End of World / Civ Rars - We haven't been grim enough...

[Solauren]

You know, we've had a fair share of 'the world has ended, what would you do!' scenarios over the years here at SD.NET.

You know, zombie apocalypse, pandemic apocalypse, and beings with impossible powers setting up a scenario for shits and giggles.

The standard reaction, with few exceptions, is 'hoard stuff and wait it out'.

Well this is a commendable idea on the surface, it turns out, with a little examination, in almost any 'end of the world' scenario, it's pointless.

You may not be aware there are several serious books and 'documentary' style movies about these types of scenario. For example 'Aftermath: Population Zero and Life After People

It's occured to me, especially after the discussion in the recent Children and SD.net Inherit the Earth !RAR! where the Duchess and I got into a minor arguement, that alot of us have never really considered the effects of a massive population die off, or even just large enough to lead to total or near total infrastructure collapse. Probably because it's to, emotionally turbulent to think about.

(Un)fortunately for everyone, I like emotional turbulence in my 'what if' scenarios.

So, have processed the above links, and making a few minor adjustments, I've decided to post what I'm calling the 'Definitive' scenario, complete with a timeline of events outside or beyond the control of survivors.

So.. here's the set up.

This starts on a Monday, and we'll say mid-July

Day 'Zero'
4:00 am, Greenich Mean time; 85% (or more) of the population in that timezone dies, regardless of location. Every major organ just shuts down, they suffer a heart attack so massive and sudden they'd need a quadruple bypass if they survived otherwise, and their braincells heat up and cook to 'burnt toast' level over the course of 2 seconds.

This process of dying occurs over the course of 1 hour, starting at the eastern edge of the timezone, and ending at 4:59 am at the western edge. Then the process repeats on each time zone, every time zone on Earth has been processed. The few 'half hour difference' timezones get hit when they reach 4:00am, regardless of activity in adjoining time zones.

During this process, global telecommunications into the affected areas are disrupted. No one really knows what's going on, assuming they even realise it, until it's too late.

(Please note: in the original scenario's, everyone is just 'raptured' away. However, I want this to be a bit more realistic, so I'm leaving bodies)

Please check the wikipedia links above for a timeline of what happens afterwards. I can post one if requested.

So, what do you do? We'll say everyone automatically knows when they wake up normally what's going on.

Summary;
Within 4 days on the calender (and about 72 hours by the clock), our civilization will have completely collapsed, beyond the point of quick and easy recovery. Coal fails after about 1 hour, nuclear by the end of the day, and in the mean time, rolling black outs occur. Massive realise of chemicals as cooling and containment facilities fail, and the sewer systems back up and overflow within that period.

Within a week, wild animals will be moving into the abandoned parts of civilization, and there are probably dog packs on the lose. Dog packs that may realise the surviving humans are not a threat physically. On the plus side, we can always eat them.

Within 10 days, every single spent nuclear fuel facility that was not totally self-contained goes up, irradiating the ares around them. Each location could irradiate an area the size of New Brunswich, or roughly 1/3 of Texas.

[Lancer]

I doubt that nuclear reactors would cook off. They should have some automated shutdown process to prevent that very thing from happening. Most wild animals would also not be so quick to move into most of the abandoned parts of civilization, as there isn't anything there to sustain them yet.

With the population reduced to only 15% of what it was, and quite possibly more casualties to come due to breakdown of infrastructure, the survivors will be only a small fraction of the populace. The immediate concern will be securing and storing food and potable water, as shelter and clothing are non-perishable and will be available for a long time to come.

Major metropolitan areas will be hit hard in this respect, as they don't keep as large a stock of food as suburban areas. Transportation will also be an issue, not so much because of fuel (there will be plenty of vehicles around that weren't being driven when the downfall of civilization occured), as the highways being littered with the burning hulks of crashed vehicles. Those regions will pretty much be write-offs, as anyone who survives will flee the cities.

Survival in the suburbs will probably be the easiest to accomplish immediately, due to the close proximity to supermarkets and other stores where they can grab food and supplies. It's not a sustainable position in the long-run however, so they will have to either develop food cultivation on their own, or migrate to rural areas where food cultivation already exists.

Rural areas will probably get hit the hardest immediately, as they've had a low population density to begin with. There simply may not be enough people left to band together and keep things running even at a subsistence level. If by some chance a rural town does manage to survive, they will most likely be the basis for recovery.

[Alferd Packer]

Transportation will also be an issue, not so much because of fuel (there will be plenty of vehicles around that weren't being driven when the downfall of civilization occured), as the highways being littered with the burning hulks of crashed vehicles. Those regions will pretty much be write-offs, as anyone who survives will flee the cities.

I would think that only major highways would be damaged, because this die-off occurs at 4 AM local time. The only people awake and driving are most likely truckers and a few people going to work. Local roads and smaller highways should be almost deserted.

One of the most interesting things of this scenario is that a significant pecentage of the population survives, unlike events in, say, The Stand. 15% of the population will consume most of the easily available food and fuel within, say, a single winter. After that, we'd probably have to go back to our agrarian roots, which means a mass exodus from suburbia and the cities. What I imagine would happen is that from the hinterlands, we would slowly edge closer to the metopolises of old as exurbs and suburbs are reclaimed by nature. Finally, we would re-building cities on or near their existing locations (after all, cities were built where they were for a damn good reason, in most cases). How long would it take? Maybe a couple centuries.

[PeZook]

How is this scenario different from, uh, all the others we've endlessly went through, always concluding them with "The situation is hopeless and recovery may be completely impossible" in the end?

If I survive the initial die-off, I probably die within the next few months, depending mostly on luck. I can't farm, I'm not physically strong, I easily get sick, I have no access to weapons, I have little technical skills.

[Solauren]

I doubt that nuclear reactors would cook off. They should have some automated shutdown process to prevent that very thing from happening.

It's not the reactors that cook of. It's the cooling facilities for the spent nuclear rods. They need to be kept cool, and have water supplied to them to act as the cooling medium.

No power, no water supply = cooling rods boiling the water into radioactive vapor.

[RedImperator]

The question of the nuclear plants has two parts, both related to the heat produced naturally by radioactive decay, regardless of whether or not the plant is operating.

The first is the fuel rods in the reactor themselves. Even if all the control rods are in place, the fuel will still produce heat via natural decay, and eventually, one way or another, the cooling water pumps will stop working (either they jam/clog/break down or simply shut down when the backup generators run out of fuel). So the question is, would they produce enough heat to 1) boil off all the cooling water, and 2) melt down. I've heard conflicting answers to this, so I'd really love to hear from someone who knows about nuclear plants.

The second, as Solauren mentioned, is the spent fuel currently stored in cooling ponds on power plant grounds. Again, these produce heat from radioactive decay, and again, eventually the cooling water pumps will shut down. Furthermore, unlike the reactor, the fuel storage buildings aren't surrounded by a reinforced concrete containment structure. So again, I'd be thrilled if a nuclear plant expert could weigh in on this: what happens to them? Eventually, they will be dry through evaporation if nothing else, unless the roof collapses first and lets in enough rain to refill the pond. So what happens to that fuel? Does it just sit there? Does it get hot enough to melt? Start fires?

I think it's inevitable that some radioactivity will be released to the environment; what I don't know is how much and how fast. Since I have a novella percolating involving an abandoned civilization, it would be really helpful to know.

[loomer]

Alright, first priorities first - Ideally my bunker will have been built by then (Yes, I actually have plans to build a kick ass underground bunker/evil lair complex once I have the money for such a major undertaking). If so, my solution is fairly simple.

Take everyone I know with useful skills who survived in there with me, as per my plans for nuclear war, zombie apocalypse, or Evil Communist Takeover (tm). With the huge population die offs, there'll be empty spaces that can be filled with strong, healthy specimens.

Subsist on the bunker's supplies for a few years (Beginning to see why this thing is going to be so costly? It needs to have air filtering capacity for at least three years, storage space for five years worth of food for twenty people, water purification systems that'll last for at least ten years reliably...) and then emerge after decay has rendered most of the corpses into mere skeletons. That wait'll reduce the ability of disease to spread like wildfire. The only challenges left will be either dealing with animals and starvation (which is why the bunker is planned to also contain basic farming tools and seeds.), roving gangs (the reason why it'll have a few handguns and rifles (and if I know the end of the world is guaranteed coming, I'll blow a load of cash on some fully-automatic black market gear)), or fitting into whatever society has since been established.

Fitting in is probably going to be easy. In a hellish world like that, who wouldn't want a group of well armed, healthy, technologically equipped and well educated survivors on their side?

At this point it goes into the usual routes of either - we all die, most of everyone dies except small enclaves, no one dies and we reclaim we the earth.

[Darth Tanner]

Your timelines rely on humanity just disappearing or dying off completely. With 15% of us left some level of civilization can quite easily be maintained if the governments simply take control of the available labour and force it into keeping the key industries going.

Coal fails after about 1 hour, nuclear by the end of the day, and in the mean time, rolling black outs occur

Why? With at least 15% of the staff surviving there should be sufficient people about to meet the now massively reduced demand (no industrial production is needed) for the short term. The loss of skilled staff would be a problem but the state could move survivors in from now redundant sectors to keep electricity generation going to the required levels.

Dog packs that may realise the surviving humans are not a threat physically

What? Animals are not going to overrun 15% of the existing civilization, a civilization that just went into survival mode and was probably armed by the state which also has what soldiers it has left on the streets to keep some semblance of order.

Within 10 days, every single spent nuclear fuel facility that was not totally self-contained goes up, irradiating the ares around them.

Even if there isn't enough surviving staff to keep them operating, there will be enough to safely shut them down, assuming of course they cant shut down automatically on dead mans switches.

For what your trying to get at you'd need a population die off of well over 99%, which just revolves around hoard some food (which is abundantly stored in tin form) away from the urban areas and wait out the immediate problems before restarting civilization in a few years a dirt poor farmers.

as the highways being littered with the burning hulks of crashed vehicles.

The immediate need for personal transportation just died with the 85% of the population, but it wouldn't take that much effort for heavy vehicles to push the few trucks and cars off the road and leave them there. The army likely has quite a few vehicles that would be idela for clearing the roads, and rail will still be operating.

Yes, I actually have plans to build a kick ass underground bunker/evil lair complex once I have the money for such a major undertaking

Not that having your own evil bunker isnt cool but do you really not have anything better to be spending your money on?

[loomer]

Yes, I actually have plans to build a kick ass underground bunker/evil lair complex once I have the money for such a major undertaking

Not that having your own evil bunker isnt cool but do you really not have anything better to be spending your money on?

Well, honestly, I should probably spend the money on food for the poor and the like. But once I can sink the numerous millions required (which won't happen any time soon) I'll probably have millions more I can donate.

Plus, c'mon! Evil Undergound Lair! Every man should have one!

[Darth Nostril]

Your timelines rely on humanity just disappearing or dying off completely. With 15% of us left some level of civilization can quite easily be maintained if the governments simply take control of the available labour and force it into keeping the key industries going.

What government? Assuming this is an even spread die off there's only going to be 15% of politicians left, most of whom will be panicking/in grief because superiors and loved ones just dropped dead.

Why? With at least 15% of the staff surviving there should be sufficient people about to meet the now massively reduced demand (no industrial production is needed) for the short term. The loss of skilled staff would be a problem but the state could move survivors in from now redundant sectors to keep electricity generation going to the required levels.

Again you are underestimating the human response to 85% of the worlds population dropping dead.
And again what fucking government?

Dog packs that may realise the surviving humans are not a threat physically

What? Animals are not going to overrun 15% of the existing civilization, a civilization that just went into survival mode and was probably armed by the state which also has what soldiers it has left on the streets to keep some semblance of order.

WTF?
There was no warning, as per the OP 85% of the population just dropped dead.
Where did you get this "probably armed by the state" from?
There won't be troops on the streets, there wouldn't be enough time for any coordinated response to take place.

Within 10 days, every single spent nuclear fuel facility that was not totally self-contained goes up, irradiating the areas around them.

Even if there isn't enough surviving staff to keep them operating, there will be enough to safely shut them down, assuming of course they cant shut down automatically on dead mans switches.

For what your trying to get at you'd need a population die off of well over 99%, which just revolves around hoard some food (which is abundantly stored in tin form) away from the urban areas and wait out the immediate problems before restarting civilization in a few years a dirt poor farmers.

Which part of spent fuel storage whooshed right over your head? The reactors would shut down on automatic, the spent fuel storage pools however need constant human oversight.

as the highways being littered with the burning hulks of crashed vehicles.

The immediate need for personal transportation just died with the 85% of the population, but it wouldn't take that much effort for heavy vehicles to push the few trucks and cars off the road and leave them there. The army likely has quite a few vehicles that would be idela for clearing the roads, and rail will still be operating.

What army?
All you've got is 15% of the population burying their dead and trying to survive.

Yes, I actually have plans to build a kick ass underground bunker/evil lair complex once I have the money for such a major undertaking

Not that having your own evil bunker isnt cool but do you really not have anything better to be spending your money on?

Building a Tanner proof bunker sounds like a good idea

[PeZook]

15% of the US population is 30 million people. There should still be more than 150 thousand soldiers left, which should be enough to form a military government at the least.

The key is centralizing the people: most of the US should be abandoned completely. Without food, utilities and with rampant disease, many of those 30 million will die out quickly, of course, but even if 1/3 survives to concentrate somewhere in the Midwest, it will be enough to rebuild civilization far more rapidly than in the "children and sd.net inherit the earth" scenario (where recovery was deemed extremely hard to impossible)

Europe is boned, though. The amount of survivors will be about the same, but they will all speak dozens of different languages. In the US, China or Russia the new (or old) government can just start broadcasting a message on national TV and get people to start concentrating, in Europe...well, we're fucked

Africa will go back to tribalism (and I mean stick-and-stone tribalism, not AK-and-machette like it is today) overnight, though. Generally speaking, the places with strong government structures should be much better off.

[Shroom Man 777]

I grab my dad's proverbial arsenal of guns, or choose between the M4, MP5 and the Galil, and head off to become Max Shroomatansky - The Shroom Warrior!

Seriously? I'm fucked. I'll end up being a degenerate aborigine in a couple of years, living in my crappy Philippine island with other degenerates. Goddamn.

[PeZook]

I grab my dad's proverbial arsenal of guns, or choose between the M4, MP5 and the Galil, and head off to become Max Shroomatansky - The Shroom Warrior!

Seriously? I'm fucked. I'll end up being a degenerate aborigine in a couple of years, living in my crappy Philippine island with other degenerates. Goddamn.

Heh, you actually have more survival skills than me.

I mean, seriously. In a post-apocalyptic setting, who's gonna be making a better living: a nurse or a guy in marketing?

[Darth Fanboy]

Fuck, if I am one of the people to survive this, i'm head right for Laguna beach, removing the bodies from whichever mansion I like, and spending the rest of my days on the Pacific. Fuck it, why not. Or maybe something close to a harbor so I can appropriate a sailboat and go fishing whenever I want. That would be a good way to eat well. Barring that, hit the road and make my way to the midwest, where the land is fertile, fresh water is availiable, and there are currently few people as it is so there are fewer dead bodies to worry about.

At first I wondered why the OP reminded me of a bad M. Night Shamalamadingdong movie, and then I remembered it's because he made this movie already.

[Shroom Man 777]

Heh, you actually have more survival skills than me.

I mean, seriously. In a post-apocalyptic setting, who's gonna be making a better living: a nurse or a guy in marketing?

Better yet, a nurse with an assault rifle (actually TWO)!

Seriously though, they teach us to do some job in some hospital. Actual-factual survivalistisism will require... rugged woodmanly skills! A lumberjack, or a crazy hillbilly, would trump both a nurse or a guy in marketing.

[PeZook]

An actual human settlement would probably prefer having a nurse (an armed one!) than a crazy hillbilly, though. They'd give you food and shit for that.

Myself, I'd have to...con them out of their food, or something

[Shroom Man 777]

You can run our barter economy! Paul, how much do these trinkets weigh in their worth of beans?

[PeZook]

You can run our barter economy! Paul, how much do these trinkets weigh in their worth of beans?

"Fuck this, we're gonna start printing money"

EDIT: Joking aside, I wonder how much actual survival skills would be necessary. Sure, industrial production collapsed, but not everyone is dead. Farmers will do okay, for one, if they scale back their production. I'd imagine communities would start re-forming around farms, with people without other skills helping out in exchange for food, unless some places maintained a strong enough government.

[Commander 598]

I know how to catch large quantities of fish in inland waterways, how to hunt (In multiple forms), hot to handle/care for livestock, the basics of modern metal working and carpentry, how to turn trees into proper firewood (And know which kind of trees to use), how to make fire without matches, and I do have a pretty good idea of how to farm despite my personal loathing of it thanks to helping my dad do it for most of my life.

Edit: And I almost forgot, I know how to get somewhere with only a map and compass.

[Darth Tanner]

What government? Assuming this is an even spread die off there's only going to be 15% of politicians left

Politicians are not the government and there are hundreds of thousands of civil servants and soldiers which are who will actually be organising any post 85% kill off society. I'd imagine that some level of planning of how to deal with a large percentage of the population dieing has already been prepared although it wouldn’t have anticipated such a sudden death rate.

For example in England and Wales there will be over 22,000 police officers surviving and 33,000 military personnel in the UK entire (although sadly many of these will be outside the UK. This should be enough to organise a population of what is now 9,000,000 people that is spread rather thin.

Obviously with people loosing their friends and families they are going to be emotionally crushed but I don't see how that equates with them just stop giving a shit about civilization.

Where did you get this "probably armed by the state" from?

Although it doesnt really work in the UK, in the USA at least the general populace are incredibly well armed and have good access to fire arms. If civilization is in peril I'd imagine that citizen militias for ensueing civil order would be a logical solution.

the spent fuel storage pools however need constant human oversight.

Which they can get because at least 15% of the engineers and other staff have survived and I'd guess that at least some of them are professional enough to realise sitting at home to mourn the death of their friends and family and ignoring their critical job is not a good idea. How many staff would actually be needed to just do the essential tasks to divert immediate crisis.

All you've got is 15% of the population burying their dead and trying to survive.

Which is 15% of the army as well you stupid tit. It would only take a few hundred men in heavy trucks or APCs to ram the roads clear enough for critical goods to be moved about, and at the event happening at 4am there isn’t going to be many roads that are truly jammed solid.

Your suggestion that because of 85% death of the population that everyone is just going to abandon society and go feral is laughable.

15% of the US population is 30 million people

Is that the adult population? Because I get 45,000,000 in total.

The surviving European population would be over 109,000,000 in total.

Hell there’s going to be over 530,000,000 people left in Asia!

Plus, c'mon! Evil Undergound Lair! Every man should have one!

LOL There is always that.

[Commander 598]

Your suggestion that because of 85% death of the population that everyone is just going to abandon society and go feral is laughable.

Well, I believe that in some locations it basically would go feral, to a degree, or at least cease to be a part of it's original nation thanks to multiple factors such as loss of power/phone lines, total soul crushing depression from having most of your family and friends cease to exist and thus making the general "government response" probably half-hearted at best for awhile, general insurgency/rioting, and actual organized secession.

We've seen perfectly well what happens when a disaster strikes and the government isn't there in any meaningful non-corrupt form...

Most major cities should be able to keep order and keep most of the utilities running, towns are possibly going to have a rough time between armed rednecks shitting bricks or rednecks and thinking it's the rapture. Remote towns are going to have a problem because they're 10,000 miles away from anything that matters (or help), and thanks to spawning towns/cities in locations totally unsuited to human habitation like the American Southwest over the 20th century may be royally fucked as far as food and water is concerned.

[PeZook]

Is that the adult population? Because I get 45,000,000 in total.

Well, I cited it off the top of my head

Hell there’s going to be over 530,000,000 people left in Asia!

India and China will become instant superpowers, to be honest. They will still have enough people left over to run pretty much everything, and the massive strain on their domestic services will ease after bodies are taken care of. This will take years, though. Disposing of 800 million bodies will be a horrifying and labor intensive process...

Most major cities should be able to keep order and keep most of the utilities running, towns are possibly going to have a rough time between armed rednecks shitting bricks or rednecks and thinking it's the rapture. Remote towns are going to have a problem because they're 10,000 miles away from anything that matters (or help), and thanks to spawning towns/cities in locations totally unsuited to human habitation like the American Southwest over the 20th century may be royally fucked as far as food and water is concerned.

Most of the country will have to be abandoned, frankly speaking, but plenty of people can be saved by simply broadcasting messages telling them to concentrate in designated locations. The US will no longer be a continental power, banditry will run rampant...I'm not sure where it would be best to concentrate the remaining people. Texas sounds like a good bet, with its oil facilities and proximity to the fertile Midwest...

[Junghalli]

Yeah, this scenario is much less grim than the "children and SDN survive" thread. There you were talking about leaving only children and a few thousand adults alive on the entire planet. Here you've got a random 15 in every 100 people surviving - enough to keep civilization running, more or less (at least in places where everybody doesn't go apeshit). We're looking at massive disruptions, of course, but not the total collapse of industrialized civilization.

[Solauren]

Sorry, I meant 15% as a maximum.

[Sikon]

Remote towns are going to have a problem because they're 10,000 miles away from anything that matters (or help), and thanks to spawning towns/cities in locations totally unsuited to human habitation like the American Southwest over the 20th century may be royally fucked as far as food and water is concerned.

There's nowhere more than hundreds of miles from a major city with many thousands of survivors. People would often migrate if necessary to join up with a large organized group.

Well, I believe that in some locations it basically would go feral, to a degree, or at least cease to be a part of it's original nation thanks to multiple factors such as loss of power/phone lines, total soul crushing depression from having most of your family and friends cease to exist and thus making the general "government response" probably half-hearted at best for awhile, general insurgency/rioting, and actual organized secession.

We've seen perfectly well what happens when a disaster strikes and the government isn't there in any meaningful non-corrupt form...

While a large percentage of the population may be depressed if they had close family members and lost them, history doesn't suggest that most people would do nothing for themselves or others for any long length of time, not typically days or anything.

I wonder how much history the average person knows. I can't think of any historical disaster in which the majority of any large group of people failed to demonstrate usual human survival instincts. That includes historical times when most of a settlement died off, with various incidences such as some times in early European colonization of North America. It includes some maritime disasters, in which some people have suddenly lost most of their closest friends and fellow crewmembers. Some military units have had huge losses with individuals losing most of their buddies, retreating or surrendering afterwards in many cases but still usually acting for survival.

A lot of workers at important facilities like city water treatment plants, power plants, and so on would still show up and do their duty. The Army, National Guard, and other organized groups would help out, drafting people from the general populace into needed work.

In the meantime, there would be months of pre-existing food (some weeks from raiding the cupboards of the houses of dead people after removing the bodies, let alone all that in between stores, warehouses, silos, and even grain usually used for animals but still edible in an emergency, as well as some surplus farm animals). Such would last for longer than it would take to get some people working on farms, instructed by the remaining original farmers and agricultural workers. Actually, on second thought, although the number of original agricultural workers surviving is 15% of the total, food production needs are also 15% as much afterwards, or less than that if the usual majority of production being fed to animals for relatively inefficiently extra meat is skipped.

I suppose some people tend to see disasters through their perception of Katrina. In that case, the New Orleans metropolitan area had a population of 1.3 million. On the order of 98% of that population carried out a successful appropriate survival plan of leaving the city, while 0.025 million or so stayed, mostly in the Superdome. Especially with some people not having left and not in the superdome shelter, there were around 1500 deaths, around 0.1% of the original total population. As most people are aware, the government response was relatively incompetent in ways, and things went much more poorly than should have been the case. Part of the weakness of the response was artificial, like how some very organized U.S. Army units could have gone there and helped if they had been authorized. But one still saw the vast majority of the total population acting in a manner appropriate for their survival.

In WWII, the Soviet Union lost 20% of its population overall, including more than that percentage in some regions, while losing most of its pre-war industry. But they continued on and rebuilt. I doubt they would have failed to survive, lost organized society, or reverted to pre-industrial agriculture alone if that figure had been 40% or even 85%. In a situation with millions of survivors, history just doesn't support fictional imaginations of people going back to mere feralism or even fully losing industrial society, almost as inaccurate as some sci-fi's imaginary human mutants after a nuclear war. This is also relevant to the recent nuclear war aftermath thread in SLAM, a situation much better than this since some neutral countries would be targeted by few if any warheads.