(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:
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 )
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