Quote:
Originally Posted by asdf
(Post 7240392)
Probably most of the people are gonna die off quickly since there's no infrastructure to feed x billion people. Unless you slowly bring everyone over a number of years. What about livestock animals - pigs, cows, chickens, etc?
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This is a good thread.
I would tend to agree with asdf that you'd have an immediate crisis just because we rely on the infrastructure right now and couldn't build it from scratch quickly enough to support the population.
So in Scenario 1, I offer the realistic scenario as follows:
1. 6 billion people get off the ship with no supplies.
2. 5.7 billion people die the first winter while everyone scrambles for food.
3. The remaining 300 million aren't necessarily the best-equipped to rebuild since they're the best-equipped for short-term survival, so key knowledge to rebuild would be missing. Also, you'd have mass chaos as the 5.7 billion people died.
4. It'd take a couple more years for everything to settle down, and at this point people are living like they did in the middle ages.
5. For the next 40 years until the current generation all died, you'd have rapid advances, probably going from the Middle Ages to the Industrial Revolution.
6. At that point, the entire population would be people who never knew earth and you'd slow back down to a normal development pace, reproducing the advances from the Industrial Revolution to today. It would be faster than the historical pace, though, because some people would have written down memories and concepts. So to get from 1830 to today would probably take 120 years.
So my answer in Scenario 1 is 120+40+2+1=163 years.
In Scenario 2, let's assume that they have enough supplies to last the winter and that they've planned a government and organization before they get off the ship.
1. 6 billion people get off the ship with supplies.
2. For the next 40 years until the current generation all died, you'd have very rapid advances, probably going from the Middle Ages to the Depression Era.
3. At that point, the entire population would be people who never knew earth and you'd slow back down to a normal development pace, reproducing the advances from the Depression to today. It would be notably faster than the historical pace, though, because a lot of people would have written down memories and concepts. So to get from 1930 to today would probably take 30 years.
So my answer in Scenario 2 is 30+40=70 years.