The city is probably a better place for survival after all, Aleks, if only because you are likely to be able to form an alliance with others who are also trying to survive and are willing to help each other on familiar ground. In an average residential neighborhood, like mine, there are at least five guys who are well armed, fairly well provisioned, and will band together to protect our homes and our families. By contrast, if everybody 'bugs-out' and goes lurching into an unknown countryside where they have nothing but what they can drag along with them in their flight from the city, then they're completely disorganized among strangers, exposed to the climate and weather, and at much greater risk of being captured, robbed, killed, or all three....
In the first weeks of a major disaster, may be but then you have to think how to produce food. Among the keys of survival : A source of water you can rely on. A source of food you can rely on. Some people you can rely on. A way to defend yourself. For the two first problems, you can at the beginning only rely on provisions, but then you have to quickly move to the production of food and a constant source of water.
A 70% depopulation of the Earth would be 4.9 billions dead. Humanity has never even come close to dealing with death on such an epic scale. Just the bodies alone would probably cause major epidemics and be a major part of the landscape for centuries. The trauma to the race would probably ruin us as a species, though it is unclear if any whole class of beings, particularly one dominant on the Earth can, in the end, expire from psychological depression. The World Wars in the last century certainly changed most of the West's outlook and they killed a rather miniscule amount, relatively But it can never happen for just that reason. WWI and WWII along with their corresponding plagues and famines may have killed 200 millions, tops. That was less than 10% of the total then existing and made up even before the next generation. Diseases, Stephen King notwithstanding, rarely if ever kill more than 25% of those they infect because they won't spread if they kill more than that many and no disease since the Black Death ( which was working in a very weakened populace and had characteristics which baffle epidemiologists to this day but which are very unlikely to be repeatable) has ever killed even close to that number anyway. It seems that humanity actually IS too big to fail, at least on the scale being proposed.
I am considering "survival" from the standpoint of an emergency duration of no more than a year. I know for a fact that canned-goods, for instance, are reliably safe to eat for much longer than that. Water-purification tablets are cheap and plentiful, and unless you live in an area where there's no water at all, you can expect to be able to get by, if you have made preparations. I'm also a big believer in the use of common household BLEACH for a wide variety of applications, including water purification (in a pinch). Honestly, I'd be more worried about medical care and the availability of medicines, but you do make very valid points. But, again, a big 'sh*t-hits-the-fan' emergency would probably not last longer than a month or two, and not longer than a year before the military took over everything anyway. Nevertheless, a LOT of people would die in those two months, and the 'art' of the thing would be to make sure that neither yourself nor those you care about are one of them.... Hint: at the very most elementary level, every adult American citizen should own at least a 12-guage pump shotgun, a .357-caliber revolver, several boxes of ammuntion for them, and six month's worth of canned food, based on estimated consumption in an individual household, plus something to barter with.... Oh, and about six gallons of plain old BLEACH.
Using your calculation, after some monsterous catastrophe (man-caused or otherwise) the reduction in human population would take us back to almost exactly what it was in 1960 (i.e., ~3 billion). I was a kid, but I do remember 1960, and it certainly was not under-populated, Aleks. Actually, it was pretty nice! I don't necessarily agree with 'social-scientists' who maintain that the ideal human population should be 2 billion, but here we are at 7.8 billion, and increasing every minute! How much time today do you spend slogging along in heavy traffic, and, when you finally get where you're going, how easy is it to find a place to park...? Nobody wants a gigantic 'catastrophe', but it does make one think....
i still can't help but think that having vast fields filled with unburied human skeletons would probably not be conducive to maintaining a bright out look on life, but then again we've never really done that anyway. https://www.google.com/search?q=alw...&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&safe=active&ssui=on
That sucks, someone put up a wall preventing me from watching the video. In my life time I have watched the world's population more than double from 3 billion to 7 billion. I also watched America's population more than double and California's population quadruple. What's the real cause of climate change ? The sun and overpopulation.
You may be able to watch the full episodes here... but I am not sure..... https://www.msn.com/en-ca/entertainment/rf-watch-online/tv-shows/infestation-2013/season-1/episode-1
At the 41:11 mark in this video a good explanation of an EMP attack begins..... This is kind of scary I must admit...
Something needs to happen. Or should I say something will happen if we don't change our ways. Maybe a massive die-off is what is needed. I think if not we will either, one, continue to multiply as a species until we have completely overpopulated and ruined the earth and then will die off like other species before us. Two, reach zero population growth now to ensure there is adequate food and water to sustain us. Or three (and my favorite), eugenics; the betterment of the species where we may eventually reach our full potential.
We're 60 years from no top soil, 40 years from no seafood, 100 years from no pollinators and 100 years from tropical temps becoming too high for humans to survive without climate control systems in place (think domed or underground cities). We be ****ed.
Yes... I think that this is implied by what the speaker was getting at through this statement...... As the environment goes through more and more changes human behaviour will almost certainly get worse and worse and worse. ..... and there will likely be a lot of corpses involved. Luke 23:31 For if they do these things in a green tree, what shall be done in the dry?
I think that you are correct....... and this hairball impeachment trial finally being over has set the stage for the breaking of the power of the very powerful followers of Thomas Malthus............ some of whom would have wanted deliberate depopulation. https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/01/politics/impeachment-watch-january-31/index.html There is in my opinion some very good news coming over this next decade. https://www.near-death.com/experiences/exceptional/mellen-thomas-benedict.html#a09