Not a Clever Idea
Malthusian theory (arithmetic vs. exponential …) is well-known. It was not a Prophetic or Satanic inspiration. You didn’t even need a genius to make such a prediction. All one needed was simple arithmetic to calculate humans versus food growths.
Nonetheless, if the prediction of millions starving to death failed, it was because humans doubled, tripled and quadrupled production of grain and farm products as their population grew. On the other side, mass industrial production came to fulfill the needs and desires of the masses of food demands.
But there were other forces working on the ‘developed’ humans. The foremost was greed. A Western analysis of the mortgage crisis and collapse of a hundred leading banks in the USA in 2008 used one word to describe the reason: greed. The material world has no answer to this malady because this is not a physical sickness. It is Satanic in its origin. It can be suppressed, and even eradicated, but with the help of Prophetic prescriptions alone. But you spell the word ‘Prophetic,’ and heads turn away in denial. They turn away to what their political, social and intellectual leaders – the new gods and priests – have to advice.
The Prophet had said: When you depend on other than Allah, He leaves you to them, and they deal with you as they like.
So, as the population kept growing, although manageable, the new gods, knowing the demands of their devotees, began to evince symptoms of heart attack: they must offer suggestions to curb the human growth, if the future is to be as rosy as the present (rosy for a chosen few, although unbearable for neglected many).
What was their suggestion? It was quite charitable: reduce the population of the world to leave one-fifth living. Four-fifth may have to be removed. The suggestion was discussed in chosen circles: the top notch elites, the corporate owners, the think tanks. The masses didn’t know anything about it.
What was the logic behind such a suggestion anyway? It was: the resources on this earth are known. They are being depleted. As Bertrand Russell had put it: ‘We are at present over-drawing from the bank of nature.’ Soon they would disappear. All minerals, including oil, would be depleted to such levels that their extraction would be economically uneconomical. People would be forced to decide that leaving them there, deep in the earth, would be a wise strategy.
But they were given hope: we will move to the Moon, or Mars, or with ever advancing space technology, to another earth-like planet, able to support life, revolving around another star. But day-dreaming gave way to realities. Life isn’t possible on either Moon or Mars. Despite tremendous advance in space-craft speeds, travel to another planet, in another star-system would take some 5500 years. So, what’s to be done? Removing a few million each from Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, did not reduce the pressure of population. It was too little.
The conclusion was: perhaps a secretive way to reduce the population had to be explored. Would a virus do?
While the false gods make their next move, (or perhaps they have already made a move), let us consider the consequences of reduction of population not by 4/5th which sounded to them, and to us, a little too drastic, but by half. Let’s say the earth’s population is down by half. What happens? Wouldn’t the life-term of the resources of the earth: oil, minerals, agricultural produce, double up? Wouldn’t the reduced population enjoy a luxurious life for twice the period, than what is fearfully projected at present? Of course, they think, yes. So, while they keep saying enthusiastically, yes, yes, to each other, let us look into some of the consequences of the removal of half of the earth’s population.
Almost the first casualty that the halved population of humans would face is transport. Continents, Nations, and Cities are at the moment deeply and intricately interconnected. Let us consider a large City: Tokyo, New York, Shanghai, Calcutta, and many others. They are around 100 km. or wider, end to end. Now, imagine the city population halved. A city of 300 km. circumference, was well connected earlier by taxis, trucks, buses, metros, all plying through with humans and goods: vegetable, fruits, other farm products, medicines, medical equipment, home appliance, spare parts, raw materials for the humming and chumming industries.
Now, facilities that were there before halving of the population was done, would still be needed in the same range and volume. The bus carrying children to schools is halved in the number of occupants. But the bus should still be there collecting students from the same area as before. Milk and dairy products, daily supplied, will still need daily transport. Halved workers of a factory would need the same number of transport vehicles as before. Hospital staff would still need to be picked up from various corners of the city ..and so on. You can halve the population, but you cannot reduce the city to half its size. Tall buildings cannot be halved, even if they are half empty. So, most facilities of former times should still be serving and operating. But the number of drivers is halved. Metro, bus, and lorry drivers are halved. And they cannot be replaced with ordinary drivers who drive their personal vehicles. You need trained people. But the halved population will not be able to provide the replacements. Training fresh manpower would not be easy. There will be demand for skilled manpower from other fronts too, and, further, recruiting, training and deploying will consume time. Meanwhile, schools, hospitals, institutions have to run. Without immediately fulfilling the shortage, schools, hospitals, institutes will collapse.
If a city’s population is halved, repair and maintenance would become a gigantic problem. You have now a repair and maintenance men available 24 hours in every large facility. Now, a team halved is not a team. So that, if the lift-system of a 20-story building, (not to speak of 50-60 stories) fails, you have no one to make it run again if the team is missing. Residents above 5th level would be stuck in their apartments. If the city is, say, Delhi, Dubai and the like, those in the top stories would be roasted if the air-conditioning system is broken.
A person suffering heart attack, needing immediate care, has to be taken to a hospital, perhaps 80 km away, because the closest hospital has been closed. He has to wait longer to get a taxi, and longer to reach the hospital, which is perhaps limping because of shortage of doctors and medicines, and especially, a heart specialist who is dead. The heart patient succumbs before reaching the hospital.
Loss of skilled workers, specialists and experts, of every field, will hit the city hard. A surgeon cannot be replaced by a dentist. If the operator of a CNC machine in an industry is dead, the whole line of machining and assembly collapses. The industry will have to shut down. Even the death of a refrigerator mechanic of the neighborhood would have serious repercussions. It is not comfort but rather preservation of food and medicine, which had already been a big hassle to procure, would be of concern. Prices of every commodity and service will shoot up. The grocery would still need air conditioners, refrigerators and general lighting despite its sales halved. The owner must increase his prices. The sewage system of the city, employing a 1000 staff, would still need a 1000 people if it would not allow it clogged, because, although half the population is gone, the city to be served is still of the same size and expanse. If the computer system fails, thousands would sit idle for hours and days. Airports would suffer most in service. Remove the computers and immigrant officers will have no way to check on forged passports. Universities will become dis-functional. They had a professor teaching microbiology. He is in the grave. What do the students do?
It is elements of destruction that will thrive. Rats and rodents, flies and mosquitoes, bed-bugs and roaches, frogs and lizards, will have a field day enjoying the free spaces, empty houses, parks and fields. Cows, pigs, sheep will leave their carcasses to rot, spread foul odor and morbid diseases in every street, every sector, every region.
For want of manure, abundance of insects and parasites, loss of the helping hand of a wife or a husband and the will to work, grain production would register all-time low in the farms, causing shortages in the cities, pushing up prices of all commodities: of farms, mills, and industries.
Humans would be the greatest casualty. Everyone would carry the grief of a loved one. Everyone meeting another would have a sad story to narrate. Every home would have an atmosphere of gloom and a pall of melancholy looming large. Everyone would prefer silence, speaking out only the necessary words, and then falling tongue-tied. The atmosphere would be unbearably oppressive. The question most common between the people would be: how is so and so? (meaning: is he or she still alive)? Those who lost a wife or a husband would be heart-broken, with little desire to carry on living. With dejection well-spread and depression high, output in farms, offices and factories will fall beyond the expectation of the surveyors. The GDP will plummet to record low.
With the closure of industries and big businesses, share and stock market would collapse, gold and other safe-haven assets would be hit hard. Personal savings would disappear, value of digital money will evaporate causing losses to the tune of billions and trillions. Health-care systems will be incurably sick.
Women will be the most to lose. Victims of viral epidemics are, generally, more males than females, roughly 1:2. Wars, the favorite pastime of the humans, remove males more than females. If a city’s population is halved, there will be twice or more the number of surviving females than males. Without the skill of males, and following the social practices and norms, large number of females would be idling. And with their counterpart-males in the dust, they would go hungry, impoverished and ‘feed’ for the hawks!
To halve the population therefore, is to double the remaining people’s misery. A general decline and fall in standards, which cannot be reversed, would lead mankind to a downhill, that will only end at the gates of the stone-age.
In short, reduction of human population, as was (and, who knows, is being proposed), in order to continue with a luxurious or even a comfortable life for the rest, doesn’t seem to be a clever idea.
Now, let not anyone tell us: Has not your own Prophet predicted that homes will be for the Devils? or, has he not predicted numerousness of women outnumbering men most grossly? or, has he not given you to understand that end-of-the-time wars would be fought with bows and arrows? Our answer is, our Prophet has made such predictions, and many others, but he has not directed us to fulfill them.
