# What if all professed Christians disappeared? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [December 31, 2013, 8:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589 "2013-12-31T20:45:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/201 "2014-01-06T17:46:06Z")
If the services/manufacturing/agriculture sectors are all down 70% of their manpower, won’t demand be reduced by 70% as well? Eighty million people seems like plenty with which to get by after dealing with the initial bumps. Plus we’ll be a beacon for freedom-loving non-Christians all over the world. And I’ll be able to blow almost unimpeded down I-95 on a summer Saturday on my way to a great Carolina beach where the crowds are non-existent. ---
**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:** [January 6, 2014, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/202 "2014-01-06T18:09:06Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > If the services/manufacturing/agriculture sectors are all down 70% of their manpower, won’t demand be reduced by 70% as well? It just doesn’t work that way. For example, if a power plant needs 100 people working to keep the place running, and 80 of them disappear, the plant doesn’t simply put out 20% of the power it did before-it quits running entirely because the minimum crew to operate it just isn’t there any more. ---
**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:** [January 6, 2014, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/203 "2014-01-06T18:28:58Z")
God, so many of you are annoying. Here’s a real non-pain in the ass answer to a straightforward intriguing OP: I would be pretty damn lonely, but the hunting and fishing would get better. I personally know just three Jews and no atheists or agnostics, but I look forward to meeting them. I’ll miss my family, but I’ll pass the time looting this nearly entirely empty city. ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/204 "2014-01-06T18:35:21Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It just doesn’t work that way. For example, if a power plant needs 100 people working to keep the place running, and 80 of them disappear, the plant doesn’t simply put out 20% of the power it did before-it quits running entirely because the minimum crew to operate it just isn’t there any more. It works that way in some sectors and doesn’t work that way in others. The bigger picture is that there’s still _80 million_ of us and that’s more than enough to function efficiently after a period of adjustment. ---
**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:** [January 6, 2014, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/205 "2014-01-06T18:45:24Z")
> [@Red\_Wiggler](#): > > It works that way in some sectors and doesn’t work that way in others. The bigger picture is that there’s still _80 million_ of us and that’s more than enough to function efficiently after a period of adjustment. How long do you think this “period of adjustment” will take…and how many of the original 80 million will still be left at that time? During this period of adjustment electricity and clean water will be gone for the most part, doctors will be few and far between, medicines will soon run out, and a number of people will be lost due to the various powerplays of would-be leaders rising up. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/206 "2014-01-06T19:59:18Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The idea that you can’t run a modern economy with only eighty million people is absurd. Whoever you’re arguing with on this point, it isn’t me. Hell, you quoted the part where I said raw numbers weren’t the problem. > [@](#): > > Yes, it would be a huge disruption if a couple of hundred million people disappeared. But people are not anarchists by nature. The survivors would reorganize themselves and the economy would be redistributed and consolidated to the size of the new population. As **Czarcasm** said, “if a power plant needs 100 people working to keep the place running, and 80 of them disappear, the plant doesn’t simply put out 20% of the power it did before-it quits running entirely because the minimum crew to operate it just isn’t there any more.” Now, this is happening _at every power plant in North America_. So there’s no power for the cell phone towers or the landlines or the Web. Most people have whatever gasoline is in their cars, or that they can siphon out of their departed neighbors’ cars. So they can’t communicate over distances, and there’s a fairly low limit to how far they can travel. It’s gonna take them awhile just to figure out what’s going on, because there’s nobody in a position to know who can tell them. And even when they do, the difficulties in terms of reorganizing are severe. How are the workers at a bunch of power plants in southern California going to know what kinds of workers are missing from which plants, besides their own, of course? How are they going to communicate this to each other, and decide which plant to all meet at and keep running? Once power is restored on some limited basis, who’s going to support the power plant workers in their endeavors, since nobody’s paying them to do this (no money, for all practical purposes), and time spent keeping the electricity on means time not hunting for food and gasoline? And when the power comes on, how long will it take to get the other puzzle pieces back together? How long will it take for one bank to function again (its employees will mostly be missing too), and will a bank have any meaning by the time it does? And while things are confused, while there is no power or communication, how are people going to act? Most will behave semi-ethically at first (but once one person smashes the supermarket window, everyone else will be in there, looting the shelves as well), but there will be predators, they will have no restraints, and they will have the upper hand at first. Most people will have to devote a lot of energy to hanging on to what’s theirs, rather than putting our economy as we know it back together again. ETA: And how long can a power plant keep running once it’s back up, absent deliveries of coal or natural gas or whatever it runs on? ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/207 "2014-01-06T20:02:22Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > And while things are confused, while there is no power or communication, how are people going to act? Most will behave semi-ethically at first (but once one person smashes the supermarket window, everyone else will be in there, looting the shelves as well), but there will be predators, they will have no restraints, and they will have the upper hand at first. Most people will have to devote a lot of energy to hanging on to what’s theirs, rather than putting our economy as we know it back together again. You know, this was actually my first reaction. Obviously there will be predators but…why? There’s gonna be so much shit laying around for free, you won’t HAVE to be a predator. The only left-behinds that will act like predators are psychopaths. Any sane person will just pick up things laying around until they have all that they want. ---
**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:** [January 6, 2014, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/208 "2014-01-06T20:15:14Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > You know, this was actually my first reaction. Obviously there will be predators but…why? > > There’s gonna be so much shit laying around for free, you won’t HAVE to be a predator. The only left-behinds that will act like predators are psychopaths. Any sane person will just pick up things laying around until they have all that they want. It’s the nature of the beast-you grab more than you need before the next guy grabs more than _she_ needs, just in case it gets even worse tomorrow, and because it can be used for barter later. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/209 "2014-01-06T20:20:56Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It’s the nature of the beast-you grab more than you need before the next guy grabs more than _she_ needs, just in case it gets even worse tomorrow, and because it can be used for barter later. But there will be so damn MUCH stuff, think about it. The estimate in the thread is that only 20% of the US population will remain, right? Yeah there’ll be a grab, but I still think there’d be so much available that each person can be as greedy as they desire, and still not have to infringe upon someone else’s found property. It’s like the Steven Wright joke…You can’t have everything; where would you put it? ---
**Author:** ![Red\_Wiggler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/red_wiggler/32/13190_2.png) [@Red\_Wiggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Red_Wiggler)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2014, 10:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/210 "2014-01-06T22:02:11Z")
Dudes, you’re scaring the children. We’d have it figured out in a week. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 1:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/211 "2014-01-07T01:12:15Z")
> [@Sicks\_Ate](#): > > You know, this was actually my first reaction. Obviously there will be predators but…why? > > There’s gonna be so much shit laying around for free, you won’t HAVE to be a predator. The only left-behinds that will act like predators are psychopaths. Any sane person will just pick up things laying around until they have all that they want. But wouldn’t the predators and psychopaths have all known it was a good idea to claim to be Christian? So all the smart ones will be gone. ---
**Author:** ![Sicks\_Ate](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Sicks\_Ate](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sicks_Ate)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 1:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/212 "2014-01-07T01:22:14Z")
> [@Yllaria](#): > > But wouldn’t the predators and psychopaths have all known it was a good idea to claim to be Christian? So all the smart ones will be gone. Odds are good that an equal percentage of them will not have only claimed to be Christian, but will have actually honestly identified as such. So the ratio of psychopaths to ‘normals’ will be about the same as before. ---
**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:** [January 7, 2014, 2:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/213 "2014-01-07T02:27:16Z")
> [@JohnT](#): > > And a post-Christian Canada would be in just as bad straits as the Americans. Yeah, I know I am moving to a warmer clime once all that real estate becomes available. I imagine the houses are going to be fully furnished too. ---
**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:** [January 7, 2014, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/214 "2014-01-07T21:04:47Z")
The flip side of this conversation can be found at [_What if all professed Muslims disappeared?_](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=712403) ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [January 7, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589/215 "2014-01-07T22:30:53Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > It just doesn’t work that way. For example, if a power plant needs 100 people working to keep the place running, and 80 of them disappear, the plant doesn’t simply put out 20% of the power it did before-it quits running entirely because the minimum crew to operate it just isn’t there any more. Do you think a power plant that has a hundred employees actually has all hundred of them working all the time? Those hundred employees are going to be divided up into three 33-man shifts. And the thirty-three people on each shift are normally going to be taking days off each week and going on vacation and calling in sick and having training days. So let’s figure on any given shift only half the employees are actually working. So the power plant that has a hundred employees only needs seventeen people to operate at any given time. Which means twenty people is enough to keep it running. Now, you can’t keep those twenty people on duty round the clock. But it shows you do have enough manpower to keep things running in an emergency. And then you begin moving people around. Here in Rochester, there are three hydroelectric plants. We could shut down one or two of them and use those people to keep the remaining ones going. You can find people who have experience in power plants but have been doing less critical work. My point is that with eighty million people, you’re not going to fall below the minimum number of people to keep an economy functioning. You’re just going to have to shut non-essential businesses down, consolidate essential services, and move people around. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-if-all-professed-christians-disappeared/677589.md?page=10)