If all people vanished suddenly, how long would it take for the world to be uninhabitable for the one remaining person?
I mean food would remain good for some time. Energy would still be available in some form as energy production could still run for some time. There would be plenty of petrol to go about, but how to extract it.
How long would frozen food stores last?
I feel there’s a novel in there
For only one person and no new dangers, easily a lifetime. Think of all the non-parishable goods around. With no one else to consume them, there’s far more than enough for a single person to live the rest of their entire life.
The same goes for fuel for a generator and/or car. It’ll last one person’s lifetime easily. Grab some solar panels and you’re easily set for life.
Actually gasoline goes bad relatively quickly. You’re going to need a horse and a wagon.
The same goes for fuel for a generator and/or car. It’ll last one person’s lifetime easily.
Cars would, definitely. But would fuel? Petrol generally has a shelf life of around 6 months. If stored in an airtight container you can store it for a year. Then it starts to deteriorate. Like those 20 year old cars in “the last of us” definitely wouldn’t have worked with the gas they just had sitting around in the tanks. 5 years well stored still functional gas, but according to my searches 10 years wouldn’t.
But it honestly wouldn’t be too hard to make fuel. I don’t know about petrol but some engines can run on used frier oil and making very pure ethanol isn’t much of a challenge.
Yeah, I don’t know. Is that shelf life when it becomes non-functional, or when it starts destroying your engine? The latter wouldn’t be an issue. There’d be effectively unlimited engines/generators around. Who cares if they start breaking when using bad gas?
Well it does both. It actually degrades even when not exposed to air. Loses combustibility. That worse gas then can damage an engine yeah. Damaging engines wouldn’t be an issue, that I agree with. But the gas will just go bad in 10 years unless you make more. I get judged for this a lot but I use Gemini on my phone and while LLM’s are still largely garbage, it’s kinda good for weird hypotheticals you probably wouldn’t find on the first page of Google.
I told it I was writing a book so it doesn’t complain about putting old petrol into a car. I asked whether tank truck which would fit 5m3 (5000l) of petrol would still be good in five years when kept from out of the weather and at a steady 15C. Said yeah, it would very likely be usable. Then I asked 10 years. Said no. Then I changed it to be a massive tanker in similar optimal conditions. Said that it probably wouldn’t be usable.
But you know, I don’t take them at their value, but I have always known it has a shelf life of some sorts. The complexity of the chemistry related is just a bit out of my comfort zone.
Project zomboid is a pretty decent simulation of this actually. Power doesn’t last long, but you can run a generator to power things. You have to hit self sufficiency in some capacity but it’s totally possible to last indefinitely, as long as the zombies or malnutrition doesn’t get the better of you.
As long as you knew wilderness survival, you potentially could live out your natural lifespan.
I mean food would remain good for some time.
How long would frozen food stores last?
Have you never heard of cooking…?
You sound like you’re not especially proficient at doing things yourself. A bit of offense meant. Not much.
I feel there’s a novel in there
Effectively any post-apocalyptic world. I am Legend Will Smith is alone for one. Or the episode of Last of Us with Nick Offerman.
Or just any homesteader on YouTube.
I mean I’m sure a good writer would know how to, but writing a book with essentially a single character who doesn’t speak or interact with anyone might be a bit of a challenge.
I’m proficient in cooking, just not in agriculture, hunting and butchering. I assume most people don’t know about those things. If you want to judge me on that, go ahead.
I think there’s a huge amount of things we take for granted that would get complicated once society collapses. There’s a lot of petrol in gas stations, but how to extract that without the ATM working, it’s hard to get at for someone who -like most, I assume- don’t know about how petrol stations function.
I think the culmination of many of those things raises problems that not many of us think about in our regular lives.
A Andy Weir type novel, were the some survivor has to make do with all these unexpected tribulations seems interesting to me.
Maybe not to you, you nimrod and urban survivalist expert, but few regular people will encompass your aptitude for civilisation collapse survival.
just not in agriculture, hunting and butchering. I assume most people don’t know about those things.
Well this one every much depends on how you define “proficient” and what populace you’re talking about. Because if we look at global demographics, I wouldn’t go so far to say that less than half know how to grow a plant or two or which parts of an animal you can eat. Also I assume quite a lot of people have the ability to read. Even if you didn’t have the internet, surely you can find a library or a bookshop.
If you’re proficient in cooking, you know what meat looks like. I can give you a quick lesson in butchering. Like theres ofc a ton more but like if you had to had to in a survival situation and you manage to corner a deer or something. (European roe deer, the small ones, not American elk or smth like that.)
Let’s disregard hunting and just assume that it’s like completely exhausted and can’t move an inch.
For not to be a dick to the poor beast, you’d preferably stun it. Meaning knocking it in the head real hard. They use bolt guns for this shit, but a large hammer would work equally well. Still, it might take several tries. :F If you had access to gas you could gas it but idk I think a fast blow to the head is probably more comfortable.
Anyway, stun it, then you need to bleed it. Hoist it in the air and stick it. A blade of some 15cm bladed on both sides. Object is to bleed it fast as blood is and ideally medium for bacteria.
Then you stick a knife up it’s arse (careful not to puncture the abdominal sack) up up and up and then cut sternum as well and up and just basically remove the insides. (Save organs if you like but maybe not guts. Although you can make nice sausages later if you do. Put put them aside anyway.
Then you’d basically need to skin and butcher and all those have tons of techniques to learn but if we’re just considering you need something to eat, then…
Well, actually simplest would be just to kill one however and like cut a foot off and carve out some bites to cook. That shouldn’t be too hard for anyone.
But basically it’s the same as with fish. I assume you may have been fishing sometime? Kill it, gut it, fry it. (you don’t really bleed fish in the same way but anyway.)
Farming lots of plants is easy as fuck. Lots as in line certain ones are really easy.
And no I don’t judge you for not having bled or gutted wildlife lolz. Or not knowing about agriculture. But like surely you’ve seen some “plant hack” videos oe something, growing potatoes and onions is rather trivial. I’ve not gutted larger beasts either but I’m a supply NCO and we did get the training. Unfortunately my special supply training period was in the brigade which didn’t do love exercises with cows. Not that I really want to kill animals, but it would’ve been good exercise and it I thought that if I couldn’t have done it, then I would had have to become vegan. Or at least vegetarian.
Also, wouldn’t technically need to if you moved to some fancy villa with orchards and vineyards and beans. They’d get rowdy and wild sure but in the time it takes for them to completely get destroyed, you’d already be a pro in taking care of them.
We discussed in another comment how petrol has quite the short shelflife. Gas stations have such vast takers which I assume don’t have oxygen that they’d last some years but.
Aren’t there service gas pumps? Not all of ours are automatic. Most still are, but lots of them are just pumps and you go in and say what pump. So this would work if threes energy. I’m sure figuring out the switches for which pump is locked and which isn’t wouldn’t be much of a challenge.
Talking about novels, you just about wrote one. I mean there’s a lot of stuff to figure out how to, and I’m our modern era most of that is in YouTube videos.
You could find out some things through libraries etc.
But there’s tons of stuff you’d have to figure out how to do and that’s quite interesting. With plenty of petrol initially you could go anywhere with road (or maybe over sea of you know failing) but where would you go?
What would be the best survival strategy?
What weird stuff would you find out about rummaging through people’s homes with fragments of their history remaining.
I should focus my writing energies something useful, yeah. That’s honestly a pretty average comment for me. Higher end of average perhaps.
Yeah you could easily do most on YouTube. Oh and man that’d be a thing. Trying to keep up some data farms lol. Probably first thing load manuals on how to fix data centres and backup as much info you can on fixing things.
I’d just start by driving to some big European city probably. With a river going through it, but most of them have.
It’s a fun thought exercise but alone it would be rather boring.
Basically yeah European large city, build a base with energy and whatnot and then teach myself how to fly properly (I could prolly fly a cessna already, a bit of sim training at home and the sequences to start are easy.) then just like idk start experiencing the world. Would be arse alone tho.
Also meat would ben pretty easily available at farms. So go liberate allow factory animals quickly definitely. They’re domestic more or less so hope they manage themselves and set up in my city then I’ll just kill one for meat every now and then.
Watch movies in sports arenas. Blow shit up. Idk.
Nothing would be worthwhile imo.
But give me like 10 people to choose with me and then it’d be an adventure. It wouldn’t produce a have human population… but then again if sperm banks existed and frozen eggs, it might still be doable.
With 10 people I could choose I’d have proper fun.
Every single asshole on the planet has fucked off and left me to chill? Dont threaten me with a good time.
This would produce the ultimate case of FOMO or a sigh of relief of finally being alone and ending this shit soon.
Kinda perfect tho.
I wouldn’t be cursed with a long life.
I wouldn’t have to share the planet with humans.
The Earth gets saved.I still think they could have been polite and left a map or something.
Tbf, if they called I prob wouldn’t have answered.
oh, and about your car insurance…
I just saved hundreds by switching to Alpha Centauri.
No need we took the cars with. You really should cancel it.
Now about your unpaid student loans…
We tried to take the loans with us, but a bunch of angry right-wingers wouldn’t let us, so that’s still due.
🦎
Remember to eat the leftovers in the fridge by Thursday or toss them.
That episode’s ending annoyed me. He had Time Enough at Last to find another pair of glasses.
He can still read the large print books!
