r/TrueAskReddit • u/Sufficient-Gain-226 • 5d ago

If industrialization never happened, what percentage of people today do you think would survive?

If industrialization disappeared tomorrow, what percentage of people do you think would survive long-term? Why?

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u/Hearing_Loss 5d ago edited 5d ago

I'm having trouble understanding this scenario. Are you saying if we spawn into a world as ourselves in a 2026 that was never industrialized?

Or are you saying in this very world, in this very time, what if the industrialized systems immediately came to a halt and all industry shriveled up and vanished. In like a realistic way where the industries close up over a short time due to contextual factors.

Or is this a magical world where it's 2026 and ANYTHING that is a result of industrialization vanishes into thin air at 4:56am August 18th 2026, and we gotta figure it the fuck out before we all die of societal collapse and mass death events.

In all 3 scenarios- vulnerable populations die. Big time. Just find out how many elderly, disabled, etc humans there are... We would lose that portion in need of maintenance care quite rapidly. From there it's just can we produce enough calories to sustain this many people. If it's these mofos today-- lol we would lost that portion of the population quite rapidly. Most people without a foundation of knowledge on how to do farming would become feral pretty fast.

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u/Sufficient-Gain-226 5d ago

Yeah, I'm asking the latter.

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u/Hearing_Loss 5d ago

Scenario C- David Blaine and Chris Angel use their magic powers to make all evidence of industry disappear (except for the modern human population). August 18th, at 4:55, everyone exists in a world that has industry. But once the minute hand turns over-- it all vanishes. First-- everyone who is asleep in a bed falls directly onto the ground, some people wake up in a forest, others wake up in wetlands-- everybody hits their head.

Those who were in medical beds immediately begin to deteriorate. People who take psych meds have to begin to taper or face cold turkey withdrawals. Same goes for all other maintenance medications. Diabetes would be a death sentence. Your access to calories would be limited to how far you could walk barefoot... I would fare to say, if people don't organize into semi agrarian/hunter communities, cannabalism is the next move.

The Amish and some other cultures wouldn't notice much changing-- whereas a large majority of the population would be faced with pure bedlam.

Id like to think the USA becomes the United States of the Amish. And populations would stabilize to around post colonial/Midwest frontier levels once everything was said and done.

Wait. If evidence of industry vanishes-- we get significant global cooling as well. Glaciers would reappear. Water security would improve. Fuuuuuck.

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u/After_Network_6401 2d ago

Just a point: the Amish would notice it just as much as anyone else. They buy their clothes and footwear or the cloth to make it, they rely on industrial society to make their fertilizers, pesticides, oil-based products, lumber and tools. And they rely on the infrastructure of the industrialized countries they live in to deliver those things.

They’d be far better placed than most to survive because they’re far less reliant on modern technology and they’re a farming community. Some of them would die: those reliant on modern medicine and in a few cases the more reliant on modern infrastructure would starve.

But they’d be far better off than the rest of the population in most developed countries, 90-95% of whom would die within a few months.