h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Slightly weird one, this, but: has anyone any thoughts on how the world might change if 40% of its inhabitants (a completely random 40%) disappeared overnight?

Do I get to choose the 40% ?

You want to choose a randomn 40%? Isn't that like being the person to press the button on the stupid lottery programs etc?

You Sir, are a buffoon.

I wanted to get rid of hairdressers, salesmen and telephone sanitisers. Ooops. Sorry...

Well there would be a lot of stuff to take... like if my next door neighbor disappeared I could get his Jeep. Maybe. We'd definitely have to rethink things... like food and taxes and the like. And traffic would be better downtown.

I dunno... personally I would get rid of some ppl in our government, so that we poor students can afford studying.. also, I think that people like Milosevic, Saddam Hussain, and Pinochet, should be priored (?? to priority) do dissappear, to hairdressers. I actually like getting my hair cut every now and then

If 40% of the people in the world "disappeared" then 40% of the cars and helicopters in use would crash killing a further large percentage of the population....on the plus side there'd be 40% fewer politicians/lawyers etc.

Assuming a completely random 40%, spread across all ages, cultures, abilities and areas of expertise and leaving aside all the emotional trauma - well we'd have slowed the over-exploitation of planetary resources by a generation or so. Those who were left would have a little time to repair some of the existing environmental damage before the survivors started on a reproductive frenzy to repopulate all those half empty cities and pick up right where we left off.

Is this random vanishing act confined to the human population?

Hadn't thought about it. Okay, let's be more specific - over a period of about a month to six weeks a virus kills 40% of the human population and a similar percentage of - I don't know - pigs, seeing as they're supposed to be one of the main vectors by which viruses reach the human race. What happens next? (Yes, yes, a shortage of bacon sandwiches, but apart from that...)

There have been several recent books on the subject (fiction) the best one I read a year or so ago was called "The Third Pandemic" by Pierre Ouellette.

Pandemics being above epidemics and go world wide, the 1918 flu outbreak is considered by some to have been a Pandemic as it killed more the the slaughter of the 1914-18 war.

The conclusion reached after it wiped out a 50%+ was that hey the world was still there just a major infestation was pruned before it could do anymore damage.

Chris

A terrible food shortage among the world's population of man-eating elephants. (I had a whole bit worked out on this this morning, but it's far too late now to type it out (looong) because I have to go. )

This conversation reminds me of one of the books in the Hitchhikers trilogy. I forget which, but in one of them Arthur and Ford (i think it was them) ended up on this huge ship. They were told that this was ship B in a group of three ships, that were carrying the entire population of the planet to another planet. Also they said that they hadn't seen ships A or C. A was to carry all the people who do the physical work on the planet, whereas C would carry the brilliant thinkers and genius'.
B was carrying useless people like middle-men and hair specialist. Ford and Arthur soon realized that there was no ship A or C. It was all a brilliant plan to eliminate the worthless members of the society.
Ofcourse I am sure that in real society we will have to kill more than 40% in order to get rid of our most worthless citizens.

Hallo, Ive got a question for H2G2: What is visually significant about a blurred image(think of both still and moving image

*blinkblink* ... Uhm.. huh? It might help to know where this blurred (generally to show motion) image is in order to determine if it is significant and if so what the significance is *breathes* ...