Senkuu is the dumbest smart person I have ever seen in all of fiction. A very Japanese character.

Attached File


That said there is some interesting stuff there.

Don't think wildlife and plants would support 5% of the current population as that would be 375 million people.

Looks like the population in 10,000 BC was around 2 million and 40 million in 5,000 BC, so I would say we would probably drop to 2 million or less before rebounding.

That would be about a 99.98% death rate or maybe even higher.

I think we'd go extinct or close to it if the current population lost everything man has had a hand in. There wouldn't even be vegetables we'd recognize.

I think we would be down to a couple million at most as long as we didn't drive all the wildlife extinct before most people died off.

Sea life might be a life saver though, but doubt if we could sustain much as it's pretty depleted close to shore.

Yep.

By 10,000 BC humans were wildly advanced.

I don't think survival as a species would be possible.  Might be a slim chance that the Sentinalese save humanity but that's about it.

If all the buildings are gone, then the mines are filled back in and the minerals are intact.  Stop making stupid rules, OP.

Prob bout tree fiddy. Seriously.

As in 350 years?

If so, how that quickly?

After thinking about it, I think you both may be right.

The fighting amongst everyone for what was left would probably drive us to extinction.

but we have several things going for us.
First we already have a unified language. people that currently are alive can read english, or whatever native language they use.
So basic information is easier to create and pass around than originally.

second we know how to create stuff that can be passed down. As stated above, clay tablets, at a min to get started if you have to.
eventually paper.

third, we know about printing. movable type etc.. that had to be invented first.
It may take a while to build, but it isn't thousands of years to invent.

that way knowledge could be recorded.
the older folks that can't help hunt or grow crops can start recording their knowledge to help future generations.

I don't think people understand how far the fall is going to be with this situation.

Hell, I didn't understand it as I thought a few million would survive.  Now I'm thinking it's going to be more like the hunter gathering tribes and maybe a few thousand people elsewhere.  Would be as bad or worse than the Toba eruption 70,000 years ago.

Imagine being naked and having to decide what you are going to do first?
Do I get a weapon which would be a club from the forest or a rock or several rocks to throw?
What clothing will I have?  I need to make something from grass or maybe leaves until I can kill a wild animal, so I can wear it's un-cured skin.
Where will I find clean water and how do I carry it with me?  Do I find eggs of wild birds and suck out the egg material to use them as very small canteens?
If I know how to make flint spearheads, where is the nearest flint rock that can be used.  Do I know the exact way to get there as all the roads and signage is gone.
If I get lucky and kill a deer quickly, do I have anything that I can cut it up with?  Can I make a shitty sharp rock to get it butchered?  Can I make a fire from just rocks and wood and grass?
If I can cook the deer meat, how many people are going to descend on me and want some as they are hungry.  Can I defend what little I have from a mob?
Do I know what wild plants are nearby and if they are safe to eat?


Thinking putting stuff down on clay tablets is only going to happen after the population collapse.

To be quite honest, I'm thinking it would take a lot longer than 70,000 years to come back.

lol
it can't take longer than it did before. Even if it is worse in the begining then ever before, once it goes back to square 1, then it starts like it did before, so it takes as long as it did.

you also don't give credit to people that might band together instead of trying to take.
those that try to take won't last long either. no guns or knives to even it up sure, but people won't take shit if they don't have to.

lord of the flys was a made up book, not necessarily what really happens when people get isolated.

If I left you alone in the woods with a hatchet, how long before you could send me an email?

Maybe if we got a pristine Earth with all it's wildlife and easy to access resources intact, and we all turned Permie or else died off before the game ran out, then it would be faster.

I figured with the current state of the natural world we'd tear down the terrestrial biosphere behind us on our way out, but the oceans are a good point, they'd probably recover while we lack the ability to fully exploit them and could sustain a substantial remnant. Maybe insects too.

You are on the right track.

Just take the US.  We have around 330 million people and around 33 million deer.

If we assume each deer is around 200,000 calories (100lbs of meat each).  That is about 20,000 calories per person which is around 7-10 days.  If you take all the other wild life and wild plants, you might end up with 30 days of food.  After that, the only food would be in the oceans which don't have much by the shores anymore (most commercial fishing takes place far away from shore).

A lot of wild life has become dependent on human food also, so there would be some population loss there also as there wouldn't be any human plants left.  Hard to factor in how much loss that would be though.

So, after a month or two, the most abundant source of calories would be people.



As to it taking longer, we won't be going back to square 1.

We won't have any easily mined minerals like we had the first time, so that is going to push the length of each period (copper, bronze, iron ages) to a longer time as we would have to figure out how to get to harder to reach minerals.

The human population crash may cause wild life crashes as we try to consume enough calories to survive.  If the wild life crashes enough, then it may be hundreds to thousands of years for it to recover which would leave what little humans left at a very low level for a very long time.

Like a big flood...

Animals and crops aren't created by humans.  


We don't sprout plant seeds or release (animal) eggs.

Good luck getting cattle again.  Aurochs are extinct.

We don't create much of anything, we reorganize things, we take trees and sand and ore and oil and organize it into houses.

Domesticated animals and cultivars wouldn't exist without humans, and many of the plants/animals we bred them from no longer exist.

98% of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass on Earth is humans and their domesticated animals.

In the best case, if we could get the right plants into the hands of the right people and keep them alive long enough, it would take many years to produce a viable agriculture to feed billions, and I think it'd be way worse than that, because all the really promising plants have been cultivated.

There's way too many of us to hunter/gather the other 2%.

i think you guys are way too pessimistic.   yes, year 1 would suck and 90% die off.   and most of the genius computer nerds would be gone, without copying their TPS reports on to new papyrus for our benefit.

but we would be able to get basic tractors and food production going quickly.   we'd remember basic concepts about mass production, henry ford stuff, and get back a lot faster than we took the first time.     we'd make simple machines much better and faster.

the weird thing is our tech would be a mix of old and new stuff.    we'd get electricity back fast.   probably plastics too.   it's a heckuva lot easier to build stuff from plastics than all the metal work we did for 6000 years.    so we'd use more oil and less mining than we needed the first time.

my bet is if 10% of us survive the initial starvation, we're back to the industrial revolution in 50 years.    hopefully we just shoot anyone who tries to create social media again

Think we could go the same route using water buffalo.

To get tractors, we would have to be able to mine iron.  Most of the easily mined iron ore is gone and you would have to find new mines or go deep to get it.  You might be able to do a bronze tractor, but then you have the same issue with copper and tin.

To get food, you would have to re-domesticate animals and find wild plants to cultivate.

To get oil, you would need to go through the iron age, so you could make the drill heads to drill for more oil or tap old wells.  You might have some bubble up from old wells, but then you would have to build plants to process it into plastics.

As to the 10% surviving, we would be lucky to have .02% survive after a year.  You would be starting with 7.5 billion people to feed at the beginning and less wild animals/plants to feed them with.

Reminds me of the quote from Dune "we shall change the face of Arrakis.".

Humans actually have changed the face of the Earth.

I believe it happened before.  I think humanity was at a bronze or iron age level of advancement and then kerplooie.  Something happened - a flood, asteroid hit, something.  

Every ancient civilization has a record of a "god" that arrives and teaches them how to build. Sumerians, Mayans, Egyptians all have records of a god that arrives to teach them laws, astronomy, math, and engineering.


Given OP's scenario, I think the world pop would be cut in half by the end of the first year.  And maybe there would be 2 billion people left after the second year.  Our society is as dependant on machines as newborn human babies are dependant on their mothers.  The people that would survive a complete disappearance of infrastructure would be the hunter/gatherers and most of their time would be spent doing things to survive day to day.  Without an infrastructure there isn't time for builders to build, thinkers to think, and workers to work.  Think about it, without something as trivial as pen and paper, the intellectuals cannot write down their knowledge to pass it on before they die out.

My guess would be 2k to 3k years before we get back to what we are now, and I think that may be a generous time frame.

Agree that there was some type of older civilization that may have been up to the bronze age level (maybe Minoan level).  Would have been limited before the Younger Dryas event due to the world wide climate (too cold to have many people living), so would have needed to be in a warm area (equator or someplace with warm water currents).

There isn't enough wild life and wild plants to support 2 billion people.  The below is a chart of world population (around 2-10 million at 10,000 BC which is perhaps when agriculture started (think it started earlier myself)).

1 billion people on earth happened around 1800.
2 billion people on earth happened around 1925.
3 billion people on earth happened around 1960.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estimates_of_historical_world_population

Thought of another thing last night that would add more suck to the scenario.

All fillings, crowns, implants would disappear too.  Eating might become very difficult for many.

For that matter, all medical implants would be gone too.

Where did all the stuff magically go?
This scenario isn't even interesting given it's parameters. If and when society collapses they'll be picking off the ruins of the old civilization for centuries to come

Into the ether as it was magic.

Actually it's more interesting than I had thought at the beginning.  Have to account for a population crash along with a biosphere crash to figure out if we would ever get back to where we are at now.

Chance is going to play a big part in all of it.


Though another thought I had last night, would have small island populations surviving and then they could repopulate the earth, but would probably take a very long time.

Especially if the CO2 levels crash and if that causes a colder climate.

Uh, there are alot of flaws in his theory....

If you would like to experience a semi-real life survival situation check out a game called DayZ.

You start out in the middle of nowhere with next to nothing and you have to loot surrounding towns, learn to navigate (no in game map, only one online, think paper map). You have to find food, build fires, find medicine, keep from getting sick and a great deal of other things...oh yeah, all while other players (PVP) are running around trying to kill you for your gear and zombies just want to eat your brains.

It's kind of addicting, best part is it take place akin to somewhere in ukraine/russia

Which theory has flaws?