Spoilers for Avengers Infinity War and Endgame…

Let’s talk about the snap. Instantly, half of all living beings are dust. Then the carnage starts.

Fifty percent of all cars, trucks (and any other single-pilot aircraft, etc.) instantly run wildly out of control. The post-credit scene in Infinity War shows a hint of this, but it mathematics suggests it would be much worse on a busy freeway. Even if you, as a driver, survived the snap, there’s 50/50 odds that the car behind you didn’t, and is now hurtling out of control toward you. Highways, especially around cities, would become the biggest traffic accident pile-ups even seen. It would take weeks, maybe months for them to get cleared. Of the 50% that survived, that number is already plummeting…

Catastrophic ood shortages would immediately follow. More than half of the farmers are gone, as are half of the truck drivers to transport food, and half of the factory workers to process food and bring it to market. Despite being (now less than) half the mouths to feed, there would immediately be panicked runs on all grocery stores. Fuel would run out within a day or two. Massive, worldwide riots would ignite. Over the coming weeks, millions more die of starvation and at the hands of fellow man. These are prime conditions for diseases to break out, so there’s a definite four-horsemen theme to world conditions at this point. Funny how the movies kind of gloss over this part.

In this light, Stark’s insistence in not ‘rolling back the clock’ as a plot point in Endgame represents a humanitarian failure that dwarfs even that of the snap itself.

So, consider what would happen to a world, finally settling back toward stability, whose population suddenly (more than) doubles. Intricate supply chains would never be able to adapt quickly enough. It’s not like farmers would’ve been growing twice as much food just in case. A fresh round of famine and pestilence and Kardashev-scale looting would again ensue, this time against badly weakened infrastructure and society. Millions of those freshly unsnapped would perish within the first few days or weeks. Survivors would have PTSD and numerous other mental health issues at a scale far beyond anything that could be reasonably addressed.

But hey, Spider Man gets to take a vacation so it’s all fine, right?

P.S. Calling it now–at least one of the Avengers has secretly been a Skrull since the 90s.