Here is a scenario for your consideration: What would happen if every single animal on Earth tried to kill every human?
Here are the rules:
- The animals do not gain intelligence except for the fact that they instinctively know the most effective way to kill us. So a bear will go for the jugular, a venomous snake will inject as much venom as it can, wasps will attack in giant swarms, slugs will slowly crawl up your body and attempt to enter your mouth and block your airway to suffocate you since that's all they can do. Assume any animal incapable of drawing blood or injecting venom will try to suffocate you.
- The animals only have instincts for killing humans through direct means. So if a bunch of chimpanzees get inside of a nuclear power plant, they aren't going to know how to cause a meltdown. Disease carrying animals aren't aware of their disease, so a rabid bat won't realize it can do more damage by biting multiple people once than by trying to bite one person to death.
- The animals will continue to care for their survival needs, they will take breaks from trying to kill humans to eat, drink, reproduce, get warm, etc. But when they have directly engaged a human they will not back down, they will fight to the death.
- They animals will be constantly looking for humans except for when they are caring for their own needs, but they do not have any more knowledge of where humans are than they have now. So a rattlesnake will just slither aimlessly across the desert hoping to get lucky, but rats that live in big cities will understand that they will find more humans if they stay there rather than go out in the wilderness.
Now, what happens? Here are our options:
1) Total human extinction. The animals succeed in killing everyone.
2) The end of civilization. Some humans survive but the world is an apocalyptic wasteland, most technology is lost, fortified human settlements are ruled by warlords, etc.
3) Civilization remains intact and most humans survive but at great cost, our standards of living dramatically decrease and many luxuries will be lost, for example most food variety will be lost and what food is available will be bland, no more coffee or tea for most people, the internet is mostly gone or reserved just for essential functions, many common household appliances become rare, recreational travel mostly ceases to exist, etc.
4) Humanity adapts well and while there are some major lifestyle changes, we retain most of our luxuries. The fact that animals want to kill you will just be a normal part of life, we'll keep on going and our knowledge and technology will continue to increase, we'll get to have our colony on Mars and sustainable energy and medicine will continue to be more effective at extending the average lifespan.
5) Total human victory. While it is impossible to exterminate all animals on Earth and doing so would doom the whole ecosystem anyway, the most dangerous animals are exterminated while the ones that pose a lesser threat are easily controlled. Through a combination of effective policy and technology, we will get to a point where the remaining animals are nothing more than a nuisance, only as dangerous as influenza or tornadoes insofar as a few die but most don't have to worry about it at all.
I would say the most likely outcomes are 2 and 3, personally I'd guess about a 2.5. The world won't be post apocalyptic but it will be pretty damn close, most luxuries will be lost, some technology will be lost, and liberal democracy is probably gone, most people will live under harsh, autocratic societies. I would guess a few hundred million humans are directly killed by animals while over a billion are killed by famine and upheaval.
What do you think? Are we humans really up to surviving this?
