’d do well in a post apocalyptic setting, provided enough time to prepare. So yeah, I’d do my part.
General “Buck” Turgidson: Doctor, you mentioned the ratio of ten women to each man. Now, wouldn’t that necessitate the abandonment of the so-called monogamous sexual relationship, I mean, as far as men were concerned?
Dr. Strangelove: Regrettably, yes. But it is, you know, 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.
Ambassador de Sadesky: I must confess, you have an astonishingly good idea there, Doctor.
What squalor and chaos? You are presuming a lot here. Some of us would see something like this as a fulfillment of all their wetdreams!
But yeah, I’d be out there humping like a bunny, killing mutants with one hand and skinning bears with my right, while standing on the bones of those who just gave up.
Would you work as Rangers or an Outriders for a rebuilding civilization? You sound like you would either be a problem or part of the solution.
Jim
Local warlord would be more my speed. But an Enlightened warlord. Save every book we can find, re-populate as fast as we can, scavenge as much tech as is possible, and slay every mutant we find!
I wouldn’t care if the earth got repopulated but if hot women wanted to have sex with me (and if my wife was dead), who would I be to deny them.
Depends on who with. Is my corresponding female scorched, tattered, wheezingsurvivor of the devastating holocaust… a hottie?
You better not count on me to do it all myself. With the endocrine problems in my family, that could lead to some pretty miserable future humans.
Call me strange, but I don’t see the wreckage & squalor as a problem. 1% of 7 000 000 000 is 70 000 000; a manageable population base even if 75% of us have no children survive to adulthood. Food will be tight for a few years, but those remaining will actually be better off than the general run of humanity before.
Some of them still smoking.
As for me? I’d Johnny Appleseed the hell outta that.
[sub]And, we’d finally be able to put that “Who’s your daddy” question to rest.[/sub]
There are some six billion people on the planet. Subtract 99 percent of them and you’re left with, what, 60 million? More than enough to sustain a human population with abundant genetic diversity without any help from me. So, no, it’s staying in my pants.
They better not count on me. Because some of the required equipment is missing. I could give advice, of course.
Well, it looks like natural selection might weed pessimism out of the human race.