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I read an interesting thread on Stackexchange. The poster posed the scenario where everyone on Earth vanishes except for 35 people, distributed randomly. How long would it take to encounter another person. Most of the commenters addressed this from a mathematics perspective - as a sort of an insane, geographically distributed birthday problem. I'd like to look at it from a personal one - where I am one of the survivors, and don't actually know if there are any other survivors but me.
Scenario: At noon tomorrow (Thursday) everyone vanishes in a Thano's-like finger-snap.
Immediately, I will likely witness the two coworkers I routinely go to lunch with get dusted. This will freak me out, especially when I realize I'm the only person left in my building. Simultaneously with that, I'll hear the cacophony of all the traffic on Crowchild Trail (One of Calgary's major freeways) suddenly being driverless.
Being in the upper floors of a building that, despite it's proximity to a major road, isn't in imminent danger of being hit by a vehicle, I hunker down and decide my course of action. My immediate needs are: 1) Survival. 2) Check for local survivors. 3) contact non-local survivors. 4) Move to somewhere with infrastructure where I can live long-term since cities aren't going to be hospitable in the short term.
Day one: Get supplies and find a place that's safe to stay the night. This likely won't be my house, since I have a neighbour with a giant ham tower in their back yard, and I want to give that a go. Part of the supplies will be a honking big truck. Load the truck up with food/water/fuel and some cherished possessions. Find a loudspeaker for hollering. Get a sledge hammer and bolt cutters so I can get into locked places easily. A couple of fire extinguishers, since there's likely lots of fires. A ham radio for communications with potential survivors. A gun, to protect myself from wildlife.
Get drunk and cry myself to sleep, mourning all the people I've lost.
Day two: tour the city. My goals here are threefold:
Day three, assuming I have all achieved my goals from day one and two, later otherwise: leave town, heading west. This will be a three fold process that take weeks.
I'm aiming for 30km/day. This should get me to the West Coast in about 33 days. This is slow enough that a person walking can catch up with me. Clearing the road also acts as giant sign that someone survived, and they're going this way! I'm basically scrapping a giant line across the mountains.
I should be good for shelter and supplies since I don't have to share. While there's plenty of areas along the highway where it's long stretches of no towns/cities, there's almost always a farm or cabin somewhere.
In my down time, I'm playing with the ham radio, or searching libraries/stores for things I think I'll need. At this point I'm long-term planning. What can I grow to survive. How do I dress game I hunt. How can I set up and maintain things like water pumps and solar cells.
When I reach the coast, I spend some time learning how to pilot a boat. My goal is to get to one of the larger Gulf Islands. Salt Spring or Galiano for example, or possibly Vancouver island. I want to find a home that is completely off the grid, in an area that is ecologically rich enough to sustain people after the supplies run out.
Once I'm settled, I continue to play with the radio, and write messages in public that could conceivably be found by others in the same boat I am. Once I'm able to travel, travel up and down the coast leaving visual messages in Seattle/Portland/San Francisco/etc. I probably won't be able to do this much past the first two years since the fuel will start to go bad by then, and I doubt I'll be able to successfully learn how to run a sail boat by myself.
Scenario: At noon tomorrow (Thursday) everyone vanishes in a Thano's-like finger-snap.
Immediately, I will likely witness the two coworkers I routinely go to lunch with get dusted. This will freak me out, especially when I realize I'm the only person left in my building. Simultaneously with that, I'll hear the cacophony of all the traffic on Crowchild Trail (One of Calgary's major freeways) suddenly being driverless.
Being in the upper floors of a building that, despite it's proximity to a major road, isn't in imminent danger of being hit by a vehicle, I hunker down and decide my course of action. My immediate needs are: 1) Survival. 2) Check for local survivors. 3) contact non-local survivors. 4) Move to somewhere with infrastructure where I can live long-term since cities aren't going to be hospitable in the short term.
Day one: Get supplies and find a place that's safe to stay the night. This likely won't be my house, since I have a neighbour with a giant ham tower in their back yard, and I want to give that a go. Part of the supplies will be a honking big truck. Load the truck up with food/water/fuel and some cherished possessions. Find a loudspeaker for hollering. Get a sledge hammer and bolt cutters so I can get into locked places easily. A couple of fire extinguishers, since there's likely lots of fires. A ham radio for communications with potential survivors. A gun, to protect myself from wildlife.
Get drunk and cry myself to sleep, mourning all the people I've lost.
Day two: tour the city. My goals here are threefold:
- Check on anyone I know, whose address I have. I can't exhaustively check the whole city, but I can at least look for my friends/family.
- Check hospitals and prisons for people who may be trapped.
- At the base of the Calgary tower, leave a message - dated - saying I'm alive and heading west on highway one. Hang a banner out several windows at the top of the Calgary tower as an obvious signal. Do the same for the Bow, since it blocks the view of the Tower for the northern half of the city.
Day three, assuming I have all achieved my goals from day one and two, later otherwise: leave town, heading west. This will be a three fold process that take weeks.
- Use a bulldozer to clear vehicles off the highway. Do this for a few kilometres. Bring a dirt bike with me.
- Ride the dirt bike back to the truck.
- Catch the truck up to the bulldozer.
I'm aiming for 30km/day. This should get me to the West Coast in about 33 days. This is slow enough that a person walking can catch up with me. Clearing the road also acts as giant sign that someone survived, and they're going this way! I'm basically scrapping a giant line across the mountains.
I should be good for shelter and supplies since I don't have to share. While there's plenty of areas along the highway where it's long stretches of no towns/cities, there's almost always a farm or cabin somewhere.
In my down time, I'm playing with the ham radio, or searching libraries/stores for things I think I'll need. At this point I'm long-term planning. What can I grow to survive. How do I dress game I hunt. How can I set up and maintain things like water pumps and solar cells.
When I reach the coast, I spend some time learning how to pilot a boat. My goal is to get to one of the larger Gulf Islands. Salt Spring or Galiano for example, or possibly Vancouver island. I want to find a home that is completely off the grid, in an area that is ecologically rich enough to sustain people after the supplies run out.
Once I'm settled, I continue to play with the radio, and write messages in public that could conceivably be found by others in the same boat I am. Once I'm able to travel, travel up and down the coast leaving visual messages in Seattle/Portland/San Francisco/etc. I probably won't be able to do this much past the first two years since the fuel will start to go bad by then, and I doubt I'll be able to successfully learn how to run a sail boat by myself.
