AHC: Have a country achive a average lifespan numbering triple digits

Hvalrossen

I hope this thread is something intresting and out of the ordinary for AHers.
Alterate History Challenge:
Have a country achive a average lifespan numbering containg 3 digits. This means that the average lifespan has to be 100 or more. Also the average lifespan in that country should only count natural born residents(no great centenarian migration). Earliest allowed POD is 1900.
Some intresting links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Zone
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centenarian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_expectancy
 

Hvalrossen

The people inhabiting Blue Zones share common lifestyle characteristics that contribute to their longevity.
Blue Zone Vendiagram.gif
 

apollo11

Banned
Only way I figure you can get this is a timeline in which the world focuses its energy on improved public sanitation, medicine, health care in general and probably longevity technology and genetics. I'm not sure how you get there though. That said from what I know of life extension technology you could actually get much higher than 100 once you crack the code of aging.


So this seems like a real hit or miss goal you've set. Either our species has cracked the cure for aging and life expectancy has jumped to hundreds of years or they miss it and it's still below 100. I'm not saying this is an impossible or ASB timeline but it seems like a far reach. For some reason modern human societies don't seem culturally interested in life extension despite it seemingly being within our reach as of OTL 2018. Change that and maybe by ATL 2018 they'd have gotten the cure.
 

GeographyDude

apollo11 said:
Only way I figure you can get this is a timeline in which the world focuses its energy on improved public sanitation, medicine, health care in general and probably longevity technology and genetics. I'm not sure how you get there though. That said from what I know of life extension technology you could actually get much higher than 100 once you crack the code of aging.


So this seems like a real hit or miss goal you've set. Either our species has cracked the cure for aging and life expectancy has jumped to hundreds of years or they miss it and it's still below 100. I'm not saying this is an impossible or ASB timeline but it seems like a far reach. For some reason modern human societies don't seem culturally interested in life extension despite it seemingly being within our reach as of OTL 2018. Change that and maybe by ATL 2018 they'd have gotten the cure.
Click to expand...
Somehow it seems scary, like someone else is going to be deciding for me, like someone else is going to be all involved in my business.
 

apollo11

Banned
GeographyDude said:
Somehow it seems scary, like someone else is going to be deciding for me, like someone else is going to be all involved in my business.
Click to expand...
I find life extension by itself to be the opposite. It gives the individual the agency to live for hundreds of years if they please or kill themselves if they don't want to.
 

Arkenfolm

apollo11 said:
Only way I figure you can get this is a timeline in which the world focuses its energy on improved public sanitation, medicine, health care in general and probably longevity technology and genetics. I'm not sure how you get there though. That said from what I know of life extension technology you could actually get much higher than 100 once you crack the code of aging.


So this seems like a real hit or miss goal you've set. Either our species has cracked the cure for aging and life expectancy has jumped to hundreds of years or they miss it and it's still below 100. I'm not saying this is an impossible or ASB timeline but it seems like a far reach. For some reason modern human societies don't seem culturally interested in life extension despite it seemingly being within our reach as of OTL 2018. Change that and maybe by ATL 2018 they'd have gotten the cure.
Click to expand...

Barring solutions like described in that video, which we haven't yet figured out, this is currently impossible. Cancer detection and treatment is not advanced enough currently. Further, the average lifespan is decreased by the amount of younger people who die in car accidents or commit suicide (the two leading causes of death below age 40)--advanced self-driving cars and better mental health services would decrease the mortality from those causes.

The maximum with current/near future technologies (what we might reasonably expect within 20 years) is probably late 80s (maybe pushing 90) at best.
 

Divergent54

GeographyDude said:
Somehow it seems scary, like someone else is going to be deciding for me, like someone else is going to be all involved in my business.
Click to expand...

You don't have to extend your life if you don't like it. However, if other people-- like me-- choose to do so, I have individual agency to choose to extend my life. It only seems scary because humans see so many films where the government or corporations « force » people to do something ( like eugenics or whatever ) that violates their individual agencies and consent.
 

apollo11

Banned
metalinvader665 said:
Barring solutions like described in that video, which we haven't yet figured out, this is currently impossible.
Click to expand...
Exactly. My questions for the board are this.

1. Why does our current society (in a global collective use of the word society) not invest more resources into life extension?
2. What factors would need to change that?

Once you have the answer to those two questions we can answer OP's prompt. It's not impossible to imagine an ATL that say has no World Wars and faster globalization so that by ATL 2018 they were economically ahead of us and with their relatively greater resources had cracked aging.
 

Look More Closely Later

Average life-span in triple digits? A dictatorship replaces the normal numeric system with binary (because of something or other to do with computers, maybe) - and any numeric value which is four or over in binary is at least a triple digit number...

Seriously though, I don't think this could be done without using a statistical sleight-of-hand such as Inferus' proposal of a very small state with a very specially chosen population to hit the target.
 

apollo11

Banned
Look More Closely Later said:
I don't think this could be done without using a statistical sleight-of-hand such as Inferus' proposal of a very small state with a very specially chosen population to hit the target.
Click to expand...
It is a matter of two questions.

1. Can we with a certain level of applied technology radically extend human lifespan?
2. If so can we reach such a level of technological development in an alternate timeline by ATL 2018?

I don't think it is a common occurrence in alternative universes but I doubt it is ASB.
 
Inferus

Inferus

Hvalrossen said:
OTL as of 2013 Monaco had the highest life expectancy of all sovereign countries in the world.
https://www.indexmundi.com/monaco/life_expectancy_at_birth.html
Life expectany in Monaco is 93,5 years for women and 85,6 years for men.
View attachment 385483

https://www.getold.com/want-to-live-a-long-healthy-life-take-a-lesson-from-monaco
-They’re dishing up smaller portions
-They’re spending time outside.
-They have access to excellent health care
-There’s calm in the air
Click to expand...
Well, when the vast majority of your state is made up of the Uber rich, it's fairly easy to live longer.
 

Hvalrossen

Inferus said:
Well, when the vast majority of your state is made up of the Uber rich, it's fairly easy to live longer.
Click to expand...
Japan Average Wage: 39000 US dollars
Monaco Average Wage: 188409 US dollars
https://resources.realestate.co.jp/living/average-salary-japan-occupation-age/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Monaco

Japan average life expectancy is 86 years just 3 years lower than Monaco. This is while Monacans almost have a 5 times(4,831) higher income than Japanese.
https://edition.cnn.com/2015/12/11/health/oldest-countries-secret-longer-life/index.html

What i am trying to point out is that there its a ceiling, where extra wealth may not be the sole or major reason for a higher life expectancy.
 

Roches

Surely avocados and coconut oil fit into that Venn diagram somewhere. They're extremely trendy right now. Like many of you, of course, I remember back when consuming coconut oil was considered tantamount to cardiac suicide... (and movie popcorn was full of it...)
 

Jiraiyathegallant

Probably requires a world wank scenario, where Tsarist Russia, China, and India all make virtually every right decision and reach developed status by the 60, 80s, and 00 respectively, while the West avoids world wars, Latin America’s better regions never lose their first world status and their poorer regions catch up by the 90s, and SE Asia and the more populous parts of Africa reach developed status by 2000. For all of these countries to have relatively open trade and sharing of ideas with each other for most of a century uninterrupted, and pretty much all of them having 20%+ of their workforce’s college educated by 2000 and most by the 80s.

In this scenario, we might have a big enough increase in wealth and technology for serious life extension, along with enough nice areas for bigger outliers.
 

Scott_B

Jiraiyathegallant said:
Probably requires a world wank scenario, where Tsarist Russia, China, and India all make virtually every right decision and reach developed status by the 60, 80s, and 00 respectively, while the West avoids world wars, Latin America’s better regions never lose their first world status and their poorer regions catch up by the 90s, and SE Asia and the more populous parts of Africa reach developed status by 2000. For all of these countries to have relatively open trade and sharing of ideas with each other for most of a century uninterrupted, and pretty much all of them having 20%+ of their workforce’s college educated by 2000 and most by the 80s.

In this scenario, we might have a big enough increase in wealth and technology for serious life extension, along with enough nice areas for bigger outliers.
Click to expand...

Or all that increased demand for resources ramps up pollution, uses up fresh water, speeds up climate change and sparks conflicts...
 
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