Wouldn't 50% of them die at the same time as the creatures that they live inside? Like unexisting 50% of humans would in fact unexist 50% of the bacteria in the humans who went poof.

How does this argument make sense?

Thanos' plan was unmitigated garbage anyway.

Humanity reached 4B in 1975 and hit 8B in 2022. On that basis, if half of humanity died when Thanos snapped his fingers 50 years later we'd be back to 8B people again.

——— Edited to billions not millions because I wrote it while under the influence of stupidity.

That would imply that 50 percent of the snapped people's biomes remained behind. All of the produce in the grocery stores would be covered in an airborne mist of E. coli, and snapped surgeons that were mid-operation would give their patients staph infections, assuming the suriviving surgery team was able to stablize and close them up before they died anyway. Neat.

Also when those snapped people returned with the half of their biomes that also got snapped, you would get a sequel to the diarrhea. Diarrhea 2: Electric Boogapoo.

Killing 50% of your gut bacteria is a big nothing.

These things reproduce on the timescale of hours.

I kill 90% of my sourdough starter every time I feed it, and it bounces back the same day.

Nah the 50% left would quickly replace what was snapped away to the limits of their environment. They multiply fast.

E. Coli reproduces so fast that a population can double in size in half an hour, and human feces is 50% bacteria by weight.

If your gut microbiome got snapped it'd be back so fast you wouldn't even notice. Bacteria are kinda scary.

Or the 50% of all people that got snapped took 50% of the gut bacteria with them, leaving the rest with no loss to their gut biomes. (taps forehead)

50% of all ≠ 50% per person

Come to think about it, whenever a macroscopic organism - ie animals - died it would leave behind about half the microbes living on and in them. When those poor fools got dusted it should have left a puddle of horrible slime on the ground.

She makes a compelling argument.

Subscribes

Thanos' snap wouldn't kill 50% of each survivors' gut microbiome, it would kill 50% of all the lil buggies that compromise all gut microbiomes, and if the snap effects individuals randomly, you'd see a normal distribution (I think, I haven't taken stats in a decade). So some survivors would retain 100% of their microbiome, some would lose it all, with a bell curve in between, probably with the peak around 50%.

I want the show where the snapped people come back and then the survivors have to awkwardly explain that they have gotten remarried and otherwise moved on.

Look, we're in the realm where the guy decided to remove 50% of all life... as a resource conservation attempt.

Lovely movies, but the "guy's a literal death cultist" required way less suspension of disbelief. Jilted incel Thanos pining after an annoyed Aubrey Plaza or whoever would have been way more timely, too.

But if we're doing it this way... 50% of the plants, algae and plankton would have died too. XKCD MUST have figured out what that'd do to the atmosphere by now, right?

Does that mean for the people that got snapped, some will leave some of their sperm behind?

And pregnant woman might leave their fetus behind.