Is it my imagination or does this sound like a good idea for a post-apocalyptic game?

ChrisCross will make you Jump?

I go with imagination - had that happened, many would be looking for what ever source caused them all to magically appear there and compel them to do something so strange. Once it is found it better be able to send everyone home or it's likely to be in a world of pain as a few billion people take turns beating it to a pulp.

I wish everyone moved to Rhode Island, I could go back to California...

No it doesn't because the article forgets 2 important things:

1: Oxygen

2: Air Pressure



Let us say, for the sake of argument, right before the pre-jump transport event, everyone on earth took a REALLY deep breath: forget that about a 3rd of the planet was probably asleep and snoring, they just DID, OK?

Everyone appears, everyone jumps, everyone exhales.

Let us also assume, for the sake of argument, that all the wildlife and housepets in the state of rhode island have equally magically vanished to other parts of the globe, for the moment there are ONLY humans there.

The average human has a lung capacity of around 6 liters of air. Now as we all know 75% or so of earths air is stable nitrogen. Another 20% is oxygen but a lot of that is bound up in stable ozone in the upper atmosphere. At ground level the percentage is about the same, though more of it is in usable O² form. So, everyone in the world is now in Rhode Island and has just exhaled their very deep breath. With a typical breath between 25% and 20% of the inhaled oxygen binds to hemoglobin in the blood and is exchanged for carbon dioxide. We will be conservative and state that in this case it is that first number. This now means that the air in the state of Rhode Island is now 75% Nitrogen, 15.XX% Oxygen, and 5.XX% Carbon Dioxide with other trace gasses.

The average person, if absolutely necessary, can hold their breath 3 minutes on a deep inhale, but everyone has just exhaled...

This is where Air Pressure comes into play.

Remember that 6 liter volume of air that was just in everyone's lungs and suddenly ISN'T?

Acoding to a nifty dodad at census.gov by the time I finish this post the world population will be at aproximately 7,238,444,000: which yeilds 43,430,664,000 leiters of air exhailed just now. Dividing this by the number of cubic meters in the first ten meters of air above the surface of the state of Rhode Island you get a value of 1.38314216561: this is the factor by which the air pressure of the state has just increased at ground level.

As you can see this more than doubling of the state's air pressure would, for just a few crucial seconds, force air back into people's lungs like a positive air pressure machine, Air which is now only 15% oxygen. Their lungs do their job and strip another 25% of the oxygen out of the air.

It is at this point that a lot of supposition and guess work rather than hard science enters this argument. I am being generous but let us say that 10% of the human race at this point realizes that if they are going to survive they MUST hold their breath for as long as they can. I will be even more generous and say that another 1% have some form of compressed air they can rely on, or which is taken from them by more able people, and saves them from suffocation. The rest of the human race continues a cycle of attempting to breath and getting less and less oxygen back for the next 3 minutes or so until they pass out, and another 3 minutes before they die. Even at this point those who have held their breath are likely to pass out unless while holding their breath they have scrambled to a higher elevation, because as everyone knows carbon dioxide is heavier than O² and will be hugging the ground, killing off all the humans at ground level which would include nearly every infant on earth not saved by a good samaritan with a sound head on his/her shoulders.

Again for the sake of argument let us assume in the event previously heavily populated state of Rhode Island there were enough buildings, trees and telephone poles that half of all the people who held their breath were able to get above the misama and that half of those with stored oxygen also survive. (The low number for stored oxygen is due to violence, not suffocation.) This leaves us with a figure of 5.5% of our previously established figure of 7,238,444,000, or 398,114,420 left alive. The population of the united states of america as of the last full census was 308,745,538...

Now here is where the real guesswork comes in: who would have had the training and education to recognize what was about to happen and/or fight off people trying to steal their stored oxygen equipment?

Answer: Chemists, Doctors, Police, EMTs, Firefighters, and Survivalists.

Who would be prone to NOT PANIC, not start shooting each other over ideological differences, and be able to recognise that it would be more trouble than it was worth to try to get back to their home countries when the US, Canada, and Mexico, had more than enough space for what was left of the human race except a few coordinated missions to recover internationally recognized artwork and artifacts...?

Not so much a 'post apocalypse' story as a 'Post Holocaust' story.

... Human lung tidal volume is only about 500mL.  You are also equating the air people are breathing to being all of the air in the area.  Even a slight breeze or downdraft would dramatically shift things away from your scenario.

Realy? Only 500mL for a full inhale and exhale? That seems, very low. Then again I stripmined all this data off the internet and we all know how reliable THAT is. (Also it would have to be one hell of a downdraft to affect the entire state of Rhode Island.)

Have you ever blown up a balloon?

My point about the breeze is that you're assuming a fairly stagnant system with all of the air present being subjected to a continual inhale-exhale cycle.  That's not the case.  There's plenty of air present such that the net effect on oxygen concentration would not be so dramatic.

It's possible that people in the middle of the state would die of suffocation, but they're probably screwed in any case.

One other thing to consider on the whole 'inhale/exhale' issue is that since all the people in this scenario are assumed to be standing on the lowest level of the ground across the state including inside abandoned mines, subway tunnels, and basements, that would probably contribute to a significant die off due to suffocation, but I digress.

Another thing that is not considered in the article is diseases. Think about this: In order to put the whole human race in the state of Rhode Island they would need to be packed in like sardines. Now, three words: Ebola, Rabies, Tuberculosis.

Let us assume, for the moment, that there is only one person with each contagion in an infectious form on earth at the time. (A laughable assumption, but I digress.)

With everyone in direct physical contact with everyone else for the jump how many people just got infected?

Let's guess six each, seems fairly reasonable to me.

Now, with those six people infected how long does each contagion take to become transmissible to other people?

I happen to know it takes about 20 days for Rabies to go from infection to full symptoms and death, and it becomes transmissible at around the 10 day mark.

At 10 days how many people would be nearby to infect? Probably not that many actually, by then rioting and murder would have thinned the herd considerably, but not enough to QUELL the infection spreading. Of our starting six let us assume half are still alive: and that they each infect 3 people somehow before they are brought down... We have the beginnings of a zombie apocalypse.

Now Tuberculosis:

Again for the sake of argument let us assume that our patient zero has a highly antibiotic resistant strain: But I also happen to know Tuberculosis takes months to become infectious again... so let us argue that four of his six victims survive to escape Rhode Island, and each infect 6 more people before they are put in an isolation ward somewhere, and so on. How long will it take the fragmented remnants of humanity to contain this vicious and deadly outbreak?

Lastly, Ebola:

This disease I know little about, it is a fairly new pathogen and I am a historian not a doctor, but I know it works fairly fast and is easily transmitted without top flight care, which in the aftermath of the riots following 'The Jump' will not be available. Let us say that it takes 1 week to go from infection to transmission, like the flu. let us say again 3 survive to infect others: but these each infect 6 others, of which 3 survive, and so on... How many would that equal dead at 2 months in...?

3⁷ = 2187.

"A drop in the Bucket, nay the ocean!" you say?

Now consider how many people there actually are at any given time world wide with each of these pathogens, and how many more pathogens besides...

Again, not so much a 'post apocalypse' story as a 'Post Holocaust' story.

 Putting all that science stuff aside a moment, I must admit a post apocalyptic game that does not involve nuclear radiation or zombies is intriguing. The world is in it's current condition but billions of people just go poof for one reason or another. If people were willing to suspend their disbelief to start, it would potentially be fun. But such a game needs more to the plot then mere survival to be successful. PhantomSkyfire, do you have a plot in mind?

*Adjusts glasses*

Actually, changes in volume for air inside the lungs have a corresponding change in volume of the body itself. This means that expelling the air from your lungs will cause no change in the atmospheric pressure as any volume of air you contribute is offset 1:1 by a corresponding fall of the stomach, chest, or shoulders, depending on the exact way a given person is breathing. This means that, while oxygen rationing will likely be important, air pressure will not come into play.

Unless, of course, you try to argue that all the air already present in Rhode Island is still present after the sudden poof, in which case those molecules of air, now superimposed by the people who suddenly appeared, will be shunted out of their bodies by intermolecular repulsion forces at speeds best expressed in terms of c, causing a nuclear explosion the likes of which Earth has never seen. In that case, everyone is dead the moment they teleport there.

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Now that I've had my say about that, I do feel that this is a pretty nifty post-apocalyptic setting.