# What would happen if a country was suddenly vacant?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-a-country-was-suddenly-vacant/663930>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [July 19, 2013, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-a-country-was-suddenly-vacant/663930 "2013-07-19T13:19:21Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![Musicat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/musicat/32/20189_2.png) [@Musicat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Musicat)\
**Post date:** [July 20, 2013, 9:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-a-country-was-suddenly-vacant/663930/21 "2013-07-20T21:00:10Z")

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> [@Neidhart](#):
>
> Never mind sudden extinctions. I’ve wondered what happens if a country’s population just keeps falling. There was a Washington Post story a few weeks back saying that Portugal only had something like 40,000 births the past year. Could a situation eventually arise, around 2100 or so, such that only one family, perhaps resident in Brazil, owns most of the land in Portugal? Would Lisbon become some kind of living-history theme park like Colonial Williamsburg?

It’s dangerous to assume that a trend will continue indefinitely. Most likely the trend would be modified before it got to that extreme. From [Mark Twain:](http://www.twainquotes.com/Conjecture.html)

> [@](#):
>
> In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oolitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing-rod.
> 
> And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three-quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen.
> 
> There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact.

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**Author:** ![David\_H\_Singanas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ac8455/32.png) [@David\_H\_Singanas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_H_Singanas)\
**Post date:** [July 21, 2013, 12:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-a-country-was-suddenly-vacant/663930/22 "2013-07-21T12:19:59Z")

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This thread shows the importance of every country having a government in exile.  
The US has such a strong ex-pat community that forming a government in exile is  
a real option.

But in any case, a government in exile can take the UN seat of the “disappeared government” and we can move forward from there.

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