Part1: Is it even possible?
Have you ever wondered what would happen if you were the last human alive on a planet or for that matter the first?
This series of stories explore this question in detail as I walk you through some of the possible chains of thoughts that might occur if you really think about it.
I can tell you that just thinking about this single question might help you broaden your perspective of humanity. It will open your eyes to the vastness of this world.
It can generate in you a new spark to connect yourself with the rest of the universe. It can generate in you a thirst for the endless knowledge that has been generated over thousands of years by humanity. It can lead you to a path you have been unfamiliar with you for your whole life.
This question can make you doubt yourself. What have you seen or learnt all the time you have been alive? How have you taken things for granted. What does it mean to live in a modern world? Can you say you are a true part of this modern world?
Whatever you might feel or decide to do, I promise you it is going to be interesting.
So lets just relax for some time and imagine in depth a scenario where you are on a healthy beautiful habitable planet, full of natural resources, just like Earth in her teens.
If there were Astrophysicists present they would have described this planet as:
This planet Neo-47b orbiting a K-type star right around the middle of the habitable range is a good candidate for supporting life. Neo-47b has just the right temperature range varying from negative ten to fifty degrees over its orbital cycle. Water! The planet’s surface is almost 70% water (30% Ice and 70% Liquid water) which is present throughout the orbital cycle. It is surrounded by a Atmosphere similar to earth while having significantly more oxygen content. The surface has plenty of neutrients and is suitable for sustaining life. After various observations, this planet has been verified to support organic life.
While this is really going into the nitty gritty and it is necessary if you are observing a planet lightyears away from you. But you can come to the same conclusion if you are on the planet just by seeing with your own eyes that the planet is blistering with life. But again thats a big if.
The sparkling streams of cold water emerging from the green long forests and going into the plains full of grass whisling with wind. In the distant sight you can see some animals grazing the plains. Yes, a scene out of some fantasy movie or maybe some famous wallpaper.
Okay, you got the point.
After you get tired of appreciating your alone time with the nature and start to feel something missing, thats when things start happening. You have already realised that you are not going to have anything from your world the gadgets, delivery services, supermarkets, tasty food, the bed, the internet and most important a companion. There will be no human being to talk to. You will be completely alone.
At this point you also realize that if I want to live I have to have a few things in check like food and water and maybe a shelter. But most importantly a mission.
I believe there is hardly any reason to try and build something if you know that you alone are going to use it and your time here is limited. It is natures rule to pass on to the next generation all the lessons one has learnt over ones lifetime, the evolution.
But if you know that you are the last person there ever will be on this planet for a long long time, you wouldn’t have much fire in your eyes to attempt anything new.
So lets modify our scenario and introduce some more survivors, enough to expand our species if carefully planned. What is the correct number? Who knows? But it lies below the magic number 150 which is required to form a close knit community which is essential initially to grow. Lets call this group the BAND. Living in the band might spark in you a fire to rebuild the society upto or beyond the point you have experienced it.
Or something better?
You now have a chance to redesign everything from ground up. You might decide to build a system free of any flaws that were so deeply rooted in the previous world that you have thought many times to do things over. Well, now you got the chance.
Now lets pause for a second and think! How exactly is this possible, how can I even be alone (don’t forget the band) on the whole PLANET?
Good question.
At first this might seem unrealistic, but as you go deep in thought you realise there are actually some potential methods which lead to you being alone on a planet. Lets see a few:
- Space Travel: This method might seem the most likely today (This statement is quite serious). If you are selected as an astronaut as a part of the Band to explore Neo-47b you might end up deciding to colonise that planet. Very much similar to what european colonies were crazy about during the Age of Exploration.
- Natural Disaster: To anhilate almost all humans from the face of the earth, this disaster have to be catastrophically lucky for you. I will give you an example, lets say you and your band is on a space exploration trip or hanging out in International Space Station. In the meantime your home planet Earth is acting up. Earthquakes everywhere, valcano erruptions, tsunamis, back to back storms. When you return in a couple of days you find humans have gone extinct on the earth.
- Pandemic: This is also one of the relatable scenario at the time of writing this article. A disease so widespread and severe might be born at some point of time that it almost anhilates the humanity. But only 0.000001% of the population are immune to this disease or better said as one in every hundred million. As it was airborne transmissable there was no time to take counter-measures. Now at the end you find yourself with your immune band alone on Earth.
- Time Travel: This might be the least possible option. But as we advocate science we cannot neglect a potential candidate. This option is really facsinating. If you time travel with your band to whence there is not a single homo sapien. You have arrived in a similar situation. Now who knows you might create different timeline or you might overwrite the existing one but whatever may be the case, it will be fun.
There are a few more possibilities like nuclear wars, meteor hit, excessive global warming, a zombie attack or maybe Thanos. I know there has to be some huge play of fates to end up in this situation, but the chances are non-zero and thats enough for us to think down this line.
You might have noticed that depending on the cause you might end up in some unique situation like on Earth or any other planet (Neo-47b). If on earth then with or without all the previous infrastructure build by humanity.
And believe it or not this can make a significant difference.
For instance, do you know what a semiconductor is? If not, forget about seeing any of the gadgets you have used every single day of your life till yesterday for the rest of your life.
It doesn’t have to be this complicated. Just ask yourself do you know how to make plastic, lets drop how, do you even know what raw materials are required and how to procure them. We are unfamiliar with making of, even simpler objects like rope, knife, match stick, clothes, threads, food preservers which are essential for survival.
You might argue that nobody knew from the start. Yes, you are correct. But the science we know as of now is the cumulative knowledge built by countless experiments and study put in by countless people since the inception of humanity. Even if we remove all the barriers science has faced in its evolution, even if you have a scientific foundation, it would take years of trial and error to fabricate a single semiconductor device ‘a transistor’ if you try to build it from scratch. A fun fact: a modern day smartphone contains billions of these transistor for processing and storing data. Good Luck!
I am not trying to convince you to learn everything there is to learn as you might not require any of this in todays world. I just hope that this question helps you light the spark of curiosity in us which at some point in our lives we decided to put out for the monotonous life we live today.
Coming back to the moment. You have a whole planet to yourself. What would you and your band do next? Where to settle? What to eat? What crops to cultivate? What is the first thing to make? What materials to gather? How to gather and extract them? What would be the most optimal approach to rebuild society as we know it? Or should you even try that?
Lets explore many such questions in the next parts of the story.
The end of Part 1.
