Something completely unforeseeable would off me within the first six months, is my guess. That tiny hangnail that breaks some skin which leads to an infection would be my demise. Assuming I didn’t have access to antiseptic, antibiotics, and the like.
Well, I’d guess no one would keep you from going “shopping” at the nearest pharmacy.
True! But with my luck this would all happen whilst camping in the wilds.
About a week until I couldn’t even stand up anymore due to Long COVID.
Provided you knew what you were doing, indefinitely. Or until you died of old age or managed to contract a deadly disease/cancer/manage to injure yourself in a life threatening way that you can’t treat yourself.
You might not be happy about it. But growing basic crops, storing away dried grains for the winter, hunting and dressing animals, making a fire to cook them, etc. should be well within the reach of anyone capable of reading this. Neanderthals could do it, so can you.
If you didn’t know what you were doing, well, until you ran out of easily scavengable canned goods and/or died of botulism from eating one of them that wasn’t as canned as you thought.
etc. should be well within the reach of anyone capable of reading this. Neanderthals could do it, so can you.
Oh you greatly overrate us internet people… 🧌
Neanderthals (and humans for that matter) did indeed but they did it in groups, usually. Being alone really stacks the odds against you I think.
Well, you’re going to have a much harder time taking down wooly mammoths, that’s for sure.
Yeah my plan (dream) has always been like this:
- Use the internet while I have it (assuming people just all disappear suddenly) to download survival guides, solar panel repair/installation PDFs, maps, etc. Anything I can think of, I’ll download
- Gas only lasts so long. I can use chemicals that extend it, but it’s definitely limited. I’d start with a gas powered truck and eventually move into electric vehicles. Batteries aren’t forever either… But I’d try.
- I’d move to a warm, temperate climate
- I’d find a building that claims it is powered by solar panels most of the year. I’d use that as my home
- I’d immediately begin trying to farm. I have a black thumb so this would take me some years to get done correctly. But I’d hopefully have some potatoes and grain growing by the end of a year
- In the meantime, I might find things to occupy my time such as: finding videogames to play, raising chickens, fishing, collecting guns/ammo, collecting books to preserve, storing solar panels, backup equipment, etc.
My end goal would be to survive as long as I’m happy. I’m pretty introverted so that would last a while. I’d use animals to keep me company. I believe nature would take us over pretty quickly. It would be hard to maintain the house, solar, etc. forever. But if I could, I would.
My wife and I already do a lot of foraging in our area and we have several guides for edible food. We also do some canning and prepping for disasters.
I don’t think a disaster would be a picnic. People are the problem. But if they disappeared suddenly, I think it would be pretty livable.
Use the internet while I have it (assuming people just all disappear suddenly) to download survival guides, solar panel repair/installation PDFs, maps, etc. Anything I can think of, I’ll download
AI would be really useful in this scenario. Have a whole internet’s worth of information at your disposal with a fraction of the storage costs.
Probably still want the actual manuals and guides for the important stuff tho…
Have a whole internet’s worth of information at your disposal with a fraction of the storage costs.
without humans to keep it going the internet’s going bye bye quickly.
I mean like, a local model. Hence the benefit of having the info at a fraction of the storage cost.
oh man this is hilarious. so you think if the AI is local the corpus it’s been taught upon doesn’t need to be stored?
it’s worse - you need the processing power (many many many gpus requiring enormous amounts of power) coupled to enormous amounts of material to educate the language model on.
sorry man there aren’t any shortcuts.
so you think if the AI is local the corpus it’s been taught upon doesn’t need to be stored?
You don’t need to store the training data. What’s “hilarious” is how confidently incorrect you are.
This, for example, is a model small enough to run on your phone that was trained on ~895GB of data.
Even if I did need to keep all of that data, and even if I also needed to train it myself, what’s stopping me from just stealing all the equipment I need if I’m the last person on earth???
and what use would this be to someone after the world ends?
AGAIN THE POWER REQUIREMENTS BELLEND.
Do you have a fusion reactor in your pocket?
And a freshwater source the size of a lake? because you’ll need both to run the data center required to run anything USEFUL.
phew… steal all the equipment you want, you wouldn’t be able to do shit all with it. just keeping a single data center UP would be a herculean task for a single person - without robots or trained monkeys or alien buds to help you I’m exceptionally dubious.
I can just imagine you pushing a shopping cart of 4080ti’s through the hellscape towards a data center thinking “shit yeah I GOT this apocalypse solved” l-o-fucking-l
About as long as content servers stayed up before I went crazy from boredom.
After the internet fails, you’d quickly learn how valuable the public library is. They have lots of disc based games for Xbox and Playstation meaning no internet required. Lots of movies on DVD and Bluray, and still pretty good collections of music on CDs.
The smallest public library also probably has more books than you could read in your entire lifetime.
“Time Enough at Last”
Twilight zone.
Good episode
For the majority of disc-based media, any large atore would do the job too if we’re talking post apocalypse situations but a lot of games these days are absolutely crapfests without the plethora of updates. As for servers, I did specifically mean places to download from, not stream. I’d already be downloading every film amd TV show I could think of I might like or have already seen and think I’d like to rewatch someday.
That said, the internet is also my means of satisfying my social needs since all of my friends live in different countries. Without that and them, the dire loneliness sets in real quick like.
And libraries have a lot of books, I agree and I already enjoy reading but I have relatively niche tastes that would likely only be catered to by large libraries so the vast majority of a small library’s collection would be worthless to me. I know the end of the world is more a “any port in a storm” kind of situation but if I’m just running down the clock before the last human alive becomes the last human to have lived, I’m not really looking to pad that time out by reading How to Win Friends and Influence People or 15 different DIY books.
I suppose it really depends on why I’m the last person on earth. If it was nuclear fallout, I’d probably be dead pretty quick.
If we’re under the assumption that everybody just poofed away and I’m the last person, absolutely a few months minimum. I’m within easy walking distance of some stores that have plethora of canned and preserved foods and liquids. I also know some places that already have full solar infrastructure already integrated.
All that being said, I’d probably off myself. I’m fairly non-social to begin with but I’d still be unhappy never being able to communicate with anyone ever again on top of major resource struggles in the future. Never find a partner, probably not even a domesticated pet as they’d all likely die within a week or so if I don’t prioritize that. Sounds incredibly sad and lonely
Probably about 5 years. I’d have to teach myself how to live in the rough by then and I don’t think I could learn everything.
Considering the number of nuclear power plants that would explode without someone to take care of them. Not long after the one about 45 minutes from my house goes up. It would be a painful death. Even if I somehow survived that, there would be LOT of radiation that would be put into the environment. Yeah I’d die pretty quick from radiation poisoning.
I don’t think they work like that…
They need heavy water. After a while the heavy water would boil away / evaporate.
That would leave the rods exposed. Of everything I’ve been told there is a very loud bang at that point.
What would prevent a catastrophe from happening?
Modern nuclear reactors use passive safety; meaning that the default state of the reactor is off and safe, and it requires work and power to get it running. When they enter a fail state, or the power is cut, they snap back to the off state.
really?
cool. i guess it makes sense that they made those changes.
I’d imagine that nuclear reactors have multiple safety features, including automatic shutdown systems etc, to prevent catastrophic events even in the absence of human intervention.
Over time stuff would likely still break/leak, but it would only contaminate the immediate surroundings compared to the big bang that would occur when failing fatally during operation.
I don’t know, chances are high that I’d still move away from those places…
Id probably get a fast car or bike and speed and end up crashing and dying or something
Why crash a car when you can crash a plane? I always considered this to be my final quest in this kind of scenario. Learn to fly a plane as big as possible. Then probably get lost and crash while looking for an airport.
Long enough to teach some monkeys how to make fire.
Or just set them on fire…
Depends on what happened to the world, what resources I have, time of year, etc.
Assuming decent conditions and luck (nothing saving you from a severe infection gotten because wrong place wrong time), likely a fair few decades. I have a lot of survival knowledge, both theory and practical - and I refresh myself on a regular basis
19 years, 5 months, 21 days, 16 hours, and 23 minutes.
If the material world survived, living in a large city, I could probably scavenge for non-perishable foods for quite some time.
If it’s a nuclear wasteland and I’m fending off mutants, I guess it depends on how many caps and nuka-cola I can find.
19 years, 5 months, 21 days, 16 hours, and 23 minutes
someone did the math
Probably depends on how everyone else disappeared
In complete isolation I think a lot of people (including me) would probably kill ourselves just after few months. We all need at least some social interaction to stay with healthy mind.
Aside from that, what the hell is even the point of living if you are the only person left?
OMG, so many things would improve!
OK, healthcare is an issue. But if only humans disappeared? There’s so much canned and freeze dried food; I could probably live off a single REI for a couple of years. Pharmacies to be raided, although I’d have to find an old-school reference for drugs, uses, and dosages. Hell, I’d spend a couple of years just outfitting a survivalist cabin near Yosemite or Frank Church Wilderness, and then a couple more backpacking out of the cabin, returning only for provisions.
I’ve lived without prior before; it’s not that hard. I know there would be psychological challenges, but the physical ones really do compensate quite a bit.
I’m assuming my dog would still be alive. So I’d just go on adventures with him.
Aside from that, what the hell is even the point of living if you are the only person left?
Visiting museums naked? Cmon dog
Just when you think the “last person on earth” fantasy has been fully explored!
Plenty of time to read.
Until you tread on your eyeglasses.
If I were the last person on earth, I’d probably kill myself pretty quickly
A month tops
