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I have been toying around with a story that involves a character wiping out a large part of the human population to save the environment. This isn't a new idea - it's spawned a James Bond movie and a Batman villain - some people think it's a real thing, even. But I'm at a loss as to how someone would realistically accomplish the goal. Most of the ideas conspiracy theorists have (chemtrails, vaccines, mass sterilization, etc) are kind of unexciting. You wouldn't want to irradiate the earth or harm its long-term ecology, but you'd want to get rid of approximately a third of the earth's population. Somehow. My best idea involves dropping giant rocks from low earth orbit onto major population centers. How would you destroy civilization, given such a mandate? What are the pluses and minuses of different scenarios? bad day fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 06:20
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bad day posted:IYou wouldn't want to irradiate the earth or harm its long-term ecology, but you'd want to get rid of approximately a third of the earth's population.... My best idea involves dropping giant rocks from low earth orbit onto major population centers. well.... quote:How would you destroy civilization, given such a mandate? I would invent millienials
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Dec 22, 2015 06:34
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A disease. Wikipedia says the black death killed 30 to 60% of the population of europe. The spanish flu wiped out 3 to 5% of the world's population.
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Dec 22, 2015 08:28
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bad day posted:I have been toying around with a story that involves a character wiping out a large part of the human population to save the environment. This isn't a new idea - it's spawned a James Bond movie and a Batman villain - some people think it's a real thing, even.  by the way, dropping asteroids on things will wreck the climate for a while due to all the dust it kicks up.
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Dec 22, 2015 09:19
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I CANNOT EJACULATE WITHOUT SEEING NATIVE AMERICANS BRUTALISED!
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The fastest way to get a civilization to destroy itself is to teach it that accruing material wealth is the only moral good. Put a high price on the most destructive-to-harvest natural resources and they'll tear the world apart digging for shinies. Capitalism, basically. In your story's scenario, maybe the main character invents a highly addictive easy-to-create drug and masquerades it as the new go-to worker placation substance, replacing even coffee. Try and monetize humanity's lust for self-destruction and you'll be fine.
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Dec 22, 2015 15:09
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This is literally the plot to Kingsmen
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Dec 22, 2015 16:03
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bad day posted:How would you destroy civilization, given such a mandate? What are the pluses and minuses of different scenarios? The first part of Stephen King's The Stand, basically. Some kind of super-disease that a low percentage of the population is immune to.
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Dec 22, 2015 17:13
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An STD that does little but makes your children's children infertile. It's a nonviolent and gentle to the environment and a good mix of "we could stop this if we tried" and a thing that the consequences are so distant that no one would try very hard at all to stop it till it was far too late.
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Dec 22, 2015 17:24
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You could have a designer virus engineered that targets a gene that only 30% of humanity carries...that might actually work. Targeting people without brown eyes would take out 45% of the planet, for instance.
warcraft_boyfriend_99 fucked around with this message at 18:09 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 18:05
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bad day posted:I have been toying around with a story that involves a character wiping out a large part of the human population to save the environment. This isn't a new idea - it's spawned a James Bond movie and a Batman villain - some people think it's a real thing, even. A bio-engineered disease, that relies on certain genetic markers. Racist as all hell, but that's not necessarily a stumbling block if you're committing to wiping out most of the human race.
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Dec 22, 2015 21:15
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I saw this guy's "argument" being used a lot in high school/college debate in favor of nuclear war saving the world. Very detailed if you need to mine for plot. http://www.foundationwebsite.org/TheEndOfTheWorld.pdf
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Dec 22, 2015 21:15
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The virus idea is a bit too sci-fi if you want it to be "realistic". There's no way to guarantee the virus won't mutate and also infect the people making it. Plus nobody wants to release a virus that'll kill them too. The real money is on causing mass starvation by shutting down trade. Blockade the British Isles and Japan for example and you've got 150,000,000 right there (assuming a degree of food independence will let them keep some of their population after the Great Hunger). Cities are another great way to do it. Just stop all food shipments and you've got 8 million dead in New York. It all adds up. Or, hell, just blockade oil shipments to countries with large industrialized agricultural industry and then let the tankers sail again when you've hit that the population you were looking for.
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Dec 22, 2015 21:19
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Just about anything will work honestly if you're willing to wait long enough for the ecosystem to repair itself. Planet-wide EMP would be a good choice. You'd simultaneously stop most pollution sources and the human population would plummet since growing and transporting large amounts of food would become difficult
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Dec 22, 2015 21:47
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I think this is really more D&D's metier, OP, just skip over the part where it's for a story and get it straight from the horse's mouth
A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Dec 22, 2015 |
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Dec 22, 2015 21:54
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The idea is kind of myopic because it assumes a certain moral value to the environment we have now, I.e. that "saving" the environment means preserving the *exact* ecosystem we have right now. The environment isn't going anywhere, and a million years from now some form of plants and animals will still be there whether people are around or not. Eliminating humans isn't going to keep the panda around unchanged for the next billion years. The real danger is that global warming etc isn't "destroying" the environment, its "changing" the environment into one where the plants and animals we like (including ourselves) are no longer well suited. From the point of view of a disinterested alien third party, having whales and pandas and poo poo isn't inherently preferable to having giant cockroaches and some weird fungus that thrives in the radioactive remains of our ruined cities. Assuming your supervillain doesn't get the irony of eliminating humanity in the service of a goal only humans can or do care about, the disease thing is probably the way to go. The earth did the meteor thing once and it changed the ecosystem a lot more than people ever did.
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Dec 22, 2015 22:12
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anyway the answer is stop running commercials on TV and wait for the current generation to die childless
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Dec 22, 2015 22:18
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Option 1: A toxic fungus that loves to eat plastic and the aggressive ant or bee colonies that benefit from "feeding" it. Option 2: 'Truman Show'-like holographic realities for every person. Nature's allowed to do its business in the background. Dinosaurmageddon fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Dec 23, 2015 |
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Dec 23, 2015 04:42
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Well, if I was a megalomaniacal evil bastard that wanted to rebuild Earth, but wanted to keep civilization working, I would build a mountain fortress. Then I would fill it with plumbers, electricians, and farmers, plus a handful of Doctors, engineers, soldiers, and teachers. Stockpile it with two year's worth of food to get through nuclear winter. Then launch the nukes. You might wonder why plumbers come first. It turns out Dysentery is a really lovely way to die. (Pun intended.) And some decent plumbing can avert those deaths. It seems like every messianic plan for a new world order ignores the basic problem of where people are going to poop. thrakkorzog fucked around with this message at 13:05 on Dec 25, 2015 |
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Dec 25, 2015 12:19
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bad day posted:But I'm at a loss as to how someone would realistically accomplish the goal. Most of the ideas conspiracy theorists have (chemtrails, vaccines, mass sterilization, etc) are kind of unexciting You need to see the bonkers British sci-fi series Utopia as a late Christmas present to yourself, assuming you haven't already. It uses one of the very methods you reckon is boring; I won't spoil it by saying which. Utopia loves to shock with ruthless cruelty, rather than gore (it is very, very violent) and is viewable for free as an online boxset within the UK: http://www.channel4.com/programmes/utopia If you can't get this to work by whatever skills you can muster, things become trickier, because I think there's no region 1 DVD release available to buy, though there is blu-ray. The first series is much better than the second, but the second one isn't terrible. There won't be any more, apparently, though IMO a third series was easily possible (probably not a fourth). It's by no means perfect, but it demonstrates that the actual means by which your evil genius(es) attempt their deed is less important than motivation, character, horrid plot twists, and blazing demented self-justification.
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Dec 25, 2015 22:40
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Wiping out a third of the world population whether through natural or manmade causes wont stop future generations from reproducing at a crazy pace for survival. To lower the population in the long-run involves nation-wide systemic policies that minimizes incentives for producing children such as discouraging rural living and concentrating majority of the population into high-density cities to eliminate the need for children over manual labor, higher incomes that encourages people to put off having children to pursue and advance their careers, and subsidized quality education for everyone so that people can actually invent ways to save the environment.
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Dec 26, 2015 19:17
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GBS Ambassador posted:Wiping out a third of the world population whether through natural or manmade causes wont stop future generations from reproducing at a crazy pace for survival. To lower the population in the long-run involves nation-wide systemic policies that minimizes incentives for producing children such as discouraging rural living and concentrating majority of the population into high-density cities to eliminate the need for children over manual labor, higher incomes that encourages people to put off having children to pursue and advance their careers, and subsidized quality education for everyone so that people can actually invent ways to save the environment. also educating fe-males and getting them into the work force no matter how loud neckbeards bitch and moan about it
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Dec 26, 2015 19:42
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The problem with a lot of population control to save the environment is people want focus on third world countries. Somebody living in a hut with no electricity and mostly eating plants isn't the problem. Most of the environmental damage is coming from "developed" national. A child watching netflix while surfing instagram on their phone and eating microwaved chicken nuggets is going to a lot more damage. But even then public use isn't even the problem. In 2012 only about 10.6% of America's total energy use was residential. So I don't think even killing 1/3rd the population is going to fix the problem. Also huge rocks would royally gently caress up the ecosystem. Talking huge shock waves. Massive dust clouds. Debris everywhere. Basically a nuke without the radiation. I would take the approach of tainting a luxury item. Maybe high end alcohols. America already has a history of putting poison in alcohol, without telling anyone, and killing its own people. Shwqa fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Dec 26, 2015 |
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Dec 26, 2015 21:19
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I fell asleep thinking of ways to end mankind without causing damage to the environment. The only thing I thought up of was tainting the water with some chemical to control libido. Well, anyway I got a good nap out of it.
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Dec 26, 2015 23:03
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If you're interested in this kind of thing, I can't recommend Margaret Atwood's 'Oryx & Crake' trilogy. A harrowing account of the fall of mankind through genetic manipulation and the rise of corporate oligarchies. I'm so glad it's being turned into an HBO series, they just better do it justice!
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Dec 27, 2015 01:55
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Medication should help with all those thoughts, op
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Dec 27, 2015 15:38
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Carnival of Shrews posted:You need to see the bonkers British sci-fi series Utopia as a late Christmas present to yourself, assuming you haven't already. It uses one of the very methods you reckon is boring; I won't spoil it by saying which. Utopia loves to shock with ruthless cruelty, rather than gore (it is very, very violent) and is viewable for free as an online boxset within the UK: Seconding Utopia - while the eradication of humanity has been played along many times, I liked (and could understand and get behind) the reasons for it. I loved it for the sensibility of plot, the amount of colour and well defined characters. Apparently HBO was to remake it but after googling I've found that remake got cancelled. Which is a shame, comparing with Helix and The Strain I've watched at the same time that dealt with end of world scenario.
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Dec 27, 2015 19:42
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Ebola/Smallpox hybrid is the planet killer Ken Alibeck has been kicking around in his books on bio-terrorism for a while. People have called bullshit on him but he says it's in the works somewhere.
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Dec 27, 2015 21:09
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1. legalize gay marriage worldwide 2. nobody has straight sex anymore because lol why would you 3. Saudis inherit the earth
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Dec 27, 2015 21:13
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make people read your post history
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Dec 27, 2015 23:08
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1. Invent robots that can monitor the human population and communicate statistical information somehow, which are also armed with deadly lasers 2. Figure out some benchmark (2 billion humans total?) 3. Have mass media describe in glowing terms the incoming robot purge of The People We Don't Like 4. Robots randomly murder with regional percentage quotas until the benchmark population is reached 5. Robots settle down into a steady state of periodically culling humans, with particular focus on those with grown children and substantial accumulated wealth 6. Secure own powerbase by selling robot insurance and robot-proof bunkers to said persons
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Dec 28, 2015 00:01
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Testikles posted:Ebola/Smallpox hybrid is the planet killer Ken Alibeck has been kicking around in his books on bio-terrorism for a while. People have called bullshit on him but he says it's in the works somewhere. I, uh, suspect there's a more effective way to build a bioweapon than "staple together two pretty nasty diseases each optimized for significantly different targets / mechanisms". (One obvious answer is to just tweak both of 'em and release 'em, no need for hybridizing.) He seems like a pretty competent dude, so I suspect he knows this.
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Dec 28, 2015 00:48
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GreyjoyBastard posted:I, uh, suspect there's a more effective way to build a bioweapon than "staple together two pretty nasty diseases each optimized for significantly different targets / mechanisms". (One obvious answer is to just tweak both of 'em and release 'em, no need for hybridizing.) Well, there are couple of problems with the whole developing a bio-weapon to wipe out most of Humanity, instead of all of humanity. The first is that even if you develop a disease that kills 99.99% of all humanity, you're still going to have a bunch of survivors pissed at you for killing their friends and family. Even if you inoculate the people that helped develop a bioweapon that wipes out most of humanity, what you send out probably won't be what you get back, viruses tend to mutate a lot, so the super disease will probably kill some of your own people. So biological weapons are probably not the best plan to wipe out most of humanity. Bio weapons are too much of a crapshoot. Just look at the Mongols using the plague as a biological weapon. Yeah, the plague wiped out a third of Europe. It was then followed by the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, along with European Colonialism. About the only time anybody gives a poo poo about Mongolians these days is on South Park.
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Dec 28, 2015 12:21
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thrakkorzog posted:
Wait what? Can you elaborate on this? I've never heard anything about this and in the 3rd grade I did an essay on the plague so I know my poo poo.
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Dec 28, 2015 15:29
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Has anyone asked My Imaginary GF to give us a sneak peek at his plan?
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Dec 29, 2015 02:57
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This was also the plot to Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy's opus.
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Dec 29, 2015 03:15
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FrozenVent posted:This was also the plot to Rainbow Six, Tom Clancy's opus. im the homeless people in the sex scene.
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Dec 29, 2015 08:29
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I LIKE COOKIE posted:Wait what? Can you elaborate on this? I've never heard anything about this and in the 3rd grade I did an essay on the plague so I know my poo poo. Here's an article from the CDC about it. The general historic consensus is the the plague originated out of the Mongol Empire, since there are written accounts of the Black Death in China before it showed up in Europe. The Mongolians were in the middle of a siege of a trading hub on the Crimean, and reportedly catapulted in dead plague victims to weaken the defenders. The traders stuck in the middle of the siege set sail, and ended up landing in Italy and taking the plague with them. I'll admit It's not an airtight theory, but it's a solid theory and the timelines add up. There are a few people who raise some decent objections about it, but I really don't know enough about the subject to get into the weeds about it.
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Dec 29, 2015 11:51
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Semi-realistic option: Contaminating hormonal contraceptives. Take a job in a contraceptive factory and add a dosage of something that makes you infertile to the batches. Spread your work out and stay on the move, so that it looks random and people don't manage to connect the dots. Effects on fertility must be very slow, so that it's harder to track the fertility decline to the source. If you do it right and use multiple people you can render hundred of millions of people infertile before they catch and fry you. This plan is very popular with mohemadan terrorist customers. $99 for the full blueprints. Unrealistic option: Political accelerationism. Get Trump elected, let him burn it all down. Post soviet-collapse Russia had a huge population decline and is full of ghost villages and cities, reclaimed by nature. Works like nothing else.
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Dec 29, 2015 14:09
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SSH IT ZOMBIE posted:I fell asleep thinking of ways to end mankind without causing damage to the environment. The only thing I thought up of was tainting the water with some chemical to control libido. It's interesting to imagine just how changed society would be if libido just disappeared. What would that even look like? Marketing, products, clothing, basic socialization alone would be so different without even accounting for the loss in population that it's a neat thought.
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Dec 29, 2015 15:50
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waitwhatno posted:Unrealistic option: Political accelerationism. Get Trump elected, let him burn it all down. Post soviet-collapse Russia had a huge population decline and is full of ghost villages and cities, reclaimed by nature. Works like nothing else. Except that all those Russians didn't die, a lot of them left the country to find better opportunities elsewhere, freedom of movement was severely restricted under the Soviet Union, and the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that people were free to go somewhere else. So they could leave Bumfuck, Siberia to move to Moscow, or Paris, or NYC, which wasn't an option back in the Soviet Union. There are plenty of dying small towns in the USA, but that has nothing to do with the collapse of America, and more to do with the fact that people feel they're better off moving somewhere else.
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Dec 31, 2015 08:54
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