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Quote: Wizard

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned Stephen King's 'The Stand' yet. I've read most of his stuff. If forced, I would say it is his best work. A huge book about a virus that kills some 99.99% of the population, while the survivors are completely immune. It was made into a mini-series a while back. Here is the opening scene, which depicts the laboratory where the virus was created and accidentally escapes.

EB mentioned the slang for the disease somewhere back in passing. I mentioned how Vegas now must look like when the one group was settling there, all the tables but nobody at them.

One thing about "The Stand" that I always wondered was what percent of a death rate would doom society to extinction. 99.9% clearly would mean the end. But at what point would so much of the skill sets needed to maintain things be lost that it would be the eventual end, with the remaining society just living off what had already been made?

Quote: AZDuffman

One thing about "The Stand" that I always wondered was what percent of a death rate would doom society to extinction. 99.9% clearly would mean the end. But at what point would so much of the skill sets needed to maintain things be lost that it would be the eventual end, with the remaining society just living off what had already been made?

Why would 99.9% mean the end? That would mean 0.001 * 327M = 327,000 survivors in the US. Much as in the Stand, survivors would find each other. The early settlers to the US came in groups of 100 or so and had all kinds of challenges we wouldn't face. Maybe we have different definitions of "society," but the human race would survive just fine. There would be a decent skill set in that 327M to form a government and get basic services going again.

Quote: Wizard

Why would 99.9% mean the end? That would mean 0.001 * 327M = 327,000 survivors in the US. Much as in the Stand, survivors would find each other. The early settlers to the US came in groups of 100 or so and had all kinds of challenges we wouldn't face. Maybe we have different definitions of "society," but the human race would survive just fine. There would be a decent skill set in that 327M to form a government and get basic services going again.

It would mean the end because you would lose so many vital skills. Lets assume that it would happen fairly fast like in "The Stand" but there would be immunity to whatever caused it same as in the miniseries. To give benefit of the doubt, we will assume all the people "found each other" same way, but not that there was a war between Vegas and Boulder.

Short term you have the problem of a biohazard of the first order. Maybe that can be cleaned up. But you would have no conveniences of modern life.

First thing that has to be done is wells need to be drilled and some kind of septic installed since treated water will be impossible and the sewers will start backing up. There will be no electricity, a flaw in "The Stand" is the power plant they got going would need fueled and get all its power sucked off to the grid. Canned goods could be taken from grocery stores and homes, but they will run out and go bad.

Minimal medical treatment would be available as supplies ran out. It would be primitive, like 150 years ago, in no time.

Of the 327000 I would predict a death rate not quite as bad as the early colonies but not a ton better. Within 2 years I would expect maybe 250000 would remain, and falling. Women would have to have a fertility rate of perhaps 6 births per woman to assure a healthy supply of children. It would take 12-14 years before newborns really could contribute fully. By that point you might be down to 150,000 people.

With so few people to pass skills down to, things would get very primitive. In two generations I am talking caveman level.

Sorry, I see more than 60% as terminal decline.

Quote: Wizard

Why would 99.9% mean the end?

Geneticists talk about "population bottlenecks".

If you talk about "super eruptions" the most recent two were:
The Oruanui eruption of New Zealand's Taupo Volcano (about 26,500 years ago).
The Toba supereruption was a supervolcanic eruption that occurred about 75,000 years ago at the site of present-day Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia.

There is a theory first proposed in 1993 that the Toba Superuption may have caused a population bottleneck in humans. Human populations sharply decreased to 3,000–10,000 surviving individuals. The genetic differences among modern humans may reflect changes within the last 70,000 years, rather than gradual differentiation over hundreds of thousands of years.

The bottleneck may have reduced the four competing species Homo sapiens sapiens, Homo sapiens idaltu, Homo sapiens neanderthalensis and Homo sapiens rhodesiensis down to the first one.

It is generally believed that 70,000 years is enough time to destroy every trace of the present human species except for the gold bars in Fort Knox.

Quote: Pacomartin

It is generally believed that 70,000 years is enough time to destroy every trace of the present human species except for the gold bars in Fort Knox.

And the nuclear waste supposed to be buried in NV by now.

I still say mankind is done in 1,000 years with terminal decline starting in 150-200.

Quote: AZDuffman

It would mean the end because you would lose so many vital skills...

Good post. I will grant you we would be living Little House on the Prairie style for a while, but I think we would pull together. We don't need a lot of the technology we have.

Then again, I'm the one who predicated 2,000 to 3,000 CV casualties in the US, so what do I know?

Unlike such a super-virus comes along and we survive it, we'll never know.

Quote: Wizard

Unlike such a super-virus comes along and we survive it, we'll never know.

I imagine it would be more practical to release 3 of4 viruses to really try to kill off everyone. Evolution usually provides enough people some resistance to any one disease.

Real bio warfare by a major nation would be really tough to combat though.

Assuming the only people left in a massive extinction would be unskilled is quite an if. Only need 1 to teach several. But even still with so few people there should be enough canned goods to last for years, so age wouldn't be a problem. Lots of time for people trying to figure out fire, hunting, trapping, shelter. For there to be no shelter at all -- even the atom bomb left some shelter near ground zero.

Quote: Wizard

Then again, I'm the one who predicated 2,000 to 3,000 CV casualties in the US, so what do I know?

Dr. Anthony Fauci said based on modeling of the current pace of the coronavirus' spread in the U.S., "between 100,000 and 200,000" people may die from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Fauci's comments on CNN's State of the Union underscore just how far away the U.S. is from the peak of the outbreak based on predictions from top federal officials. As of early Sunday afternoon, there were 125,000 cases in the U.S. and nearly 2,200 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. Public health experts say that because of undocumented chains of transmission in many parts of the country, the number of new coronavirus cases in the U.S. is set to keep surging as more and more test results become known.

Quote: Wizard

Good post. I will grant you we would be living Little House on the Prairie style for a while, but I think we would pull together. We don't need a lot of the technology we have.

Then again, I'm the one who predicated 2,000 to 3,000 CV casualties in the US, so what do I know?

Unlike such a super-virus comes along and we survive it, we'll never know.

It is fun to think it out. One other thing to remember, well maybe two, is critical mass. Lets say we lost all but 400,000 people to keep a round number. Unless we got to 1-2 settlements there would be no critical mass and survival would be very hard. While we don't need a lot of the tech we have, we do need so much.

Here is a fun mental game.

Think for a moment where, choice of anywhere in CONUS, you would plop a settlement. You have to be near a water source. Keep in mind within a few years the big rivers will flood annually and become unnavigable as dams fail and dredging stops. You have to grow food to ensure a balance diet. The need for citrus means you need to be pretty far south. But this means storing food is harder as you cannot just cut ice from lakes and put it in a basement hole. Southern living means more diseases such as malaria.

It is not an easy choice.


Off topic for this post, wasn't this malaria drug they are going to use to treat the subject of a MASH episode?

Quote: AZDuffman

Off topic for this post, wasn't this malaria drug they are going to use to treat the subject of a MASH episode?

Yes, in an episode they ran out of chloroquine and had to use Primaquine which was bad for the Negroes.