Thoughts on a Snapped future
Jul. 31st, 2019 04:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pensnestBelated, but I was tidying up my desktop and this was there.
So, Thanos snaps his fingers, and...
50% of people who work in food production are now gone.
There is, in theory, plenty of food now for everyone who is left—except a whole lot of people are going to have to start eating their vegetables to make that true, since I'm assuming that edible creatures are suddenly fewer in number (I mean, the birds reappeared). But are the existing systems going to work with only 50% of people to run them? Will there be enough farmers to make sure that grains, vegetables etc are planted, tended and harvested? Will there be enough people to ensure that the (presumably 50%) of cattle are suitably herded, that the chickens and pigs and farmed fish etc are tended and slaughtered and conveyed to market appropriately? Will there be enough people to ensure that cows are milked and milk gets processed and sold as it needs to be?
Perhaps the system will work. Perhaps there will be surplus grown food so that people and animals actually now have more to eat, as there are now fewer people and fewer animals.
What if it doesn't?
Some people will die from lack of food. Some people will profit from being in charge of food supplies. People who grew their own vegetables (and/or kept chickens) before the Snappening will be in a better position food-wise than people who didn't. Will they be targets for food thieves? Will they be killed for their courgette crops?
*
Half the doctors and nurses will be dead. So will half the patients. Will the necessary skills remain? Overall, probably yes, but there could easily be regional differences in what kind of health care is available. Plus, I'm seeing the possibility that those who, say, work in old people's homes, who take care of people with dementia or with incurable illnesses, decide that in this new, horrifying world, they aren't going to work today. Some people will die.
50% of the people who worked to produce medicines and other pharmaceuticals are gone. So are 50% of the people who needed those products. Will people with 'very small minority' medical problems find that their needs are no longer met? Will the systems for production and distribution of medications still work? If not, what kind of adaptations will happen?
Some people will die from lack of medications.
*
50% of the people who work to provide energy - electricity, gasoline, gas, biofuels, whatever - are gone. (That's assuming that the sudden disappearances won't have caused the deaths of many unSnapped people. An unwise assumption.) Will the system continue to work?
Wind and solar power will presumably continue to provide energy, and with a reduced customer base they can make up a greater proportion of the energy used. This should clean things up a bit.
Nuclear power plants - will there be enough qualified personnel to keep them working and to keep them secure? Will they be shut down safely or will they pose a risk? Will power-seeking groups try to steal the radioactive matter?
Oil production - same story, different details. Will the production of oil continue? Probably not at the current level, which is fine because there won't be as many customers. Will refineries continue? Will some of them explode instead? Will there be organised reductions in capacity, or disasters due to lack of manpower?
Will there be electricity supplies in the normal way? I think it's probable that there will be, though there could be rationing - six hours per household per day, for instance - at least until things restabilise.
*
Political willpower: 50% of politicians will be dead. Will the remainder be preoccupied with the power struggle for supremacy or will they work for the good of the people? The answer to this will be different in each country. Will the UN continue? Will local government continue to work? What about police? What about the military?
Some countries will go to martial law. Some countries will do their best to exist as a free and functional society. Some will devolve into chaos. Some will impose strict rules which the people will follow for their own safety. Some small communities would become tribal, closing in on themselves and distrusting 'the other' whatever that might mean. Others would become more open and generous, welcoming anyone who could contribute to the general welfare. Some will cling to the past and try to keep it going, others will embrace change. No way to predict which outcome would happen where.
Although, I think geography may well make a difference as to whether society remains coherent or not. In a small country such as my own, with a dense population, I think a much reduced population could still make the systems work. Half the mechanics, half the medical staff, half the organisers etc, would get a wider catchment area but still find customers (etc). The smaller-scale BBC would probably keep broadcasting, and that would help a great deal. Hmm - suddenly, immigrants might be in high demand! In a big country where the population is well spread, it might be a lot more problematic. The US might find that the largest cities remained coherent but not the vast areas in between - which could be really problematic for the food chain.
*
Presumably the halved rat and pigeon populations would get back to full strength pretty fast after the Snappening, and other creatures which are happy to survive on human garbage would have a good go, only to find that when human society had settled down at its new level, there'd be less food waste to be found.
*
And, what a lot of problems the ReSnappening will create! All those people who, five years later, have done their grieving and moved on (those therapy sessions have to be good for something, right?). New spouses replacing the lost ones. Suddenly orphaned children, adopted into new families and now faced with their parents again.
Food shortages, probably.
Job shortages, since the economy has unquestionably changed.
The ones who died without being Snapped—the ones who starved, who lacked medical care, who were killed by accident or system failure, the ones who killed themselves when they saw this Snapped new world—remain gone. That's going to disappoint a lot of people.
The bureaucracy is going to have to adjust very quickly for things like Date Of Birth.
Countries that got their shit together after the Snappening - I'm thinking China, quite a lot of Europe, Singapore, places with a very firm government and/or fairly densely packed population, and I don't know enough about population density elsewhere - would probably figure out ways to deal with the personnel problems. There'd be rules about official polygamous relationships, there'd have to be counselling for pretty much everyone. And meanwhile, a bunch more people will die.
*
We saw NONE of this. All we saw were (a) memorials, (b) therapy sessions and (c) garbage in the streets. Now, I loved the memorials (presumably a good number of stonemasons survived), but were they really prioritised over getting the streets cleared of debris? Was it the best use of Captain America's time to sit offering Wise Advice instead of trying to help people work together to keep one another alive? Hah. At least Natasha was trying to keep things together. (Let us not speak of Clint.)
Now, okay, no movie has time to show all this stuff, or the myriad things I haven't thought of. But the fact that we saw NOTHING suggests very strongly that the people creating this movie had not thought about ANY of it. Just, Snap! People dead. That's it. If they had thought about it, there could have been hints in the background. There could have been something, here and there, to show how during the FIVE YEARS when the remaining Avengers were doing whatever, society was trying to pick itself up—or degenerating into chaos, who knows.
But they couldn't show it, because they wanted Tony Stark to Die Heroically. Tragically. The five year gap between Snap and Response was so that Tony Stark's Adorable Moppet could reach maximum adorability, so that the tenderest sympathies of the audience would be roused and we'd all see that, obviously, Tony Stark could not risk losing his Adorable Moppet. Could not restore the world to five-seconds-after-the-Snappening, because his Adorable Moppet might not then have been, what, conceived?
OMG. Serious tragedy is not Tony Stark Dies. SERIOUS tragedy is Tony Stark Sacrifices His Own Daughter For The Sake Of The World. (And Steve Rogers dies, probably.)
Now I feel robbed of the movie we might have had, if someone had thought about this stuff.
If anyone still has thoughts about this stuff, I'd be interested to read them.
So, Thanos snaps his fingers, and...
50% of people who work in food production are now gone.
There is, in theory, plenty of food now for everyone who is left—except a whole lot of people are going to have to start eating their vegetables to make that true, since I'm assuming that edible creatures are suddenly fewer in number (I mean, the birds reappeared). But are the existing systems going to work with only 50% of people to run them? Will there be enough farmers to make sure that grains, vegetables etc are planted, tended and harvested? Will there be enough people to ensure that the (presumably 50%) of cattle are suitably herded, that the chickens and pigs and farmed fish etc are tended and slaughtered and conveyed to market appropriately? Will there be enough people to ensure that cows are milked and milk gets processed and sold as it needs to be?
Perhaps the system will work. Perhaps there will be surplus grown food so that people and animals actually now have more to eat, as there are now fewer people and fewer animals.
What if it doesn't?
Some people will die from lack of food. Some people will profit from being in charge of food supplies. People who grew their own vegetables (and/or kept chickens) before the Snappening will be in a better position food-wise than people who didn't. Will they be targets for food thieves? Will they be killed for their courgette crops?
*
Half the doctors and nurses will be dead. So will half the patients. Will the necessary skills remain? Overall, probably yes, but there could easily be regional differences in what kind of health care is available. Plus, I'm seeing the possibility that those who, say, work in old people's homes, who take care of people with dementia or with incurable illnesses, decide that in this new, horrifying world, they aren't going to work today. Some people will die.
50% of the people who worked to produce medicines and other pharmaceuticals are gone. So are 50% of the people who needed those products. Will people with 'very small minority' medical problems find that their needs are no longer met? Will the systems for production and distribution of medications still work? If not, what kind of adaptations will happen?
Some people will die from lack of medications.
*
50% of the people who work to provide energy - electricity, gasoline, gas, biofuels, whatever - are gone. (That's assuming that the sudden disappearances won't have caused the deaths of many unSnapped people. An unwise assumption.) Will the system continue to work?
Wind and solar power will presumably continue to provide energy, and with a reduced customer base they can make up a greater proportion of the energy used. This should clean things up a bit.
Nuclear power plants - will there be enough qualified personnel to keep them working and to keep them secure? Will they be shut down safely or will they pose a risk? Will power-seeking groups try to steal the radioactive matter?
Oil production - same story, different details. Will the production of oil continue? Probably not at the current level, which is fine because there won't be as many customers. Will refineries continue? Will some of them explode instead? Will there be organised reductions in capacity, or disasters due to lack of manpower?
Will there be electricity supplies in the normal way? I think it's probable that there will be, though there could be rationing - six hours per household per day, for instance - at least until things restabilise.
*
Political willpower: 50% of politicians will be dead. Will the remainder be preoccupied with the power struggle for supremacy or will they work for the good of the people? The answer to this will be different in each country. Will the UN continue? Will local government continue to work? What about police? What about the military?
Some countries will go to martial law. Some countries will do their best to exist as a free and functional society. Some will devolve into chaos. Some will impose strict rules which the people will follow for their own safety. Some small communities would become tribal, closing in on themselves and distrusting 'the other' whatever that might mean. Others would become more open and generous, welcoming anyone who could contribute to the general welfare. Some will cling to the past and try to keep it going, others will embrace change. No way to predict which outcome would happen where.
Although, I think geography may well make a difference as to whether society remains coherent or not. In a small country such as my own, with a dense population, I think a much reduced population could still make the systems work. Half the mechanics, half the medical staff, half the organisers etc, would get a wider catchment area but still find customers (etc). The smaller-scale BBC would probably keep broadcasting, and that would help a great deal. Hmm - suddenly, immigrants might be in high demand! In a big country where the population is well spread, it might be a lot more problematic. The US might find that the largest cities remained coherent but not the vast areas in between - which could be really problematic for the food chain.
*
Presumably the halved rat and pigeon populations would get back to full strength pretty fast after the Snappening, and other creatures which are happy to survive on human garbage would have a good go, only to find that when human society had settled down at its new level, there'd be less food waste to be found.
*
And, what a lot of problems the ReSnappening will create! All those people who, five years later, have done their grieving and moved on (those therapy sessions have to be good for something, right?). New spouses replacing the lost ones. Suddenly orphaned children, adopted into new families and now faced with their parents again.
Food shortages, probably.
Job shortages, since the economy has unquestionably changed.
The ones who died without being Snapped—the ones who starved, who lacked medical care, who were killed by accident or system failure, the ones who killed themselves when they saw this Snapped new world—remain gone. That's going to disappoint a lot of people.
The bureaucracy is going to have to adjust very quickly for things like Date Of Birth.
Countries that got their shit together after the Snappening - I'm thinking China, quite a lot of Europe, Singapore, places with a very firm government and/or fairly densely packed population, and I don't know enough about population density elsewhere - would probably figure out ways to deal with the personnel problems. There'd be rules about official polygamous relationships, there'd have to be counselling for pretty much everyone. And meanwhile, a bunch more people will die.
*
We saw NONE of this. All we saw were (a) memorials, (b) therapy sessions and (c) garbage in the streets. Now, I loved the memorials (presumably a good number of stonemasons survived), but were they really prioritised over getting the streets cleared of debris? Was it the best use of Captain America's time to sit offering Wise Advice instead of trying to help people work together to keep one another alive? Hah. At least Natasha was trying to keep things together. (Let us not speak of Clint.)
Now, okay, no movie has time to show all this stuff, or the myriad things I haven't thought of. But the fact that we saw NOTHING suggests very strongly that the people creating this movie had not thought about ANY of it. Just, Snap! People dead. That's it. If they had thought about it, there could have been hints in the background. There could have been something, here and there, to show how during the FIVE YEARS when the remaining Avengers were doing whatever, society was trying to pick itself up—or degenerating into chaos, who knows.
But they couldn't show it, because they wanted Tony Stark to Die Heroically. Tragically. The five year gap between Snap and Response was so that Tony Stark's Adorable Moppet could reach maximum adorability, so that the tenderest sympathies of the audience would be roused and we'd all see that, obviously, Tony Stark could not risk losing his Adorable Moppet. Could not restore the world to five-seconds-after-the-Snappening, because his Adorable Moppet might not then have been, what, conceived?
OMG. Serious tragedy is not Tony Stark Dies. SERIOUS tragedy is Tony Stark Sacrifices His Own Daughter For The Sake Of The World. (And Steve Rogers dies, probably.)
Now I feel robbed of the movie we might have had, if someone had thought about this stuff.
If anyone still has thoughts about this stuff, I'd be interested to read them.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-31 05:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-08-01 04:50 pm (UTC)The whole thing was just annoying.
no subject
Date: 2019-07-31 05:22 pm (UTC)And I had the same thoughts about the re-snapping. Poor families who come back and find new families in their place.
no subject
Date: 2019-08-01 04:53 pm (UTC)I'd have liked it better if there had been a conspiracy behind Tony's back, where the survivors pointed out how incredibly difficult it had been, and how crazy it would be trying to get back to 'normal' after a five year break. Although I'd have liked it *best* if Tony had accepted the sacrifice that was being asked of him.