What If What if everyone who ever died came back to life?

[Kyng]

(Direct cross-post from the old board . Here's the original topic: http://s1.zetaboards.com/The_Coffee_Hous...8244557/1/)

Okay - so, here's quite a ludicrous one. I mean, a lot of these what-ifs are ludicrous, but still . 

As of 2018, there are approximately 7.6 billion people living on the Earth. However, this is only around 7% of all humans who have ever lived: it's estimated that around 108.2 billion people have ever been born. So, what if those 100 billion dead people all somehow came back to life right now - at the same age and in the same place as they were when they died? 

YouTube user RealLifeLore explores that scenario in this video: 



Here are the main take-aways: 

• The dead people would, on average, be much younger than the living. Because infant mortality rates were so high during most of human history, it's entirely possible that the majority of the world population would consist of children.
  
  
• The people being resurrected would be disproportionately rural. As this graph shows, urbanisation is a comparatively recent phenomenon: in 1950, only 29% of the world's population lived in urban areas (compared to just over 50% today).
  
  
• There's no way the planet would be able to support such a large population. In fact, it's pretty certain that over 90% of the resurrected people would die again of starvation within two months .
  
  
• In fact, it's worse. It's very likely that a global war would break out over the scarce resources, thus further accelerating the return of our ancestors to their graves.
  
  
• After all of this, the world population would stabilise at around 10 billion - so, at least 2.5 billion of the previously-dead people would stay alive long-term. (Hopefully, this some victims of genocide and other atrocities would get a second chance at life )

Now, before most of these people die again, I do hope I'd have a chance to catch up with my grandfather (who passed away in 2012), and also meet some of my ancestors from further back. Who knows, maybe I'd be able to trace my ancestry back to the Vikings then ?

[Eremurus]

Yeah, earth just couldn't sustain all those people. Population checks existed throughout all of our time for a reason.

I have thought about this quite a bit- it would settle religious debates once and for all, for example. We would have... Plato.. Archimedes.. Tesla, Bach, Da Vinci...it would be crazy, actually.

[JHG]

I dunno if I could take it.

[Eremurus]

I dunno if I could take it.

Packed like sardines!

[Mozzie]

Seen this once before, though the facts of how long we have been here is still debated, there still would be an overload. Even if all the dead dried up and land mass was all over, there would still be no room

[Shiny Star]

I mean, it would be nifty to see so many faces that died too young. James Dean. Paul Walker. All of the ones listed above too. However, it would be so much chaos and we wouldn't be able to feed and give everyone a place to live. Some of them would be so shook and probably not used to the jump in technology development.

[Kyng]

Yeah, it'd be like Brooks in The Shawshank Redemption . If he couldn't even handle 1950s levels of technology, goodness knows how lost he would be in today's world!

[Detective Osprey]

I can't imagine how some of the great philosophers would think of today's technology.

[Kyng]

Yeah, so would I .

And another thought: what would all these dead people think when they start reading their own obituaries? And what about those who were commemorated in some other way; for example, those whose portraits have been put onto UK banknotes? (I'd like to think that Alan Turing would be rather pleased that he's now on our £50 notes - given that he wasn't treated at all well by our government during his lifetime !)

[Emerald]

Now that sure would be interesting and yet unimaginable!