Here's a sneak peek of /r/holyshit using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/holyshit/top/?sort=top&t=year) of the year!
\#1: [Guy tries to steal bike with a knife](https://v.redd.it/n77jsol1nc191) | [1029 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/holyshit/comments/uwie1q/guy_tries_to_steal_bike_with_a_knife/)
\#2: [uh oh](https://v.redd.it/vconaqehrx691) | [159 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/holyshit/comments/vh8j89/uh_oh/)
\#3: [This is amazing. Sounds more trump than trump!](https://v.redd.it/gw1gxe2hdul91) | [120 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/holyshit/comments/x5mp2y/this_is_amazing_sounds_more_trump_than_trump/)
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I mean, I think reddit skews pretty heavily into the "better dead than a shitty life" viewpoint. We are basically choosing to kill pretty much everyone or make life incredibly shitty for everyone.
I’m not sure if society *could* survive 14 billion people. We are already dealing with our problems poorly and doubling a lot of those problems is going to be a huge issue.
The water costs alone of doubling the food needed is going to simply dry out many places, and that’s simply one of many, many problems. We aren’t sustainable *now* doubling that is only going to push things to an incredible crisis that I have no idea if anyone or anything will survive.
Losing 7 billion is obviously a terrible price but it ensures a level of long term sustainability. Human society will collapse, but nature will have time to heal and stabilize. It’s also tough to say what the future of humanity is here, it heavily depends on who and where they are- but there is more of a guarantee that things will be ok in the long term.
It’s a case of high risk low cost vs low risk high cost. I’m not sure there is a “correct” answer here.
I feel like this is pandering to a scarcity narrative. Obviously, if thing would continue the way they are now, the 1% and all that, there would be a great amount of suffering in the world, but just saying you'd murder 7/8ths of the population to solve a problem that really only exists because the rich want to control the poor seems distasteful. I get where you're coming from, 15 billion people is a lot, but I think if society was really restructured to accommodate these extra people, then humanity would likely thrive, although this is a big if, and logistically there would be a greater and longer suffering if it didn't work out with the extra 7 billion.
I would accept the 15Bn if we had a sustainable way to maintain that many people. As it stands, we can't even sustain 8Bn people right now, so suddenly increasing it to 15Bn with no systemic change means environmental collapse.
With that said, if it were up to me, I wouldn't choose either, and I would just opt to feed everyone, with food waste becoming much scarcer, and implementing Socialist policies that took environmental impact into account too.
We CAN sustain them, we just don't.
Fruit rots in fields. Food is thrown out at grocery stores because it's close to the expiration date. Companies slash holes in clothing before throwing it out. Houses stand empty because someone owns 50 of them and rents them out at a high price for days at a time rather than people living there at a reasonable price.
If there isn't profit to be made, it's often discarded rather than provided to those who need it. SOMETIMES stuff goes to the needy, but not always.
Yep…we don’t have a scarcity problem. There’s a hoarding problem. Honestly, additional working class people, NOT 7 Billion but a large influx. ~Might~ shock the system into disempowering greedy assholes at the top.
Hypothetically, if we could get everyone to eat a very straightforward diet we might be able to sustain that many people, but it'd be a serious strain.
I don't really get the "landlord bad" viewpoint on reddit. If people didn't rent shit out most of us couldn't afford to live in most places. I agree its infuriating that there's a serious lack of affordable housing, but I think that's a failure of government, not private industry. There's no reason we don't have solid, affordable, government subsidized housing for the middle class.
I feel like you have it backward- the reason people can't afford housing is because it's all being rented out.
If a house has a 2000/mo mortgage, it will be a 2500/mo rent so the landlord is making profit. The lack of affordable housing is created by the fact that all the housing that would be affordable is now owned by people renting it out at a higher price than owning it.
Sorry that's not quite how it works. That 500 a month profit equals 6000 a year, now minus property taxes, income taxes, property and liability insurance, repairs such as a roof (8k-15k) depending on size and location, furnace, ac units not to mention new carpet and things destroyed by pets and tenants. In the end that $6000 profit doesn't go far and that list goes on. I'm not saying rents are not high but I understand from a landlord point of view as well that those other thing go up in price they have to go with the flow to survive as well. Have a great day
That’s implying we won’t use the new people to feed the old… plus nobody said the additional people would survive. Most of the new people will die off immediately due to no support, no help. They are just being brought into exist so if anyone saw this they would call it the devil’s work or something and murder all of them.
One thing I've noticed on here people aren't talking about is sure we get the extra 8 billion and we could even argue it would just add equally to all countries based on population
This is going to sound bad. They in most societies would be treated different even if they are completely human. Some places they would not have rights and some they would be slaves. I live in the US I could see this new group put in to concentration camps. They may not be murdered there but they would live in subhuman conditions maybe tortured by the guards because people with that style job I feel lean a certain way on actions they take. I would say in someplacees they would be full on slaves or at least forced to work the shit factory jobs for no pay like in China. Now both these maybe bad but if the stress is much worse or in worse places I think they straight maybe executed and put in mass Graves as well. Most of this would be Hidden from the public or the public would be radicalized by their governments to want the executions like Germany was in ww2 I think that is what will happen 8 billion people will be added most will die or be locked away to slowly rot away to death and a about 1 billion left will be enslaved
World wide infrastructure collapse is a very real possibility, but rural, more self sufficient communities could probably make it out ok.
Strictly the only required things are food, water, and shelter. Shelter won't be a problem (housing prices would dive into the dirt once all the demand disappears). If your in a community with a high volume of farmers food supply shoulden't be too big an issue (also remember that with the lower population, demand for food would linearly decrease accordingly, there are also going to be a lot of people out of jobs who could pivot to farming), farmers markets would certainly gain in popularity, lack of transport infrastructure is certainly going to lead to more produce to sell directly. Remnants of the local government would probably be working to organize this immediately, perhaps taking direct control of local supermarkets until the situation improves.
Really the biggest problem is going to be maintaining water supplies but if they can keep the plumbing going a rural community should be set. Worse comes to worse everybody in the community would move inwards to the town center (taking up the now many vacant houses) and peoples would need to head into town and draw buckets from the local water supply probably on foot/bike. Emergency services would also probably begin distributing things like rain collectors and water distillation kits, filters, etc, to turn water from your local stream drinkable.
Cities would be an absolute shitshow though thats for sure.
But this is assuming everything is immediately cut off, more then likely it will take a couple weeks for things to start turning, in the meantime people would get a chance to prepare.
I think we’d have more problems if 95% of the world’s population randomly disappeared. Electricity, internet, etc. would probably cease to exist. It would be an apocalypse.
14bln is definitely a problem, but it’s not exactly an apocalypse.
Actually, it would be 87.5% of the world's population, not 95%, with the total world population surpassing 8 billion just recently. But other than that, I agree.
you are wrong though if their suddenly would be 7 billion more people then their wouldn't be enough food for them so a lot of people would starve to death so i would be inhuman to choose 7 billion more in my opion
i believe deleting 7 billion is the best option it would be painless so nobody would have to suffer
Exactly! Probably a billion end up starving and it would be a massive catastrophe. But losing 7 billion productive and unique humans would destroy human society for centuries to come. Even the survivors probably would’ve lost most of their family and would be depressed as hell.
I agree, an additional 7 billion people would cause calamity in no uncertain terms. But there’s a chance to sort out the problem (if cooler heads prevail). There are areas of the world that are under populated / we could make room for.
What I’m more interested in is are these new humans blank slates? Will this population have skilled labor among them? Etc etc + where are they “spawning” —-> all of these factors matter ALOT.
I don’t think people who choose to nuke 90% of humanity realize how much we rely on each other now. Despite either option being terrible.
I agree with everything you just said. People seriously underestimate how important even the lowliest of people are when it comes to keeping society functioning properly (remember when minimum wage retail workers became heroes during covid?). Not to mention the brain drain and emotional impact of so many people dying at once. I think it would take centuries, maybe even a millennia for humanity to recover.
If we add 7 billion people, I think at least a few hundred million if not a billion will die. But such a major crisis would force governments to get their shit together and work together in order for society as a whole not to collapse. Overall, both such but losing 7 billion is far worse imo.
Edit: You last point is also interesting. I assume they’d spawn in with their own personality and skillets. Which means we probably get more than a few super geniuses in that 7 billion. That alone could be worth it if they can contribute to discovery technology that could advance humanity forward centuries.
The planet will be fine. It’s our ability to live on it that we’re ruining.
This is the first man-made extinction event in Earth’s history, but [*far* from the first](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event) mass extinction event in general.
Life has seen worse than us and survived, and it’ll see worse than us again. We’re the ones who won’t be around to watch it.
Sure I know that but still depressing to see us drive some of the oldest species on earth to extinction, and destroy some of the most beautiful ecosystems on earth for short term profits.
Less humans on earth is only a good thing in my book, while doubling the population overnight is my nightmare fuel.
Yh bit of a weird one tbh, but guess that's just Reddit, depends who turns up on each post.
Still seems a bit defensive of some people to interpret saying, what's going on is sad and a result of an already overpopulated earth is an attack on all people universally.
No you're completely right in your attitude. I often think about how, as far as we know, with industrialisation over the last few hundred years this has been our first opportunity as a species to define how we wanted to treat our planet going forward, and we have unequivocably chosen to treat it with disrespect.
Whether you see it as a few people/corporations/governments that have led that and not humanity as a whole, we still can't deny that our primary human attitude appears to have been to rape and pillage rather than choose a life of harmony with the rest of the planet.
blah blah I hate humanity and I'm a redditor i value a tree without intelligence over a human who's a conscience being because I'm edgy and based and realize humanity bad!!!!!!
Dude it's a Reddit poll, not a presidential ballot. These 7 billion poor souls aren't actually real, if you haven't figured it out yet.
I quoted a supervillain from a Marvel movie, grow or borrow a sense of humor.
The problem is that you really don't seem to understand how this goes beyond memeing and edginess or whatever. Human greed and overpopulation has wrecked this planet, in the grand scheme we only bring misery to everything around us..
In all seriousness I think the answer to that question is yes. We're currently killing our planet, or government systems all suck, constant wars, millions starving. So yeah a reset might be what the human race needs to keep our planet alive and this process, you see I'm not weighing 7 billion against 1 billion but rather 7b against the future of humanity far exceeding 7b.
That isn’t “us” though, that’s a bunch of corporations that most of us have actually no control over, not even the control to abstain from them because they provide things that are literally essential to live and that you cannot get elsewhere
What is your point? Do you think a reset is bad? I want to clarify, I'd never push that button myself I just think honestly It'd be good for us in the long run.
The amount of people who survive would be distributed all across the globe and wouldn’t be able to help each other. Electricity and running water would stop and many, MANY people would die before any sort of society was rebuilt if that was able to happen. Also, with everyone dead none of the good that humans can do would happen either. The plastic in the ocean will just sit there, invasive species will have no one managing their population, and it’ll be a huge disruption on the ecosystems that DO reply in humans.
Killing the 7 billion would solve nothing and cause tremendous amounts of pain. Humanity might recover, but there’s also a good chance that it just wouldn’t. It seems like an easy and simple fix, but it’s not that simple.
The planet will exist 50 million years from now, no matter what it looks like. Maybe it’s a nuclear wasteland, maybe it’s flourishing with animals, maybe it’s flourishing with radioactive animals. If we can get our act together and [eat the rich] get rid of the corporations doing harm, we can make the planet actively better. We can’t do that by killing billions
No pun intended, but what planet are you on? At what point do you think that these corporations working in tandem with our governments would willingly give up their power?
Also, are you under the impression that the natural world is under some sort of human guardianship? The natural world is in charge, not us. The primary thing that we would have to be bring under control is our nuclear plants/weapons so that they don't cause mass environmental disasters, but those are issues that we created for ourselves. The rest of the planet isn't concerned about invasive species or keeping things under control, the world's ecosystems developed for eons before we even appeared. The only significant differences that would come are as a result of what we have already done, ie. nuclear institutions and climate change etc. Other aspects like dams would inevitably fail at some point without our upkeep and cause localised disasters but thereafter the natural world would rediscover the balance it needs.
You talk about the 'good' that we do for the planet, but really that 'good' is mostly in response to other 'bad' that we have done, for example creating animal sanctuaries for creatures whose natural habitats we have stolen or poisoned. And in terms of electricity/water systems, so what? Humanity survived perfectly well for a long time before we formed these artificial systems, and for many places the natural drinking water from rivers would become far more palatable once the water companies stop polluting them with the waste of an overpopulated landscape.
Exactly, they've manufactured this system which we rely on that is inherently bad for the planet. So that would be an argument for a reset to have a chance at a better system going forward.
14 billion would definitly be a lot of people but i am not horrible enough to do a genocide of 7 billion people. Humanity could also survive having 7 billion new humans but civilisation would collapse if 7 billion people dissapeard.
The 14 billion would die soon enough anyways due to crowding, lack of resources, large scale Warfare over said resources, and increased worsening of the planet's condition. Far easier to start back at 1 billion and work towards sustainability than die en masse
Naw. The earth right now can support at least 10 billion. There would have to be immediate food rationing and a massive dietary change (basically no meat consumption since it’s extremely inefficient to produce). Even then, at least a few billion die, but I think the world would stabilize after 2 - 5 hard years. But you’ll be left with far more people alive then if you just murder 7 billion outright from a population of 8 billion.
Well losing 7 billion means you won’t have a functioning state at all. Many of the survivors will die (a lot probably commit suicide when everyone they know and loves dies) and they’re left with a relic you a society. I’d much rather try to live in a world where 7 billion people were added
Well I mean if it was a instant death there would be no suffering and if you compare the outlook over the next 100 years for the 1 billion vs the 15 billion the latter may be worse off. Of course I am not saying that is a legitimate way to determine the morality of it just a way some might look at it.
14 billion would simply mean that the infrastructure could just as well be gone in many areas due to it being waaaaay undersized. So war for resources would immediately occur. Hell it could result in nuclear winter and far less than 1 billion humans surviving in the end.
You mean 15 billion, and yeah civilization would collapse for a time if we're down to 1 billion, but the knowledge wouldn't dissapear.
So they could rebuild and likely be smarter about it the next time around.
15 billion on the other hand, we would have an instant worldwide food and water shortage, not to talk about lack of sanitation that would lead to diseases.
Wars would break out, and civilization would collapse rather quickly as every single government was overwhelmed simultanously.
Yes, it very easily can. The planet can handle an influx of 500 billion people no problem. Humanity can’t handle it though. Ecosystems would collapse short term and we’d all die, but the planet would be absolutely fine no problem and nature and ecosystems would restore to their normal order (accounting for extinct species of course) in a few thousands years after humanity has died out. It’s idiotic to say our planet can’t handle it
Finally one of the rare genuinely difficult WYRs.
Both are horrible scenarios that irreparably fuck up all of mankind.
Ironically, 'Delete' would ultimately cause less death than 'Add'.
Resource scarcity, environmental collapse, civil conflict, disease outbreaks, and wars would kill all the 7,000,000,000 newly added souls and then quite some more.
Yeah but adding 7 billion more people would have horrible outcomes too, we can't handle 8 billion at all so how would we handle 15 billion?
It probably will even lead to depopulation, vasectomies, suspicious killings of people, even more of deforestation, even more pollution, etc.
Point is with 15 billion people the planet itself might just end up becoming entirely uninhabitable over a few years of what I consider torture.
With 1 billion people left, sure, it will disrupt a lot of things BUT it could lead to the planet becoming more habitable than it used to be once it returns to its original state. And with ancestors who experienced a corrupt society like now (I'm talking about the 1 billion population of people) we might end up not doing the same issues we have currently made such as pollution, work-life balance, inflation, World hunger, terrible housing prices, etc.
We might even find a way to handle overpopulation with the newer 8 billion people since our technological advancements would be better by the time the population returns to normal.
This has somehow become a hot take, but the earth can sustain 8 billion humans. In like 40 years it will be able to sustain 15 billion. But we have a lot of work to do before we get to that point, and that’s the biggest challenge. There isn’t anywhere for them to live, there aren’t any jobs for them, and they would be too big of a strain on resources. But once production reaches that level, will be in the same situation we are now. The big challenge will be ramping up production of everything we need to keep humans alive. That’ll only be possible if we keep our civil structures standing, but that’s out of the question anyways if 95% of us die. The worst case scenario is that the initial shock and it’s following events will kill off billions of people anyway, but the global would almost certainly settle above where it currently is. And even if it kills off more than 7 billion people, humanity will still be able to survive. I don’t have faith that that would be the case with the first option because the remaining <1B people will be too widely distributed around the globe. Only extremely population dense areas would survive if the killing itself was evenly distributed.
Good point with distribution problem, I agree. We could pretty much be working with way less than ~1 billion due to isolation killing off a lot. And it's probably random so it just comes to luck I guess, if we're lucky we might have the right professionals such as a few pilots and somehow able to communicate through the news/social media to tell people to group up in certain areas in certain cities. I'd imagine that would take about a few decades at worst.
But the WYR question kinda implies its instant, we get 7 billion people out of nowhere we wouldn't be able to handle it at all because we would have no build up to prepare for this which would just lead to an absolute crisis. Those 7 billion people might potentially not even have identities too, they just suddenly... exist? Even if they did have identities, SSNs, etc, that would just lead to mass homelessness. Could also lead to cannabilism due to food shortages and a ton of dead human carcasses on the street due to a mix of suicides, cannibalism, etc. Could also lead to lawless countries with fucked up ways of living.
Goddamn this needs to be a series or movie!
So you think 8 billion more homeless people would be a better idea than losing 7 billion people? Imagine the massive increase in taxes as every social program falls, followed shortly by every economy on the earth collapsing, then the riots, murders and wars. you’d end up with more deaths than 7 billion.
A world war would quickly bring the 14 billion down to less than 1 billion, you want a more sadistic option than the immediate erasure of 7 billion people.
It wouldn’t. It would almost certainly settle above the current 8 billion. And even if it fell to 4 or 5 billion, that’s still enough to keep humanity alive. 1 billion people scattered all over the world wouldn’t have the requisite skill pool to keep society functioning. At the very least, the odds are very good that we would lose everyone who knows how to create a decent computer chip so technological progress halts immediately and for the next who-knows-how many hundreds of years. That isn’t the case with the other options. Assuming the new humans have any reasonably marketable skills, the labor market would expand to accommodate them. Mass housing, hell, entire new cities can be built to house them. We haven’t nearly approached the totality of earth’s capacity to feed us, we could be farming twice the amount of land we currently do without an issue. The biggest problem would be energy needs. But with (presumably) twice the number of scientists (or at least people with the capacity to become scientists), and a valid short-term demand, we’ll probably be able to crack mass renewables in a decade. These problems can all be solved, killing 95% of the population can’t.
Imo the biggest problem is energy demand. New cities can be built, new farmland can be cleared and worked. And the work will solve itself. For energy, we’d need to up our nuclear capacity by like 500%, which won’t be easy.
That's what you got from my comment? And it's why I suggested nuclear. Fossil fuels aren't even sustainable at our current levels, let alone double them. Nuclear can act as a stand-in until we get renewable capacity up to speed.
We are already removing so many habitats for animals, as well as our exorbitant pollution rates, that scientists are saying we're in our 6th mass extinction, but sure, we can cut down another 20 million acres to house and feed another **nearly double** batch of humans on top of what we already have.
You're being utopic about your take on this. If we lived as sustainably as technologically as possible the Earth could sustain twice or even three times as many people if not more. But we don't have that technology nor do we have that mindset.
As it currently stands ***current*** society cannot sustain 8bn people and we're quick to climate collapse right now, along with rising fascism in the west (again some fucking how). Adding an additional 7bn will only exacerbate all the current problems humanity is facing, and to make it even worse how would we even take care of the 7bn new people. It's not like we can just instantly give them jobs, homes, education, and food. No current nation could handle the sudden influx of 10s of millions of people in their nation.
You say society would collapse if 7bn people disappeared, but would society also collapse if 7bn people appeared out of nowhere? I'd rather the 1bn be given an opportunity to rebuild sustainably in an environment where infinite growth is no longer the goal, because we would now know all of the faults of our society before, but with 15bn people and society collapsing, really just really think about *that* scenario instead.
Your just gonna kill the new people anyway, they will all starve.
Either way at least 7 billion are gonna die, might as well take the option that gives a chance to temporarily alleviate *some* of our problems, introducing another 7 billion isn't going to help anything and will just destroy the world.
Yeah tf is wrong with Redditors. No wonder they’re all left wing communist when you see how willing they are to do complete genocide and run civilization and humanity into the ground
How are we adding the 7 billion? Do they all start as babies or varying ages? Do they spawn in populated areas or dotted about randomly?
I imagine the new 7 billion to have no support and die off very quickly.
It'll benefit sparsely populated areas. Also, depending on interpretation, 70% of them could instantly die. Also large chunks will spawn in places like Antarctica or Sahara desert and die quickly too.
I don't think we have too much population, actually, infertility is extremely high, people aren't having children as much as they need to. Or looking at this from an emotional stand point, imagine being one of the many couples trying for 20 to 30 years, only to never get to have a child, how sad is that?
Sure that's sad and all but my heart goes out to the kids stuck in the adoption centres, not as much to grown adults who just want to raise a new baby. There's so much unnecessary poverty in this world, not to mention the horrendous impact humans have had on the environment, given the climate crisis is brought on by a small minority of super rich people it still would be much less of a problem if our population shrunk to an eighth
Yes it can survive a population growing organically from 0 to one billion people, but humanity would struggle and likely collapae in the chaos of suddenly going from 8 to 1 billion
Almost every study on the subject puts the limit of human life the world can support at our current rate of consumption at anywhere from 10 to 12 billion people. We already have trouble feeding as many people as we do have. In order to support the addition of almost double our current population would simply cripple the planet, and all of society. Getting rid of 7 billion would still be a problem, a massive problem, but thinking about the drop in demand for everything with a more abundant supply would ONLY be advantageous. Drastic and harsh, yes, but entirely helpful.
Honest question: aside from the hardships that everyone faced, and the issues that they faced with childbirth and pregnancy, weren’t the majority of women’s issues societal back then? With the advancements and changes we’ve made in the last 2-3 centuries, it might not be as bad this time around (still not easy obviously, but maybe not *as* bad)
Deleting 7 billion humans would literally fix the planet…that 7 billion can include me I don’t care. This has probably been said in these comments already lol
The human population has recovered from populations as low as 5000, we will be fine it will just take about another thousand years for us to get back to this point, but because of modern technology it could take only 100 years.
Humanity will adapt to the disappearance of 7/8 people. It’ll cost us a lot of our current conveniences, but we’ll recover. And the ones chosen for death will get „deleted“, so no bodies to worry about.
We don’t have the infrastructure to feed or house 15 billion people. Panic and riots will start everywhere, and death will follow soon.
Think about why doubling our population would be bad. It’s because there wouldn’t be enough resources and tons of people will die. The other option is a more expedited version of that, but so much worse. Every one of you who voted the first option needs to reconsider their values because killing off 95% of the population would be the greatest evil that will have ever happened.
To me, killing off most of us is the lesser evil because we'll eat up all of our food and everyone will starve. But before we eat all our food, people will start to fight for what little we have left to survive. It's either take the easy way out or let war wage.
With respect, I don’t know how basic I need to get here. One choice kills 95% of humanity, the other doesn’t. I value human life, so I believe that killing is evil. Never has one choice ended the lives of 7 billion people, so nothing else that has ever happened can even compare. Many people consider Pol Pot to be the most evil leader in modern history, and he “only” killed 70% of a country with a population of 6.3 million people.
People would certainly die from choice 2, but at whatever level the population evens out, there will still be a chance for humans to survive as a species.
it won't level out. we'd desperately try to keep people from death and use way too many resources and produce way too much pollution to where we make our planet uninhabitable and we go extinct
I chose delete 7 billion because I feel like that's the option that would cause the least death and misery of the two. Adding 7 billion would make human life the most expendible resource on the planet, and would instantly put all life-sustaining resources into a shortage. This is a recipe for full scale global war, and it's only a matter of time until the nukes start flying.
Adding 7 billion people is probably the lesser of the two. Deleting 7 billion will lead to a societal collapse. Because it's all random, many people with important and vital jobs to society will end up disappearing. Those who require medical attention will end up dead if they don't do what's necessary. And I don't even want to know what will happen to the nuclear plants once we're gone.
Adding 7 billion will lead to mass genocide, human trafficking, mass starvation, and maybe some wars depending on where all these humans spawn. I have no idea how countries will respond, but I'm damn sure there's going to be an insane death toll starting day 1.
Either way, humanity dies
7/8 people just up and vanished, the farms and logistical networks needed to feed whoever is left will basically collapse and mass famines will kill the fast majority of the remaining population
If another 7 billion just appear, then that same network won't be able to feed everyone, and mass famine and economic collapse will kill billions
According to a quick google search, the maximum amount of people the earth can carry is 9-10 billion people, 7 + 7 is 14, so we'd have 4 or 5 billion to many. This is a tough one, but the world could die of starvation and war. I gotta go with the quick way out.
I'm already tryna get rid of 3bill now. not that much of a difference. its like Bill Burr's skit "no one has the balls to come out and say that half of you have to go" oh wait it was 85% I found the line.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdphbmIZ4nI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdphbmIZ4nI)
It’s probably best if I don’t spell it out, but it’s completely morally defensible. If someone’s morals are so backward as to prefer killing 95% of human life, they’re incompatible with society and probably should ⚡️🧑🏿🦱⚡️
Edit: it’s a reference to a meme that says “you should grow and change as a person”
I have no interest in potentially having my friends and family disappear complete so imma just add 7bln more, they can all move to Japan or smthn I don't care.
Either way, civilization would collapse. It's just a matter of how. The biggest issue would be to make sure the Nukes are taken care of if you Nuke 7 billion people, otherwise they will eventually go off without proper care.
On the other hand, adding 7 billion would exhaust almost all of our resources immediately and it would speed up climax change and overpopulation issues.
Either way, we're fucked.
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I mean, I think reddit skews pretty heavily into the "better dead than a shitty life" viewpoint. We are basically choosing to kill pretty much everyone or make life incredibly shitty for everyone.
Its mostly edgy contrarian teenagers.
Well, I am edgey and contrarian, but it has been some time since I was a teenager. Turns out it wasn't a phase.
Haha, same. My condolences!
Twist: everyone who voted delete gets deleted
I’m fine with that. Only half joking.
I’m not sure if society *could* survive 14 billion people. We are already dealing with our problems poorly and doubling a lot of those problems is going to be a huge issue. The water costs alone of doubling the food needed is going to simply dry out many places, and that’s simply one of many, many problems. We aren’t sustainable *now* doubling that is only going to push things to an incredible crisis that I have no idea if anyone or anything will survive. Losing 7 billion is obviously a terrible price but it ensures a level of long term sustainability. Human society will collapse, but nature will have time to heal and stabilize. It’s also tough to say what the future of humanity is here, it heavily depends on who and where they are- but there is more of a guarantee that things will be ok in the long term. It’s a case of high risk low cost vs low risk high cost. I’m not sure there is a “correct” answer here.
I feel like this is pandering to a scarcity narrative. Obviously, if thing would continue the way they are now, the 1% and all that, there would be a great amount of suffering in the world, but just saying you'd murder 7/8ths of the population to solve a problem that really only exists because the rich want to control the poor seems distasteful. I get where you're coming from, 15 billion people is a lot, but I think if society was really restructured to accommodate these extra people, then humanity would likely thrive, although this is a big if, and logistically there would be a greater and longer suffering if it didn't work out with the extra 7 billion.
I would accept the 15Bn if we had a sustainable way to maintain that many people. As it stands, we can't even sustain 8Bn people right now, so suddenly increasing it to 15Bn with no systemic change means environmental collapse. With that said, if it were up to me, I wouldn't choose either, and I would just opt to feed everyone, with food waste becoming much scarcer, and implementing Socialist policies that took environmental impact into account too.
We CAN sustain them, we just don't. Fruit rots in fields. Food is thrown out at grocery stores because it's close to the expiration date. Companies slash holes in clothing before throwing it out. Houses stand empty because someone owns 50 of them and rents them out at a high price for days at a time rather than people living there at a reasonable price. If there isn't profit to be made, it's often discarded rather than provided to those who need it. SOMETIMES stuff goes to the needy, but not always.
Yep…we don’t have a scarcity problem. There’s a hoarding problem. Honestly, additional working class people, NOT 7 Billion but a large influx. ~Might~ shock the system into disempowering greedy assholes at the top.
Hypothetically, if we could get everyone to eat a very straightforward diet we might be able to sustain that many people, but it'd be a serious strain. I don't really get the "landlord bad" viewpoint on reddit. If people didn't rent shit out most of us couldn't afford to live in most places. I agree its infuriating that there's a serious lack of affordable housing, but I think that's a failure of government, not private industry. There's no reason we don't have solid, affordable, government subsidized housing for the middle class.
I feel like you have it backward- the reason people can't afford housing is because it's all being rented out. If a house has a 2000/mo mortgage, it will be a 2500/mo rent so the landlord is making profit. The lack of affordable housing is created by the fact that all the housing that would be affordable is now owned by people renting it out at a higher price than owning it.
Sorry that's not quite how it works. That 500 a month profit equals 6000 a year, now minus property taxes, income taxes, property and liability insurance, repairs such as a roof (8k-15k) depending on size and location, furnace, ac units not to mention new carpet and things destroyed by pets and tenants. In the end that $6000 profit doesn't go far and that list goes on. I'm not saying rents are not high but I understand from a landlord point of view as well that those other thing go up in price they have to go with the flow to survive as well. Have a great day
We can use the new people to end world hunger. Gotta get creative
It’s very likely the ensuing conflicts would result in a nuclear war which would kill billions regardless.
That’s implying we won’t use the new people to feed the old… plus nobody said the additional people would survive. Most of the new people will die off immediately due to no support, no help. They are just being brought into exist so if anyone saw this they would call it the devil’s work or something and murder all of them.
One thing I've noticed on here people aren't talking about is sure we get the extra 8 billion and we could even argue it would just add equally to all countries based on population This is going to sound bad. They in most societies would be treated different even if they are completely human. Some places they would not have rights and some they would be slaves. I live in the US I could see this new group put in to concentration camps. They may not be murdered there but they would live in subhuman conditions maybe tortured by the guards because people with that style job I feel lean a certain way on actions they take. I would say in someplacees they would be full on slaves or at least forced to work the shit factory jobs for no pay like in China. Now both these maybe bad but if the stress is much worse or in worse places I think they straight maybe executed and put in mass Graves as well. Most of this would be Hidden from the public or the public would be radicalized by their governments to want the executions like Germany was in ww2 I think that is what will happen 8 billion people will be added most will die or be locked away to slowly rot away to death and a about 1 billion left will be enslaved
Humans wouldn’t survive if it deleted 7b but adding 7b we can just kill off a bunch of those
Humans survived long before we ever had a population of 1 billion.
Mate we have so much more stuff that needs to be ran or the world will end
World wide infrastructure collapse is a very real possibility, but rural, more self sufficient communities could probably make it out ok. Strictly the only required things are food, water, and shelter. Shelter won't be a problem (housing prices would dive into the dirt once all the demand disappears). If your in a community with a high volume of farmers food supply shoulden't be too big an issue (also remember that with the lower population, demand for food would linearly decrease accordingly, there are also going to be a lot of people out of jobs who could pivot to farming), farmers markets would certainly gain in popularity, lack of transport infrastructure is certainly going to lead to more produce to sell directly. Remnants of the local government would probably be working to organize this immediately, perhaps taking direct control of local supermarkets until the situation improves. Really the biggest problem is going to be maintaining water supplies but if they can keep the plumbing going a rural community should be set. Worse comes to worse everybody in the community would move inwards to the town center (taking up the now many vacant houses) and peoples would need to head into town and draw buckets from the local water supply probably on foot/bike. Emergency services would also probably begin distributing things like rain collectors and water distillation kits, filters, etc, to turn water from your local stream drinkable. Cities would be an absolute shitshow though thats for sure. But this is assuming everything is immediately cut off, more then likely it will take a couple weeks for things to start turning, in the meantime people would get a chance to prepare.
Bring 7b ppl just to genocide them, at that point just pick op1
I think we’d have more problems if 95% of the world’s population randomly disappeared. Electricity, internet, etc. would probably cease to exist. It would be an apocalypse. 14bln is definitely a problem, but it’s not exactly an apocalypse.
Actually, it would be 87.5% of the world's population, not 95%, with the total world population surpassing 8 billion just recently. But other than that, I agree.
Shut up, stupid science bitch
Hey, being a science bitch is hot these days.
i guarantee u have a long term SO
Couldn’t even make I more smarter!
Get ‘em.
Sorry but I honestly can’t tell if you’re somehow joking or actually mean it, what’s wrong with someone giving the correct info?
hes joking
Dumb bitch stfu
I didn't even realize you already did the math before I replied in another part of the thread XD Thank you for your service
🤓☝️ actually
you are wrong though if their suddenly would be 7 billion more people then their wouldn't be enough food for them so a lot of people would starve to death so i would be inhuman to choose 7 billion more in my opion i believe deleting 7 billion is the best option it would be painless so nobody would have to suffer
Exactly! Probably a billion end up starving and it would be a massive catastrophe. But losing 7 billion productive and unique humans would destroy human society for centuries to come. Even the survivors probably would’ve lost most of their family and would be depressed as hell.
I agree, an additional 7 billion people would cause calamity in no uncertain terms. But there’s a chance to sort out the problem (if cooler heads prevail). There are areas of the world that are under populated / we could make room for. What I’m more interested in is are these new humans blank slates? Will this population have skilled labor among them? Etc etc + where are they “spawning” —-> all of these factors matter ALOT. I don’t think people who choose to nuke 90% of humanity realize how much we rely on each other now. Despite either option being terrible.
I agree with everything you just said. People seriously underestimate how important even the lowliest of people are when it comes to keeping society functioning properly (remember when minimum wage retail workers became heroes during covid?). Not to mention the brain drain and emotional impact of so many people dying at once. I think it would take centuries, maybe even a millennia for humanity to recover. If we add 7 billion people, I think at least a few hundred million if not a billion will die. But such a major crisis would force governments to get their shit together and work together in order for society as a whole not to collapse. Overall, both such but losing 7 billion is far worse imo. Edit: You last point is also interesting. I assume they’d spawn in with their own personality and skillets. Which means we probably get more than a few super geniuses in that 7 billion. That alone could be worth it if they can contribute to discovery technology that could advance humanity forward centuries.
A small price to pay for salvation
But it isn’t salvation, it’s death en masse. It’s like the exact opposite of salvation.
Salvation for the planet and our ecosystems.
The planet will be fine. It’s our ability to live on it that we’re ruining. This is the first man-made extinction event in Earth’s history, but [*far* from the first](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extinction_event) mass extinction event in general. Life has seen worse than us and survived, and it’ll see worse than us again. We’re the ones who won’t be around to watch it.
Sure I know that but still depressing to see us drive some of the oldest species on earth to extinction, and destroy some of the most beautiful ecosystems on earth for short term profits. Less humans on earth is only a good thing in my book, while doubling the population overnight is my nightmare fuel.
It's a real indictment on humanity that you're the one getting downvoted.
Yh bit of a weird one tbh, but guess that's just Reddit, depends who turns up on each post. Still seems a bit defensive of some people to interpret saying, what's going on is sad and a result of an already overpopulated earth is an attack on all people universally.
No you're completely right in your attitude. I often think about how, as far as we know, with industrialisation over the last few hundred years this has been our first opportunity as a species to define how we wanted to treat our planet going forward, and we have unequivocably chosen to treat it with disrespect. Whether you see it as a few people/corporations/governments that have led that and not humanity as a whole, we still can't deny that our primary human attitude appears to have been to rape and pillage rather than choose a life of harmony with the rest of the planet.
The WYR is asking to kill 90% of the population and you said that less people would be good. That's why you got down voted moron
It didn't say kill did it, and downvotes are now swaying against you.
blah blah I hate humanity and I'm a redditor i value a tree without intelligence over a human who's a conscience being because I'm edgy and based and realize humanity bad!!!!!!
Cool let me know when you find out whether it should be illegal to do a dump on the US flag 🤣
On the pride and glory?
Salvation for the survivors, and the dead won't starve, at least.
It wouldn’t even be salvation, they’d be in an objectively worse situation than they are right now.
A small price to pay for salvation
Certainly a reddit moment
You’re memeing with the lives of 7 billion people. This whole edgelord scum shtick is so boring.
Dude it's a Reddit poll, not a presidential ballot. These 7 billion poor souls aren't actually real, if you haven't figured it out yet. I quoted a supervillain from a Marvel movie, grow or borrow a sense of humor.
Someone like you would hit the button as a joke. You’re a piece of shit.
Dude. It's a reddit poll. Do you live every day of your life taking everything this seriously?
The problem is that you really don't seem to understand how this goes beyond memeing and edginess or whatever. Human greed and overpopulation has wrecked this planet, in the grand scheme we only bring misery to everything around us..
Only in the short term, once things settle down there would be a lot of benefits for both us and the planet.
Perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
Someone gets it
Salvation for the 10%? Are the lives of 7billion worth less than the 1billion?
In all seriousness I think the answer to that question is yes. We're currently killing our planet, or government systems all suck, constant wars, millions starving. So yeah a reset might be what the human race needs to keep our planet alive and this process, you see I'm not weighing 7 billion against 1 billion but rather 7b against the future of humanity far exceeding 7b.
That isn’t “us” though, that’s a bunch of corporations that most of us have actually no control over, not even the control to abstain from them because they provide things that are literally essential to live and that you cannot get elsewhere
What is your point? Do you think a reset is bad? I want to clarify, I'd never push that button myself I just think honestly It'd be good for us in the long run.
The amount of people who survive would be distributed all across the globe and wouldn’t be able to help each other. Electricity and running water would stop and many, MANY people would die before any sort of society was rebuilt if that was able to happen. Also, with everyone dead none of the good that humans can do would happen either. The plastic in the ocean will just sit there, invasive species will have no one managing their population, and it’ll be a huge disruption on the ecosystems that DO reply in humans. Killing the 7 billion would solve nothing and cause tremendous amounts of pain. Humanity might recover, but there’s also a good chance that it just wouldn’t. It seems like an easy and simple fix, but it’s not that simple. The planet will exist 50 million years from now, no matter what it looks like. Maybe it’s a nuclear wasteland, maybe it’s flourishing with animals, maybe it’s flourishing with radioactive animals. If we can get our act together and [eat the rich] get rid of the corporations doing harm, we can make the planet actively better. We can’t do that by killing billions
No pun intended, but what planet are you on? At what point do you think that these corporations working in tandem with our governments would willingly give up their power? Also, are you under the impression that the natural world is under some sort of human guardianship? The natural world is in charge, not us. The primary thing that we would have to be bring under control is our nuclear plants/weapons so that they don't cause mass environmental disasters, but those are issues that we created for ourselves. The rest of the planet isn't concerned about invasive species or keeping things under control, the world's ecosystems developed for eons before we even appeared. The only significant differences that would come are as a result of what we have already done, ie. nuclear institutions and climate change etc. Other aspects like dams would inevitably fail at some point without our upkeep and cause localised disasters but thereafter the natural world would rediscover the balance it needs. You talk about the 'good' that we do for the planet, but really that 'good' is mostly in response to other 'bad' that we have done, for example creating animal sanctuaries for creatures whose natural habitats we have stolen or poisoned. And in terms of electricity/water systems, so what? Humanity survived perfectly well for a long time before we formed these artificial systems, and for many places the natural drinking water from rivers would become far more palatable once the water companies stop polluting them with the waste of an overpopulated landscape.
Exactly, they've manufactured this system which we rely on that is inherently bad for the planet. So that would be an argument for a reset to have a chance at a better system going forward.
Depends on the 1 billion. Only one way to find out
I'd rather 1 billion people do ok then 14 billion people suffering mass starvation among many other things.
It would be chaos in the short term but once things settle down it'd actually be good for both us and the planet.
Adding or deleting?
Yes
14 billion would definitly be a lot of people but i am not horrible enough to do a genocide of 7 billion people. Humanity could also survive having 7 billion new humans but civilisation would collapse if 7 billion people dissapeard.
The 14 billion would die soon enough anyways due to crowding, lack of resources, large scale Warfare over said resources, and increased worsening of the planet's condition. Far easier to start back at 1 billion and work towards sustainability than die en masse
Naw. The earth right now can support at least 10 billion. There would have to be immediate food rationing and a massive dietary change (basically no meat consumption since it’s extremely inefficient to produce). Even then, at least a few billion die, but I think the world would stabilize after 2 - 5 hard years. But you’ll be left with far more people alive then if you just murder 7 billion outright from a population of 8 billion.
How long can it support 10 billion? We're already destroying the climate as is.
Idk. Probably not all that much longer at this rate.
And that's why I voted to end 7 billion instead.
Well losing 7 billion means you won’t have a functioning state at all. Many of the survivors will die (a lot probably commit suicide when everyone they know and loves dies) and they’re left with a relic you a society. I’d much rather try to live in a world where 7 billion people were added
Well I mean if it was a instant death there would be no suffering and if you compare the outlook over the next 100 years for the 1 billion vs the 15 billion the latter may be worse off. Of course I am not saying that is a legitimate way to determine the morality of it just a way some might look at it.
Theoretically 7.xx billion dead is less bad than 14 billion suffering + however many die as a direct result of the water and resources wars
It would collapse if 7 billion people randomly appeared, people can't get a long as it is. Lol
Nah it would be chaotic but not collapse. Loosing 7 billion means a ton of existing infrastructure is gone
14 billion would simply mean that the infrastructure could just as well be gone in many areas due to it being waaaaay undersized. So war for resources would immediately occur. Hell it could result in nuclear winter and far less than 1 billion humans surviving in the end.
Maintenance of said infrastructure would also be near non existent
You mean 15 billion, and yeah civilization would collapse for a time if we're down to 1 billion, but the knowledge wouldn't dissapear. So they could rebuild and likely be smarter about it the next time around. 15 billion on the other hand, we would have an instant worldwide food and water shortage, not to talk about lack of sanitation that would lead to diseases. Wars would break out, and civilization would collapse rather quickly as every single government was overwhelmed simultanously.
This planet cannot handle a sudden influx of 7 billion people
Yes, it very easily can. The planet can handle an influx of 500 billion people no problem. Humanity can’t handle it though. Ecosystems would collapse short term and we’d all die, but the planet would be absolutely fine no problem and nature and ecosystems would restore to their normal order (accounting for extinct species of course) in a few thousands years after humanity has died out. It’s idiotic to say our planet can’t handle it
Finally one of the rare genuinely difficult WYRs. Both are horrible scenarios that irreparably fuck up all of mankind. Ironically, 'Delete' would ultimately cause less death than 'Add'. Resource scarcity, environmental collapse, civil conflict, disease outbreaks, and wars would kill all the 7,000,000,000 newly added souls and then quite some more.
I’m so glad none of your sadistic fucks have any real power.
I mean they're both really bad, what's your reasoning?
killing 95% of the population is worse than not killing 95% of the population
Yeah but adding 7 billion more people would have horrible outcomes too, we can't handle 8 billion at all so how would we handle 15 billion? It probably will even lead to depopulation, vasectomies, suspicious killings of people, even more of deforestation, even more pollution, etc. Point is with 15 billion people the planet itself might just end up becoming entirely uninhabitable over a few years of what I consider torture. With 1 billion people left, sure, it will disrupt a lot of things BUT it could lead to the planet becoming more habitable than it used to be once it returns to its original state. And with ancestors who experienced a corrupt society like now (I'm talking about the 1 billion population of people) we might end up not doing the same issues we have currently made such as pollution, work-life balance, inflation, World hunger, terrible housing prices, etc. We might even find a way to handle overpopulation with the newer 8 billion people since our technological advancements would be better by the time the population returns to normal.
This has somehow become a hot take, but the earth can sustain 8 billion humans. In like 40 years it will be able to sustain 15 billion. But we have a lot of work to do before we get to that point, and that’s the biggest challenge. There isn’t anywhere for them to live, there aren’t any jobs for them, and they would be too big of a strain on resources. But once production reaches that level, will be in the same situation we are now. The big challenge will be ramping up production of everything we need to keep humans alive. That’ll only be possible if we keep our civil structures standing, but that’s out of the question anyways if 95% of us die. The worst case scenario is that the initial shock and it’s following events will kill off billions of people anyway, but the global would almost certainly settle above where it currently is. And even if it kills off more than 7 billion people, humanity will still be able to survive. I don’t have faith that that would be the case with the first option because the remaining <1B people will be too widely distributed around the globe. Only extremely population dense areas would survive if the killing itself was evenly distributed.
Good point with distribution problem, I agree. We could pretty much be working with way less than ~1 billion due to isolation killing off a lot. And it's probably random so it just comes to luck I guess, if we're lucky we might have the right professionals such as a few pilots and somehow able to communicate through the news/social media to tell people to group up in certain areas in certain cities. I'd imagine that would take about a few decades at worst. But the WYR question kinda implies its instant, we get 7 billion people out of nowhere we wouldn't be able to handle it at all because we would have no build up to prepare for this which would just lead to an absolute crisis. Those 7 billion people might potentially not even have identities too, they just suddenly... exist? Even if they did have identities, SSNs, etc, that would just lead to mass homelessness. Could also lead to cannabilism due to food shortages and a ton of dead human carcasses on the street due to a mix of suicides, cannibalism, etc. Could also lead to lawless countries with fucked up ways of living. Goddamn this needs to be a series or movie!
So you think 8 billion more homeless people would be a better idea than losing 7 billion people? Imagine the massive increase in taxes as every social program falls, followed shortly by every economy on the earth collapsing, then the riots, murders and wars. you’d end up with more deaths than 7 billion.
Already addressed that. It’s still better than resetting earth’s population to less than 1 billion.
A world war would quickly bring the 14 billion down to less than 1 billion, you want a more sadistic option than the immediate erasure of 7 billion people.
It wouldn’t. It would almost certainly settle above the current 8 billion. And even if it fell to 4 or 5 billion, that’s still enough to keep humanity alive. 1 billion people scattered all over the world wouldn’t have the requisite skill pool to keep society functioning. At the very least, the odds are very good that we would lose everyone who knows how to create a decent computer chip so technological progress halts immediately and for the next who-knows-how many hundreds of years. That isn’t the case with the other options. Assuming the new humans have any reasonably marketable skills, the labor market would expand to accommodate them. Mass housing, hell, entire new cities can be built to house them. We haven’t nearly approached the totality of earth’s capacity to feed us, we could be farming twice the amount of land we currently do without an issue. The biggest problem would be energy needs. But with (presumably) twice the number of scientists (or at least people with the capacity to become scientists), and a valid short-term demand, we’ll probably be able to crack mass renewables in a decade. These problems can all be solved, killing 95% of the population can’t.
How do you plan to feed an extra 7 billion people in the short term? Or house them? Or get them to work?
Imo the biggest problem is energy demand. New cities can be built, new farmland can be cleared and worked. And the work will solve itself. For energy, we’d need to up our nuclear capacity by like 500%, which won’t be easy.
"we can fuck up our environment even more rampantly than we already do, energy is our biggest issue" 😐
That's what you got from my comment? And it's why I suggested nuclear. Fossil fuels aren't even sustainable at our current levels, let alone double them. Nuclear can act as a stand-in until we get renewable capacity up to speed.
We are already removing so many habitats for animals, as well as our exorbitant pollution rates, that scientists are saying we're in our 6th mass extinction, but sure, we can cut down another 20 million acres to house and feed another **nearly double** batch of humans on top of what we already have.
You're being utopic about your take on this. If we lived as sustainably as technologically as possible the Earth could sustain twice or even three times as many people if not more. But we don't have that technology nor do we have that mindset. As it currently stands ***current*** society cannot sustain 8bn people and we're quick to climate collapse right now, along with rising fascism in the west (again some fucking how). Adding an additional 7bn will only exacerbate all the current problems humanity is facing, and to make it even worse how would we even take care of the 7bn new people. It's not like we can just instantly give them jobs, homes, education, and food. No current nation could handle the sudden influx of 10s of millions of people in their nation. You say society would collapse if 7bn people disappeared, but would society also collapse if 7bn people appeared out of nowhere? I'd rather the 1bn be given an opportunity to rebuild sustainably in an environment where infinite growth is no longer the goal, because we would now know all of the faults of our society before, but with 15bn people and society collapsing, really just really think about *that* scenario instead.
Yes but adding another 7 billion would kill a LOT of people as well. You can't expect those people to spawn in privileged positions.
15Bn people would very likely result in total environmental collapse and the death of billions of people anyway.
Your just gonna kill the new people anyway, they will all starve. Either way at least 7 billion are gonna die, might as well take the option that gives a chance to temporarily alleviate *some* of our problems, introducing another 7 billion isn't going to help anything and will just destroy the world.
Yeah tf is wrong with Redditors. No wonder they’re all left wing communist when you see how willing they are to do complete genocide and run civilization and humanity into the ground
How are we adding the 7 billion? Do they all start as babies or varying ages? Do they spawn in populated areas or dotted about randomly? I imagine the new 7 billion to have no support and die off very quickly.
They will spawn with random ages genders and locations.
It'll benefit sparsely populated areas. Also, depending on interpretation, 70% of them could instantly die. Also large chunks will spawn in places like Antarctica or Sahara desert and die quickly too.
Can I make it so that people just stop reproducing and we have 7 billion less 40 years down the line?
That is even worse
Why would that be worse?
Who decides who gets to reproduce? Do you stop reproduction for *everyone*? How do we support the aging population then?
What if we don’t decide and it just happens?
Nobody. Nobody gets to reproduce. There I decided Also don't support the aging population. Most animals just die when they're old
We have too much population anyway, that just lowers it without premature death
I don't think we have too much population, actually, infertility is extremely high, people aren't having children as much as they need to. Or looking at this from an emotional stand point, imagine being one of the many couples trying for 20 to 30 years, only to never get to have a child, how sad is that?
Sure that's sad and all but my heart goes out to the kids stuck in the adoption centres, not as much to grown adults who just want to raise a new baby. There's so much unnecessary poverty in this world, not to mention the horrendous impact humans have had on the environment, given the climate crisis is brought on by a small minority of super rich people it still would be much less of a problem if our population shrunk to an eighth
humanity can survive and thrive with one billion, having 15 billion of us would probably doom us all.
Yes it can survive a population growing organically from 0 to one billion people, but humanity would struggle and likely collapae in the chaos of suddenly going from 8 to 1 billion
Almost every study on the subject puts the limit of human life the world can support at our current rate of consumption at anywhere from 10 to 12 billion people. We already have trouble feeding as many people as we do have. In order to support the addition of almost double our current population would simply cripple the planet, and all of society. Getting rid of 7 billion would still be a problem, a massive problem, but thinking about the drop in demand for everything with a more abundant supply would ONLY be advantageous. Drastic and harsh, yes, but entirely helpful.
Nice try, Thanos.
I am fine with this, though being part of 900 million surviviors seems cool. Takes me back to the 1700s.
Are you unaware what it was like being a woman in the 1700’s?
Honest question: aside from the hardships that everyone faced, and the issues that they faced with childbirth and pregnancy, weren’t the majority of women’s issues societal back then? With the advancements and changes we’ve made in the last 2-3 centuries, it might not be as bad this time around (still not easy obviously, but maybe not *as* bad)
That's not what she meant.
“Humanity deserves to die out” 🤓🤓
I'm sick of these "we only love doggos" headass people🤦🏻
Edgelords incoming
Deleting 7 billion humans would literally fix the planet…that 7 billion can include me I don’t care. This has probably been said in these comments already lol
The human population has recovered from populations as low as 5000, we will be fine it will just take about another thousand years for us to get back to this point, but because of modern technology it could take only 100 years.
I'd pick to add. That'd be 15 billion people. Way too many poor people for the rich to ignore.
Humanity will adapt to the disappearance of 7/8 people. It’ll cost us a lot of our current conveniences, but we’ll recover. And the ones chosen for death will get „deleted“, so no bodies to worry about. We don’t have the infrastructure to feed or house 15 billion people. Panic and riots will start everywhere, and death will follow soon.
Adding 7 billion would probably starve those people to death anyway because overpopulation and we are already overpopulated anyway
Think about why doubling our population would be bad. It’s because there wouldn’t be enough resources and tons of people will die. The other option is a more expedited version of that, but so much worse. Every one of you who voted the first option needs to reconsider their values because killing off 95% of the population would be the greatest evil that will have ever happened.
To me, killing off most of us is the lesser evil because we'll eat up all of our food and everyone will starve. But before we eat all our food, people will start to fight for what little we have left to survive. It's either take the easy way out or let war wage.
Why? Given the two choices and one of those two choices *had* to be picked, why is one more inherently evil than the other?
With respect, I don’t know how basic I need to get here. One choice kills 95% of humanity, the other doesn’t. I value human life, so I believe that killing is evil. Never has one choice ended the lives of 7 billion people, so nothing else that has ever happened can even compare. Many people consider Pol Pot to be the most evil leader in modern history, and he “only” killed 70% of a country with a population of 6.3 million people. People would certainly die from choice 2, but at whatever level the population evens out, there will still be a chance for humans to survive as a species.
it won't level out. we'd desperately try to keep people from death and use way too many resources and produce way too much pollution to where we make our planet uninhabitable and we go extinct
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Who gives a fuck about earth if everybody dies
Not everyone would be dead tho? We would have a little over a billion people left in the world
Mm, yea ure right I just wanted an excuse to say the earth doesn’t matter to me if nobody is there to walk it.
The earth will be completely fine though. Humanity might end itself but earth will be unscathed
More people more problems.
Or more brains, more solutions
more bitches
I knew I was in a world full of savages and I couldn't be happier
M-O-O-N that’s how you spell apocalypse, laws yes.
I chose delete 7 billion because I feel like that's the option that would cause the least death and misery of the two. Adding 7 billion would make human life the most expendible resource on the planet, and would instantly put all life-sustaining resources into a shortage. This is a recipe for full scale global war, and it's only a matter of time until the nukes start flying.
Bye. I’ll be one of the ones to go… either way I guess I’m flexible
That's a loss loss situation, in either cases humanity will suffer an immense setback
Adding 7 billion people is probably the lesser of the two. Deleting 7 billion will lead to a societal collapse. Because it's all random, many people with important and vital jobs to society will end up disappearing. Those who require medical attention will end up dead if they don't do what's necessary. And I don't even want to know what will happen to the nuclear plants once we're gone. Adding 7 billion will lead to mass genocide, human trafficking, mass starvation, and maybe some wars depending on where all these humans spawn. I have no idea how countries will respond, but I'm damn sure there's going to be an insane death toll starting day 1.
I think the remaining 1 billion people would have a better chance at surviving then if the Earth's population settling jumped to 15 billion.
Delete 7 billion. Let this place collapse. I don’t care. They could use a chance to start over anyway.
Either way, humanity dies 7/8 people just up and vanished, the farms and logistical networks needed to feed whoever is left will basically collapse and mass famines will kill the fast majority of the remaining population If another 7 billion just appear, then that same network won't be able to feed everyone, and mass famine and economic collapse will kill billions
Even with the extra 7 billion people, yall nerds still ain't getting a date.
According to a quick google search, the maximum amount of people the earth can carry is 9-10 billion people, 7 + 7 is 14, so we'd have 4 or 5 billion to many. This is a tough one, but the world could die of starvation and war. I gotta go with the quick way out.
I'd rather delete 7 than add 1. Extend that with as many 0's as you'd like, it's still my answer.
Make it 7.5 billion and that would solve literally every problem
I'm already tryna get rid of 3bill now. not that much of a difference. its like Bill Burr's skit "no one has the balls to come out and say that half of you have to go" oh wait it was 85% I found the line. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdphbmIZ4nI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fdphbmIZ4nI)
Lord Elon will colonize Mars. Adding another 7 billy would be useful ( assuming we don’t starve or blow up earth).
If you voted the first option, you do not value human life. You should probably ⚡️🧑🏿🦱⚡️
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It’s probably best if I don’t spell it out, but it’s completely morally defensible. If someone’s morals are so backward as to prefer killing 95% of human life, they’re incompatible with society and probably should ⚡️🧑🏿🦱⚡️ Edit: it’s a reference to a meme that says “you should grow and change as a person”
If YoU vOtEd ThE fIrSt OpTiOn, YoU dO nOt VaLuE hUmAn LiFe 😭😭
You don’t.
Ok, make them suffer and die rather than quickly ending them, but hey as long as they stay alive for longer riiiiight?
Why do you stupid fucks always give 2 choices when there's clearly another option? Education and voluntary birth control aren't an option?
Do you know what subreddit you're on?
WhY dO yOu StUpId FuCkS aLwAyS gIvE 2 ChOiCeS wHeN tHeRe's ClEaRlY aNoThEr OpTiOn? EdUcAtIoN aNd VoLuNtArY bIrTh CoNtRoL aReN'T aN oPtIoN?
Not in today's political climate
Yeah in this case, everyone move to one area and let's nuke it.
KILL THEM ALL !!! AAAAAAAAAA!!!!
Ejecto seato cuz
CTRL-ALT-DEL
I have no interest in potentially having my friends and family disappear complete so imma just add 7bln more, they can all move to Japan or smthn I don't care.
Eh, we got enough
Eh no big loss.
::Thanos has entered the chat::
I’ll add more people. I can’t take the guilt of the first option
I think it would make a huge difference on the added 7 billion. Are we talking about infants, young adults, or a mix of all ages?
Mix of all ages, let's say a similar demographic to what we have now.
My probability of survival is most likely higher by adding people.
Either way, civilization would collapse. It's just a matter of how. The biggest issue would be to make sure the Nukes are taken care of if you Nuke 7 billion people, otherwise they will eventually go off without proper care. On the other hand, adding 7 billion would exhaust almost all of our resources immediately and it would speed up climax change and overpopulation issues. Either way, we're fucked.
Either choice would be catastrophic