For whatever reason, you are the last human on Earth. So what do you do? Eat like a king? Move into Buckingham Palace? Drive fast? Blow things up? Be naked all the time? Or would you pretend you weren’t alone? How long would you last?
So you wake up one day and find that you’re the only person left in the world. Kind of cool, right? No obligations, no rules, no limits. Go nuts!
1. Enjoy the good things, while you can.
Actually, go for the exotic fruits first. If your mangos and bananas are imported from overseas, chances are they’ll be hard to get to. So eat them while you can, and enjoy every last bite.
2. Secure Your Fuel Source
You might think that with no one stopping you, you could go anywhere! But not so fast! All those abandoned cars, boats, and planes you see lying around will be useless in about 2 years when their fuel goes stale. Guess you’ll be sticking around. But for how long?
3. Find Shelter
If water, food, and shelter are your basic needs, shelter would be the easiest to come by. You’d literally have a world of homes to choose from! But be careful where you settle down.
Cities would become dangerous, since without proper maintenance, they’d start to fall apart pretty quickly. Nature’s elements: rain, frost, and heat, would take their toll. Rot and mold would become widespread, and vegetation would crack through concrete and break through glass. But even if you were to fight back against nature’s reclamation of the land, all it takes is one bolt of lightning to start a city-wide fire. And you can’t call the fire department. So run for the hills!
4. Protect Yourself
But even the country isn’t all that safe. First of all, there are predators you’d need to defend against. Wild dogs, feral cats… bears… But you’d only have to worry about them as long as you could still breathe. There are more than 400 nuclear power plants in the world. And once their automated safety systems began to fail without human supervision, there would be meltdowns across the planet, rendering many regions simply uninhabitable.
5. Secure Your Food Source
In terms of food, the city would be your best bet. Supermarkets have enough canned and frozen food to last you for decades! Whereas in the country, crops and livestock would start to dwindle without proper care or protection from predators. But if natural is more your style, you’d have to go back to the old ways of hunting with a spear or a bow, since ammunition would be limited and harder to come by. Maybe you could grow your own little vegetable garden, but that would cut into your water resources.
6. You Need Water to survive
Without other humans, you’d be without electricity. Water pumping stations and treatment works would shut down, and the fresh water kept in reservoirs would go stale quite quickly. So you could rely on bottled water, and you’d probably have thousands of liters to go through, but eventually, you’d have to learn how to purify your own.
7. Get Smart
Of course, you would have to teach yourself a lot of things, but lucky for you, you’ve got a lot of time on your hands, and millions of books out there with all the information you’d need to survive effectively on your own. So, while it might be hard at first, you could technically survive as the last human on Earth. But would you really want to?
Humans evolved together as social creatures in order to survive. We joined forces against hunger and harsh weather; and built families and communities to share stories, empathize, and keep each other happy and healthy. Human contact has been scientifically proven to build trust and reduce stress. So, while it’s apt to cramp your style, be glad it’s a small world, we need each other more than we think!
Sources
- Hudson, John. 2010. “Last Person On Earth–What Would You Do?“. The Atlantic. Accessed November 15 2019.
- “Why We Need Each Other“. 2019. Psychology Today. Accessed November 15 2019.
- Carey, Benedict. 2018. “New Research Focuses On The Power Of Physical Contact“. Nytimes.Com. Accessed November 15 2019.
I would storm area 51 and have fun with all the aliens.