# What would happen if everyone under the age of 12 died tomorrow? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 18, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336 "2016-11-18T17:18:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/1 "2016-11-18T17:18:11Z")
Inspired by this of course: > [@What would happen if everyone over the age of 70 died tomorrow?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-over-the-age-of-70-died-tomorrow/772212/1): > > **What would happen if everyone over the age of 70 died tomorrow?** > > Imagine that some force, aliens perhaps, was so aggravated by the outcome of the election they managed to kill off everyone on earth who was over the age of 70. Satisfied with the results, they don’t stick around to harm anyone who wasn’t yet 70, so the people who would turn 70 on Friday or later luck out. > > How does life change if everyone over the age of 70 suddenly dropped dead? What changes socially? Politically? Economically? So - same question, but now the aliens hate kids & wipe out the lot of them. Kids who’ve celebrated their 13th birthday are fine. The others are dead. All of them. Even the fetuses in progress. But getting pregnant the next day would still work fine and we’d expect the resulting kid to live to a ripe old age just like always. Your ideas? Thoughts? Wild-assed guesses? My thoughts below. ---
**Author:** ![LSLGuy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lslguy/32/5813_2.png) [@LSLGuy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LSLGuy)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/2 "2016-11-18T17:19:19Z")
My reply: Clearly we don’t have the mass disruption to social security payments, the medical industry, and to Florida real estate. Nor the mass inheritances followed by some smaller amount of mass frivolous spending. No jobs are suddenly vacant when the oldster employees fail to show up as scheduled. So the aftermath will be simpler for all those reasons. BUT … We still need to dispose of (WAG) a billion bodies. At least they’re smaller on average. Kids are the other big consumers of medical care after oldsters. It’s the 13 to 69 year old group who mostly never needs a doctor. Kids also consume large amounts of tax expenditure and civic infrastructure in the form of schools. All elementary schools close tomorrow for at least 6 years, then (maybe see below) gradually refill. High schools still have pupils for a couple more years then they wind down over 4 years and stay shut down for 13 (or more see below) years before the next set of kids become freshmen. Colleges have a decade to prepare for a decade-plus drought in their main customers. Certainly parents spend huge amounts of money on feeding, clothing, entertaining, and stimulating the little sprogs. All that economic demand will disappear at a stroke. Second-hand stores and Craigslist will be swamped with little shoes, onesies, toddler dresses, car seats, footballs (round and pointy kinds), baseball mitts, Barbies, bikes, and all the rest. For which there will be no buyers for one to 13+ years … The long term demographic jolt will be huge. The larger issue I suspect would be the psychosocial impact. Think of all the people who were parents yesterday and aren’t today. Oldsters want to live a long time yet, but everyone including them, knows their days are numbered and at 70-plus their fuse is short and getting more so. We mourn the death of an oldster, but we’re not surprised by it. Dead kids are different. It’s shocking; it’s wrong; its … How many just-were-parents would get back to making more? How soon? How many would age out of childbearing years before they were ready to try again? Would the public at large be paralyzed by the fear the mass kill might happen again? Even if the aliens came clean about being the culprit and said it was a one time act, who’s to trust aliens who’ve already proven they’re willing to do something so heinous? ---
**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:** [November 18, 2016, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/3 "2016-11-18T17:21:47Z")
Is this merely a morbid philosophical exercise, or are you going somewhere with this? ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/4 "2016-11-18T17:23:22Z")
Many such parents of such children would be in their 30s or 40s by then. Assuming they still wanted a family, they’d be suddenly trying really hard to conceive again to get kids again before it was too late. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/5 "2016-11-18T17:27:53Z")
People who believe in the Rapture also believe that all children under the age of accountability (which is unknown to us) will disappear. ---
**Author:** ![snoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@snoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snoe)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/6 "2016-11-18T17:32:41Z")
I think the psychological, social, political, religious, fill in the blank upheaval would make the actuarial concerns seem like child’s play! In looking for answers, the world would make a good attempt at tearing itself apart. I’ll note that this hypothetical is similar to LaHaye & Jenkins’s Rapture scenario in the Left Behind novels. (Well, the kids _disappear_, along with all the Christians of the Right Sort.) Fred Clark, a liberal evangelical blogger, has been doing a close reading of the LB novels on his "slacktivist " blog for years now. A constant theme in his criticism is that the vanishing of all the world’s children would have devastating social effects that the authors utterly ignore (since there’s a goofy Satanic conspiracy to write about). PS: hey, I just realized that among 2016’s victims are LaHaye and Jack Chick. Nobody ever brings them up, for some reason. Edit: ninja’d ---
**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:** [November 18, 2016, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/7 "2016-11-18T17:37:08Z")
Hundreds of thousands of babysitters go jobless. Gerbers goes out bankrupt, as does Toys-R-Us and an untold number of other youth-related companies. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/8 "2016-11-18T17:44:38Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Hundreds of thousands of babysitters go jobless. > Gerbers goes out bankrupt, as does Toys-R-Us and an untold number of other youth-related companies. What about pre-school, kindergarten and elementary school teachers? :eek: And who is Justin Bieber going to sell his music to??? ---
**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:** [November 18, 2016, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/9 "2016-11-18T17:46:48Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > What about pre-school, kindergarten and elementary school teachers? :eek: > > And who is Justin Bieber going to sell his music to??? They would just get transferred to classes they aren’t qualified to teach-Just ask any P-E/History teacher. ---
**Author:** ![Velocity](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/velocity/32/18006_2.png) [@Velocity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Velocity)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/10 "2016-11-18T17:51:30Z")
I’m guessing programs like Social Security would have a 12-year period, sometime decades into the future, where they are temporarily starved of funding due to the lack of people in the workforce. Schools and universities will also go through a lean 12-year period. ---
**Author:** ![John\_Mace](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/john_mace/32/185_2.png) [@John\_Mace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/John_Mace)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/11 "2016-11-18T17:52:56Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > They would just get transferred to classes they aren’t qualified to teach-Just ask any P-E/History teacher. You’re not serious, are you? You think the public school system could just absorb all those teachers when the student body is cut almost in half? Schools get allocated $$ based on enrollment. ---
**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:** [November 18, 2016, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/12 "2016-11-18T18:01:07Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > The long term demographic jolt will be huge. That’s going to be a big issue in the long term. We talk about the baby boomers and generation x and the millennials but there’s never been a generation divide like this one. Imagine what it will be like in 2036 when there’s nobody between the age of 19 and 33. Or in 2056 when there’s nobody between the age of 39 and 53. The entire world will essentially turn into two separate societies with only a minimal cultural bridge between them. Remember the sixties when the established values of older generations were challenged by the values of a new generation? Multiply that by a hundred. ---
**Author:** ![Some\_Call\_Me.Tim](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/439d5e/32.png) [@Some\_Call\_Me.Tim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Some_Call_Me.Tim)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/13 "2016-11-18T18:08:05Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > People who believe in the Rapture also believe that all children under the age of accountability (which is unknown to us) will disappear. So you’d get a set of people convinced that the rapture had occurred and 0% of those over the age of accountability were enraptured. Mass religious hysteria results. ---
**Author:** ![ThelmaLou](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thelmalou/32/390_2.png) [@ThelmaLou](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ThelmaLou)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/14 "2016-11-18T18:21:23Z")
A microcosm of this has happened a few times in history, where all or most of the children in a town were killed. One that I know about because my father grew up in the area and lived there at the time is the [New London School explosion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_London_School_explosion). The Wikipedia article is interesting and quite heartbreaking. At the end is the list of victims, most of whom were children. > [@](#): > > The New London School explosion occurred on March 18, 1937, when a natural gas leak caused an explosion, destroying the London School of New London, Texas,[1] a community in Rusk County previously known as “London”. The disaster killed more than 295 students and teachers, making it the deadliest school disaster in American history. > [@](#): > > At some time between 3:05 and 3:20 p.m., Limmie R. Butler[6] (an “instructor of manual training”) turned on an electric sander. It is believed that the sander’s switch caused a spark that ignited the gas-air mixture. > > Reports from witnesses state that the walls of the school bulged, the roof lifted from the building and then crashed back down, and the main wing of the structure collapsed. The force of the explosion was so great that a two-ton concrete block was thrown clear off the building and crushed a 1936 Chevrolet parked two miles away.[7] Approximately 600 students and 40 teachers were in the building at the time. > [@](#): > > Of the more than 600 people in the school, only about 130 escaped without serious injury. Estimates of the number of dead vary from 296 to 319 but that number could be much higher as many of the residents of New London at the time were transient oilfield workers, and there is no way to determine how many volunteers collected the bodies of their children in the days following the disaster and returned them to their respective homes for burial. … The death of this many children in a small town would naturally change the course of the town’s future. The Wiki article lists some films and books that you may want to look for, if long-term impact is what interests you. > [@](#): > > In 2008, some of the last living survivors of the explosion shared their personal stories of their experience with documentary filmmaker and East Texas native, Kristin Beauchamp. The feature-length documentary, When Even Angels Wept, was released in 2009 and was a first-hand account of the disaster. It is told almost exclusively by survivors and eyewitnesses. They share what they experienced on the afternoon leading up to the blast to what it was like to spend days searching East Texas towns, hospitals and morgues for missing loved ones. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/15 "2016-11-18T18:27:19Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > That’s going to be a big issue in the long term. We talk about the baby boomers and generation x and the millennials but there’s never been a generation divide like this one. Imagine what it will be like in 2036 when there’s nobody between the age of 19 and 33. Or in 2056 when there’s nobody between the age of 39 and 53. The entire world will essentially turn into two separate societies with only a minimal cultural bridge between them. Remember the sixties when the established values of older generations were challenged by the values of a new generation? Multiply that by a hundred. Most 70-year-olds have lived their lives. They have married, raised their kids, started and finished their careers (or at the very least, are at the end of it). If they all croak, very sad, but outside of special cases humanity continues as it always has You have basically a missing generation here. One who never reproduced, worked, did anything really. 20 to 30 years later, there is going to be a very big period when you have too many old people and too many young people and not much mid aged people. Best example would be France in 1939. The losses of young men in the trenches and young women to the Spanish flu (which unlike most pandemics, tended to kill young and healthy to the old and aged) led to the malaise of the 1930’s. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 6:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/16 "2016-11-18T18:43:56Z")
It would be nice and quiet. ---
**Author:** ![DCnDC](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dcndc/32/2842_2.png) [@DCnDC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DCnDC)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/17 "2016-11-18T18:54:41Z")
The Gerber Life Insurance company is fucked. ---
**Author:** ![Sahirrnee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sahirrnee/32/13937_2.png) [@Sahirrnee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sahirrnee)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/18 "2016-11-18T19:01:26Z")
Five fewer Christmas presents for me to buy, and both of my nieces would be childless. The older one would probably try for another baby, the younger one is SOL because she can’t have any more. My mother would lose all of her great grandchildren. Lots of sadness all around. ---
**Author:** ![scr4](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/59ef9b/32.png) [@scr4](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scr4)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/19 "2016-11-18T19:32:30Z")
There would be mass unemployment, not just babysitters and schoolteachers but also all the stay-at-home parents getting back into the job market. Colleges and universities will run out of students in a few years. So they’ll probably start shifting their focus immediately - more research, more continuing ed, etc. Probably a HUGE baby boom starting in about 9 months. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [November 18, 2016, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336/20 "2016-11-18T19:52:05Z")
_The Girl Who Owned A City_ would be voted the most ironic book ever. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-would-happen-if-everyone-under-the-age-of-12-died-tomorrow/772336.md?page=2)