What If No One Else Was Born? | Unveiled

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What If No One Else Was Born?</h4>

Think back to when you last celebrated your birthday. Hopefully you were made to feel pretty special with cake and presents and a party. Maybe you marched through your home town with a huge balloon and the birthday song played on repeat. What might come as a little surprise then, is that you’re actually not that special at all. By current figures, even on the exact day that you were born, you were only one of around 385,000 babies born in total on Earth, during that 24-hour time period. Which is about 260 a minute. Which means that, globally, approximately four babies are born every single second. That’s four, and four, and four… and you get the point.

And remember, that’s only on the specific date and year that you were born. The same thing happens every single year - before and after you arrived - which means more and more and more people to share your birthday with. Of course, really it’s not quite as simple as all that. For instance, birth rates have risen and fallen over time. We also know that certain periods of the year tend to witness more births than others. But still, it’s said that any one person probably shares their “special day” with more than 20 million others, at least. The only serious anomaly being if you were born on February 29th, during a leap year.

So, already we’ve set the scene for the question at the top of today’s video… and triggered the realization that, even on your birthday, you’re still just one of millions more. Such is the size, scope and longevity of the human race. So, and to suddenly switch from a mood of celebration to one of creeping, ominous darkness and dystopia… what would happen if actually none of the previously mentioned statistics were relevant anymore, because birth itself disappeared?

This is Unveiled, and today we’re answering the extraordinary question; what if no one else was born?

In November 2022, the global population passed 8 billion people for the first time. That number has more than tripled in the last 70 years as, in 1950, it was around 2.5 billion. And while millions of people do sadly die every year, as well, far more are born. The most widely cited figures say that there are between 60 and 70 million deaths every year versus between 130 and 140 million births. Around twice as many people are born than die. In general, these numbers show the remarkable growth of our species into a wide-reaching and dynamic population. It hasn’t always been this way, though.

Examining historical trends, the birth rate has fluctuated significantly over time. In the pre-modern era - the middle ages and up to at least the mid-nineteenth century - factors such as high infant mortality rates, limited medical knowledge, and largely agricultural lifestyles all contributed, to some degree, to higher birth rates. Families needed more children to ensure survival and support in their daily lives.

The twentieth century brought about a transformative shift, however. With advancements in medicine, increased access to education, and improvements in living standards, birth rates in many developed countries started to decline. This phenomenon, known as the demographic transition, is characterized by a shift from high birth and death rates to lower ones. And, even though the population as a whole has continually risen, we’ve seen birth rates continue to fall in line with this pattern. Long story short, people today have far fewer children on average, but far more of those children survive into adulthood.

All of that said, today’s topic is wholly hypothetical. In the real world, we’re not expecting to see an “end of birth” scenario or anything even close to that. In fact, many demographers predict that after a period of decline, birth rate could well increase (and potentially quickly) in the near-to-far future. For a true “world without birth”, then, we have to imagine a place where, for some reason, even the possibility of humans giving birth has disappeared. Could anything really happen to cause that? In a word, no. Or, at least it’s extremely, extremely, extremely unlikely.

In a science fiction dystopia, we might see the spread of some kind of biological factor, like a virus that specifically affects reproductive systems, with a 100 percent infection rate. Or perhaps widespread infertility due to unknown environmental changes. Or maybe some kind of technological disaster leading to an ultra-specific biological ruin. All of those circumstances work in fiction, but are very difficult to envisage in real life. Nevertheless, if we imagine that the seemingly unthinkable has happened, and birth really does just stop… then the immediate and long-term consequences are incomparably huge.

In the first days and weeks after the end of birth, there’d surely be panic and confusion worldwide. Until the impossible truth became an accepted reality, it would just be too difficult to believe. Next, in the first few months and years, we’d all begin to truly realize the problems that we’d be facing. All sorts of societal structure would face inevitable collapse due to the total absence of new generations to keep them running. Emergency services, schools, healthcare, governments. Food production, energy use, the economy. None can last so long as humanity isn’t regenerating itself. Of course the global population would fall, but not in any kind of natural order. Instead, we’d lose millions of people every week, and those people would be leaving behind an endlessly aging remainder. Before long there would be far too much that needs to be done for the dwindling few that are left to do it.

Clearly, the survival of humanity in this scenario would be the ultimate race against time. The exact timeline until extinction would depend on factors such as life expectancy, disease prevalence, and environmental conditions. Although, it’s a certainty that the prospects for all of those would get worse and worse, with fewer and fewer people alive during every passing day. 

For the absolute last generation to live, they’d find themselves in an extraordinary predicament. As the final torchbearers of humanity, their lives would be drastically different from ours, saddled with the weight of an entire species' legacy on their shoulders. The very last humans might choose to form tight-knit communities, driven by a shared awareness of their unique situation. Or they might unavoidably become split up and spread out. Meanwhile, treatment of the “last born” would be another major point of interest. Because, if it were possible to determine who the very last birth was, then that individual could quickly become a symbol of hope. Or, their fate could bend the opposite way, to where they’re viewed as the ultimate harbinger of doom. In either case, this hypothetical person would be forced to carry the emotional burden of being the final representative of a once-thriving species.

In the long-term, the eventual absence of humans (and human activity) would have profound consequences on the planet. There are many predictions suggesting that, if humans were to disappear, we’d see Earth enter into a sustained period of ecological restoration. That we’d see nature reclaiming urban areas and wildlife flourishing in the absence of human interference. However, while that may be true, we’d also see a prevalence of technological ruins. The cities of yesteryear left like wounds pockmarking the surface. And, also, although the negative impacts of humankind on the rest of the natural world are well documented… the relatively sudden removal of us from the system might not be such a good thing, either. With the loss of a dominant species triggering potentially cascading effects on many (or all) other species.

One way we might get out of our birthless predicament would be to head life off at the other end, as well, by preventing death. Certainly, in the face of extinction, the pursuit of immortality would intensify. And, as more and more humans die off, those that are left might become increasingly desperate to just try something, anything, to preserve themselves for future years. In a civilization that’s effectively closing down, it’s hard to imagine that something as energy and labor intensive as a cryonics lab, for example, would remain up and running, so it’s not like we’d all be openly freezing ourselves in the hope of a resurrection. But perhaps many would place their faith in digital immortality; in uploading a semblance of their own consciousness onto a hard drive or into the cloud, again in the hope of one day being reborn, or re-uploaded.

At the very end of the story, the disappearance of humans doesn’t guarantee that life, in some form, would never re-emerge here. The history of Earth has witnessed multiple mass extinctions, followed by the rise of new species. And, here, we’re only really imagining one species - our own - going extinct. Therefore, if conditions were suitable, evolution seemingly could give rise to another group of comparably intelligent beings in the distant future. But, ultimately there is no way to know whether that would or wouldn’t happen.

For now, the hypothetical scenario of a world without any new births invites us to reflect on the fragile nature of human existence, in general. While there is a deep interconnectedness between us and the wider ecosystems of Earth, it’s a very intricate balance that’s required for our survival. And yet, as we discussed at the beginning, even during your most special day - your birthday - you’re really only ever one of millions more, doing the exact same thing. Life is at once eternal and fleeting, deeply personal and entirely average. But, however you find yourself feeling about it at any one moment in time, it’s a relief that life does find a way. Because that’s what would happen if no one else was born.