Let's waste time together

[Oprale]

You wake up one day and realise you are the only human being left in this world. No visible apocalypse occured, it seems as if everybody just suddenly dissapeared while you were sleeping. What do you do, what's your first day like?

Do you prepare a survival plan or end your life? How would you deal with the fact that everybody and everything you once knew is gone without a trace? Knowing that there is no monetary limit as to what you can acquire and no rules, what's the craziest thing you would do? In the long term, could you deal with the loneliness or would you have a slow descent into madness?

And how do you think earth will evolve once it suddenly got rid of all humans except you?

I saw this topic pass on 9gag but I think it'd be cooler to have the intpforum version of it.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

I would go and re-watch I Am Legend and try to replicate the lifestyle. Hopefully there would be zombies around somewhere.

 

[Deleted member 1424]

Do you prepare a survival plan or end your life? How would you deal with the fact that everybody and everything you once knew is gone without a trace? Knowing that there is no monetary limit as to what you can acquire and no rules, what's the craziest thing you would do? In the long term, could you deal with the loneliness or would you have a slow descent into madness?

Oh, but there are rules; namely physical limitations. Crossing oceans is now basically impossible right off the bat and you better find yourself in an environment conducive to your ongoing survival before all the gas goes bad. There are a lot of human constructs that will breakdown and potentially explode without human maintenance, plus a potential for massive fires, so vegging out in the city seems like a bad idea to me, even if they are the easiest food sources. Aside from raiding a pharmacy you'll have no access to medical treatment beyond what diy knowledge you may possess.

Imo, it's a race against time to get yourself setup sustainably or to build a sufficient cache to last the rest of your life, before transport becomes difficult. Unless you have a lot of beforehand knowledge/training, life without electricity seems inevitable. It could be a hedonistic one man drunken bender in the beginning, but you wouldn't survive very long that way.

And how do you think earth will evolve once it suddenly got rid of all humans except you?

You may live long enough to see wildlife rebound, but you're not going to observe its evolution in a meaningful way. That wildlife will try to eat you soon enough.

Also, it's not likely to be just you. If you survived, there must be others. That's a bad thing, dwindling resources and all. For every useful surviving person, there are 5 that will kill you and 25 that would be complete loads due to incompetence or poor health. Plus, if you are of the female persuasion, someone is going to want to propagate the species and that's real bad news for your potential survival.

 

[Oprale]

I would go and re-watch I Am Legend and try to replicate the lifestyle. Hopefully there would be zombies around somewhere.

Don't forget to get a dog

--

Yes of course there would be physical limitations, I was speaking of human rules exclusively

The best plan seems to establish oneself in a rural place where houses are at a fair distance from each other to reduce the risk of fire. If you have the knowledge needed for it, you might also be able to grow some crops and hunt to have fresh food. The village would idealy be a few kilometers away from a city so you could go and scavenge for ressources but still be able to come back to your house in a reasonable amount of time. Another advantage of living in the countryside is an easier access to water for hygiene purposes, as the city streams would be heavily polluted.

In the abscence of advanced medical treatment you better watch out for yourself, as any injury could potentialy become fatal. On the plus side, man spread diseases are no longer a danger.

Books would probably become one of your best survival tools, as they would teach you what you need to know ( like edible plants, hunting, fishing, how to start a fire and other survival tricks, protecting your house from wildlife, medical care, and so on, and so forth )

And in the scenario I'm depicting here, there is absolutely no one left but you, as unlikely as it is. Everybody is just gone. A part of it is about having to deal with the surreal aspect of it all, and the loneliness and existential crisis it brings along.

 

[TheManBeyond]

i think there's a movie who shares same story

i guess really scared? or really happy that i can do whatever i want? exept for sex? how i'm supposed to know?
basically steal things, expensive stuff, go really fast speed on cars in the middle of the city, maybe crash some builidings, experiment with gases, if animals are still alive build a refugee for them so i can lead them... kidding.
i have no clue

now, about slowly becoming crazy, well chances are, if i can grab a cat and put it a collar like dogs then it would be cool, that would mean i'm the true boss, no more freedom and praise for cats in my castle, it could help, to talk and care for him/her, how does english deals with these unknown gender animals?
maybe go to forbidden places and drop things from high places and see how they crash?, explode a gas station for sure, get a bazooka for sureeee, i guess more expensive stealing? try expensive spas.
try to find out if aliens really exist of no, by like going to área 51 or pentagon and analizing their documents?
i might not contact them tho

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

exept for sex?

You could go to Madame Tussauds and hook up with some world-class wax figures.

 

[nanook]

keep your potatoes, i will head towards tropical lands, hunting for bananas and who wants to freeze to death in a northern winter anyways? most crazy thing: i might get myself killed by experimenting with an airplane. i don't care much for crazy actions. wouldn't hang out in a play casino, etc. creatively fixing something up seems more rewarding. searching cool equipment sounds like much fun. i can imagine becoming quite paranoid around cities. might get myself a tank of sorts for transportation. otherwise i could probably enjoy being alone. +1 for becoming friendly with animals.

 

[JR_IsP]

Lol all the answers above

Being the very last human on Earth would bring some phycological consequences, even for ultra hermit intps (such as myself). I guess I'd find pictures of humans I like to don't forget who I am and not go crazy.

Also a cat. I love cats.

I'd also try to get a lot of gas and a good transport (aka a tank, or something alike), also raiding markets and pharmacy searching for food, first aid supplies, weapons (not guns since I live on a place where it's hard to find those... but knifes, or bows and arrows)... and books. Surviving guides, first aids, geography, weather... anything useful.

Also a lot of literature to entertain myself.

I'll head north, stopping on any university or college I find.

To the US, or whatever it's left of them. What I'm looking for is lacking everywhere but there and Europe, but crossing the ocean would be almost impossible.

I need to learn about genetics and DNA stuff. Go to a lab and somehow find DNA of other people (or use myself if I can't find anything else). Probably labs won't be working, but if I manage to power one, I'll store DNA for any intelligent life for ages to come.

Also literature and visual clues to learn our alphabet and language, like those needed for childs to learn how to read.

I think I'd eventually write some kind of "JR IsP guide to Earth: Clues for a future civilization", describing ourselves and our history, politics and other stuff to create some sort of Utopia to live in.

If I manage to get that done before dying, I'd probably think of other ideas to mantain the human knowledge, saving books on a safe place, kinda like the Svalbard seed ark, but for books.

In the very last end I'd try to find out how to hibernate indefinitely. It's very unlikely for one person to do that thing, but c'mon, the whole mankind just vanished. That's hell of unlikeliness.

Yeah...

It sounds like what I'll do.

 

[TheManBeyond]

keep your potatoes, i will head towards tropical lands, hunting for bananas and who wants to freeze to death in a northern winter anyways? most crazy thing: i might get myself killed by experimenting with an airplane. i don't care much for crazy actions. wouldn't hang out in a play casino, etc. creatively fixing something up seems more rewarding. searching cool equipment sounds like much fun. i can imagine becoming quite paranoid around cities. might get myself a tank of sorts for transportation. otherwise i could probably enjoy being alone. +1 for becoming friendly with animals.

hahahah, i swear i was about to say the airplane thing but didn't make much sense cuz i would die.

You could go to Madame Tussauds and hook up with some world-class wax figures.

nasty.

 

[TheManBeyond]

thing is that there are no other humans and OP didn't say there was an apocalypse, everyone just dissapeared so there are no reasons to stay vigilant, as nanook said, i would feel really paranoid and observed all the time, that might make me go crazy actually.

JR_IsP, why books? i mean, yeah u don't have to study to work and then support yourself and a family so if you like to learn you can still learn i guess. but seems pretty absurd to be learning that much of science in order to become inmortal. That's how you waste a life. What you can really do is get Access to secret facilities and documents that can lead you to highly advanced medicine, and u can decide or not to try it on yourself. maybe there's already medusa genes ready for eternal life but they haven't made it comercial because of the new world order.
Why keeping books if no one will ever read them, unless aliens. Why survival guides? against aliens only thing that could help is conspiration theorists on internet, or again like i said before above, reaching área 51, pentagon, etc.
But in my view, thinking of an invasion is burning your brains. Imagine you are alone in the planet and you are already fucked up after 3 months of no communication with anyone, imagine if you are learning all the time about how to survive in case of an invasion. If i wanna hunt aliens when the world has ended i would do it for fun not for the sake of science.

 

[JR_IsP]

JR_IsP, why books? i mean, yeah u don't have to study to work and then support yourself and a family so if you like to learn you can still learn i guess. but seems pretty absurd to be learning that much of science in order to become inmortal. That's how you waste a life. What you can really do is get Access to secret facilities and documents that can lead you to highly advanced medicine, and u can decide or not to try it on yourself. maybe there's already medusa genes ready for eternal life but they haven't made it comercial because of the new world order.
Why keeping books if no one will ever read them, unless aliens. Why survival guides? against aliens only thing that could help is conspiration theorists on internet, or again like i said before above, reaching área 51, pentagon, etc.
But in my view, thinking of an invasion is burning your brains. Imagine you are alone in the planet and you are already fucked up after 3 months of no communication with anyone, imagine if you are learning all the time about how to survive in case of an invasion. If i wanna hunt aliens when the world has ended i would do it for fun not for the sake of science.

Well, I've been reading a book about something like this (Man after Man: an anthropology of the future), I wasn't expecting alien invasion, just preparing for another intelligent to arise on Earth (maybe cats finally take over the world someday).

Will be kinda like discovering Atlantis or whatever.

But if aliens decide to show up cuz no government is paying their silence I'll be kinda fucked up.

 

[Oprale]

Also a lot of literature to entertain myself.

For entertainment I would probably collect a shit ton of cellphones, mp3s and Ipods, and make lists of each one's songs and battery level. I just can't live without music. I would organize them so that I could keep the phones with the lowest batteries but the best songs for special moments.

I can also picture myself painting on every wall I see until I get bored of it.
And establishing my base in a church because it has a lot of place for storage but mainly, it looks cool.

As I keep getting crazier and crazier I might start collecting mannequins, paint them dress them up, sit them down in the benches and pretend I'm speaking to a crowd that thinks I'm an amazing person.

Your plan sounds really cool for the next intelligent species to come ( if it does ), but at the same time I can totally see in you the character that starts off with good intentions and ends up loosing it lol

 

[nanook]

Thanks to tesla and the likes, there are solar panels everywhere. Should be real easy to get some electricity to go. wait, his name isn't actually tesla. cant recall his real name.

i can relate to the creative play. did many such things as a child. but chronic fight of flight mentality killed the visual artist in me. not sure if the end of the world would make my anxiety worse or better. depends on whether i am more nervous about getting along with humans or about survival in general.

 

[JR_IsP]

For entertainment I would probably collect a shit ton of cellphones, mp3s and Ipods, and make lists of each one's songs and battery level. I just can't live without music. I would organize them so that I could keep the phones with the lowest batteries but the best songs for special moments.

I can also picture myself painting on every wall I see until I get bored of it.
And establishing my base in a church because it has a lot of place for storage but mainly, it looks cool.

As I keep getting crazier and crazier I might start collecting mannequins, paint them dress them up, sit them down in the benches and pretend I'm speaking to a crowd that thinks I'm an amazing person.

Hmm, the problem with electrical devices are their batteries. Unless you already have solar panels around, probably a toal blackout would be inminent.

There are, however, more accesible ways to generate enough power to say, charge phones. I've read about hydroelectrical generators made for rural people easy to build and they work on any river (or fountain, or... be creative).

Your plan sounds really cool for the next intelligent species to come ( if it does ), but at the same time I can totally see in you the character that starts off with good intentions and ends up loosing it lol

Probably a journey to the states would be enough for me to give up, but damn, you're the very last member of the first (at least whom I know of) intelligent civilization on Earth, why evolution shouldn't create another in the next.......... a lot of million years?

Or aliens

Worth trying.

 

[tpaper91]

As soon as i knew that every human was gone, nothing would mean anything to me anymore. it would basically be like stranded on an island with all the riches in the world. I would probably seek out animal friends until i talked myself into...

 

[Pyropyro]

I'll probably go to the most hi-tech biotech facilities and try to recreate the human race using my DNA and any leftover human DNA within their buildings (to provide enough genetic variety to sustain the future human race). I do need to improve my knowledge of artificial wombs though.

Then, during my twilight years I shall be immortalized as Pyro, Father of Sloths!

 

[redbaron]

Rejoice

 

[Creeping Death]

Raid every nearby pharmacy of their opiates.

Befriend the domesticated dogs I can find.. the useful ones like pits, shepherds, labs. This may help keep my sanity for a while. Keep a pack to go hunting with and extra protection.

Raid a pawn shop or gun store for weapons and ammo. The nearby grocery stores food supply won't last long. Hunting will be more efficient than growing your own food when you're the only human left. Plus, in the absence of humanity, certain game will thrive and explode in population rapidly. No human competition when hunting.

There is nothing more to do than venture into places out of curiosity or seeing what cool shit there is to find.

I may research cloning extensively and see what I can do to repopulate. I'll have access to the labs of universities and large companies. That would become my only purpose to keep going, the hopes that I can be the father of a new chapter of humanity, year 1CD.

If not, I'll just go crazy and die somehow.

 

[JR_IsP]

I'll probably go to the most hi-tech biotech facilities and try to recreate the human race using my DNA and any leftover human DNA within their buildings (to provide enough genetic variety to sustain the future human race). I do need to improve my knowledge of artificial wombs though.

Then, during my twilight years I shall be immortalized as Pyro, Father of Sloths!

All hail the Sloth master!