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[–]Alienhunter 2 insightful - 2 fun2 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 2 fun -  (1 child)

Imagining a world where Thanos snaps all fossil fuels out of existence?

Nah modern civilization would absolutely collapse and world wide population would plummet. But the die off would be largely concentrated in cities which just wouldn't support their populations. People would have to move to places that are arable and start growing their own food, and the ones that couldn't would starve to death. Earth would go back to a largely pre-industrial agrarian economy by necessity but modern technology and some trappings of our current government systems would still exist, they would essentially be "wizard kings" lording over vast estates of agrarian peasants with the secrets of technology.

The nuclear reactors, if they melted down, wouldn't be a big problem since most are designed with fail-safes for those kinds of situation. And if the fail safes fail? Oh well, I guess cancer rates go up. Won't matter much since civilization as you know it as well as modern medicine will be largely concentrated in the hands of a small elite. Peasants wouldn't be living long enough to get cancer.

Seriously nuclear accidents don't work like the Simpsons. Go to Chernobyl and what do you see? Few people, loads of wildlife, gets by fine. Go to Fukushima and what do you see? Same thing.

The Africans will be fine unless they decide to go live within sight of a power plant.

[–]Bigs 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

Modern plants are much safer but there are plenty of older designs that would indeed melt down without electricity and workers. You mention the 2 examples of breakdowns that had people and power thrown at them - and still couldn't contain all the radiation.

Fukishima is still ongoing by the way. Nobody wants to talk about it because it's depressing and nobody can 'do something!' about it other than what is already being done.

In contrast, plants going full melt-down WITHOUT concrete envelopment and/or thousands of tons of water are something we've never experienced but is considered A Very Bad Thing. One of them might not end human life but a few dotted around the world all going at once..? I agree though, that for most people cancer wouldn't be a concern; starvation would.

"People would have to move to places that are arable" - By walking, and carrying any supplies with them, meaning most would not make it.

Even where things are ideal, good weather, good soil, tools already available - we'd be pretty fucked. Too many people fighting for scraps NOW, eating the seeds and the last of lifestock, so no new eggs or calves or much of anything the next season.

To really understand how fucked we'd be, you need to read the essay "I, Pencil". He explains how nobody knows how to make our most basic of machines, a pencil. Once we ran out of pencils we literally wouldn't be able to replace them. We'd be back to charcoal sticks or drawing in the mud.

See, modern humanity is entirely dependent upon the division of labor, meaning individual specialists and workers who do their own thing, which contributes to the amazing economy we have. Too much disruption (and just the energy crisis hitting Europe could trigger much of this) creates cascading knock-on effects that would wipe out a lot of production downstream. Even with all we have today, some of Germany's industrial base will never recover if the power goes out for just a few weeks. You can't just switch an economy off and switch it back on later.

More than 90% of humanity would be dead within weeks or a few months. Those left would be surrounded by technology they couldn't use. In hot or cold areas they'd mostly die off from the first hot summer or cold winter, leaving only those scraping by and able to live off the land under their feet. Like I said, Africa basically, until the radiation reaches them.