Tipping point

Written 5-13-16 Written 5-13-16
I like reading EOTW stories, movies and such; whether it’s the zombie apocalypse, or just a big meteor.
But reading them makes me wonder, just what is the tipping point?
Take a plague, for instance, at what mortality rate does society break down?
We can easily recover from a local calamity, for there are always people elsewhere who can come in and help restore order. But what if it’s a disease that begins to kill off some portion of humanity everywhere?
(Of course, we cannot count the Zombie Apocalypse, because it is always assumed that 100% of the people bitten become zombies. This is similar to the myth of vampirism and lycanthropy. Hmmm…that makes me wonder if anyone has ever done a zombie story where the bite is not 100% fatal? Because, as you know, with any disease, there is always some portion of the population that is resistant. But I digress.)

Losing 30-60% of your population during the years of the Black Death may have reduced a countries population dramatically; but people were able to regroup and carry on. This is, I think, because there was not as much knowledge to lose back then.
Today, there is so much specialized knowledge that we would be hard pressed to recover.

Back then, if you lost your village blacksmith, you could go to the next village and use that blacksmith. Difficult and inconvenient, yes; but not the end of the world. Heck, you could always hitch your horse up to a bunch of thick branches lashed together, with a sharpened end, and still plow your fields.
Today, if you lose a car factory, it’s not the end of the world; but what if you also lose the oil refineries, pipeline distribution, electricity to keep things moving, trucks and railroads to deliver all the pieces to the factory?
You can’t just go to the next city, for they are facing the same troubles.

So, at what point do the doctors get overwhelmed? When too many of them don’t show up to the hospital?
When do the police not go on patrol because they are sick or do not want to get sick/?When do the guys running the dam or coal fired power plant not show up to work?
How long before the electricity stops?

If doctors become in short supply, what about the everyday sick and injured? You will still have car wrecks, women in labor, broken bones, etc.
If the disease is killing 30%; if another 10-20% of people who would normally get help from a hospital are added to that; at what point does it all fall apart?

We have so far to fall, compared to the farmers of 1350, that I don’t think it would take as high a percentage rate for everything to spiral out of control. I just wonder where the tipping point is.