what would happen if there were 10x the amount of people

Author Topic: what would happen if there were 10x the amount of people  (Read 1993 times)

most people would either have to be killed or the entire population would be at risk


Population control would be the first solution, but as if that ever works in the long run

I like how this guy not only just answers some kid's stupid question he then goes in great detail with what would happen to the outcome of the human population of itself lol.

Totally not what that kid had in mind I bet when he asked that question.
That's the beauty of xkcd.


Also the entire planet would run out of oxygen.

This would not happen for so many reasons.


Would the earth get too heavy and fall?

No.  This is not how orbital mechanics work for so many reasons.  Also the Earth outweighs humans by a factor of roughly ten trillion, so in this scenario we'd just get an order of magnitude closer.  This would affect absolutely nothing.


I'm not sure, but this scenario has been giving me the spookers.

You're afraid that sixty-six billion people will appear out of nowhere in blatant violation of the Law of Conservation of Energy.  This will not happen.  You should be afraid of things which can actually kill you, like cars, firearms, and nuclear weapons.  But sure, let's suppose this happens.



The current global human count is roughly 7.4 billion.  This means in your scenario, there are now 74 billion humans.  Current estimates say that, if we were to most efficiently utilize farmable land, the Earth can support around 10 billion humans.  So clearly food is going to quickly become a problem.

Let's say these humans are generated in a distribution that mirrors the already-existing world population, and let's say they're also given identities so that they can't easily be picked out of a crowd of other humans.  What happens next?

Well, there simply isn't enough food for everyone.  The entire human race begins, collectively, to starve.  While certain areas may take matters into their own hands, this simply wouldn't solve the overall problem.  So almost everyone is going to starve to death.  Maybe a lucky couple million survive - but they would be in pockets, in isolated areas that are difficult to get to.  There probably wouldn't be any groups with enough genetic diversity to survive in the long-term.  So, ultimately, humanity dies.

Let's say that the government comes to this conclusion, and decides to do what others have already suggested and commit mass-genocide.  Well, unfortunately for us, the way I've set up this scenario states by definition that the new humans aren't easily picked out of a crowd.  So we can't just kill all the new humans.  So if the world's governments did collectively decide to pare down the human count to 7.4 billion, there's a 90% chance that any individual person gets chosen, regardless of whether they're a generated or pre-existing human.  So humanity as a whole would survive, but you will probably die anyway.

Regardless of what happens, it's very likely that you die, even if humanity as a whole survives.
« Last Edit: March 06, 2016, 02:56:52 AM by Xalos »

This would not happen for so many reasons.


With 63 billion new people billions of trees need to be cleared for homes.

There will also be almost next to none space for grass anymore.

There would not be enough time to build homes for them, and the Earth's atmosphere outweighs our usage by a similarly massive amount as the Earth to our total mass anyway.  We would starve to death, not suffocate to death.

Countries that have decent systems of tracking/identifying citizens (birth/marriage certificates, passports, driving licenses, etc) would have a much better chance of seperating new humans from old ones.

It would still be a logistical nightmare to round up everyone and check they are identified within the 1-2 months it takes most everyone to starve to death, but it's somewhat plausible.
A country with good records, a strong military, and good food production may be able to seperate it's population, lock down its country and survive the global famine, albeit probably still with a significant loss of life to their base population.


My bigger worry in the situation is, if they are spread proportionally by country, and everyone is now outnumbered 1:10, if the order to exterminate is given, what stops the new humans from revolting and killing the old humans and/or destroying the governments?

Yes, the new humans still won't survive, even if they killed all old humans and lost a quarter to a third of their own numbers.
But now no one survives.

Countries that have decent systems of tracking/identifying citizens (birth/marriage certificates, passports, driving licenses, etc) would have a much better chance of seperating new humans from old ones.

Given that we're already violating a fundamental law of reality just to make this scenario happen, it's not that implausible to say that we can create documentation for the new humans as well.  And I haven't even gotten into the philosophical nightmare of whether or not we remember that there are 66 billion humans that have spawned in from nowhere yet.

Basically, regardless of what the scenario is like, any individual human has a better than 50% chance of being completely screwed.

realistically a lot of people would starve.

everyone who says everyone would starve is dumb

after all.... now there's much more 'food'...

everyone who says everyone would starve is dumb

after all.... now there's much more 'food'...
revision:
a lot of people would die


Are we talking 10 clones of already existing humans? You'd have to think about people like babies and small children or individuals unable to really do anything themselves. Those would probably all die off which would be a decent chunk of the population. As for adults / teens? Probably would be killing each other off for the new decade.

Our houses would literally be clogged.

Also the entire planet would run out of oxygen.
Impossible. Matter never gets destroyed. By killing and burning those humans, you can get the oxygen back in the form of carbon di/monoxide.