this post was submitted on 09 Jul 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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Maybe we should just start nuking the most densely packed cities/countries. Sorry NYC, Tokyo, and basically all of India.

But would this not solve the problem?

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[โ€“] MrJameGumb 71 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I know the name of the community is "no stupid questions", but you managed to power through somehow anyway

An excellent trolling if ever I've seen one

๐ŸงŒ

[โ€“] EleventhHour 29 points 5 months ago

i have observed that many people interpret the community title as a dare

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

If I'm really honest I often feel that way about the questions here. I suspect that most of us are here just to gawk at how truly stupid some of us are.

[โ€“] theywilleatthestars 36 points 5 months ago (1 children)

The thing is that that's an extremely fucked up and evil thing to do

[โ€“] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I'll say. Even Thanos only wanted to kill HALF the population.

[โ€“] Lost_My_Mind 9 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Well, I was going to say just kill ALL the humans, but then I thought people would get mad that I'm killing all the humans. So I said 2/3rds.

[โ€“] samus12345 11 points 5 months ago
[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago

Need to up those numbers to 111% of the Humans

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[โ€“] [email protected] 33 points 5 months ago (2 children)

You could accomplish the same CO2 reduction with fewer deaths if you start with the richest and work your way down.

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago

Good point, you might only need to knock off a very small fraction.

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[โ€“] samus12345 31 points 5 months ago
[โ€“] [email protected] 30 points 5 months ago

Nice try, ChatGPT

[โ€“] Delphia 20 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

I actually think this could work with one important adjustment.

We should probably start with the people who think that killing off large portions of the population is a great idea and stop once we run out of those people.

[โ€“] spittingimage 15 points 5 months ago

Well I mean... initially you'd have a whole bunch of dead humans emitting carbon dioxide and methane as they decompose.

[โ€“] [email protected] 14 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"We have Thanos at home"

The Thanos at Home:

[โ€“] Postmortal_Pop 18 points 5 months ago (3 children)

Thanos was fucking stupid and no amount of "cold logic" bullshit will justify the fact that unlimited cosmic power could have just doubled the universe.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 5 months ago

Or just the fact that achieving space farring tech in effect makes you a post scarcity civilization.

Thanos wasn't called Mad because his people deemed his ideas too radical, it was because even the premise of his plan was based on him being as dumb as a sack of rocks.

[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (1 children)

At least in the comics he wanted to impress the personification of Death.

[โ€“] Postmortal_Pop 2 points 5 months ago

As dumb as "to bone death herself" is as an excuse, it's so much better than we got in the movie.

[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Neither addresses the problem, they just both push it into the future. Half the population/double the resources isn't even a reasonable amount to give much more time. It's better for drama though, because disappearing 99% or more of the universe would have really set back the Avengers, if any of them made the cut at all.

[โ€“] Postmortal_Pop 7 points 5 months ago (2 children)

That's exactly my point, he could have made infinite resources, made energy infinite, made resources unnecessary, put the entirety of the universe in Minecraft creative mode, or just make everything into hyper realistic cake. Instead he picks the outcome that hurts the most people.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago

Perhaps you forget how the infinity stones were purported to work...

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago

Calm down Thanos.

[โ€“] [email protected] 13 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Good answer! Nuking ruins valuable resources, like plants that help reduce greenhouse gases, and animals that help ecosystems thrive.

What we need is some sort of pandemic, that targets the especially stupid (refusing to take protectionary precautions, idiotically increasing their risk of exposure). It's hard to go without also catching people with comorbidities in the net, but acceptable losses, I guess.

If only there was such a disease...

[โ€“] CarbonatedPastaSauce 3 points 5 months ago

If you find a GoFundMe for this, let me know.

[โ€“] cygnosis 10 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago)

(attempting to answer the question instead of shaming the questioner)

It might have helped solve the problem if we did it 50 or 60 years ago, along with global EMP strikes to disable all the vehicles and industrial equipment, and a global commitment to return to an agrarian low-energy lifestyle. And if you prioritized the most highly industrialized cities that produce the greatest carbon per capita. But the sad truth is that, right now, it's already too late. We have already released so much carbon into the atmosphere that we are more or less guaranteed to see 4 degrees C above pre-industrial. And if you aren't already retired you will probably see it in your lifetime. Along the way that triggers a series of cascading feedback loops which, all-told, will likely take the planet to about 10C above pre-industrial. We continue to release something like 40 billion metric tons per year. And the best CCS facility we have, in Iceland, can sequester about 4,000 tons per year. We are racing toward the cliff with the throttle at full speed and no corrupt government scientist is going to take away my truck or make me eat bugs.

And questions about who should die, who should be killed, and such don't even really matter now. They sound immoral, but if the projections are right it looks like all of us who aren't already old are going to die from climate change anyways. So pontificating on things that aren't ever going to happen is just academic onanism.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

I mean, nuking? That ain't exactly going to fix anything.

Like, the whole idea is bad, but dropping nukes is it's own environmental disaster as bad or worse than global warming.

Even using conventional munitions is going to cause fires and literal megatons of debris to be released into the atmosphere and water. This ain't going to fix anything.

It also assumes that population control is the fix in the first place, and it isn't. The population levels would only shift the speed of change, not the fact of it. To stop or reverse the changes, you have to change the underlying cause of the change, which is pretty much down to industrial processes across multiple areas, including agriculture.

Yeah, you kill off enough people, industrial efforts might cease, but it's more likely that the remaining people are going to have to rely on the most effective methods to stay alive and functional, rather than the methods that are environmentally best.

[โ€“] [email protected] 7 points 5 months ago

OP convenient that your living location isn't on the list. Maybe start looking inward? If you remove 2/3 of your mass you'd be doing your part, right?

[โ€“] lemmefixdat4u 7 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Logically, killing humans would be way down on the list of potential Global Warming solutions. We would have to exhaust all other methods first. Just banning private vehicles would save a few billion from extermination. Green energy tech and Nuclear power would save more. Vegetarian diets even more. Reducing organic waste, involuntary birth control, carbon sequestration - it's a long list of better incremental solutions. They may be more costly than extermination, but they're infinitely more ethical. It's only logical if that's the sole solution that ensures some of the population survives. We're a long way from that condition.

[โ€“] A_A 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

"... involuntary birth control ..."
We are the only two contributors here rising this topic. How do you see it ?
Please also read my root comment.

[โ€“] lemmefixdat4u 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I see it as one possibility of many. Measures currently employed are limited because most countries are democratic, where politicians must appease the people to stay in office. China could implement one-child because they are a de-facto dictatorship.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago (3 children)

The problem to this solution is who chooses the humans. The only moral way would be to accept volunteers.

[โ€“] [email protected] 3 points 5 months ago

Or to start with the wealthiest people and biggest corporations.

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[โ€“] [email protected] 6 points 5 months ago

Bill Burr said we should start sinking cruise ships.

[โ€“] CarbonatedPastaSauce 6 points 5 months ago

Username checks out.

[โ€“] Today 6 points 5 months ago

Covid tried. Eventually the earth will win.

[โ€“] palebluethought 6 points 5 months ago (2 children)

I almost hesitate to bring up the other problems with your plan since, obviously the total monstrosity of it. But that's anyway pretty well covered so I'll just throw in that blowing enough nukes to kill that many people would create considerably worse environmental disaster

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[โ€“] problematicPanther 4 points 5 months ago

Nuking wouldn't really be the way to go, it'll destroy the world in other ways.

[โ€“] lordnikon 4 points 5 months ago

oh 2/3s will die just not by humanity hands directly. heat, extreme weather, more pandemics. it's all coming earth will get it's payment in blood.

[โ€“] InternetCitizen2 4 points 5 months ago

It is man made and the answer is to make better use of our resources to limit pollution where a green alternative is not possible.

[โ€“] Surp 4 points 5 months ago

Ok Hitler...

[โ€“] A_A 3 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

The one child policy as was imposed in China is the most drastic that is ethically tolerable.
And, lack of resources will soon enough convince people to make less children.
You don't have to kill yourself today because you may die in 50 years - - this is blindingly obvious.

[โ€“] XeroxCool 4 points 5 months ago (1 children)

I don't think limited resources ever results in reduced births. 100 years ago, US parents were making lots of kids and not naming them for the first year because infant mortality was so high. Education is what slows the birthrate.

[โ€“] A_A 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You are right that it happened in the past and it still happens in many countries today : without education we are going toward disaster.
But i was trying to have a somewhat optimistic view and if you consider China's one child policy it necessitated more education but this policy was sparked by a lack of resources.
We could find more examples where education combine with lack of resources would go the way i was saying.

[โ€“] XeroxCool 2 points 5 months ago

I suppose with global education on the rise, prior examples won't always be accurate. I wasn't considering China's example to be part of an increased education amount because it didn't necessarily teach the average citizen why they should limit kids, but a governing decision that results in the same outcome could still count.

[โ€“] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

If people who hunt with population control as the excuse were logically consistent then they'd say yes

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