# The effects on civilization of 'The Snap' in Avengers **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 8, 2018, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801 "2018-12-08T15:40:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 11, 2018, 11:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/61 "2018-12-11T23:53:54Z")
> [@AlsoNamedBort](#): > > Think of it like every single person flipping a coin. Heads you’re here, tails you’re dust. On average, 50% of each planet will be wiped out. Adding more and more people to be snapped won’t affect your odds. Sure it would. “All life” is what they are saying. Add up every living thing on Earth and humans will be a _very_ small percentage of that total. You are envisioning the snap as a micro-event. I see it as a macro one. You are talking a whole universe here. Earth is a statistical nothing. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/62 "2018-12-12T00:26:38Z")
But even if you take a list of all individual organisms and randomly select half of the list, you’re still going to get approximately half of the humans and approximately half of the _E. coli_ and so on. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 12:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/63 "2018-12-12T00:42:30Z")
Only if you group them by species. How many bacteria exist in your body? Counting all of those and yourself, eliminate 50%. The odds that _you_ will be eliminated will be millions to 1, if not billions to 1. Then extend that to the whole planet. You could wipe out 90% of the multi-cellular animal life on this planet and never get out of the beetles, for Ghu’s sake! ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/64 "2018-12-12T03:34:24Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Only if you group them by species. How many bacteria exist in your body? Counting all of those and yourself, eliminate 50%. The odds that _you_ will be eliminated will be millions to 1, if not billions to 1. Then extend that to the whole planet. You could wipe out 90% of the multi-cellular animal life on this planet and never get out of the beetles, for Ghu’s sake! I not a math person, but I’m about 99% sure that’s not how statistics work. ---
**Author:** ![Ike\_Witt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ike_witt/32/283_2.png) [@Ike\_Witt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ike_Witt)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 4:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/65 "2018-12-12T04:13:56Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Only if you group them by species. How many bacteria exist in your body? Counting all of those and yourself, eliminate 50%. The odds that _you_ will be eliminated will be millions to 1, if not billions to 1. But that seems to go against the ‘spirit’ of what Thanos was trying to do. Of course so would killing half of “all life”. The intent seems clear but illogical even if the expression of it in the movie is flawed. Maybe that is why Thanos looked so confused or stunned right after the snap. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/66 "2018-12-12T04:36:23Z")
But by the same token, if you’re choosing which half to spare, you could pick enough without getting out of the beetles, too. And choosing which half to spare is exactly equivalent to choosing which half to kill. Picture this: Put yourself in a lineup of one of you, plus ten billion bacterial. Shuffle the line into a random order, and then kill the first half of the line. What are your chances of dying? Well, you’re either in the first half of the line, or the second half. ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 10:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/67 "2018-12-12T10:08:53Z")
One thing that crosses my mind is that (apart from freak accidents) most people travelling on trains should be safe enough. Almost all trains nowadays have a Dead man’s Handle or similar driver’s safety device that would stop the train if the driver suddenly had a heart attack; it would also stop the train if the driver was finger-snapped out of existence. Similarly most railway signalling systems would be interlocked to prevent an accident caused by the disappearance of the signaller. So, apart from accidents where an unmanned train runs into the platform end at a terminal, or crosses into the path of another train while performing an unsignalled shunt manoeuvre, most trains should simply slow down and stop, causing chaos but few additional deaths. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 12:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/68 "2018-12-12T12:20:14Z")
Wouldn’t gigatons of LifeDust\* present a biohazard of epic proportions? Was it ever explained what happened to the mass of all the dead? We saw them disintegrate, not disappear, so all that yummy (to bacteria) organic matter is just sitting there, ready to rot. Ugh. Cleanup is gonna be a bitch. \*All Rights Reserved ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/69 "2018-12-12T13:29:47Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > But by the same token, if you’re choosing which half to spare, you could pick enough without getting out of the beetles, too. And choosing which half to spare is exactly equivalent to choosing which half to kill. > > Picture this: Put yourself in a lineup of one of you, plus ten billion bacterial. Shuffle the line into a random order, and then kill the first half of the line. What are your chances of dying? Well, you’re either in the first half of the line, or the second half. Fine. How do you know that the snap didn’t wipe out all the life in one half the universe and leave the other half completely untouched? Anything we guess would be just as likely. Random means just that. With a group that large there will be all sorts of statistical weirdness going on. If every being in existence is metaphorically flipping a coin, you are going to get some runs. Lots of runs. Entire planets wiped out and others untouched. 50% does not mean 50% of any given subset. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 1:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/70 "2018-12-12T13:47:40Z")
Yes, but surely _I_ will be spared, right? 😉 ---
**Author:** ![xnylder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/x/bbce88/32.png) [@xnylder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/xnylder)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/71 "2018-12-12T14:00:43Z")
I appreciate the arguments people are making about killing half of life as a total and saying bacteria and such should count. But based on the results we saw in the movie, I think we’re going to have to guess that Thanos killed half of life on earth divided by species. Onscreen, we saw roughly every second person get dusted. A wide shot showing half of the Wakandan riding rhinos get dusted too would have confirmed this theory… but we don’t have that. (The quote from Feige shows they would have been dusted, what I’m questioning is the half-per-species or half-in-total number.) We didn’t see half the plants get destroyed though, so maybe at least our crops, fruit trees, and all that are fine and we’re not down a major food source? ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/72 "2018-12-12T14:28:48Z")
Personally, I think Feige misspoke. I think the snap took out half of all _sentient_ life. Anything else would be even stupider than Thanos’s reason for snapping in the first place. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/73 "2018-12-12T15:20:37Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Personally, I think Feige misspoke. I think the snap took out half of all _sentient_ life. Anything else would be even stupider than Thanos’s reason for snapping in the first place. Are you arguing that fanaticism has a habit of being logical? ---
**Author:** ![Jophiel](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jophiel/32/66_2.png) [@Jophiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jophiel)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/74 "2018-12-12T15:45:05Z")
Thanos says that, when he’s done, half of humanity will still be alive. So he’s probably wiping out things on a per species basis. Of course, he’s also wrong about “half” of humanity still being alive given the catastrophic consequences of his actions. And he boasts about how the children on Gamora’s world slept with full bellies following his genocide which definitely won’t be the case after the Snap. Which brings us back to Thanos just being a moron with a half-baked plan. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/75 "2018-12-12T15:45:30Z")
The point is, it doesn’t matter if it’s by species or not, because even if it’s not explicitly by species, it’ll still get about half of each species. Yes, some species (or some planets, or whatever) will by chance end up with more or less than half, but the numbers involved are so huge that it’s going to be overwhelmingly likely to be really, really close to exactly half. ---
**Author:** ![Labtrash](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/labtrash/32/528_2.png) [@Labtrash](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Labtrash)\ **Post date:** [December 12, 2018, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/76 "2018-12-12T17:52:02Z")
> [@Ike\_Witt](#): > > You know how statistics work. There is a chance the snap got all of your cats. Or none. Schrödinger’s Snap? ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/77 "2019-01-25T16:59:10Z")
Reviving because I finally saw the movie. Does the 50% figure mean ALL of the Universe? Are there planets 13 billion light years away, who’ve never even heard of Thanos (or Infinity Stones, as they seem to be concentrated in one small area) which now have half their population? What do these uninformed people think when half their population turns to LifeDust ™ with no warning and no explanation? Or is it just another case of Hollywood writers not having any idea how BIG space really is? Did the comic address this? ---
**Author:** ![DigitalC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ebca7d/32.png) [@DigitalC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DigitalC)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2019, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/78 "2019-01-25T18:23:52Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > Reviving because I finally saw the movie. > > Does the 50% figure mean ALL of the Universe? Are there planets 13 billion light years away, who’ve never even heard of Thanos (or Infinity Stones, as they seem to be concentrated in one small area) which now have half their population? Yes. > [@](#): > > What do these uninformed people think when half their population turns to LifeDust ™ with no warning and no explanation? Only a handful of people in the entire universe are aware of Thanos and his plan, everyone else is completely oblivious. > [@](#): > > Or is it just another case of Hollywood writers not having any idea how BIG space really is? Did the comic address this? I don’t see how it matters to be honest. So no one knows why it happened, and? ---
**Author:** ![Jonathan\_Chance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jonathan_chance/32/701_2.png) [@Jonathan\_Chance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jonathan_Chance)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2019, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/79 "2019-01-25T18:51:50Z")
Hell, look at how confused Nick Fury looks. All he knows - before vanishing himself - is that there’s a big thing happening in Wakanda and suddenly people are turning to dust. All he can do is call Code Red and hit the space beeper for help. The entire world is going to be confused about it. It’ll likely lead to a rebirth of strong religious attendance and belief and everyone behaving like monks for a while. There will be a LOT of ‘God is punishing us for our sins’ on Earth unless the real story gets out. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [January 25, 2019, 6:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801/80 "2019-01-25T18:56:09Z")
Massive numbers of dead bacteria, etc, in their bodies will render much of the remaining half of humanity dead. Those which survive get to fight the plagues caused by the gigatons of biomass just ready to become a breeding ground for the once-decimated, but now rapidly-recovering bacteria. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-effects-on-civilization-of-the-snap-in-avengers/825801.md?page=5)