How long would it take humanity to recover, if 99% of us died

[Mormolyce]

Depends a lot. Assuming current growth rate remained constant (1 billion per 12 years), adjusted down 99%... 8,400 years?

But I suspect the rate of birth would change dramatically.

P.S. You'd better hope that the 1% is all from the third world, because 97% of the planet's population growth is from there. Most first world countries are at or below replacement rates.

[ddsad2212]

There'd be a lot of variables. I mean if those 1 million helped each other it wouldn't take long to get all the basics working with the existing knowledge base we've already build up. It wouldn't require people with past knowledge as long as the texts needed survived people can figure it out through some trail and error.

Then again if due to fear they went to warrior with and lets say this happened to be in the US where some states and more fire power then countries then it could take a while longer.

[Fenixdown]

It'll depend on the women left alive. If they're the stereotypical women who only go for tall, dark, handsome abusive losers with money...then we're screwed. If they're women that aren't stereotypical, then we'll be fine.

[anyaka21]

There's a ton of factors that are unknown and as thus, impossible to really determine how long it would take.

1) how many left understand technology enough to teach it.
2) how about energy. meaning resources, gas, electrical, wind, etc... How is this 1million community going to get power up and running and keep it up and running.
3) to dovetail on this, who about fixing things that are broken. You need resources, products, manufacturing, steel, etc... to make this happen
4) medicine - not only from a doctor perspective and having trained health profressionals, but how about meds to keep people alive. And the ability to fight diseases, especially without medicine and of course as suggested from point 3, people to be able to manufacture said medicines.
5) add that if you are in a place like warsaw, or mid-europe, you've lost most of the internet because lets face it, most of the hubs of information storage will be without power and that information you could get from that.
6) food - farmers, livestock to be able to feed said millions of people, especially in such a compact community. And yes, 1million people would be a pretty compact community. Do you have the availability of livestock, farmlands, cattle, etc... to make that happen.

7) what really happened to cause this mass extinction - that could change everything in an effort to rebuild. If the rest of the world is basically a nuclear wasteland, it would create repopulation issues and how the ones that are left could grow and expand. Same thing if it was say a zombie apocalypse. How can you expand if their is a massive population of dead people trying to eat you. What if it was something as catastrophic as a comet hitting the earth on a body of water, creating a worldwide flood, or another geological event ala the movie 2012. Granted, said flood example doesn't fit with the infrastructure in tact scenario, but let's face it too though, without people to be able to keep up said infrastructure, said infrastructure is going to fail.

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There'd be a lot of variables. I mean if those 1 million helped each other it wouldn't take long to get all the basics working with the existing knowledge base we've already build up. It wouldn't require people with past knowledge as long as the texts needed survived people can figure it out through some trail and error.

Then again if due to fear they went to warrior with and lets say this happened to be in the US where some states and more fire power then countries then it could take a while longer.

depends, most of said knowledge base is on the internet or online. And if you kill off the vast majority of the world and likely their online capabilities, you lose that. Thus making it extremely difficult to rebuild.

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Why do you think jungle hut people could survive better than westerners?

jungle hut people could probably survive more easily than internet junkies. They know how to survive with nothing, make their own food and shelter, make their own clothes, etc... Standard populations of today don't know shit about how to survive without electricity. Jungle people have been around a lot longer than civilized society.

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I said usually. Otherwise, he'd be part of this problem himself, implying that (as he thinks people dying is the solution) he'd be better of being dead himself. If so, why is he still here?

But lets please not stroll off topic

OT:

Let's just assume that this one million people are already extremely functioning. All issues regarding education etc. have already been sorted out. The city is a fully self sustaining society, including farmers, teachers, police forces, bartenders and politicians. The storm is further over, and people could theoretically move out.

How would they sort out issues such as property rights? Who owns the property around the world? I assume people would start looting...? Would everything fall under the government's ownership, with the possibility to buy things directly from the government?

Would we see groups of 100k people migrating to areas around the city, creating villages? Or would they move out further away, creating new coastal cities? Or would the city itself keep on expanding until parts of it became independent new cities?

What's the most likely scenario?

I mean, even in movies they never really cover the reconstruction of a global society after a massive disaster.

you also need to take into consideration that the rest of the worlds infrastructure is basically going to be in the shitter. Thus to spread out population wise, you are still going to have to have the manufacturing acument to rebuild, repower, refarm, etc...

Who owns what, will most likely depend on who ends up in charge. Most likely is that with so few people, no one will really care as there would be enough property and living space not to cause an issue.

Other problem with Warsaw though, it's pretty landlocked. You'd run into tons of power issues, at least in terms of gas. Where is the oil coming from? And as thus, without that, how do people get around. You'd run out of gas really fast, cars would then an issue, etc... and as thus mobility.

Furhter adding to the problem, with 1mil population left, that leaves over 7billion dead. Thus those bodies are still around, they didn't just disappear. They'd be decaying, rotting, and rife with disease.

The viablity of fresh water would be an issue in warsaw. Likely the population would not get themselves landlocked, they'd go to a coastal city with much better access to said water, and well as fish, as well as water for farms.

[Piglord]

There's no way 1,000,000 people could survive in a single city under these circumstances. Current food supplies would be gone within a month or so. It would take hundreds of thousands maybe a million plus acres to grow enough crops to support the population. Without modern technology (heavy farming equipment, canning factories, etc.) it would be impossible. Smaller communities of around 100 people or so would be best.

[StayTuned]

The viablity of fresh water would be an issue in warsaw. Likely the population would not get themselves landlocked, they'd go to a coastal city with much better access to said water, and well as fish, as well as water for farms.

Warsaw is on the river Vistula.

For everything else really, there is an answer in this thread or in the OP even. Energy and infrastructure is fully functioning in the city itself. This is more about colonization of "new" land, distribution of property and human behavior in general the moment people are allowed to move around freely

[lockedout]

Probably not as long as you think, 77000 years ago we recovered from 1000-10000 breeding pairs.

Did you miss the part where it's a hypothesis and a theory at best?

[Captainn]

Just by reading some threads here, I began wondering what would happen in an actual event of a massive disaster, killing 99% of the human population in the process.

Would, lets say, 1 million people left in a single, remote city, be enough to repopulate the whole planet and create a functioning, globalized society? And if so, how long would it take those people to accomplish it? What about infrastructure, etc.? For the sake of discussion, let's assume that the buildings are still more or less intact, despite the fact that they have been abandoned for at least 50 years.

Would they spread from their city onward, or do you think we would see people migrating in smaller groups to areas previously inhabited by humans all around the world?

Let's just assume that the area around Warsaw (chosen because it is relatively close to the center of Europe) is the last city on this planet and has about 1 million survivors, coming from all around the world. Their language is English. The disaster is over, people could theoretically move out. What happens next?

We'd regress super hard. And the population wouldn't reach levels like this for centuries I imagine, unless the survivors were really tech savvy and were able to salvage medical knowledge and all that.

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Depends a lot. Assuming current growth rate remained constant (1 billion per 12 years), adjusted down 99%... 8,400 years?

But I suspect the rate of birth would change dramatically.

P.S. You'd better hope that the 1% is all from the third world, because 97% of the planet's population growth is from there. Most first world countries are at or below replacement rates.

Agreed about the replacement rates in the non-first world, but that's due to a lot of things I think. Take entertainment out and technology out, and people would bang more, I'd think. So that's a nonissue.

[Pterodactylus]

I mean, we went from just Noah's family to 7.3 billion people in little under 4.5k years, right?

[Holydee]

We will die from a virus before anything.

[Cosmic Janitor]

P.S. You'd better hope that the 1% is all from the third world, because 97% of the planet's population growth is from there. Most first world countries are at or below replacement rates.

When I make a comment about that, people were losing their shit. :/

[Conspicuous Cultist]

It'd fix the global warming problem at least.