Last man standing

[Glitch]

A recent BBC News article reminded me that I have a sci-fi/thriller idea on my to do list to flesh out.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-17127617

The idea is that no male babies have been born for about 20 years - anywhere on the whole planet. I have yet to work out the cause. I was originally going on research that showed all human embryos start off as female for the first 9 week. Further research has shown that is not the case; gender is determined at the point of conception.

The story follows the main character who becomes the youngest male on the planet. He wasn't the last male born, but unfortunate circumstances have happened to the others over the years making him the de facto 'last man standing'.

Question - How quickly do you think the world would notice no male babies have been born?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Certainly by school age; they keep registers of admittance. But I suspect health visitors etc might notice on a local basis quite quickly, it's just how long it takes them to join the dots nationally.

 

[Arthur_Connelly]

Fairly quickly I'd imagine. Initially it'd be something that'd make the local news. But with everyone on the internet the story would make the national news within 6-12 hours, as an anomaly and an odd story at first, but would grow into a big issue within 24-48 hours. People love news, especially of the salacious and strange variety.

 

[Glitch]

If a hospital only delivered female babies on a day, who would report it?

I agree with the dawn of the Internet it would spread quickly once it became news.

I found the following article Male Births: Decline In The US And Japan (2007). This shows people look at these figures. But how long do they take to filter through I wonder.

 

[JandenHale]

Sounds very much like the movie Children of Men. Except the only difference is that no children have been born for the last 18 years. They call the youngest person in the world Baby Diego, and everyone mourns when he gets killed for refusing to sign an autograph. I just watched this movie the other day, so it's all fresh in my mind. You should definitely watch it. If anything, so you can do your story so it's different.

 

[Glitch]

Sounds very much like the movie Children of Men. Except the only difference is that no children have been born for the last 18 years.

Thanks, I'll check it out.

 

[Susan Boulton]

John Wyndam's, "Consider her ways." works on a similar theme and has a very ambiguous ending.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Hospitals are fastidious about birth details - no male babies being born would be noticed very quickly, and as people swap notes, the pattern and geographic distribution would be very easily recognised.

 

[Mr Turtle]

Sounds very much like the movie Children of Men. Except the only difference is that no children have been born for the last 18 years. They call the youngest person in the world Baby Diego, and everyone mourns when he gets killed for refusing to sign an autograph. I just watched this movie the other day, so it's all fresh in my mind. You should definitely watch it. If anything, so you can do your story so it's different.

The film is based on a book "Children of Men" by P.D James - the book is infinitely better than the film - which is shocking to say the least, with the exception of the final "one shot" take through the battle in the ruined city.

Read the book, it really is quite good, and makes you think a lot more about what would happen if suddenly people couldn't have babies.

I LOVE your idea of no male babies - there is a well documented fact that male births have been declining, in some places around the world women outnumber men 3:1!!!! That type of end of the world scenario, in my opinion, is always much more interesting than a plague that wiped out everybody. As it's a completely different thought process as to how human kind will survive - although I believe a few years ago there was talk of women being able to use their own DNA with an egg to reproduce without men - SHOCK HORROR! ;-) But you'll have to look it up cos I really can't remember the specifics!

In answer to your question about how much time until people notice - watch the 1st episode of 'Torchwood : Miracle Day', it's a collaboration between the americans and the bbc - no one dies in it, death just stops happening and they all realise pretty quickly, within a day or two. It might give you a few pointers.

Peace

 

[Hex]

I agree about the book compared to the film -- though I quite liked the film it didn't compare in terms of raising the questions the book did (better explosions, though).

Something that may or may not be of relevance is that you need far fewer men than women to continue surviving -- because of course one man can impregnate many different women (disregarding our pesky social expectations and moral frameworks). Males are a bit of a luxury in survival terms -- you need some, but not that many.

In terms of hospitals -- in the UK at least they're very on top of who's born etc. and even for homebirths it's rare for a baby to be born without a midwife. The records would rapidly show that only girls were being born. In big hospitals you might get people commenting on it -- or local newspapers picking it up -- after only one night. You are legally obliged to register births within 21 days in Scotland (42 days in England and Wales) so presumably that would be the information all together in one place.

 

[Ursa major]

I was originally going on research that showed all human embryos start off as female for the first 9 week. Further research has shown that is not the case; gender is determined at the point of conception.

The story follows the main character who becomes the youngest male on the planet.

It is true that human gender, as we generally understand it, is determined at conception, but that isn't true of all species. As your story is not set on Earth, is there any reason why they have to be human?

Question - How quickly do you think the world would notice no male babies have been born?

Very quickly, I would assume. While some things can be missed (all those extra deaths associated with Dr Harold Shipman were), it's usually because the evidence of a deviation from the norm would have to be derived from other information. In the case of something that would be very obvious, at least some of the many registrars (assuming that this is not a centralised and/or automated function) would quickly notice a lack of boys being born. The first report could be one of those quirky stories in the local media, but would soon go national as others thought: "It's like that here."

 

[Interference]

My first thought is that a couple of nurses during a break would undoubtedly comment about it as an interesting thing that had happened that day in their hospital. If it happened again on the second day, phone calls would be made, I'm sure.

 

[Glitch]

Some interesting advice. I'm now leaning towards a rapid decrease in male births rather than a sudden stop.

As your story is not set on Earth, is there any reason why they have to be human?

Sorry for misleading. The story is actually set on Earth, about 50 years from now

The books/films mentioned have interesting ideas on how they create/solve the problem. There is also a comic book 'Y: The Last Man'

Males are a bit of a luxury in survival terms -- you need some, but not that many.

Interesting point Hex. This gives me a new idea, and a potential second main character in a luxury profession.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

@Hex; and, eventually, we might even get around that?

(That'll keep them on their toes. )

 

[Hex]

Who'd want a world without luxury?

 

[Glitch]

@Hex; and, eventually, we might even get around that?

Which gives me another idea. Which scientific project should get the government grants - Fixing the issue of no male births, or finding a way of reproducing without a male population?

(That'll keep them on their toes. )

You would miss us if we weren't here. Wouldn't you ?

Would be a nice cliff hanger to lead onto a sequel. Wipe out all the male population and end on a woman giving birth to a son!

 

[alchemist]

There's another film I remember from about 20 years ago (foreign film; German or Russian) where two astronauts accidentally end up in a female only future. Conception is all done through IVF and in the final scene the lads, er, adulterate the conception vats to introduce some normality. I'll try and find the name.

As for the timescale, a hospital would notice in a couple of days and Twitter would have it within a week.


Edit: got it! Not Russian or German, but in-between -- Polish. The hilariously titled Sexmission

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088083/plotsummary

 

[Ursa major]

I remember seeing that Polish film on the TV a few decades back: most of it was set underground, I seem to recall.

 

[Vertigo]

How quickly it is noticed would depend on how quickly it manifests. If it happened abruptly it would be noticed within a few days. An average hospital has a good few births a day and if you had two or three days with only female births someone would soon comment.

If it is a slow trend taking a year or two then it would likely take a lot longer to be noticed but even then, these sort of statistics are always being monitored and the trend would, I suspect, still be noticed very quickly; within say six months.

 

[Jammill Khursheed]

If the protagonist is in his twenties or something when the story starts don't worry about it. $**t happens, and if it happened twenty years ago or so you can get away with just saying it happened and then moving on.

'I, Robot' didn't chart the development of robotic bodies or show how people programmed AI into them, but we accepted the context of the book/bad-film without that. 'Children Of Men' didn't tell us how long it took for the world to notice no babies at all had been born, and we still went with that without complaining.

We don't need a full breakdown of how long it took from the first day it happened to it becoming noteworthy UNLESS that's the bit of the story you are telling, and from what you've posted about it, it don't sound like you are.

Just write the story you want to tell about the aftermath of it a number of years later, let people see it, and if they start asking "what sort of timescale did it take before panorama made a documentary about it?" then you go and work it out. I bet no one does though, so don't worry bud.

Jammill