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A 'rouge' state would indeed by terrible.

Is it automatic like poof!

Not good for surviving passengers on airplanes that just lost both pilots. Or the coastline when the oil tankers crash into them. Or the trains carrying hazardous cargo that run into gak...

I don't like it.

 Daba wrote:

Relapse wrote:

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:
For the sake of the surviving 10%, I really hope Baronlveagh is one of the 90%.

He's been telling us here on Dakka in this thread and that others he's part of an ultra secret government think tank, his family helped build the ABomb, he's a master warrior, etc., so I imagine his bet is on he'll be in the 10%.

I bet he also knows Kung Fu.

He does seem to have in-depth knowledge of every single tank monument in Ukraine, which is quite amazing. Maybe he is planning to use them to build an army and take over the world? He looks the type...


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Experiment 626 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 VorpalBunny74 wrote:
This theory sounds like an inefficient global solution to localised problems.

Who is causing overpopulation, where, and why? Demographics is a fine art, you can't brush the world with broad strokes. China being overpopulated doesn't mean you bomb Argentina to balance the books.

The problem is that there's no such thing as a 'local' problem when it comes to water and food issues. Trade usually evens things out, but there's a certain tipping point where the planet simply cannot support sufficient food production to feed the human population anymore. Individual countries can have overpopulation before that point, but once that point is reached, that's all she wrote.

Once that point is reached, countries without are going to start attacking countries that are not overpopulated, to try and feed themselves.

And what is so bad about that? War is part of human nature. Wars have been fought over food, living space etc. before, why will it be so bad this time? Besides, Europe and North America will be fine. Virtually limitless water, the most fertile soil in the world, and far from overpopulated. Combine that with the military power to easily destroy any attackers, and I think it is going to be pretty quiet around here. I don't see this being a global problem.

I doubt we'll ever see another 'conventional' large scale modern war... Insurgent/guerilla warfare and the likes of civil conflict as is happening across the Middle East & the Ukraine sure, but full out nation-on-nation ala WWII? Nope, not happening.
If a scenario where to happen such as say a Yellowstone super eruption, or the entire Ring of Fire popping off, you'll be much more likely to have nations attacking eachother through cyber and/or chemical means.


Besides, the whole idea of the planet becoming too overpopulated within the next century is somewhat silly anyways... Most of the human population still lives in high risk areas for natural catastrophes, and as we've been seeing over the past 20+ years, these events are causing record setting death tolls.
The majority of the newest generations are being forced into areas that weren't populated in the past for example, because those areas were so prone to events like regular hurricanes/cyclones, are too arid for proper farming/sustainability, etc... And then there's countries such as China, where there soon won't be enough women to sustain the current growth rate.

The main concerns for an actual 'depopulation bomb' event are more likely to be caused by;
1. A near Earth object collision.
2. A VEI.8 level eruption.
3. Massive climate shift caused by our Sun.
4. Pandemic.
5. Zombiepocalypse!

A rouge state or some insane genocidal scientist gone rouge? Not so much.

Don't forget the magnetic field shift!

Ensis Ferrae wrote:So, Africa in a nutshell then?

Africa on steroids. With bigger guns and the potential for greater levels of mayhem. But, very broadly, similar.

Experiment 626 wrote:
I doubt we'll ever see another 'conventional' large scale modern war... Insurgent/guerilla warfare and the likes of civil conflict as is happening across the Middle East & the Ukraine sure, but full out nation-on-nation ala WWII? Nope, not happening.
If a scenario where to happen such as say a Yellowstone super eruption, or the entire Ring of Fire popping off, you'll be much more likely to have nations attacking eachother through cyber and/or chemical means.

Actually my vote is biological. but, that said, yes, you will, eventually. The only thing that keeps it in check atm is the fear of Nuclear escalation. As long as the property they're fighting over is worth more than the human lives being expended, you can have a large conventional war, as a nuclear exchange would render the arable land they'd be fighting over worthless. It's why chemical would be unlikely too. Too much of a risk of soil and water contamination, depending on what they use.

Experiment 626 wrote:
Besides, the whole idea of the planet becoming too overpopulated within the next century is somewhat silly anyways... Most of the human population still lives in high risk areas for natural catastrophes, and as we've been seeing over the past 20+ years, these events are causing record setting death tolls.

And, yet, despite them, the population keeps growing. And, it might seem silly to you, but the UN etc are taking it seriously. Remember, the idea that humans might drive a species to extinction was considered silly once. After all, God would never let a species die out.

Experiment 626 wrote:
The main concerns for an actual 'depopulation bomb' event are more likely to be caused by;
1. A near Earth object collision.
2. A VEI.8 level eruption.
3. Massive climate shift caused by our Sun.
4. Pandemic.

Famine should be number 3 there, since 4 and 5 would cause 3 as a side effect.

Iron_Captain wrote:
He does seem to have in-depth knowledge of every single tank monument in Ukraine, which is quite amazing. Maybe he is planning to use them to build an army and take over the world? He looks the type...

Some things are easier to prove to people on the internet than others.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

Experiment 626 wrote:
I doubt we'll ever see another 'conventional' large scale modern war... Insurgent/guerilla warfare and the likes of civil conflict as is happening across the Middle East & the Ukraine sure, but full out nation-on-nation ala WWII? Nope, not happening.
If a scenario where to happen such as say a Yellowstone super eruption, or the entire Ring of Fire popping off, you'll be much more likely to have nations attacking eachother through cyber and/or chemical means.

Actually my vote is biological. but, that said, yes, you will, eventually. The only thing that keeps it in check atm is the fear of Nuclear escalation. As long as the property they're fighting over is worth more than the human lives being expended, you can have a large conventional war, as a nuclear exchange would render the arable land they'd be fighting over worthless. It's why chemical would be unlikely too. Too much of a risk of soil and water contamination, depending on what they use.

Biological is harder than a lot of people think it is, which is why it hasn't been used since reliable chemical delivery was developed. What's your plan for when your bioweapon leaks out in your own country? By the way, it will. Either while you're developing it (and your own defenses for it) or while you're deploying it. Militaries had accidents with their chemical weapons all the time. Joe is going to drop one. During WW2 we did extensive chem weapon testing on our own troops. Bioweapons would be the same, except you have the risk of your bug escaping. Instead of a person poisoned with nerve agent, you have a guy carrying your own weaponized smallpox walking around Beijing. Even if your military chooses to liquidate it's "volunteers" after testing, there's always the human element. Some nurse will fall in love with some test subject and help him escape the purge. Now they're both spreading weaponized smallpox around Beijing.

Cyber is far more likely, for a variety of reasons. First, it's not an act of war to test your offensive cyber capabilities on another nation. Second, you can reliably impact a far larger portion of a population. Third, the second order effects of your cyber attack force the government to act against, rather than for, it's own people.

Think about it, what's more damaging for the risk? Unleashing smallpox or anthrax in a few major airports (for which the US reserves the right to nuke you), or shutting off everyone's EBT (which would be considered a civil act rather than a military one)?

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

Haha, sounds like an amazing job to me.

It's really, really boring. Every day, I make sure 70k odd documents are preserved to the current standard, and every week there's a new standard. Putin says something crazy: new standard. Some scientists announce a discovery: new standard. OPM losses everyone's data: new standard. Seriously, I've had water cooler conversations that went:"What if Putin joins ISIS?" "But what might they do?" "How about a computer virus that strobes a hypnotic patten that makes everyone who sees it a suicide bomber...? " "We better draw up a new form for that one..." And thus, there is a procedure in the event of the 'Sexy Putin Allah Hypno-pocalypse.'

I guess they eventually had to put computers on Shutter Island but they really should monitor your output. Also those water cooler conversations sound exactly like non-events. I mean if this is the stuff that requires a cull then you are one messed up dude. Back to the backing up job and stop trying to be Dr Evil!

jwr wrote:

Cyber is far more likely, for a variety of reasons. First, it's not an act of war to test your offensive cyber capabilities on another nation. Second, you can reliably impact a far larger portion of a population. Third, the second order effects of your cyber attack force the government to act against, rather than for, it's own people.

Think about it, what's more damaging for the risk? Unleashing smallpox or anthrax in a few major airports (for which the US reserves the right to nuke you), or shutting off everyone's EBT (which would be considered a civil act rather than a military one)?

The more likely scenario however, from a "foreign nation attacking the US in Cyber Warfare" point of view, is much much worse than someone cutting off EBT.... I'm talking there are nations who are actively planning and trying to take out the power grid. Think about it, imagine if China were able to completely cut off ALL electrical power for the entire West Coast of the US? A couple days, nothing really changes, a month... things get bad. Six months?? you're talking total game change at that point.

jwr wrote:

Biological is harder than a lot of people think it is, which is why it hasn't been used since reliable chemical delivery was developed.

I have to ask when you think that was, as Japan used biological weapons on China, yielding about 400k to 500k killed, including weaponized Yersinia pestis.


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 IGtR= wrote:
I guess they eventually had to put computers on Shutter Island but they really should monitor your output. Also those water cooler conversations sound exactly like non-events. I mean if this is the stuff that requires a cull then you are one messed up dude. Back to the backing up job and stop trying to be Dr Evil!

Clearly, you have not bothered to read most of the posts in this thread to determine what we're actually talking about.

Until you do, please move along. The Egress is that way.

 shasolenzabi wrote:
Only 3% of the worlds' water is fresh water, the rest is brackish, dirty, or salt water.

Now dirty/brackish water can be filtered, but the filtration systems are not cheap, and that nasty water is in poor countries who will be hard pressed to pay for enough of those filter/purifiers.

Salt water is a lot of issues with de-salinization. The by-product of de-salinization is potent salts laden with chems and heavy metals that are also not safe to dispose of at such high concentrations, so sure, you solve the one problem of water to drink, but now where to dispose pf the waste materials from the process?

Of that 3% we use, some is shared not for drinking, but also laundry, dishwashing, waste, and industrial use, again, better purification and filtration will be needed to re-use some of that gray water, but many companies hate spending money on such measures and prefer the low fines for polluting rather than pay for something that stops the polluting.

Some is not for drinking? More than 2/3 of water is used in industry. Of the other third used in homes, only a few % is drunk - the rest is used in showers or sprayed on our lawns.

While future water shortages could cause problems for agriculture and industry unless new tech is developed, it's ridiculous to talk about water in terms of people running out of drinking water. And the use of water really isn't driven by population, but consumption.


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 Ensis Ferrae wrote:
California is majorly proving that sentiment wrong. Areas where agriculture is the main industry are seeing soil subsidence at around 1 foot per year. The aquifers that are providing that water, filled up over the course of 10k-100k years. "We" are draining it far, far faster than it can possibly be replaced, even with the expected El Nino weather coming this winter.

Which is an issue driven by water use and methods of agriculture, not population. Remember that most of the food produced is later just thrown away.


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 Grey Templar wrote:
The only difference between a Desalination plant and rain is that the rain is spread out over a larger area. And there will still be rain out at sea.

And the cost. Desalination costs about 50c per cubic metre, which becomes a very big number when you look at making desalination a primary source of water.

And sure, it can cause harm to some delicate ecosystems down there, but really where should our priorities be? Some little ocean lifeforms which are cool, but ultimately aren't helping us

I don't think you have any idea at all about how oceans work.


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 BaronIveagh wrote:
Yes, because Jim the garbage man is special and elite because he rolled a 10. The supposition being that the 10% that live are selected in a purely random way.

"I don't want to kill poor people, I'm not a monster. I plan to kill randomly, it's the humane way."


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 BaronIveagh wrote:
so how's Freddy Mercury doing these days? Talked to Rock Hudson lately? Read anything new by Issac Asimov?

Modern medicine does have limits.

Umm, you might want to look at the relative survival rates for AIDS in rich and poor countries before you try that argument.

 IGtR= wrote:
I guess they eventually had to put computers on Shutter Island but they really should monitor your output.

I got reminded today why this would not work. Our boss came back from a trip to SOG today and had us, at the request of someone further up the chain, draw up a new readiness plan.

You'll be glad to know that now I am to keep hard copies of my last three performance evaluations at my desk, in the event that they have some bearing on my fate, should I be at my cubical on Judgement Day, should the apocalypse of Saint John come to pass, so that the Prince of Peace can review them on his way through. Should the Rapture occur, we are permitted to, assuming that the boss has just translated to heaven (something I find more questionable than the idea of honesty in government), drive the VIP shuttle to the front gates in order to expedite the King of Kings access to our facility, should we get the go ahead from Baltimore or Washington.

I rate this one up there with the one to redeploy our security staff around the interior of the facility in the event of an attack by Mole Men, also someone in the capital's idea.

I think the guys that draw up our budget are just seeing what hoops they can make the boss jump through.

 sebster wrote:
"I don't want to kill poor people, I'm not a monster. I plan to kill randomly, it's the humane way."

No, the humane way is if it doesn't hurt. The fair way is if everyone has an equal shot.

 sebster wrote:

Umm, you might want to look at the relative survival rates for AIDS in rich and poor countries before you try that argument.

If you look at it in the mid 1980s to early 1990s, however, you're looking at very similar survival numbers.across the board.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
No, the humane way is if it doesn't hurt. The fair way is if everyone has an equal shot.

Uh huh. And of course fairness is the only priority, and other notions like the avoidance of suffering just don’t factor in at all. So much so that it makes perfect sense to initiate the deaths of billions of people just to make sure it happens fairly, rather than to hope there is no apocalypse, let alone actually try to prevent it.

At first I thought the craziest thing about this was the conviction that an apocalypse was inevitable. But holy crap the rabbit hole goes so much deeper.

If you look at it in the mid 1980s to early 1990s, however, you're looking at very similar survival numbers.across the board.

Only if you look at treatment. Effective methods of prevention were established and effective in the mid-80s, in ways that developing countries still haven’t reached. Similarly, your hope for this ‘fair’ slaughter relies not only on medicine being unable to cure it, but also to fail to figure out how to prevent it. Because if either of those things become possible, then it is the rich who will be best positioned to use whatever medicine discovers.

After some serious thought, I have a counter proposal. What if humanity was reduced to 10% of it's current clothing? Would this be a good thing for the long term survival of mankind?

We could call it. . . the Nude Bomb!

SFW (I promise)

 sebster wrote:
Uh huh. And of course fairness is the only priority, and other notions like the avoidance of suffering just don’t factor in at all. So much so that it makes perfect sense to initiate the deaths of billions of people just to make sure it happens fairly, rather than to hope there is no apocalypse, let alone actually try to prevent it.

Well, frankly, we looked at prevention first:

Ever try to convince people to stop screwing? Forced sterilization will never be a viable plan in the West. You'd have people screaming 'eugenics' in a heartbeat.

Even the sunniest numbers for space colonies, if we started *right now* would barely be able to feed themselves in the time-frame we're looking at, let lone export food back to Earth.

Given the limitations on yield, hydroponics and other alternative ways to cultivate crops might give another five years at best, and that's if you began a project on a scale that hasn't been seen since the Panama Canal.

Aquacologies really wouldn't help due to limited fresh water playing a role in said disaster.

We also considered 'close our eyes and hope it goes away' but that hasn't worked yet in the history of humanity, so...

 sebster wrote:

At first I thought the craziest thing about this was the conviction that an apocalypse was inevitable. But holy crap the rabbit hole goes so much deeper.

And denial is not just a river in Egypt.

As far as medicine not being able to do anything about it, if a pathogen is sufficiently fast spreading and sufficiently lethal, then, yes, there isn't a whole lot they can do about it, other than try and isolate the victims. If there is a long period between becoming infectious and symptom onset, then even that does not work well. Ideally, the whole thing would be over in a week at most.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

We also considered 'close our eyes and hope it goes away' but that hasn't worked yet in the history of humanity, so...

...the obvious way to avert massive amounts of death, is to cause massive amounts of death.

Yep, that sounds perfectly reasonable Mr. Drax.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

As far as medicine not being able to do anything about it, if a pathogen is sufficiently fast spreading and sufficiently lethal, then, yes, there isn't a whole lot they can do about it, other than try and isolate the victims. If there is a long period between becoming infectious and symptom onset, then even that does not work well. Ideally, the whole thing would be over in a week at most.

The only way you could control a pathogen virulent enough to eliminate 90% of the human population in that time frame is to develop, and deploy a form of vaccination before hand; so its a fair bet a cure would also exist. Moreover, for that to work in the context of your argument you would have to find a way of randomly immunizing only 10% of the population without doing anything to alert people to the coming of the apocalypse. Hell, even if you managed to do that the nature of vacination infrastructure pretty much means that most of the 10% who survived would be in developed nations.

And that's before we get into the possibility of the pathogen mutating, and God forbid it jumps species as a result.

 dogma wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:

We also considered 'close our eyes and hope it goes away' but that hasn't worked yet in the history of humanity, so...

...the obvious way to avert massive amounts of death, is to cause massive amounts of death.

Yep, that sounds perfectly reasonable Mr. Drax.

The entire premise of this thread is fething lunacy.

Hmn, perhaps already said, but its nice to see this thread on the same page as the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

Stay classy Dakka.

Might it not be better to solve the resource issue by reducing the consumption of the average human, rather than reduce the humans?

The losers would simply be hardwired into the internet, and have their wasteful bodies eliminated. Then just keep their minds alive as long as they are sane, or needed.
Artist rendition.




I know, the obvious objection is that we don't have the technology to do this reliably. But it has some chance of success- and if it doesn't work, 90% of the population is eliminated anyways. A terrible, bureaucratic win/win situation.

Otherwise, it seems like this could be an ideal situation to put the socal ordering plan put forth in Battle Royale and the Hunger Games into effect, with the survivor of each 10 person match simply being awarded all of the possessions of the other 9.

If we ate the sick and elderly instead of cremating them, we would have fewer hungry people.

 kronk wrote:
If we ate the sick and elderly instead of cremating them, we would have fewer hungry people.

I had a buddy with a t-shirt that said "Feed the homeless to the hungry"

 CptJake wrote:

 kronk wrote:
If we ate the sick and elderly instead of cremating them, we would have fewer hungry people.

I had a buddy with a t-shirt that said "Feed the homeless to the hungry"

Klassy with a K!

 CptJake wrote:

 kronk wrote:
If we ate the sick and elderly instead of cremating them, we would have fewer hungry people.

I had a buddy with a t-shirt that said "Feed the homeless to the hungry"

We're gonna make them eat themselves?

 Shadow Captain Edithae wrote:

 CptJake wrote:

 kronk wrote:
If we ate the sick and elderly instead of cremating them, we would have fewer hungry people.

I had a buddy with a t-shirt that said "Feed the homeless to the hungry"

We're gonna make them eat themselves?

 Wyrmalla wrote:
Hmn, perhaps already said, but its nice to see this thread on the same page as the anniversary of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

I might point out that those bombings, horrible as they were, saved millions more lives than they ended. The Japanese army's plan to defend the home islands (Operation Ketsugō) was to use women and children as human shields and disposable troops to try and break the American's morale. Estimates for American casualties were so high that 500k Purple hearts were made in advance. The Joint Chiefs cheerily estimated 1.7-4 million US casualties before the fighting ended, with a large section of Japan being entirely depopulated.

Truman made the right choice and saved millions of American and Japanese lives.

 dogma wrote:
...the obvious way to avert massive amounts of death, is to cause massive amounts of death.

No. to save mankind, we'll have to kill a lot of people.

 dogma wrote:

The only way you could control a pathogen virulent enough to eliminate 90% of the human population in that time frame is to develop, and deploy a form of vaccination before hand; so its a fair bet a cure would also exist. Moreover, for that to work in the context of your argument you would have to find a way of randomly immunizing only 10% of the population without doing anything to alert people to the coming of the apocalypse. Hell, even if you managed to do that the nature of vacination infrastructure pretty much means that most of the 10% who survived would be in developed nations.

Actually you can do it by tainting or replacing the supply of another vaccine, one commonly distributed by the ICRC.

Or you could make it pnumonic, aim for about 75% and hope for the best. The 'how' really isn't important as the effect.

Does anyone feel this is starting to sound like plot of a weaker James Bond movie?

 BaronIveagh wrote:
Well, frankly, we looked at prevention first:

Ever try to convince people to stop screwing? Forced sterilization will never be a viable plan in the West. You'd have people screaming 'eugenics' in a heartbeat.

Even the sunniest numbers for space colonies, if we started *right now* would barely be able to feed themselves in the time-frame we're looking at, let lone export food back to Earth.

Given the limitations on yield, hydroponics and other alternative ways to cultivate crops might give another five years at best, and that's if you began a project on a scale that hasn't been seen since the Panama Canal.

Aquacologies really wouldn't help due to limited fresh water playing a role in said disaster.

And now we're back to the impending global food shortage. We must have gone back in time to 1973, and no-one told me. How rude.

Anyhow, go and read. Learn about the vast oversupply of food we have. We could feed 20 billion with what we produce, if we were more efficient. This fantasy that we'd have billions starving to death relies on the assumption that we'd still be throwing away most of our fresh produce, and giving most of our grain to livestock for slaughter, instead of using it to feed people... it's completely absurd.

We also considered 'close our eyes and hope it goes away' but that hasn't worked yet in the history of humanity, so...

No, I just think its really quite insane to commit genocide in order to avoid a potential genocide. The fact that your suggested genocide is unlikely enough to be almost impossible doesn't really matter, as long as it is in any way uncertain then committing genocide in order to avoid possible genocide makes no sense.

But I think you know that. I certainly don't believe I have to explain it to you as a new concept. I think you ignore it, because you like to play at being the hard man with the hard solution.

I think this thread is whacked man.

I'm still not convinced that we're anywhere CLOSE to being over populated.


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 sebster wrote:
Does anyone feel this is starting to sound like plot of a weaker James Bond movie?

Seems like M. Night Shaylaman's "The Happening" plot.

 sebster wrote:
Anyhow, go and read. Learn about the vast oversupply of food we have. We could feed 20 billion with what we produce, if we were more efficient.

Wow, that's an if you could hide Mount Everest behind. And thus far, everything I've found to read on this subject has said 'nope, 10 billion'. so you'll have to point me to these other numbers you seem to believe exist.

 sebster wrote:

No, I just think its really quite insane to commit genocide in order to avoid a potential genocide.

As Ironcaptain has been quick to point out on occasion, genocide requires that you be killing a particular race or creed. This is 'mass murder' to prevent the destruction of civilization.

 sebster wrote:
But I think you know that. I certainly don't believe I have to explain it to you as a new concept. I think you ignore it, because you like to play at being the hard man with the hard solution.

The point was that the mass death itself was entirely hypothetical until people started demanding to know how it would be done (and why) rather than address the issue of whether or not 10% was enough survivors to keep civilization going. Which was the topic of the thread.

Which I think says more about the other posters here than it does me. Yourself included.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
The point was that the mass death itself was entirely hypothetical until people started demanding to know how it would be done (and why) rather than address the issue of whether or not 10% was enough survivors to keep civilization going. Which was the topic of the thread.

Which I think says more about the other posters here than it does me. Yourself included.

That's like someone starting a thread on the recent Planned Parenthood videos and then complaining about how the other posters talked about PP and abortion rather than video edits when "they just wanted to talk about the editing techniques used". In starting a thread talking about 90% of the world dying off, you can't then complain when a part of the discussion evolves into how this fantastical scenario can come about, and the specifics behind it. Doing so is in fact quite rude, as if you're saying "man all you people are bloodthirsty bastards, I just wanted to talk about how the world will work after 90% of the people have magically died, I didn't want to think about the moment beforehand and how this will come to past, you're all terrible and I'm great, especially you."

 whembly wrote:
I'm still not convinced that we're anywhere CLOSE to being over populated.

We're not. The only reason there are appearances that this could be true, is in the distribution of "living" goods (food, clean water, that sort of thing)

 motyak wrote:

In starting a thread talking about 90% of the world dying off, you can't then complain when a part of the discussion evolves into how this fantastical scenario can come about, and the specifics behind it.

Yes, but mocking the person who makes a suggestion about how it might happen is A-OK I guess.

 motyak wrote:
Doing so is in fact quite rude, as if you're saying "man all you people are bloodthirsty bastards, I just wanted to talk about how the world will work after 90% of the people have magically died, I didn't want to think about the moment beforehand and how this will come to past, you're all terrible and I'm great, especially you."

And yet, it's perfectly acceptable for them to ask how it came about, have me make a suggestion, and decry me for 'a bloodthirsty bastard' for suggesting it might work out for the best. It's perfectly acceptable for me to correct (most likely deliberate) Sebster's misuse of a word, and have him turn it into a thinly veiled insinuation that I'm proposing torturing everyone to death. It's Ok to start squawking "Godwin, Godwin!" when I suggest that such a scenario would improve mankind's long term survival chances, even though the act which would cause it would be horrible in the extreme.

I'm not a big fan of Iron_Captain, he and I disagree on a lot of issues, but at least he was polite. Sebster just came to derail the thread and try and start a fight.

If you don't belive me, this is his first post.:

 sebster wrote:
This topic is fething flying rodent gak. I mean, even ignoring the fairly significant moral issues with killing more than 5 billion people, the actual logic underpinning it is gibberish. In fact, even ignoring the unstated and highly dubious assumptions about sustainability, and even ignoring that resource use is driven more by living standards than population numbers, it's still complete and utter gibberish.

The thing about having 7 billion people is that if gak goes bad and that population proves unsustainable, then it will reduce to a sustainable level by itself. You don't have to pre-empt that by killing people - if it did ever happen the problem would sort itself out.

Effectively the premise in the OP is that we have to kill people now to prevent people possibly dying later. It's fething nuts.

 whembly wrote:
Seems like M. Night Shaylaman's "The Happening" plot.

I've seen a lot more terrible Bond movies than I've seen terrible Shyamalan movies


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 BaronIveagh wrote:
Wow, that's an if you could hide Mount Everest behind. And thus far, everything I've found to read on this subject has said 'nope, 10 billion'. so you'll have to point me to these other numbers you seem to believe exist.

First up, the existance of an 'if', any 'if' at all, is enough to make your whole premise completely deranged. Because it turns your logic in to 'we have to commit genocide in order to prevent a possible genocide'.

Second up, holy crap please fething read something fething please. Are you seriously claiming you have no idea about food wastage figures? And even if you've never heard of the inefficiency of livestock food sources compared to grain, it shouldn't take more than three seconds to intuit how much you can save by no longer feeding grain to the herd for months before eating the herd, and instead just eating the grain. But you just won't do that, because you've got a fantasy genocide to dream about.

As Ironcaptain has been quick to point out on occasion, genocide requires that you be killing a particular race or creed. This is 'mass murder' to prevent the destruction of civilization.

Oh look, pedantry as well all the rest.

Which I think says more about the other posters here than it does me. Yourself included.

All it says about me is that when crazy turns up on dakka I just can't stop digging until the end. Which I think we all knew already.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
And yet, it's perfectly acceptable for them to ask how it came about, have me make a suggestion, and decry me for 'a bloodthirsty bastard' for suggesting it might work out for the best. It's perfectly acceptable for me to correct (most likely deliberate) Sebster's misuse of a word, and have him turn it into a thinly veiled insinuation that I'm proposing torturing everyone to death. It's Ok to start squawking "Godwin, Godwin!" when I suggest that such a scenario would improve mankind's long term survival chances, even though the act which would cause it would be horrible in the extreme.

This is the first claim you made in your OP;
"The central supposition is that if all humanity were reduced to 10% of it's current population (evenly) that this would be a good thing for the long term survival of humankind."

I can put the appropriate response more politely if you want. Good, gentle and mannered sir, if I could be presumptive enough to give my own humble opinion of your premise, I must tell you that it is fething nuts.

But it isn't really politeness that you're worried about. Its the 'fething nuts' part that actually bothers you. But describing it any other way wouldn't be honest.