if you can't die how can the earth be over populated is the question. If everyone stood next to each other right now (7bil) we wouldn't even cover the city of LA. There is tons of space on this planet, how can you be over populated if you don't die? The point of "over populated" means you can't survive with the amount of people here. I don't get it.
In the series people still felt all the regular pains. Including hunger and thirst.
As the population kept increasing at a drastic rate (birth rate isn't all that far ahead of rate of death), the resources for people quickly ran out.
Now there were billions of hungry people. The population was too large, far too quickly, to be sustained comfortably.
There was also not enough medicine for people, nor the facilities to care for people.
Old people were still getting older, and still getting injured. With no one dying, they continued to drain resources, while more people behind them needed resources too.
Scientists would figure out how to solve this issue as it would become an imminent threat to all animal life.
Let's say this is an entirely different hypothetical situation (because it doesn't make sense in the current one).
If the consumption of oxygen was suddenly outcompeting the output of oxygen by all the worlds vegetation, then there wouldn't be much scientists could do.
The means of making oxygen on the ISS for example, is via electrolysis of water. Splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen.
This requires some fair amount of power.
The power it takes to do this on a scale to give animal life a chance on earth would be immense. To the extent that we're putting more CO2 back into the atmosphere via the burning of fuels. We're probably not going to make a dent.
There is so much oxygen across the planet at the moment that we wouldn't be anywhere close to running out. If we were to be at a dangerous point like that, then the amount of work required to put it back would probably be more than we could manage.
well TECHNICALLY they can't be a drain on resources since they can live on nothing, right???
Technically, yes.
But the issue is that you now have the sick and injured sitting around in extreme pain. And their loved ones want something done about it (but not them to be rounded up and incinerated).
By public demand the sick still need resources. They need to be cared for, and often need their own housing, on account of the spread of disease.
As for the general population, although they can't die, they can't do anything if they're not being fed and watered. People would become deathly sick, and immobile. They wouldn't die, but they wouldn't be able to do anything, and would be a waste of space.
And if you just let your population starve, then your workforce is also gone, and you no longer have a country.