You wake up and you're the only one alive. What do you do?

[Laggartha]

I've just started watching I Think We're Alone Now and this is the premise. I'm only 8 minutes in and we've just seen how our hero spends his time.

I think it's a fascinating idea so I had to pause it to consider what I would do. What would you do?

Well you couldn’t put the kettle on as there would be no electricity. Your dinner might be a problem as you couldn’t cook it on a cooker and the supermarkets would be empty.

Dead - actual bodies. Kill myself. I can't think beyond that point. I have DH and three young boys.

Vanished - I watch enough of this telly to know they'll come back and I won't ACTUALLY be the only person. So first I'd go scouting for other people, call my family, check FB etc. Cry. Get drunk. Lose a week on pain. Check my supplies and go to the local shops, gain entry and stock up on pain killers, first aid kits and long life food. My biggest issue is I don't drive. Find my Mom's key and move into her house. It would be too painful in mine.

@GoLightlyontheEarth

Well you couldn’t put the kettle on as there would be no electricity. Your dinner might be a problem as you couldn’t cook it on a cooker and the supermarkets would be empty.

I'm not up on this stuff, but how much of that is automated tho? How long would it all continue without someone to press buttons and levers?

Go back to sleep again and hope it is just a nightmare, and that when I wake up next everything will be back to normal (pre-covid normal ideally)

I think I would end up staying in my house, sleeping in my young son's bed with his cuddly toys (who all have personalities already) and writing books and books of everything I can remember about my life and his life.
Eventually I'd finish that and processed the change and have started to adjust to no proper food/water/sanitation/medicine and I might decide to take the books somewhere significant and do something dramatic (possibly suicide, maybe not).

How long do frozen eggs and sperm etc last? Just thinking, if you did have children using frozen sperm then presumably, once they were adults, they could make the choice (it would be creepy if it was an expectation) to do what you did and have their own children through using the now 20 year old (or whatever) frozen sperm. That would completely eliminate the need for sex, incest or inbreeding if you could do it for a few generations.

But I guess that would only work if the power to the sperm freezers was still going.

@SleepingStandingUp

Dead - actual bodies. Kill myself. I can't think beyond that point. I have DH and three young boys.

Vanished - I watch enough of this telly to know they'll come back and I won't ACTUALLY be the only person. So first I'd go scouting for other people, call my family, check FB etc. Cry. Get drunk. Lose a week on pain. Check my supplies and go to the local shops, gain entry and stock up on pain killers, first aid kits and long life food. My biggest issue is I don't drive. Find my Mom's key and move into her house. It would be too painful in mine.

Would not being able to drive be such a huge issue? Just wear a seatbelt and teach yourself. No-one is going to complain if you crash the porsche through the windows of Harrods.

I’ve thought about this myself. But in my world literally every person has vanished so no bodies. I would probably:
Go explore a shopping mall/ department store trying all the clothes
Visit inside Buckingham palace
Have a nosey at other people’s houses
Stock up on food from the supermarket to keep me going
Travel to different counties exploring the sights
Then after all that fun I would kill myself

My kids and family dead? I’d kill myself.

Mysterious note saying they’d be back in a few years and not to worry, I’d find the coolest fastest van I could find and go exploring, eat and drink what I want. Rootle through private government and military documents. Find a whole bunch of dogs and horses to play with a ride. Find a giant library and stock up on books. Lots of music.

Then get bored and try to find humans.

@apalledandshocked the issue is I have no car so assuming someone disappeared and left one, yes you have a point and the local store of raid also have a petrol station so likely to be cars there at any time.

Would I want to travel far though if Dboys could reappear at any point?

I'm not sure I have the survival skills for this

My 15yo DS and I discussed this thoroughly earlier.

Me: Take a nice car from the neighbours, drive to GoOutdoors hoping to be able to break in to get camping stove, cooking equipment, battery powered lights etc. Break in to Tesco for a load of water and non-perishables to see me through about 2-3 weeks. Take a load of Oramorph from the chemist with a view to killing myself with it later on.
Take all the scratchcards I can from the kiosk (I know I can’t claim any winnings but figure it’ll be fun to scratch them all to see if there’s any big wins there) Grab some magazines and books to keep me entertained.
Spend one day going to nearest big city to hopefully break in to somewhere I can get a Rolex and diamond jewellery and some fancy clothes and bags just to see what it’s like for a bit then stay at a posh hotel in a huge bed for the night.
Spend a bit of time nosing around fancy houses.
Another day I might go to the coast or to local mountains.

After a couple of weeks I’ll have had enough so I’ll take myself to the cemetery where I’ll sit at my parents’ grave and guzzle down as much Oramorph as I can to hopefully knock me in to deep sleep I’ll never wake up from.

DS: Take a car and hopefully drive well enough to get to Manchester, find a good sports shop to get the best boots and ball available then head to Old Trafford where he’ll break in and play on the pitch for a bit.

(He also reckons he could get to America on a jet ski towing a few other jet skis full of fuel but I told him not to be so ridiculous 😉)

Do you think this is what happens when you die?

I once read a book that said according to a tradition (I think maybe Inuit) when you die you don't really die until everyone who remembers you dies.

About half of the story was set in this 'not completely dead' city where the recently dead protagonist encounters lots of people who remember her from the 'real' world and the people who remember her are interesting, the doorman from an apartment block she passes, the buss driver.

Something terrible is happening in the real world with the population being wiped out and as it does her city shrinks.

Check that there are spare batteries for the vibey. 💥

In 'The last train' (a small group of strangers are frozen and wake 50 years after an apocalypse) several of the survivors died almost immediately to wild dogs. The wildlife would get ya! No one running the zoos. kennels, labs, animals running rampant like 12 monkeys or Last of us 1. I'd never stop worrying I wasn't actually the last person, this was some kind of experiment or there were tons of people just living normally elsewhere like Divergent or a million other dystopian worlds.

I know the electricity and net would go out very shortly after people disappeared. But I assume without people doing all the important people things like running nuclear reactors and fighting fires and ensuring all the plague monkeys stay locked up, keeping dams regulated and fixing flood defences and just everything, life wouldn't last too long. I'd be a terrible final human anyway, disabled with multiple health issues, can't have kids, struggle to walk. I'd be very good at being alone though, I only see another person once a week. All the risks and apocalypse and such notwithstanding, I could probably chill alone until the end of days with no fuss.

I'm pretty sure I would kill myself quite quickly. I have read the whole thread and none of the other options appeal to me. I feel sad now, almost in tears just thinking about it, I really don't think I could cope without my kids and no support network.

Maybe if it had happened before I had my children I might feel differently, but I expect in the long run anyone in this situation would end up taking their own lives.

@yumscrumfatbum

This is the story in one of my favourite Twilight Zone episodes. The man in that takes his lunch break in the bank vault, there's a suggestion he prefers the company of a good book to actual people. He emerges as a lone survivor of some great disaster, scenes of devastation. He goes to the library and then to the supermarket which no longer has doors or windows. He makes his way back and drops his glasses smashing them. The story ends here with the knowledge that without his glasses he won't be able to read. As a child this bit annoyed me, surely he can make his way to the Opticians?!

An unforgettable episode of Twilight Zone ! Yes I also thought " surely he could go to the optometrist's and find some specs "

@MarshaBradyo

Sounds bad I wouldn’t last long. I eat and drink alcohol. Freak out

I always think back to the episode where person could stop time and they stopped everyone as a nuclear bomb was falling

I can’t remember if it was the Twilight Zone or Tales of the Unexpected

Was it based on Arthut C Clarke's "All the Time in the World"? Short story. On youtube as audiobook.
"

I’m sorry it has upset you @ChocOrange1

I've considered this scenario for a while. One of the things I'd worry about is the astronauts on the ISS. They'd still be alive, they're not on earth. But they'd be unable to return home without NASA.
I'd try to get them to launch off in a little pod and splash down off the south coast, then I'd tow the pod in with my little fishing boat and cut it open with power tools and a compressor on the beach and have some handsome, clever Astro-engineers to survive with.

And if people want to have provisions to kill themselves I'd recommend raiding a vet, rather than a pharmacy.

Honestly? Just find the quickest most effective and possible way to kill myself, too. What is the point without the people i love? I can't even finish reading this thread because I just keep thinking 'but but but....'.
My kids, parents, partner and friends all gone? Couldn't do it.

Am I the only one who has spent too much time researching what home I would take over? It’s actually quite hard to find somewhere that’s fully set up to be off grid that isn’t in the wilds of Scotland (not that there’s anything wrong with the wilds of Scotland but I think for self sufficiency purposes it’d be a lot more practical to be somewhere warmer).

@GoLightearth I've got the book Gardening for the Zombie Apocalypse, a greenhouse and a few boxes of matches. I won't starve .

Oh the world would stop running (in terms of electricity/water etc). You’d have to break into shops and take all the matches, battery operated lamps, camping gear, bottled water etc. Live off long-life foods, or learn to hunt...

I reckon I could learn to love being alive, despite grieving for everyone I loved and the life I no longer could have. A whole new world would open up to me!

I've also got enough food to last a few weeks and there's always the cat.