As long as we’re looking at the other possibilities might as well consider this one too.
Real quiet day on the SDMB.
Well, yeah. Everybody’s dead.
I, Czarcasm, being of unsound mind and body, leave my vast estate to…aaarrgh
thump
Matlock reruns and Disney sitcoms would fill the airwaves!
There’s gonna be an awful lot of unchanged diapers. Baby and adult!
“I’ve fallen…and there’s nobody who can do a thing about it!”
It would be “Lord of the Flies” meets…“Cocoon”.
In a few years, the 70+ year olds won’t be around. So then it is a “reset” of all civilization.
Need answer fast?
Vast majority of human population dies. And then many toddlers and infants die too for lack of care.
The world would be mostly old people and also maybe some roving bands of 7-11 years olds who can take care of themselves. In a decade or two those older folks die too. Nobody in the meantime is working factories, businesses, etc. People starve to death, die of disease.
Soon those 7-11 year olds have become teenagers or young adults, accustomed to foraging and survival. It would be like a *Walking Dead *life. A zombie apocalypse without the zombies.
In addition to Lord of the Flies …
Reminds me of that original Star Trek episode where they beam down to a planet inhabited by just a few kids. Some fungus-like disease killed all the adults and kills the kids too as they age into susceptibility at puberty plus a bit. These are the last few survivors.
“Bonk Bonk on the head!!”
There are 2 scenarios still left - “everyone above 12 dies” and “everyone under 70 dies.”
You left your estate to the Black Beast of Aaaargh?
Most of the seniors won’t be physically able to farm and raise animals for meat.
So they’ll turn to an available and (if they act wisely) renewable food source. Mmmm…tasty children…
Won’t be pretty.
That would be “Miri”. Thought of that too. And of “Logan’s Run”. The difference is that there wouldn’t be any “mechanism” (disease or ritual) to keep the 12 and under’s from aging. So they’d grow up, and the “Lord of the Flies” civilization would continue and become the new world.
Let’s be honest, this thread basically IS the “everyone above 12 dies” because even healthy septigenarians aren’t going to last that partcularly long without access to competent medical care.
As for the other one…the world ends in 30 years.
We have an historical model to answer that question. In Paraguay’s war (1864-1870) almost every male of child-bearing age was killed, when Paraguay waged a war against Brazil and Argentina.
Paraguayan lore has it that virtually every Paraguayan living today is descended from crew-members on Argentine trading vessels, that sailed up the river to Paraguay after the end of hostilities.
One historian has it that before the war, Paraguay had a population of about 700,000, the war reduced the total poplation by half, and of those, there were just 28,000 adult males survivors
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the remainder above 70 wouldn’t last very long.
The remainder under 12 would be walking around wondering why they can’t text their friends anymore.