What If: Everyone Over 14 Years Old Disappeared?

[amigocabal]

Here is a scenario.

What if, on the 2012 summer solstice, everyone over 14 years old vanishes permanently. (This is similar to the Life Without People series, except it is only people over 14 years old who disappear). What are the immediate effects? The effects one year after? The effects ten years after?

[Dominus Atheos]

Sounds like The Girl Who Owned a City.

[Spoonist]

altuna and trillo did a really nasty comic on that topic
El último recreo
See if you can find it translated

[Mr Bean]

So roughly 12% of the world's population is left? Just shy of 850,000,000 humans left alive. I'd say within the week half of those will have died of dehydration because they are either to young (0-4) to look after themselves or are just unlucky and unable to look after themselves because of the location of their home. By the end of the first year I'm predicting less than forty million survivors which should congregate in communities by that point or be dead.

At that point it's any ones guess as to if these communities live or die based on local conditions.

[amigocabal]

So roughly 12% of the world's population is left? Just shy of 850,000,000 humans left alive. I'd say within the week half of those will have died of dehydration because they are either to young (0-4) to look after themselves or are just unlucky and unable to look after themselves because of the location of their home. By the end of the first year I'm predicting less than forty million survivors which should congregate in communities by that point or be dead.

At that point it's any ones guess as to if these communities live or die based on local conditions.

My guess is that the immediate effect would be car crashes and airline crashes when the drivers/pilots vanish. For example, summer solstice would happen during rush hour in Los Angeles, so the freeways would be a total mess.

I would imagine the older kids might try to take care of the younger kids; they would know at least some of the implications of the event. There will be a mass migration of children from urban to rural areas. Cars and pickup trucks would not be difficult to drive, and in the immediate term, there would be more than enough fuel to leave the cities, although there would be complications if the roads are clogged with wrecked cars and trucks, like in Los Angeles. (Although, given traffic patterns in Los Angeles, some of the crashed cars might still be driveable, as most of the freeway crashes would have happened at low speeds.)

The biggest cause of death after the event would likely be violence. A lot of firearms would be left lying around, and plenty of older kids would have the foresight to go to the nearest armory.

[Simon_Jester]

Don't be silly; people will be much too busy trying not to starve or die of thirst to waste time shooting each other.

[Junghalli]

I remember we had a discussion with a similar premise a while back: "children and SDN inherit the Earth".

As I remember the consensus there was that human civilization was pretty much toast in such a scenario; people would survive but with basically all the people who know how to run and maintain civilization dead civilization would crash hard.

[PREDATOR490]

Sounds like the Tribe...

Children forming gangs that bully, steal and otherwise wreck havok while the others scramble to survive. I full expect some children to be fetching weapons to attack others or defend themselves with. More likely in homes with guns but I dont see children raiding a nearby army base at in the short term. Supermarkets, toy stores and schools would be brutally raided first I imagine.

As for the effects: Lord of the Flies ?

[FaxModem1]

I'm imagining the show Jeremiah. Where for years there's nothing but chaos, but a couple decades later, when they're all adults, the main purpose of the main characters is to rebuild civilization.

[Lord Relvenous]

Sounds like The Girl Who Owned a City.

Holy shit, thank you. I read that book in 7th grade, but I could never remember the name of it.

[TC Pilot]

I'm actually from the town that book is set in and went to the school they ultimately holed up in. And if the level of planning they show in that book is indicative of how the rest of the world will act (i.e. setting up their first base literally within visual distance of a castle on a hill), I can't see many people surviving for very long.

[Flameblade]

Sounds like The Girl Who Owned a City.

Man, I loved that book growing up. I'm deeply amused now that I've read the wikipedia article on the book. Apparently it was intended to put Randroid philosophy into a format children would understand.

...and when I read it in 5th grade, it read like an argument for the occasional necessity of authoritarianism over democracy in a dire enough state of emergency.

[Simon_Jester]

This is where someone more lit-crit oriented than me would write an essay on the book, ensuring the death of the author with whatever weapons necessary, and talk about how the ownership-oriented social model of Randism winds up identifying with authoritarianism.

Me, I guess I'll just settle for the one-liner.

[The Yosemite Bear]

Well there was "Lord of the Flies" and knowing what little shits teens normally are, I expect that to be the end of the human race in short order.