The Thanos Conundrum

This isn’t a ‘Thanos is right’ article. There were a proliferation of these hot takes in the aftermath of Endgame a few months back*, and I doubt I could add much. Rather, this article is about the consequences of halving the human (and animal) population, as depicted in Avengers: Endgame.

This is my problem: we have a science-fictional near-future scenario where the population has been reduced by half, and yet the complexities of such a tragedy are never honestly explored. My objection to Endgame (unfair, perhaps, because it is a super-hero movie and in the end, unless you are Christopher Nolan, shades of grey are not the point), is that it makes a difficult and fraught decision – to reverse what happened five years before – as easy and simple as snapping one’s fingers.

(Click the PDF icon, upper right, if you prefer reading a black-on-white script)

Before we snap our way to a happy ending, let’s discuss what could have happened between Thanos winning and Iron Man pressing reset.

Carbon emissions would be reduced. Massively reduced, after five years. The meat we eat would be halved because the market for meat would be halved, and after all, half the animals were snapped (we know this because the birds start singing again after they reverse the event of five years before, implying half the animals died). Way fewer farting cows. Power plants would be decommissioned. China would certainly not be building new ones. Fish stocks would be under far less pressure, as would fresh water supplies. We would no longer need so much of the surface of the Earth for agriculture (example: they’d probably stop burning down the Amazon to make way for soy crops). Environmentally, without question, it would be a positive.

You will be thinking about now: hey – he’s saying Thanos is right. I’m not saying that (mass murder is bad, m’kay). Rather, I’m saying that the movie didn’t address any of this. What I’m saying is: it’s actually very complicated.

The only potential complication raised by Endgame involved Iron Man having a family, and therefore finding a degree of happiness in those intervening years. But this was easily resolved by his insistence that they keep the five years in-between, that the past and the future, in a sense, merge. As we will see, this selfish insistence would almost certainly have been catastrophic.

But before we get there, let us first look at some of the stupidities depicted in the post-Thanos world. For example: at one point Captain America drives past an empty, overgrown baseball stadium. Why? Did all the baseball fans get wiped out, all the players? No. Only half of each, on average. Taking a cricket example, do we really thinking an ambitious Sheffield Shield player wouldn’t step up to the Australian team if one of the opening batsman were Thanos’d? Or that interest in the Ashes would be reduced? It’d be increased, if anything, given the important role sport has always played in times of national or global crisis (In fact, studies show that populations come together in these times: the World Wars, 9/11, natural disasters, and the like; these events strengthen social bonds and give survivors a sense of purpose).

Stupid. Stadiums would not be abandoned. Sport would go on; everything would go on. And yes, this includes garbage being collected. Only half the garbage collectors died, remember, so why are the streets strewn with litter? It’s a nonsense. Especially five years on, when the world has had time to recover and to remedy.

There would be some infrastructure decay: yes. Housing needs would be halved, for example. Parts of a city would be abandoned, especially the outer suburbs: the long commute would no longer be necessary. It would no longer be necessary because homes closer to the city would be available and affordable. In general, housing prices would dramatically fall, and Millennials (and Gen Xers like me) might finally be able to buy their own homes.

In general we can assume 50% are taken out of each profession. We’ll still have enough cricket players, and doctors, and garbos, and cops. I suppose particularly small demographics could be disproportionately affected; for example, Nobel prize winners or billionaires. There’s not many of each, so it is possible more or less of these small samples could disappear. But what if we got lucky? What if chance spared most of the current and potential Nobel prize winners in medicine, physics, and chemistry, but killed off most of the climate-change-denying billionaires? Well, the world could be a vastly better place (true, if we allow this, we have to allow for the opposite: Gina Rinehart lives, and Alain Aspect dies).

On a personal level, as well, things are complex. We see in Hawkeye, for example, the tragedy of a lost family. But what we don’t see are the people who find true happiness. Maybe a woman’s abusive husband gets finger-snapped. Maybe a generally unhappy marriage gets broken. Maybe a whole range of people find true love and true happiness because of Thanos. Not maybe. Without question.

Again, mass murder is bad. But the premise I am following here is that the mass-murder has already happened. It hasn’t fallen on one group or nation, but on all groups and all nations equally. And act of an almost god.

So here we are: the earth is healthier, society has adjusted, many have moved on with their lives. But then – check this out – everyone comes back. Every human and animal returns.

For half the planet, five years have passed, for the other, an instant. This would have two immediate consequences: mass starvation and mass psychosis.

Come along with me here: imagine half the animals were wiped out. We therefore need half the arable land to feed half the human population. The rest of the land returns to forest, or rainforest, or is generally re-wilded. Then these animals all reappear. Well, firstly, many of those new animals will die quickly. There will be not enough feed, for starters.

Second, there will not be sufficient food supplies or supply chains for 3.85 billion more people (imagine we had been Thanos’d and didn’t know it. Imagine, tomorrow, 7.7 billion people turn up. How the fuck are we going to house and feed them all?).

There would also be devastating psychological consequences. Yes, many will have their whole family returned. That’s the problem. Many more will find themselves with two husbands, or two wives, or several extra children. Imagine the sense of betrayal. Family-related violence would sky-rocket, as would suicides.

What about duly-elected politicians, Prime Ministers and Presidents suddenly returning? What about the wealthy coming back to see their estate redistributed among family and friends? Business owners suddenly find their business run by someone else? Do you think Donald Trump or Xi Jinping, suddenly finding themselves no longer president, will be cool with that?

No doubt laws will change (multiple spouses maybe well be normalised, for one), and society will evolve again. But before it does, we will have resource wars and civil conflict. Mass starvation, coups, and insurgencies.

Endgame fails miserably in portraying the type of society that would exist if half the population suddenly disappeared, and it fails utterly to foresee the dire consequences of bringing them all back.

Far better, and simpler, would be to return to that point, five years before. Delete the five years in-between. Many would be unhappy (Iron Man is dead in either scenario, so he should really stop whinging), but if the magic click makes the reversal fall from memory: well, did it ever really happen? Life goes on, just as it did before, and we are none the wiser.

Yep, then we have a truly happy ending: Xi Jinping is still president for life, democracy is in decline worldwide, we are polarized and divided, and the planet is dying.

But sure. Thanos was wrong. Definitely.

*I don’t read pop-cultural hot-takes anymore, because life is too short. So it is possible the ideas I came up with independently here have been said elsewhere. If so, I’m not sorry.