# The Road--How long would humanity last? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 25, 2013, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737 "2013-11-25T06:04:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/21 "2013-11-26T17:21:56Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Must one choose between one or the other? > > Anyway, though I do like well-written fiction, it takes a back seat to cinema (under which I include high quality TV); and when I do read fiction I generally prefer to read short stories rather than novels. In any event, were I to read some Cormac McCarthy, it would make more sense to start with the source material for a film that is in my [all time top five](http://www.flickchart.com/Charts.aspx?user=SlackerInc). It’s damn rare to find a book that is both literary and is excellent genre fiction. Unfortunate. The genre elements in The Road are incidental compared to genre fiction where the post apocalyptic elements would be the focus and purpose for the work. People who have no problem wading through airport-book level writing to enjoy an engrossing well-plotted genre tale were sometimes frustrated with The Road because it doesn’t explore the setting and the universe it uses only as a backdrop. The Amazon reviews speak to that by the hundreds. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 5:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/22 "2013-11-26T17:24:33Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > Are we all agreed that food deprivation will be a finisher for us far quicker than any oxygen problems there may be? What if an individual or small group found a big cache of non-perishable food and potable water and were able to keep it hidden and/or defended? Then they might have enough to supply calories indefinitely, but would the air stay breathable? Even if all the other humans and animals were dead and therefore not consuming the oxygen, wouldn’t the atmosphere “go bad” after a while just through non-replenishment of oxygen and the gases that come out of volcanoes and such? Or would it stay breathable for a long time? > [@Jas09](#): > > That is, in fact, part of the book. The bands of savages keep women to birth infants, which they then consume. But of course that doesn’t really work because the resources required to support that system are almost certainly greater than the resources gained.I agree entirely that the nature of the disaster is unrelated to the point of the book, which is more concerned with the nature of humanity and the possibility of a meaningful existence in a world without a discernible future. And also the writing. See, I think from everything I keep hearing and reading about the book (including your spoiler) that this gives McCarthy too much credit. I am sure the prose is great, but I believe he was taking a genuine stab at SF here and was caught wandering around in an area, a genre, that is not his element. There are too many details I’ve read about like the one you list that are far too specific (yet scientifically wrongheaded) for him to have meant the world he created to be more of an empty stage _a la_ Waiting for Godot. I think he sees it as a plausible future scenario. Googling just now for interviews with McCarthy, I find [one in the WSJ](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572) that confirms this sense: > [@](#): > > WSJ: For novels such as “Blood Meridian,” you did extensive historical research. What kind of research did you do for “The Road”? > > CM: I don’t know. Just talking to people about what things might look like under various catastrophic situations, but not a lot of research. I have these conversations on the phone with my brother Dennis, and quite often we get around to some sort of hideous end-of-the-world scenario and we always wind up just laughing. Anyone listening to this would say, “Why don’t you just go home and get into a warm tub and open a vein.” We talked about if there was a small percentage of the human population left, what would they do? They’d probably divide up into little tribes and when everything’s gone, the only thing left to eat is each other. We know that’s true historically. > > WSJ: What does your brother Dennis do? Is he a scientist? > > CM: He is. He has a doctorate in biology and he’s also a lawyer and a thoughtful guy and a good friend. > > WSJ: Brotherly conversation just turns to the apocalypse? > > CM: More often than we can justify. A doctorate in biology and also a law degree is impressive. But I would think such a smart brother would know better than to sign off on this scenario. And “we know that’s true historically”? Huh? Elsewhere in the interview, he says it doesn’t matter what specifically caused the apocalypse, which is a point for the other side; but he still shies away from the idea that it is a metaphor or a McGuffin. Rather, he posits that it could happen a lot of different ways, and then still seems to be saying that what he portrays as happening afterward is a plausible scenario based on biological and social science: > [@](#): > > At the Santa Fe Institute I’m with scientists of all disciplines, and some of them in geology said it looked like a meteor to them. But it could be anything—volcanic activity or it could be nuclear war. It is not really important. The whole thing now is, what do you do? The last time the caldera in Yellowstone blew, the entire North American continent was under about a foot of ash. People who’ve gone diving in Yellowstone Lake say that there is a bulge in the floor that is now about 100 feet high and the whole thing is just sort of pulsing. From different people you get different answers, but it could go in another three to four thousand years or it could go on Thursday. No one knows. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/23 "2013-11-26T17:34:59Z")
I categorically reject the dismissive notion advanced by **drastic\_quench** that SF or so-called “genre” fiction is inherently “airport novel level” stuff. I have read too much high quality SF from writers like Ursula LeGuin, Harlan Ellison, and James Tiptree, Jr., that is fastidious about its science but still nothing you’d ever find in an airport. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/24 "2013-11-26T17:35:02Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > What if an individual or small group found a big cache of non-perishable food and potable water and were able to keep it hidden and/or defended? Then they might have enough to supply calories indefinitely, but would the air stay breathable? Even if all the other humans and animals were dead and therefore not consuming the oxygen, wouldn’t the atmosphere “go bad” after a while just through non-replenishment of oxygen and the gases that come out of volcanoes and such? Or would it stay breathable for a long time? I think that for the extremely small numbers of survivors we are talking about the air would be breathable for a very long time unless the particulates in the air caused significant breathing problems. Which, if my hazy memory is correct, seems to be one of the primary causes of the man’s sickness > [@](#): > > See, I think from everything I keep hearing and reading about the book (including your spoiler) that this gives McCarthy too much credit. I am sure the prose is great, but I believe he was taking a genuine stab at SF here and was caught wandering around in an area, a genre, that is not his element. There are too many details I’ve read about like the one you list that are far too specific (yet scientifically wrongheaded) for him to have meant the world he created to be more of an empty stage _a la_ Waiting for Godot. I think he sees it as a plausible future scenario. Yeah, I think you’re clearly right that McCarthy thinks the scenario he created is at least plausible. And the spoiler I posted is very much a short-term thing. Think more tribal warfare and taking of women as slaves. Is it long-term workable? Nah. But we’re only talking about a pretty short period of time after the disaster that is shown in the book (maybe a few years?). He doesn’t really paint any detailed picture of how people are actually surviving other than finding food stores of non-perishables and killing and eating each other. The only thing I remember being clearly “non-scientific” is the notion that an event could kill all plant life and nearly all animal life and still leave a decent number of human survivors. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 5:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/25 "2013-11-26T17:45:07Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > The only thing I remember being clearly “non-scientific” is the notion that an event could kill all plant life and nearly all animal life and still leave a decent number of human survivors. Which is a huge one. But there’s also, as you say, the problem that in the scenario you described in your spoiler “the resources required to support that system are almost certainly greater than the resources gained.” I would only quibble with the “almost” there. Same is true of another bit, referenced in an excerpt at one of the interviews I read: Some “bad” people are keeping other people prisoner, essentially as livestock to eat (the father assures the son they would never do that no matter how hungry they become). But again, the prisoners would waste away pretty quickly; and if you somehow have food to feed them to keep them alive, they will consume far more than they eventually provide you in meat. The only scenario that would make a lick of sense there would be to find someplace cold, kill the people you are going to feed off of, and keep them in cold storage, without that pesky warm-blooded metabolism cranking along and using up all those potential calories. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/26 "2013-11-26T18:21:47Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Googling just now for interviews with McCarthy, I find [one in the WSJ](http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052748704576204574529703577274572) that confirms this sense: > > A doctorate in biology and also a law degree is impressive. But I would think such a smart brother would know better than to sign off on this scenario. And “we know that’s true historically”? Huh? Very strange–I read what you quoted, and got an impression exactly opposite yours. He’s explicit that he didn’t do any careful thinking about what would really happen, that instead, his thinking consisted entirely in jokey conversations he had with his brother. I don’t know where you’re getting the notion that his brother “signed off” on anything. From your second quote, again, I just get a vague notion that everything could go kablooey somehow at any minute for all we know. Nothing detailed or scientific there. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/27 "2013-11-26T18:23:53Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Some “bad” people are keeping other people prisoner, essentially as livestock to eat (the father assures the son they would never do that no matter how hungry they become). But again, the prisoners would waste away pretty quickly; and if you somehow have food to feed them to keep them alive, they will consume far more than they eventually provide you in meat. The only scenario that would make a lick of sense there would be to find someplace cold, kill the people you are going to feed off of, and keep them in cold storage, without that pesky warm-blooded metabolism cranking along and using up all those potential calories. From the film (I haven’t read the book) I don’t get the impression that any of this is being portrayed as sustainable. It’s all stop-gap ad-hoc stuff. ---
**Author:** ![drastic\_quench](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e36b37/32.png) [@drastic\_quench](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drastic_quench)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 7:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/28 "2013-11-26T19:04:32Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > I categorically reject the dismissive notion advanced by **drastic\_quench** that SF or so-called “genre” fiction is inherently “airport novel level” stuff. I have read too much high quality SF from writers like Ursula LeGuin, Harlan Ellison, and James Tiptree, Jr., that is fastidious about its science but still nothing you’d ever find in an airport. Glad we got that on the record. It doesn’t change that literary fiction is more concerned with prose, imagery, themes, and character vs genre fiction’s emphasis on advancing a plot and ideas and actions. Yes, the lines can be blurred and there’s always outliers. But these distinctions have been acknowledged in the publishing world for a hundred years. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/29 "2013-11-26T20:38:56Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Same is true of another bit, referenced in an excerpt at one of the interviews I read: As Frylock points out, that is shown as being pretty clearly an extremely temporary measure (with no power your alternative suggestion is a non-starter). A related point, at least as I took it, was that in a world like the one posited, truly evil people have a much easier time of it than “good” people (those that “carry the fire” in the man’s phrasing). How do you continue to be good, faced without no hope of even the stories of your goodness being passed on? It’s almost an extension of the nonsensical violence of _No Country For Old Men_, which ended with a dream about a man carrying a fire for his son. ---
**Author:** ![filmore](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/7993a0/32.png) [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 9:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/30 "2013-11-26T21:07:42Z")
I don’t usually get too hung up on the premise if the people behave in a believable manner. Perhaps the catastrophic event was some type of cosmic blast which was blocked by cotton fibers. Anything not surrounded by cotton would die. So we’re left with people and a few bugs which happened to be surrounded by cotton at the time. I liked the movie because it didn’t try to put a happy spin on the situation (other than a bit at the end). The world was bleak and horrible in a realistic way. I was a little disappointed with the ending since I felt it wasn’t true to the rest of the movie. The length of time people could survive probably depends a lot on how many people are still alive. If only a few people live, then the food supplies can last a very long time. If one person has NYC to themselves, they could last for years. But if everyone lives, then likely it’s just a matter of months. Actually, humanity would survive for a long time. Even if no one died initially, there would quickly be violent anarchy where a few people would control massive reserves of food. Those people would last a long time, while the rest would starve or be killed. ---
**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:** [November 26, 2013, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/31 "2013-11-26T21:33:21Z")
> [@Jas09](#): > > As Frylock points out, that is shown as being pretty clearly an extremely temporary measure (with no power your alternative suggestion is a non-starter). But keeping people as slaves for cannibalism later doesn’t even make sense as a temporary measure. This is because slaves need to eat. If you’re starving, giving your non-renewable stored food to a slave so you can eat him later doesn’t make any sense. You eat your captive right now, preserving as much of the meat as you can via smoking, salting, sun-drying, cold storage or what have you based on what is available in your situation, and you keep your shelf-stable stored food for later consumption. Every morsel of food that goes into a slave’s mouth is an irreplaceable non-renewable morsel of food that you will never get back. If the only source of food is human flesh then your slaves must also eat human flesh to survive. You can’t get more calories out than you put in, by the laws of thermodynamics you always get fewer calories out. Cannibals hunting people and killing them and eating them and taking their stored food makes sense. Cannibals capturing people and keeping them alive and eating them later doesn’t make sense because the captives have to eat. And if you don’t feed them, every day your prisoners get thinner and thinner which means fewer calories when you finally get around to eating them. Basically in this situation there is a finite amount of stored non-perishable food available for human consumption after the disaster. And there are a finite number of human bodies. Each human body eaten means the stored food lasts a bit longer, every bite of stored food eaten is gone forever. The problem is that people aren’t going to voluntarily starve to death so that a small fraction of people have more stored food for a few years. They’re going to eat a lot of stored food, and then they won’t be able to find any more, and they’ll then starve to death, which means the stored food they ate was wasted. Only a fraction of it can be recovered via cannibalism. ---
**Author:** ![Jas09](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/d07c76/32.png) [@Jas09](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jas09)\ **Post date:** [November 26, 2013, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/32 "2013-11-26T21:44:04Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Cannibals hunting people and killing them and eating them and taking their stored food makes sense. Cannibals capturing people and keeping them alive and eating them later doesn’t make sense because the captives have to eat. And if you don’t feed them, every day your prisoners get thinner and thinner which means fewer calories when you finally get around to eating them. As I recall it, the house was a trap. The “bad guys” would watch for people approaching and then fall upon them and lock them in the room the man and the boy found. Then they would eat them piecemeal. I doubt they would feed them - the fact that the prisoners would lose mass as they starved is only avoidable if they have the knowledge and equipment to preserve the meat. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 3:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/33 "2013-11-27T03:10:32Z")
> [@Frylock](#): > > From the film (I haven’t read the book) I don’t get the impression that any of this is being portrayed as sustainable. It’s all stop-gap ad-hoc stuff. I get that it’s not intended to be sustainable in the long term; but it doesn’t even make sense in the medium or anything beyond the very short term. The whole thing with babies, especially: you’d get far more benefit out of just eating the mothers and not bother impregnating them and waiting nine months. But that wouldn’t be as horrible or shocking. > [@Jas09](#): > > As Frylock points out, that is shown as being pretty clearly an extremely temporary measure (with no power your alternative suggestion is a non-starter). Aren’t they somewhere cold, travelling south to try to find greater warmth? > [@filmore](#): > > The length of time people could survive probably depends a lot on how many people are still alive. If only a few people live, then the food supplies can last a very long time. If one person has NYC to themselves, they could last for years. But if everyone lives, then likely it’s just a matter of months. > > Actually, humanity would survive for a long time. Even if no one died initially, there would quickly be violent anarchy where a few people would control massive reserves of food. Those people would last a long time, while the rest would starve or be killed. I agree with that. I also tend to be more of an optimist (in a relative sense) than most when it comes to these post-apocalyptic scenarios. I think in any reasonable doomsday scenario (other than something truly final like in the intense, and highly recommended, Lars von Trier film _Melancholia_), some small percentage of the population (but still a relatively large number of people in absolute terms) will survive indefinitely in high-tech bunkers, with nuclear reactors to power hydroponic gardening, water recycling and filtration, etc. Like that discussed in _Dr. Strangelove_, or shown in _Deep Impact_. > [@Lemur866](#): > > But keeping people as slaves for cannibalism later doesn’t even make sense as a temporary measure. This is because slaves need to eat. If you’re starving, giving your non-renewable stored food to a slave so you can eat him later doesn’t make any sense. Right, exactly. I’m glad I’m not the only one who sees this! If it’s just for a few days, then sure: whatever. But when there is a discussion of entire pregnancies and so on, we are clearly talking about time frames that make no sense. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 3:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/34 "2013-11-27T03:18:51Z")
The pregnant people didn’t happen in the film so I don’t have much to say about that. The only explicit cannibalistic scenario shown was where several people (clearly starving to death) were being kept locked up, begging to be rescued because “they’re going to take us to the smokehouse.” I just got the idea that the keepers would just go out and snatch up a person every now and then and throw them in the lock up, every few days pulling one up for dinner. I don’t figure this to be sustainable, I didn’t take the writers to think it sustainable, and I don’t figure the cannibals themselves to be thinking about anything other than having food for another day or two, with some food locked up that will “keep” for a week or two. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/35 "2013-11-27T06:12:19Z")
If they had a smokehouse I don’t see why they wouldn’t just smoke them all at once before they metabolise away any fat and muscle. ---
**Author:** ![Frylock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/ce7236/32.png) [@Frylock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Frylock)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2013, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737/36 "2013-11-27T13:50:54Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > If they had a smokehouse I don’t see why they wouldn’t just smoke them all at once before they metabolise away any fat and muscle. Possibly because even if you’re evil or desperate enough to capture people to use them as food, you could still be at least subconsciously squeamish about the actual act of killing them to their face. Bit of a fanwank, but otoh there’s no impression I get that any of the people in this film have thought very long, hard or knowledgably about the logic of the situation. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-road-how-long-would-humanity-last/674737.md?page=1)