Back in the day, before I was blessed with the greatest girlfriend of all time, I used to go on the prowl like a tiger, looking for girls to date. Little did I know, being 5’6’’ and 130lbs soaking wet wasn’t really considered attractive by America’s standards. This got me thinking about one of the most common rejection lines, “I wouldn’t go out with you if we were the last two people on Earth.” I’ve been thinking about this line literally and decided it’s one of the dumbest phrases of all time.
Let’s pretend like the world split in half and everyone fell into the giant crack, landing on molten lava except you and a potential mate. Basically, you’re the last two people on Earth. You find this person, fall in love, have children, and human civilization is saved as we know it, right? Wrong.
If you take a moment to think about it, after the first generation, the gene pool becomes a puddle. The second generation means siblings marrying siblings. The third generation means your grand kids are also your cousins. The risk for genetic defects skyrockets because, in small, inbred populations, there’s a much higher chance that both parents carry the same recessive gene from shared ancestors. That overlap increases the odds of recessive disorders like cystic fibrosis and sickle cell anemia showing up in future generations (thanks High School IB Biology).
After doing some Google research, it turns out the minimum viable population for species survival is somewhere in the hundreds or thousands. Generations of inbreeding leads to genetic diseases and sterility. Scientifically speaking, there’s no such thing as humanity bouncing back from an “Adam and Eve” scenario.
Long story short, the world would end in a bang… just not the type of bang that reproduces offspring.