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.
Yeah, I have been on antibiotics that wiped out most of my gut bacteria. It was easy to upset my stomach for a few months, then I was fine.
I had the same experience with norovirus this spring.
Probiotics did the trick, but it was t so much fun.
You took antibiotics for a viral infection?
Yeah, the antibiotics were first for a UTI. They left me on them when noro hit, which made the noro experience much worse.
Probiotics came next & were part of the solution.
Okay fine I’ll take it… You doing okay now?
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?
If it’s all a truly random selection, which I believe it was, then half of all people would cease to exist, leaving half of their gut biomes behind, still alive (albeit briefly). I guess the end result would be the snapped people leaving behind a mist of gross intestinal bacteria which would itself mostly die out without a host. Meaning much more than half of all gut biome bacteria would be killed as a result.
Of course it would make more sense to consider a person and their gut flora as one being, but the joke is about how stupid the initial conception of Thanos’ plan is, not creating an academically rigorous argument.
This brings up an interesting point. The snap would have to run a multi pass check to make sure that by killing half of all organic life, it’s not causing the other half to die off. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be confirming to the will of the user, but then does it “scan” individual life types independently or as an ecosystem unto themselves, in which case is there precedence? Do food producing things get a pass, because otherwise the snap is just shortcut the process for half of the population. If it does leave the food producing ones alone, then really he’s just snapping away apex predators.
Each bacteria is an individual living organism. So I’m guessing that (within this framework) the humans disappeared, but only ~50% (it would average out to 50% across the entire population) of their gut biome (or I guess any other living organism within them) disappeared.
And as such, in people who did not disappear, ~50% (on avg) of their gut biome also disappeared.
The math checks out…
So you are saying for the 50%who disappeared, 50% of their gut bacteria fell out (and died)
Yes I agree with this analysis
Nah the 50% left would quickly replace what was snapped away to the limits of their environment. They multiply fast.
As someome who is fucking stupid, what ghe hell is a gut biome and why would 50% of the world population disappearing affect it at all? And why would people be power blasting their bathrooms with diarrhea
Your gut is full of friendly bacteria that help you digest your food and keep everything running smoothly and efficiency. This vast community of bacteria is called a gut microbiome. People with gut problems like inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome tend to have a much less diverse gut micribiome. Taking a broad spectrum antibiotic can devastate your gut microbiome, letting the bad bacteria thrive while the good ones are offstage, sometimes leading to some of the same symptoms that people with IBD and IBS might encounter, and it can take months to recover.
Killing 50% of all living things might include 50% of gut microbia, resulting in the potential for bloating, gassiness, stomach cramps, and potentially diarrhoea.
Ahhh that makes sense. Thank you for this explanation, I appreciate it very much.
You’re very welcome.
Because it just makes sense. Snap, diarrhea. It’s simple.
Oh, okay i figured that much but wasnt sure
I was kidding around, it’s a silly leap, and the post is silly, so I was just suggesting something silly myself. Someone else seems to have done the legwork though.
So was I! I’m having a good time here, you having a good time?
I haven’t had a good time in years.
50% of each living thing, so each kind of bacteria you have in your gut is reduced by 50%
Not 50% of all the bacteria
I have a math problem for you.
10x0,5 + 20x0,5 + 40x0,5 = 5+10+20= 35
(10+20+40)x0,5 = 70x0,5 = 35
You see where this is going?
There’s never an equal number of each bacteria though.
So there’s an odd number of each kind of bacteria in the gut?
Also, one bacteria isn’t equal to another of a totally different kind, there’s some that can survive better than others, there’s good and bad bacteria that has a high survivability against the invasions of others.
There’s probably trillions of different kinds of bacteria and each one has its own capabilities…and let’s not forget, they share genetic information with each other all the time.
So after the snap, there’s probably a lot of people who have fucked up gut biomes and other people with extremely healthy ones. Because there’s a different quantity of each kind of bacteria inside of each living thing.
That would probably cause some insane mutations in the next coming months after the snap too. Half the bacteria being gone means there’s 50% less genetic material for them to share.
Wait… How is that different?
I responded to a different comment explaining more.
Micro biology changes a lot faster than what you see in complex multi-celluar organisms.
But half still die regardless of how fast they reproduce/come back
yes.
Well no, That would be 75% if the other 50% already existed within the organisms he killed.
It literally specifies of the survivors.
Could also be a lot of legless torsos flopping about, as well as torso-less legs, and all sorts of other less-precise halves.
Zebras probably took it the worst.
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)
or the survivors lost all but bacteria, and the remainders were left over in places of the snapped people
Ohh so that’s what the dust is. The leftover gut bacteria.
See… see this is the story content that belongs in the extended cut.
Not just the bathrooms, but the livingrooms and childrenrooms too.
!(I would have used “kitchenrooms” but I couldn’t bring myself to make that kind of joke)!<
They were mostly part of the bacteria domain but I slaughtered them like animals.
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.
Maybe that was accounted for in the dust/flake animation of the unlucky deceased.
Since we’re talking about magic, maybe life that’s inside or attached to other life not disappeared by the snap gets a pass.
Then humans would get a pass, since we’re attached to our gut biome.
But half of all gut biomes would be erased with the people. The numbers already work.
Do the HeLa cells all die together, or do only half of them die?
She makes a compelling argument.
Subscribes
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.
Yeah, worst case scenario stock prices for probiotic yoghurt would increase.
Looks like Jamie Lee Curtis is joining the MCU.
Not a bad thing?
Wait, do you have a source for the 50% number?
My bad – looks like I misread the Google summary. A healthy turd is 75% water, and of what’s left, around 25-50% is made up of microbes.
