I’m defining “apocalypse” as some kind of event that disrupts the functioning of modern society, but leaves a large percentage of the modern framework (roads and buildings, but not modern commerce as we know it) and population intact. Consider:
One aspect of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” is probably accurate, in that it depicts the final survivors resorting to cannibalism. Without industrial farming, and the modern mechanisms to both sustain it and move its products to market, there is no way to feed most of the world’s people. A huge percentage of the population will just starve to death.
Stockpiling weapons will be irrelevant, unless you intend to use them to take what other people have. (See #1.) Ammunition requires modern infrastructure to manufacture, and most modern weapons are not made to last indefinitely with minimal maintenance. It will be bows and arrows within a year or two. Eventually, swords and axes. Ironically, using a bow (especially a crossbow) is not as much of a disadvantage as it may seem. Modern crossbow technology is so advanced it’s about equivalent to early 19th century firearms.
Connecting to #2, planning to survive by hunting is also irrelevant, unless you live in a REALLY rural area (Wyoming, or Alaska) with significant wild game and, much more importantly, no other people. Millions of starving people will kill and eat anything living, which will quickly denude all urban and suburban areas of wildlife of every description, even insects.
The more low-tech and socially interconnected one’s lifestyle was before whatever caused the apocalypse, the better your odds for survival. By that standard, the people who maximize both equally in modern America are the Amish. Better learn to say “Guten Tag.”
On the positive side, the solar power industry will be experiencing some boom times.
If you have a significant portion of the population and modern infrastructure, then you could rebuild modern society and commerce fairly quickly. Sure, you’d have a lean few decades, and life would lack most basic amenities, but eventually you’d recover. Look at Europe and Asia after WW2. Society is a lot more resilient than people think.
This is “a really big disaster”, then. Apocalypse is a religion-specific word, meaning the time when the end of history arrives and the prophecies come true. “Apocalypse” outside of religion has no usable meaning.
That’s not true at all. It was originally a religious word (specifically the Christian end of the world prophecy from Revelations). The modern meaning is exactly what the OP describes, the catastrophic global societal collapse (e.g. thisarticle)
What is the minimum scenario that would bring about such an “apocalypse”? I suppose that hydrogen bombs dropped on a dozen of the world’s largest seaports would be rather disruptive—though I’m not sure it would impede the manufacture of bullets in North America—but what is the minimum catastrophe that would satisfy OP’s needs?
If most of the people are still around, I reckon there’d be someone who knows how to get farming up and running again. Even if you can’t use combine harvesters there’ll be plenty of manual labour available once all the non-farming jobs dry up.
Incidentally, the original wrinkle “The Road” introduced to the post-apocalyptic genre - besides suicide-inducing levels of bleakness and despair - was that there was *nothing *alive on Earth other than humans; no edible plants, no animals, no nothing. In that case, I suppose that humanity would in fact revert to cannibalism, because what other option would they have?
In a more realistic apocalypse, so long as the soil is still fertile, and the tractors, trucks and roads are still functional to any degree, then humanity would find a way to feed itself. They wouldn’t eat well for a while, but they’d eat. Modern farming is wildly inefficient, producing far more calories per acre than we currently need. Get rid of all of the animal feed and plant wheat instead and we’ll be fine.
I think what you’re saying is that it takes the fruit of the industrial revolution to support the current seven billion people. Without usable technology the population would likely dwindle (war, disease, etc,) back to the fraction of a billion that lived before the industrial revolution, and they would likely survive well enough to reconstruct a fair amount of modern industry in a generation or two. Assuming that books survive.
There may be nearly a billion people in the world now who are living pretty much in the umbra of modern industry, and hundreds of millions who wouldn’t even know the apocalypse took place.
This more or less describes most EMP scenarios, whether natural or manmade. One Second After is a typical entry in the genre. In many ways this is a worst case scenario, with the other end of the spectrum being a pandemic (The Stand, or Earth Abides) which kills almost everyone but leaves the survivors untouched.
No argument there.
I think this is overly pessimistic. First, there are a lot of people out there who have the knowledge and tools to reload cartridges. Brass casings will eventually wear out but not for several reuses, and primer and propellant stored in bulk will go a lot further than the same mass of cartridges. Second, guns aren’t as maintenance needy as you seem to think. Basic cleaning and oiling will keep them functional a long time- probably longer than the ammunition will hold out. Third, there are people who can actually make a rifled musket with an anvil and forge and can make their own black powder. Even primitive firearms are enough of an improvement that as long as the knowledge of how to make them is passed on, they’ll be around.
. Agreed.
Or preppers who go all in for the “off the grid” lifestyle and are truly prepared to be self-sufficient.
If we look at how nature reacts to truly disastrous circumstances, life dies off until it reaches a level that the altered environment can support, and then populations stabilize. I see no difference when the situation involves human beings. When the point of stabilization is reached, the people that are left will survive and slowly rebound in terms of population growth and quality of life. In fact, a greatly reduced human population might end up being a true blessing in the long run.
If 90% of Humanity died, there would still be 730 million humans, 33 million here in the USA.
If 99% of Humanity died, there would still be 73 million humans, 3 million in the USA.
If 99.99% of Humanity died, there would still be 730,000 humans, 30,000 in the USA.
Now that last number would cause problems in that there would only be a few hundred to at most a thousand or so people in each state. But Humanity would likely survive. Except in PrepperLandia, where the doomsday cultists would be too busy shooting each other.
That’s assuming an even distribution of people across the continent, but we don’t have that now. I doubt we’d have that after an apocalypse. The population might well die out in the more extreme physical environments (lack of water in a desert being fatal, as an example) and in the most heavily urban environments (surviving in the heart of New York City could be a problem). Less populated areas with more moderate environments might have the sweet spot between arable land, potable water, and a population small enough not to outstrip the resources but large enough for communal defense and other projects.
Folks in the arctic might also survive, as there are still people with survival skills for that environment and it’s remote enough to escape a lot of potential problems in the temperate regions.
I’d expect vast swathes of empty land with communities of various sizes here and there were resources are most accessible, which might be several thousand for the largest ones.
Where are you getting the idea that modern weapons will stop working within a year or two? I know lots of people who shoot rifles today that were used in WW2 and have only had minimal maintenance since then, and modern weapons are generally built to a higher standard. I’m also not sure why you think people would run out of ammunition within a year or two, they’re not going to actually be firing a lot, so a few thousand rounds of ammunition should last for quite a while, and that’s not even getting into people with bulk reloading supplies. And if they start to run out of smokeless powder, black powder is easily manufactured. It will foul a lot of automatic weapons, but not all, and will work fine with bolt action rifles and revolvers.
I can’t think of any possible scenario where an “apocalypse” happens, and most of the population lives for a significant amount of time.
Let’s say the power goes out permanently (a la Revolution - dumb show, interesting premise). I give it a few weeks before about 90% of the population is dead (that doesn’t include those dead by nuclear power plants melting down). If you live through that, you’ll probably survive the rest of the way.
I’d be heading to the heartland. The farmers would be the last ones to go, and I’d work for them as an indentured servant if I had to. They’re going to need plenty of manual labor when their machines no longer work.
Why would 90% of the population be dead in a few weeks? That seems a bit extreme.
On the other hand, I’m having trouble figuring out what kind of apocalypse we’re talking about, here. If most of our stuff is still OK, and most of the people who make the stuff work are OK, I think we can probably get shit fixed pretty quick.
