Picture it, something catastrophic happens, 99.9% of the worlds population dead

[veritas]

How long would it take to get civilization back on its feet again. And let further say Only regular Dick and Janes survived, no engineers, doctors. Now the survivers would still be "civilized", but no way to continue civlized life...

[SkyEmperor]

depends, if certain areas are spared and not others, civilization could come back quickly.
also depends on whether all or tech gets wiped away. if lots of stuff is left over, then society can come back really quickly.

[Mojo]

It also depends what the actual disaster is. If it was say 99.9% of the wolrd's population turning into chocolate then they might not do to bad but if it was a comet or somthing then they're pretty screwed.

[Ward]

If ITS Just Dick and Janes of the world tech would fall very fast because most of them would not know how to keep the manchrie runing . Think about it what do you know about running a power plant or a water treatment plant .
Can you Crack oil to make Gas and any of the hundreds of jobs that are needed to keep a modren city going .

For one Why do you think in a little trip we are going to be locky to keep are civilztion going at a 1890 time let alone a 2001 time peariod .
There is just to much work to do just to keep your self feed let alone keep the machary working . Plus in the Little trip we have a Doctor a trained EMT and engineers and we are still having a hard time keeping from falling back earlier ther 1880's .

P.S . Post on the A little trip because you are there any way as a board member.

[PoorBoy]

Well, it all depends...are the Six Million Survivors scattered evenly across the planet, or are they concentrated in a city, such as Seattle?

[Tielhard]

World population estimate as at Feb. 2006 6.5 bn souls.
0.1% of world population 6.5 mn souls.

Point 1: Anything that kills 99.9% of the population is going to kill all of it. E.g. the big three: sheet vulcanism, big NEO strikes and 10,000+ Mton exchange.
Point 2: If this number of people do survive then there will be a huge amount of left overs from the dead to exploit for many, many years even if the place is trashed.
Point 3: Assuming death spreads her wings uniformly over humanity then of the 6.5 mn souls surviving something like 750,000 of them will be in the coastal regions of China and a similar number in India below the Himal. There are just about sufficient in each of these places to support a new civilisation. Western Europe is of small area and heavily populated so whilst it would only see about 350,000 survivors in total most of them would be close to one another in the part of the world with the most dense road, rail and communications systems. They may also form the basis of a new civilisation.
Point 4: "And let further say Only regular Dick and Janes survived, no engineers, doctors." This is an unfair rule. If death is to be uniformly distributed then it is reasonable to assume technical people will survive in the same proportion as they do in the current population. So a handful would survive.

[jolo]

How about a religious war in which fanatics kill everyone knowing something, educated better, or less fanatical? Especially if done with WMD's. Germany once managed to kill half her population this way (long before wwii).

[LacheyS]

I would head to the nearest large irrigation area and hope that enough of my compatriots would have the sense to do the same. Abandon the cities and start from scratch.

Most of us would understand how forges operate, have some degree of literacy, know how to make vessels and bricks from soil and would know how to grow food. What we are essentially losing is everything from the Industrial Revolution on. And presuming libraries are still intact, we might be able to piece some of that back together gradually.

[Ward]

I would head to the nearest large irrigation area and hope that enough of my compatriots would have the sense to do the same. Abandon the cities and start from scratch.

Most of us would understand how forges operate, have some degree of literacy, know how to make vessels and bricks from soil and would know how to grow food. What we are essentially losing is everything from the Industrial Revolution on. And presuming libraries are still intact, we might be able to piece some of that back together gradually.


The Arage Dick and Jane have no knolage of how a Forge works at all . and do you know how to thow pots and make bricks . How do you make cerment to hold the bricks together .

[LacheyS]

Ah, yeah, I do. But I had an "alternate" upbringing. ;)

And you wouldn't actually need to use cement - clay would suffice.

[NapoleonXIV]

People can read books. If the infrastructure survives at all there will be enough canned goods for years.

The thing is, it might not. Fires will probably burn much of the cities.

There is also the problem of the bodies and the rats and the dogs, cities will be neither safe nor pleasant for a very long time.

[DuQuense]

You head for the coast, while most machinery will give out within 2-3 years, [transport net, return to horse power] things like fiberglass SailBoats [back to the days of the Tall Ships, Vikings, and Pirates] will last for decades.

[Umbral]

Tielhard, if I might dispute your point 1, one or several biological agents could potentially kill 99,9% of humanity. Without massive collateral damage.

The problem is that such a supposition skewers the survivor distribution. Survivors will be either people who live in isolated places, or people with a biochemical twist giving them immunity. Such a twist would be likely to be more frequent in some families and ethnic groups.

Loss of doctors would be more severe, as they would be heavily exposed to the pathogen.

Survivors in third-world countries would be quicker to recover a livable society. Posessing a better knowledge base for how to survive without modern coveniences.

On the other hand, first-world survivors would have much more knowledge on how to restore some tech, with better average education and literacy.

Egalitarian countries where the job market is not too gender-divided would also have a higher percentage of useful skills and knowledge in the surviving population.

[Dave Howery]

if only .01% of humanity survives, civilization is gone. What people are left will soon be reduced to subsistence agriculture... and then, they will have to learn a lot by trial and error (at least, those from the first world, where farmers are a pretty small part of the population). I'd think the majority of the population will be living in small farm villages in the better agricultural areas of the world...

[Umbral]

I'm not entirely sure...fishing is a popular hobby, costal areas should do ok foodwise. In the first world, canned and freezedried goods from supermarkeds would give a "grace period" of a few years, given how few people are left to consume them.

I'd imagine getting the power back on would be the first priority, then contacting other survivor groups. Competiton for resources would be reduced badly, but would-be rulers and people who wanted to impose their own ideal system, religous or political, could be a problem.

[Tielhard]

"Tielhard, if I might dispute your point 1, one or several biological agents could potentially kill 99,9% of humanity."

Umbral,

I won't say you are wrong but a disease that kills 99.9% of humanity has to be due to a very atypical biological agent. Normally disease organisms (or virus) which produce mortality rates even close to this die out or at least die back as they cannot transmit themselves fast enough to keep ahead of the death wave in the host (i.e. us) population. The interaction between mortality and transmittability is usually finely ballanced.

"The problem is that such a supposition skewers the survivor distribution. Survivors will be either people who live in isolated places, or people with a biochemical twist giving them immunity."

You would be hard put to find many biochemical traits which are present in less than 0.1% of the human population.

"Egalitarian countries where the job market is not too gender-divided would also have a higher percentage of useful skills and knowledge in the surviving population."

This is an interesting point I had not thought of, however does it make a significant difference? Which countries were you thinking of? Scandewegia is just too small. Western Russia is too big and in any case far more gender divided that the 1950s USSR. West Coast USA might perhaps be a possibility but I can't think of anywhere else off hand.

[Tielhard]

Dave Howery,

"if only .01% of humanity survives, civilization is gone. What people are left will soon be reduced to subsistence agriculture..."

I presume you meant 0.1% rather than 0.01%? It is a popular mistake, I did the same myself yesterday and had to edit.

You make two assertions first that 'civilization will be gone', I think you are on reasonably strong ground here. The old civilisation will almost certainly collapse and no centralised state with the possible exceptions of China and India could expect to survive. However that does not mean that the old civilisation could not be replaced almost immediately by a new one. I see no reason for a period of barbarism. In almost any scenario you can think of there will be resources in abundance for the survivors. Your second assertion that 'the people left will soon be reduced to subsistence agriculture' seems much more unlikely most Western people and an ever increasing number of Chinese and Indians are urbanites. They know very little about subsistence agriculture but lots about fridges, electricity, central heating, cars and tractors at the least they can go for modern mechanical agriculture. Consider the UK ca. 60M population falls to 60,000. The UK has around six weeks petrol supply for a population 1000 times bigger than the survivor population so assuming the infrastructure is more or less intact and taking a huge amount to account for spillage and evaporation the survivors can still look forward to more or less a millenia of free petrol.

[Leej]

See Earth Abides for this.
One smart man does survive however his kids mostly just aren't that interested in restarting civilization prefering to survive and try and have a good time while they are at it. Modern civilization would most likely just pass into history and legend for a fair few centuries before population levels begin to pick up again.

[Umbral]

Tielhard, I belive you are correct that any disease that kills 99,9% of humanity has to be atypical. I was thinking either of an artificial agent, or a combination of several epidemics breaking out at the same time. Either due to human action or random chance.

I do believe you are refering to the interaction between trasmittability and incubation period, though. Observe how the long incubation period of AIDS allowed it to spread across the globe before the host population started dying.

As to finding a biochemical or genetic twist that is only present in 0,1 % of the population, I must simply disagree. The human population is full of little peculiarites.
It also tends to work that way with other populations, from microbes up. A small number will be sufficiently resistant, and a resistant population derives from them.

In regard to the egailitarion countries having an advantage, I suppose it would mainly matter to the countries and populations themselves. Scandianvia, USA, Britain, and Germany perhaps. Could be an advantage to Germany.

However, since making the original post, it has occured to me that the more egailitarian countries would also put a higher priority on retaining contraceptive capability. Wome will not be happy about giving up their sexual and reproductive freedom.

Which will be a massive disadavntage a few generations down the line, against less egalitarian, possibly less technologically advanced peoples where the women have 10 children each.

[Straha]

Gimme until saturday if you want to find out what would happen...

[Dave Howery]

well, this is ASB, so if we want to have 99.9% of humanity gone, we can do it.. :)

does canned food really last for 'years'? I had the idea it was good for maybe 1 or 2, judging from the expiration dates you see on them. And I just don't see how there will be enough people to keep civilization going... people to run the oil fields, shipping, factories, power plants... and grow enough food to feed everyone? Not to mention the trucking, maintenance... most of the farmers (a pretty small part of the population to begin with) are gone... the ones left can't feed everyone and get the food to them, scattered as they are. People everywhere are going to have to start with the bare basics of feeding themselves; pity the ones who live in marginal areas.. they'll be heading for better growing areas soon...

[Othniel]

.01% of the 6 billion is 6 million. Reasonable to say unless they happen to all be in a wide area and have factories of every type we see a huge drop in tech. Assuming though that these are spread out over equal distance on earth, all 148,939,063.133 km², then that would be .04 people per every km² or every person has a 2.5 km² to themselves. Depending on where this extinction thrives....

With that much spacing an industrial society is gone, but prehaps a few surviors can group together? A cottage industry might be doable within a few DECADES... but most will just be trying to survive.

But keeping most infasturture around, we can see a rate of survial go up, due to humans being able to find food sources, intil they start growing their own or hunting the rats, cats and dogs in the Urbanite areas....

[Tielhard]

0.001% is a factor of 1*10E-5, 6 bn is 6*10E+9 so

1*10E-5 * 6*10E+9 = 6*10E4 = 60,000

This is far more harsh than the proposal that started this thread!

[Othniel]

0.001% is a factor of 1*10E-5, 6 bn is 6*10E+9 so

1*10E-5 * 6*10E+9 = 6*10E4 = 60,000

This is far more harsh than the proposal that started this thread!
Whoops, I accidentially posted my multipler instead of my precentage. It should be .1% instead of .001 which is what happen when you take 1.000-.999...sorry about that monsterous typo....

Again, thank you for catching that horrendous error.

[The Sandman]

The secondary disease wave produced by having 6 billion corpses rotting in the open and basically no one to dispose of them finishes off the last .1% of humanity. Rodents and roaches inherit the earth. End of story.

[Umbral]

Unless the survivors made it due to isolated locations, rather than a genetic twist. I could easily see a scenario where locations such as Spitzbergen, the Falklands, and Ascension shut off all contact with the outside world in response to outbreaks of class IV diseases.

Such places would already have considerable infrastructure set up.

Of course, other places would try the same thing, but remote locations such as the above have a much better chance of it actually working.

Dr. Woolhouse recently noted that the rate of diseases jumping species from animals to humans is rising sharply. At an average rate of one new disease per year, the exposure we are getting to new diseases are likely unprecedented in our evolutionary history.

If one or more of the diseases we are postulating, were of zoonotic origin, our survivors would have a problem. The disease could easily persist in an animal reservoir, where a higher resistance would enable them to live with it. And then reemerge when humans made contact with the animal population again.

In such a scenario, large areas of the earth would be off-limits to the survivng humans for a very long time. Untill a treatment was found, really. And the smaller the clean area is, the less resources available to find such a treatment.

We are well out of ASB territory, though.

[Leej]

well, this is ASB, so if we want to have 99.9% of humanity gone, we can do it.. :)

does canned food really last for 'years'? I had the idea it was good for maybe 1 or 2, judging from the expiration dates you see on them. And I just don't see how there will be enough people to keep civilization going... people to run the oil fields, shipping, factories, power plants... and grow enough food to feed everyone? Not to mention the trucking, maintenance... most of the farmers (a pretty small part of the population to begin with) are gone... the ones left can't feed everyone and get the food to them, scattered as they are. People everywhere are going to have to start with the bare basics of feeding themselves; pity the ones who live in marginal areas.. they'll be heading for better growing areas soon...

Those are sell by dates. Not even best before dates. If properly stored many ordinary household cans could retain full flavour and all for a decade and still be edible for a decade or two after that. Then you have your more specialist canned food designed for such a scenario (even though I doubt there is much of that these days).
As per Earth Abdies I would imagine the survivors in many places become pretty much hunter gatherers- cattle numbers would become a serious problem. Particularly in Britain where the most we have to keep numbers down is domestic dogs.

[Dave Howery]

actually, the number of all domestic animals would sharply decline after a couple of years... the main reasons being that they don't have us feeding them anymore and that they tend to give birth willy nilly around the year instead of during optimal times, such as summer. But once the majority of them are gone, the survivors will be truly wild animals again...

[Umbral]

Those are sell by dates. Not even best before dates. If properly stored many ordinary household cans could retain full flavour and all for a decade and still be edible for a decade or two after that. Then you have your more specialist canned food designed for such a scenario (even though I doubt there is much of that these days).


I had an MRE marked "best before december" 1956 once. It was ok. That was almost twenty years ago though.

[Leej]

actually, the number of all domestic animals would sharply decline after a couple of years... the main reasons being that they don't have us feeding them anymore and that they tend to give birth willy nilly around the year instead of during optimal times, such as summer. But once the majority of them are gone, the survivors will be truly wild animals again...
With sheep yes, they are idiots and will just die for no reason and all that.
Cows though they could definatly fend for themselves, a lot of die off at first with ones trapped in buildings or fields and all that but there will be some who get free and are allowed to roam the country. They would have it pretty much to themselves and their numbers would rocket accordingly.
And giving birth willy nilly? Eh? Most domestic animals tend to just do it in spring. And on the other side of things there are a lot of wild animals who give birth all year round too.

[Dave Howery]

cattle and sheep do tend to breed in the spring, if left to their own. Modern cattle (at least the ones I worked with in MT when I was a kid) have been 'engineered' to give birth all at once in the winter, so that the calves will be ready for sale in the spring. Cats, dogs, and horses, though, will breed any time of the year.... I've seen all three of them born in the dead of winter. It will take a few generations before all these critters start breeding at proper times, but it will happen sooner or later. The biggest kill factor for all of these will be that people aren't around to feed the majority of them anymore...

[PMN1]

The planet's population reached the 6.5 billion mark sometime last Saturday - what could it fall to whilst still maintaining the world's economy and trade at its current level?

[Tom Veil]

I would head to the nearest large irrigation area and hope that enough of my compatriots would have the sense to do the same. Abandon the cities and start from scratch.

Most of us would understand how forges operate, have some degree of literacy, know how to make vessels and bricks from soil and would know how to grow food. What we are essentially losing is everything from the Industrial Revolution on. And presuming libraries are still intact, we might be able to piece some of that back together gradually.

Actually, that's why instead of going to the irrigated lands, I would collect the other 500 people in Washington, D.C., collect some canned food and ham radios, and guard the Library of Congress like it was my religion. My 500 people might not survive to develop a new civilization, but whoever did survive would be grateful to us for keeping the Library standing.

[Tom Veil]

P.S. Ooh, and the Patent Office in Arlington, VA; my little religion would guard that, too. :)

[Heart of Darkness]

I live in/around D.C. and would sign up for that duty. As long as the books survive, civilization could be re-established with resounding ease, at least up to early 21st century levels.

I could, however, foresee the future civilization taking several generations to re-absorb this knowledge. Although going from nothing to space-shuttles in 200-300 years is a lot better than the 100,000 it took us the first time.

[Tom Veil]

OK, we've pretty well spelled out how hard it would be if the 6.5 million survivors were spread out evenly. What if they were in isolated communities? If I had to make this sort of "Sophie's Choice", I would pick Puerto Rico and Tibet. Why?
1. Puerto Rico (pop 3.9 mil) is an island. That means that they can hide from the rotting corpses for a while, and it means that if they can just find enough abandoned oil, coal, etc., in raids of the mainland, they can keep their power grid up.
2. Tibet (pop 2.6 mil) has a culture of isolation. Most of the population already does subsistence farming. They may not be your best bet to restore 21st Century technology -- that's what the Puerto Ricans are for -- but you can bet your bottom dollar that they will survive and maintain at least iron-age civilization.

[Doctor What]

2. Tibet (pop 2.6 mil) has a culture of isolation. Most of the population already does subsistence farming. They may not be your best bet to restore 21st Century technology -- that's what the Puerto Ricans are for -- but you can bet your bottom dollar that they will survive and maintain at least iron-age civilization.

Maybe a bit higher level than that but I think you're right. In fact--it might actually take them a while before they even notice the whole world has gone silent.

[Umbral]

They'd notice the absence of the Chinese rather quickly, I expect:)