The Falcon & Winter Soldier

[Starbuck_II]

Granted comic Falcon had a living falcon instead of a machine. Granted, currently Red Wing in comics is a vampire (vampires attacked and everyone but the bird got cured, long story)

I hope it gets a little light hearted at times and doesn't stay gritty.

But enjoying it so far.

[Psyren]

I don't disagree, but I'd also caution taking too much inspiration from the comics' story beats. The MCU has shown that, in places where they think the comic made too bold or controversial a move, that they can sidestep those developments entirely (e.g. Steve Rogers' "Hail Hydra" being made into a clever joke in Endgame.)

[Kitten Champion]

I really wouldn't want Red Wing to be a real bird. If for no other reason than I'd be constantly concerned with it coming to harm.

The only animal needed in the MCU is Goose, and he's a lovecraftian monstrosity.

[Tyndmyr]

Maybe, but the movies that would have happened in 2020 or early 2021 in a non-Covid timeline were Black Widow, Shang-Chi, and Eternals. I wouldn't exactly consider Black Widow or Shang-Chi are big Phase 4 movers and shakers. So it really all comes down to Eternals, which, admittedly, could have been the big setup film that we're missing.

Black Widow especially. Unless they are also bringing her back, that severely limits how much that can change things. I *think* it's a prequel from the trailer, too.

Which is all fine, but basically, I don't think it'll do much the status quo. It might have been a better idea to give her a film before offing her in order to make that less of a foregone conclusion, though. Oh well, at least she's getting it now.

Bucky...actually may have a reasonable case for a pension and a LOT of backpay from the US military. I assume military pay continues while you're a POW and he arguably served a long time as a POW. Maybe even interest is required, don't know.

This is correct. No interest, but as a POW, you continue to draw pay and benefits. You may even be promoted due to time in service, etc.

There may be some MCU specific exceptions here, maybe? I can see the Snap screwing up the economy quite a lot, maybe things changed? We don't really have the detail here to know for sure....but overall, it shouldn't feel like these characters are actually broke, I think. The average snapped character perhaps would be, but it probably shouldn't apply here.

Also, Sam may qualify for a pension. It's only twenty years on active duty, so 38 year olds drawing a pension is actually entirely normal. It's not an amazing amount of money, but especially considering that you're usually still fine working at 38, it does provide a pretty nice bonus. I'm not sure what Sam's exact age/military history is in canon.

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Though I am not sure about the directorial choice of having him make a weird gurning face when he was revealed. Should have gone for the not-quite-really-there smile Anthony Starr does as Homelander

Homelander's facial expressions are...amazing. But also very much an Anthony Starr thing. He's amazing at controlling microexpressions, and you see it in everything he does. Many, many actors just don't do that. If you're a fan of it, check out Banshee. Though fair warning, the show probably deserves nearly every trigger warning that exists, but it's an amazing story.


Discussion of snap, economics, and show logic:

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So, I have a lot of questions about what exactly happened in the snap. The more of these post-snap shows we get, the more it seems relevant. For instance, I would not assume that national borders vanish post snap. That's...a really large leap. Not impossible, maybe, but it feels like it needs explanation.

I could see a lot of disruption, accidents, and wars, though. Wakanda's leadership structure got gutted by the snap, for instance. Perhaps an opportunistic neighbor wanted to take advantage of their recent reveal and temporary disarray.

I also note that they give us explicit confirmation of animals being affected in this. Half the fish in the sea just came back when the snap was undone. Lots of implications here.

First off...wow, Thanos's plan was dumb. Removing half the people, and then also half the animals, uh...that's not a great plan to prevent starvation. Dunno if plants were affected, but Groot dusted, so, uh, maybe? Anyways, I like the headcanon that it was the excuse Thanos used to indulge his evil desires.

Second...that could suck for endangered populations. Half the population spread over the same territory could absolutely push a troubled species over the edge. Bringing half back after the other half died out just lets you replay the extinction. This could legitimately suck.

Third...for businesses like fishermen who rely on it, that does create some problems. It also means there's probably a fish boom now, so selling the boat is honestly probably rational. Shortage of fish and too few people to run the existing boats probably means a lot of boats weren't maintained for five years, and had to be scrapped, but now that everyone's back, well...

Ownership rights do have to be some kind of awful mess. You own half the boat, but she did maintain it entirely for those five years, which is not cheap. And how do you untangle that, especially if there have been a few sales or what not in that time?

I'm really just speculating here, none of these are complaints about the show...in fact, some of this interesting complexity might provide fodder for the show to explore.

[GloatingSwine]

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First off...wow, Thanos's plan was dumb. Removing half the people, and then also half the animals, uh...that's not a great plan to prevent starvation. Dunno if plants were affected, but Groot dusted, so, uh, maybe? Anyways, I like the headcanon that it was the excuse Thanos used to indulge his evil desires.

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The important thing to realise about Thanos is that he's not out to solve the problem, he's out to prove that he was right and people should have listened to him.

He's long past consideration of whether the idea he had thousands of years ago is actually any good, he can't let go of it either way.

[Psyren]

Black Widow especially. Unless they are also bringing her back, that severely limits how much that can change things. I *think* it's a prequel from the trailer, too.

My impression was that it would be two things:

1) Prequel for Natasha Romanoff
2) Origin story for whoever's next in the title (most likely Yelena Belova)

The latter would then continue on into Phase 4, and the blip explains why it would be a slightly (or even considerably) younger actress.

There may be some MCU specific exceptions here, maybe? I can see the Snap screwing up the economy quite a lot, maybe things changed? We don't really have the detail here to know for sure....but overall, it shouldn't feel like these characters are actually broke, I think. The average snapped character perhaps would be, but it probably shouldn't apply here.

Also, Sam may qualify for a pension. It's only twenty years on active duty, so 38 year olds drawing a pension is actually entirely normal. It's not an amazing amount of money, but especially considering that you're usually still fine working at 38, it does provide a pretty nice bonus. I'm not sure what Sam's exact age/military history is in canon.

Didn't he leave active duty prior to Winter Soldier even? Depending on the circumstances there (e.g. was he honorably discharged or AWOL?) he might be eligible for less than we think, even before the Snap is accounted for.


RE: Snap - did it really affect crops and livestock too? My thought was that it targeted intelligent life specifically, which is why aliens like Groot were affected.

[Dienekes]

RE: Snap - did it really affect crops and livestock too? My thought was that it targeted intelligent life specifically, which is why aliens like Groot were affected.

It's left vague. On the one hand when we see Thanos performing his task specifically it only shows us him targeting Intelligent creatures.

When he talks about it, he discusses how "Life" needs to be controlled which could be just short for intelligent life or it could be short for animals or it could be literally all life.

When the Snap was undone the first hint that things went right was that Scott Lang heard birds chirping. Implying that a whole lot of unintelligent animals reappeared.

Personally, I think it's just safe to say that Thanos had a solution to a problem that may have worked on his home planet. No one listened and he was cast out. His planet doomed itself. And he internalized it to think that it must be true on every planet ignoring that other planets may have vastly different ecosystems that would not work with the shock he was about to put them through.

I don't think crops are ever implied to be a part of the equation though, since even when we were watching the Snap take place, we didn't see blades of grass turning to smoke.

[Tyndmyr]

Fish in the sea were explicitly referenced in the pilot of this series with regards to the snap.

That seems like pretty firm confirmation for animal life, at least. Plants...less sure. It doesn't seem to be portrayed as killing plants. It may have just been that the writers didn't think much about the implications of it.

Didn't he leave active duty prior to Winter Soldier even? Depending on the circumstances there (e.g. was he honorably discharged or AWOL?) he might be eligible for less than we think, even before the Snap is accounted for.

I'm not sure we definitively know what his discharge is. It doesn't seem like AWOL. When he is in contact with the military, he doesn't seem like he's treated like someone AWOL. Canonically, he's helping fellow vets after getting out of the military. Looks like Veteran Affairs? That probably implies at least nothing dishonorable(The VA tries hard to hire vets, but dishonorable discharges definitely doesn't help with that)

Could also be a medical discharge, depending on circumstances. In some cases, that can result in retirement, but it all depends on the details.

I don't really know how old he is or how many times he deployed, but his conversation with cap "Nothing we hadn't done a thousand times before" at least implies he's been actively deployed in his job a fair bit, and pararescue has a long, intense training to get into, two years IIRC.

Given that he's working with the military again, it *seems* like he should be getting some pay somehow...but definitely fuzzy on that. Heck, he may have rejoined at some point. Otherwise, I'm unsure how he's getting gear. Stark, maybe? Wait, it's definitely gov property. They said as much in Civil War.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Fish in the sea were explicitly referenced in the pilot of this series with regards to the snap.

I watched it twice and didn’t catch that. When was that mentioned?

I’ve always assumed that when Thanos said “all life,” he meant all life. The scene of the birds returning does suggest that half of all species everywhere disappeared, and then reappeared with the Hulk Snap.

Pretty sure that, as you say, the writers didn’t really think it through. By rights the planet should have gone through two mass starvation events—first when half the world’s population disappeared, meaning a complete collapse of food production and distribution; and again five years later, when half the population reappeared, creating unsupportable demand on whatever agricultural systems had managed to partially recover.

At this point we should be down to 10% or less of the pre-Snap human population, from the combined effects of famine, disease, resource wars, global economic collapse and mass migration of refugees. But apparently no one thought about any of that.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Otherwise, I'm unsure how he's getting gear. Stark, maybe? Wait, it's definitely gov property. They said as much in Civil War.

Cap and Widow outright stole his flight rig in Winter Soldier, and no one ever mentioned that again.

It’s confiscated in Civil War, and then re-stolen by Agent 13 and handed over, again without any apparent consequences.

At this point I’m assuming that Stark built a whole series of Falcon rigs, the same way that he goes overboard for everything else (e.g. Spidey suits), and Sam is still working his way through them.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Fish in the sea were explicitly referenced in the pilot of this series with regards to the snap.

That seems like pretty firm confirmation for animal life, at least. Plants...less sure. It doesn't seem to be portrayed as killing plants. It may have just been that the writers didn't think much about the implications of it.

Per the Avengers Twitter account - ‘probably’ including trees. (Of course they ‘probably’ should have shown that on screen if that was what they were going for, given that the Avengers compound in Endgame still seemed to have 100% of its tree cover...so I’m going to go with ‘the writers didn’t think that much about it’.)

Losing half of all the crops on top of half the infrastructure to distribute them... They could do multiple entire shows/movies just on the immediate aftermath of the Snap.

Edit:

I watched it twice and didn’t catch that. When was that mentioned?

I think it was the scene with Bucky in the restaurant? TBH my impression was that she was talking about the dating scene not actual fish but the out-of-movie sources said the actual fish got Snapped too so the discussion is still relevant. *shrug*

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Of course they ‘probably’ should have shown that on screen if that was what they were going for, given that the Avengers compound in Endgame still seemed to have 100% of its tree cover...so I’m going to go with ‘the writers didn’t think that much about it’.

I’d been thinking that we should’ve seen half the trees in Wakanda suddenly disappear as Bucky, Wanda, Sam and the others began dusting away.

“Half of all life” does have some massive implications, especially when thinking about the difference between r-selected and K-selected species. Rodents will bounce back much faster than any of their predators, which means far greater losses for whatever crops are left, further exacerbating food shortages.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I think it was the scene with Bucky in the restaurant? TBH my impression was that she was talking about the dating scene not actual fish….

I remember that line very well, and I understood that to be 100% about the dating scene.

Poor Bucky, trying to figure out online dating.

[Tyndmyr]

I watched it twice and didn’t catch that. When was that mentioned?

I’ve always assumed that when Thanos said “all life,” he meant all life. The scene of the birds returning does suggest that half of all species everywhere disappeared, and then reappeared with the Hulk Snap.

Pretty sure that, as you say, the writers didn’t really think it through. By rights the planet should have gone through two mass starvation events—first when half the world’s population disappeared, meaning a complete collapse of food production and distribution; and again five years later, when half the population reappeared, creating unsupportable demand on whatever agricultural systems had managed to partially recover.

At this point we should be down to 10% or less of the pre-Snap human population, from the combined effects of famine, disease, resource wars, global economic collapse and mass migration of refugees. But apparently no one thought about any of that.

Kind of a shame, because that would actually be a really interesting premise. I agree with the bounce-back problem, of course. It'll *really* screw up some predator/prey relationships. I could see some populations exploding due to essentially no predators, while others are virtually hunted to extinction.

That said, yeah, it may have meant dating, I might have been stuck on the fishing boat thing for this quote. Oops.

Cap and Widow outright stole his flight rig in Winter Soldier, and no one ever mentioned that again.

It’s confiscated in Civil War, and then re-stolen by Agent 13 and handed over, again without any apparent consequences.

At this point I’m assuming that Stark built a whole series of Falcon rigs, the same way that he goes overboard for everything else (e.g. Spidey suits), and Sam is still working his way through them.

That's probably the most reasonable way to approach it, even if it's listed as "government property" in canon because realistically, if you made off with a government plane or equivalent, I'm pretty sure that'd be a really big deal. Stark is kind of a convenient handwave for at least half the MCU's quibbles.

[Psyren]

Yeah the "fish" quote referred to the dating pool, not actual fish. Come on people.

When the Snap was undone the first hint that things went right was that Scott Lang heard birds chirping. Implying that a whole lot of unintelligent animals reappeared.

I thought the first hint was Hawkeye's daughter calling his cell. Birds outside getting noisy could be from a lot of things.

[Kitten Champion]

The important point - from the perspective that this is fiction - is the Snap and the unSnap is how it relates to the characters, is the thing. Not the things which aren't characters, like shrimp and such.

From an overall outlook of MCU stuff post-Snap, there is clearly a sense of deep insecurity.

In Far From Home have Quentin Beck bamboozling the world with nonsense and visual trickery to be the next Iron Man because people are willing to be sold anything as long as it makes them feel safer while on the other side you have Spider-Man's primary internal conflict being that he's panicking that everyone desperately wants him to be the new Tony Stark - i.e. the world's Saviour - and bring back some sense of normality to their world and he doesn't think he can live up to that responsibility.

In WandaVision you have SWORD going to extremes to illegally reproduce The Vision so they could have a functional Superhero in what appears to be a SWORD that was once about space security and now more isolationist in scope.

Now here, you have the United States DoD making a new Captain America, and wherever that's going to lead.

This suggests to me that traditional nation states aren't where people are looking to provide that sense of broader security in their lives and the powers-that-be are aware of it and are looking for Superhero-esque means to resolve it.

Also, while they wouldn't say a real-world country collapsed in the wake of the Snap since this is the MCU, I could easily see them claiming the Sokovias of the MCU had anti-nationalist revolutions in the last five years.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Kind of a shame, because that would actually be a really interesting premise.

There are a lot of stories that could be told, and also a lot of questions to answer.

Beyond the agricultural, ecological and financial collapses, the impacts on society would be even greater when you consider the loss of expertise in many fields. Randomly losing half the people in a given profession would result in a lot of unique knowledge being lost as well. That means output in many sectors would reduced far beyond the effects of a 50% RIF, and in some cases production would grind to a halt, with further follow-on effects for national economies.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
I could see some populations exploding due to essentially no predators….

Think of insects, and mosquitos in particular. With only half as many bats to feed on them, mosquitos will be out of control in weeks, and there won’t be enough city employees left to handle mosquito control—if anyone even bothers to think about it.

That means a sudden surge in mosquito-borne diseases, with hospitals, clinics and pharmacies running at half-staff, at best, and already overwhelmed with normal caseload plus the consequences of panic, riot and attempted suicides.

The same holds true for agricultural pests with fast generation times. Meanwhile bee colonies will be struggling to recover, which means less pollination for the crops that survived.

In the oceans, losing half of all life means fewer predators on jellyfish and ctenophores, which means their populations will begin to increase, and ctenophores in particular reproduce quickly. That means greater predation on fish larvae, resulting in a net transfer of biomass from fish to jellies, which translates into global declines in marine fish stocks.

Originally Posted by Kitten Champion
The important point - from the perspective that this is fiction - is the Snap and the unSnap is how it relates to the characters, is the thing.

Working out the effects of a global catastrophe does, in fact, relate to the characters.

Especially if those characters have a family business tied to the health of marine ecosystems.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

The same holds true for agricultural pests with fast generation times. Meanwhile bee colonies will be struggling to recover, which means less pollination for the crops that survived.

Wait, why would bees be significantly worse off? If the queen gets Snapped, the workers know to replace her, same as if she died any other way - we’re talking a little more than two weeks before the new queen emerges. And while they wouldn’t have half their workers, they also would have half as many workers to feed, and the honeycomb isn’t alive and thus shouldn’t have been Snapped - any honey or empty cells that were built before hand should still be there. It wouldn’t be good any more than it would be for any wildlife, but they should be better off than, say - wolves. Or humans.

Aphids would definitely go all ‘Attack of the Tribbles’ on everything though.

Working out the effects of a global catastrophe does, in fact, relate to the characters.

Especially if those characters have a family business tied to the health of marine ecosystems.

Second this. I’ve been trying to figure out how Sam’s sister is doing as badly as she is when she’s part of the first link of the food production chain - half the fish were gone, yeah, but with the infrastructure collapse people in the vicinity aren’t going to be able to buy food that isn’t nearby, and half her competitors would have gotten snapped too. So they should be buying from her, and only her -> relatively steady income by Blip standards.

This leads to the conclusion that either she’s completely incompetent at running her fishing business, or we’re going to get a plot thread where someone’s been sabotaging her over the last five years, and I give better odds to the second one because that has the potential for superhero fights.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Aphids would definitely go all ‘Attack of the Tribbles’ on everything though.

Good point on the aphids. As for the bees, I’m assuming that without queens to produce a steady supply of new workers, the varroa mites will gain the upper hand, at least for a while.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I’ve been trying to figure out how Sam’s sister is doing as badly as she is when she’s part of the first link of the food production chain - half the fish were gone, yeah, but with the infrastructure collapse people in the vicinity aren’t going to be able to buy food that isn’t nearby, and half her competitors would have gotten snapped too.

On the other hand…half her competitors may be gone, but their boats are still there. And the surviving half of the population is suffering the effects of disruption and collapse of the global food distribution system.

So there will be a lot of starving people, and a lot of unattended but perfectly serviceable fishing boats with no one to defend them. This may not result in a complete replacement of the missing 50% of local fishermen, but I’d expect there would be a lot of people trying their luck at fishing out of desperation.

So that means much more than half of the preexisting fishing fleet out on the water, trying to catch as much as possible of half the preexisting fish stocks, which works out to more harvest pressure than before the Snap. Add to this that there will likely be no enforcement of any federal and state regulations on catch limits, so that will be even more intense pressure, which reduces the long-term viability of local fisheries.

So I can easily see that between greater competition for fewer fish, and a reduced population of fish not able to easily recover, anyone trying to make a living from the sea would find themselves in very difficult circumstances.

[Tyndmyr]

A lot of predator/prey species, rather than enjoying a constant balance, go through routine cycles. If memory serves, fox/rabbits have a thirteen year cycle, in which the fox population generally lags behind the the rabbits. Starvation at the peaks causes numbers to crash, and when they bottom, lots of food causes them to rise. It's a perpetual cycle of booms and busts.

This provides some resiliency when populations are large. If you lose half while you're near the peak, well...the data will look odd for scientists, but things will mostly self regulate. If you lose half in the period where rabbits are at their minimum, but foxes are still at moderate numbers, that looks pretty brutal for the rabbits.

The above is part of the rationale for adjusting hunting pressure along with species population. The bigger the population, the more capacity it has for accepting shocks.

Generally, I'd expect very numerous populations with fast reproduction rates and relatively low predation to do extremely well. Even if algae is half destroyed, it's gonna be back to normal pretty quick. That's mostly capped by available nutrients and not much else.

Second this. I’ve been trying to figure out how Sam’s sister is doing as badly as she is when she’s part of the first link of the food production chain - half the fish were gone, yeah, but with the infrastructure collapse people in the vicinity aren’t going to be able to buy food that isn’t nearby, and half her competitors would have gotten snapped too. So they should be buying from her, and only her -> relatively steady income by Blip standards.

Agreed, though I can see some potential problems if essential people were snapped. Maybe she got unlucky with workers getting snapped so she was alone? As jobs go, though, this seems...relatively secure. There are far more troublesome careers. Imagine being a home builder and now vacancy rates are amazingly high.

Some local crime does seem a relatively likely explanation. That's something you can punch, unlike statistical depopulation issues, and making a main character's sister merely incompetent rather than being a good person suffering through hard times sort of reduces the impact.

[BRC]

A lot of predator/prey species, rather than enjoying a constant balance, go through routine cycles. If memory serves, fox/rabbits have a thirteen year cycle, in which the fox population generally lags behind the the rabbits. Starvation at the peaks causes numbers to crash, and when they bottom, lots of food causes them to rise. It's a perpetual cycle of booms and busts.

This provides some resiliency when populations are large. If you lose half while you're near the peak, well...the data will look odd for scientists, but things will mostly self regulate. If you lose half in the period where rabbits are at their minimum, but foxes are still at moderate numbers, that looks pretty brutal for the rabbits.

The above is part of the rationale for adjusting hunting pressure along with species population. The bigger the population, the more capacity it has for accepting shocks.

Generally, I'd expect very numerous populations with fast reproduction rates and relatively low predation to do extremely well. Even if algae is half destroyed, it's gonna be back to normal pretty quick. That's mostly capped by available nutrients and not much else.



Agreed, though I can see some potential problems if essential people were snapped. Maybe she got unlucky with workers getting snapped so she was alone? As jobs go, though, this seems...relatively secure. There are far more troublesome careers. Imagine being a home builder and now vacancy rates are amazingly high.

Some local crime does seem a relatively likely explanation. That's something you can punch, unlike statistical depopulation issues, and making a main character's sister merely incompetent rather than being a good person suffering through hard times sort of reduces the impact.

It sounds like her fishing boat is old and badly in need of repair.

She's a small independent business in an age where the economy of scale means large corporations are going to outcompete and pressure you. The Snap didn't seem to cause much in the way of global systemic collapse, and unless she was near a big enough population center to sell her fish directly to consumers, half the population being gone means the transportation infrastructure for seafood is likely also gone, and what remains is probably going to be contracted to bigger companies.


Plus, the family doesn't seem that wealthy to begin with, which means they're extremely vulnerable to any number of things could cause serious financial troubles besides "Sam's sister is incompetent".

[Kareeah_Indaga]

Good point on the aphids. As for the bees, I’m assuming that without queens to produce a steady supply of new workers, the varroa mites will gain the upper hand, at least for a while.

Half the varroa mites will also have been dusted, and my understanding of their lifecycle is that they rely on the bee larvae they feed off of to break out of the honeycomb cell, so depending on where they were in their lifecycle - a nonzero number of them are going to starve to death because the larvae their eggs were laid on were dusted. Plus statistically speaking, only half the colonies are going to lose their queens in the first place. But Wikipedia gives the mites a reproduction cycle time of 10 days and bee queens 16 to emerge (and I gather that was just to emerging from the comb for the queens, full egg laying production looks like closer to a month) so for a queenless hive they might have time to overtake the remainder of the hive before the new queen restored worker production...?

On the other hand…half her competitors may be gone, but their boats are still there. And the surviving half of the population is suffering the effects of disruption and collapse of the global food distribution system.

So there will be a lot of starving people, and a lot of unattended but perfectly serviceable fishing boats with no one to defend them. This may not result in a complete replacement of the missing 50% of local fishermen, but I’d expect there would be a lot of people trying their luck at fishing out of desperation.

So that means much more than half of the preexisting fishing fleet out on the water, trying to catch as much as possible of half the preexisting fish stocks, which works out to more harvest pressure than before the Snap. Add to this that there will likely be no enforcement of any federal and state regulations on catch limits, so that will be even more intense pressure, which reduces the long-term viability of local fisheries.

So I can easily see that between greater competition for fewer fish, and a reduced population of fish not able to easily recover, anyone trying to make a living from the sea would find themselves in very difficult circumstances.

I think this is an oversimplification. Even if we assume the local law enforcement is a-okay with people stealing the boats of the Snapped fishermen (...plausible, at least in the short term, since we’re in a global catastrophe and I could definitely see the police having higher priorities) and enough of these starving people know how to drive the boats (we’re on the sea coast so I’ll say plausible), that doesn’t mean they know how to run all the fishing equipment, or know where the good fishing grounds are, or any number of other advantages a veteran in her industry should have over a bunch of complete newbies - if they did, then they would already be fishermen, not hairdressers or real estate agents or whatever.

She's a small independent business in an age where the economy of scale means large corporations are going to outcompete and pressure you. The Snap didn't seem to cause much in the way of global systemic collapse, and unless she was near a big enough population center to sell her fish directly to consumers, half the population being gone means the transportation infrastructure for seafood is likely also gone, and what remains is probably going to be contracted to bigger companies.

But a small independent business should be a lot easier to pivot with in a disaster of that magnitude than a large corporation - fewer moving parts, not as many people to replace or retrain.

[BRC]

But a small independent business should be a lot easier to pivot with in a disaster of that magnitude than a large corporation - fewer moving parts, not as many people to replace or retrain.

Alright, let's look at this

Second this. I’ve been trying to figure out how Sam’s sister is doing as badly as she is when she’s part of the first link of the food production chain - half the fish were gone, yeah, but with the infrastructure collapse people in the vicinity aren’t going to be able to buy food that isn’t nearby, and half her competitors would have gotten snapped too. So they should be buying from her, and only her -> relatively steady income by Blip standards.

She seems to live in a small coastal community, which probably means that fishing is the primary local industry.

And, as you mention, small independent fishermen are going to be fairly resilient to the Blip.

You also mention an infrastructure collapse, and this is true.

The people in the town lose easy access to non-local foods, so they have to buy from the local fishers, but they don't have much money, because the global economy collapsed.

Meanwhile, the same infrastructure collapse means those small local fishers lose their ability to sell their fish outside the small, increasingly cash-poor community. The refrigerated trucks that come to take the fish to canneries or for sale elsewhere are not going to be coming anymore. The number of routes are about the same, but the number of drivers just got cut in half, and since Fish besides canned tuna is a mild luxury for much of the US, global demand for Fish probably dropped by a good deal more than "half", since not only did half the consumers vanish, those remaining don't have the money they would have spent on non-local Fish.

Meanwhile, she's got an old boat that's falling apart. Anything not manufactured locally is going to be increasingly difficult to get, especially if you don't live near a major population center or other transportation hub. Even as the number of people has gone down, the number of places people live hasn't.

And if your livelihood is dependent on an old machine that needs replacement parts that are not manufactured locally, you are now in trouble. Same if you or your family needs medicine, or anything else that isn't manufactured locally.

Money is going to be flowing out of the local community much faster than it's going to be flowing in, and as somebody trading in a highly perishable good, she's very limited in where she can sell her goods.

As a food producer, she's not going to have much trouble with the literal "Feeding your family" part of life, but with everything else, money is going to be tight.


Plus, in general, small businesses are very susceptible to shock. Anything could have happened over those five years to put her in dire financial straits. A bad storm prevents her from going out, her kids get sick and she has to stay home and get them care. Half her local support network is gone.


This also assumes that the Blip affected her community evenly. The "Blip" was even across the entire universe, that gives a lot of room for local variation. Her local fisheries could have been devastated in exchange for the fuzzy bunny people on planet xqvlis being relatively unaffected, because Thanos didn't just have a bad philosophy, he also had a bad implementation of that philosophy.


TLDR, I have no trouble believing that a small fisherman is in deep financial trouble.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
…that doesn’t mean they know how to run all the fishing equipment, or know where the good fishing grounds are, or any number of other advantages a veteran in her industry should have over a bunch of complete newbies - if they did, then they would already be fishermen, not hairdressers or real estate agents or whatever.

It’s very true that newcomers wouldn’t be as efficient or successful as established operators. But if food production is destabilized, there will be enough hungry people who are willing to try anything. More people will be familiar with the basics in small coastal communities anyway.

Also, people do leave businesses they were raised in. Some people might have gone to college, trade school, etc. to escape life on the shrimp boats, but reluctantly returned to the family business when their careers collapsed.

And anyone with a kayak or a johnboat will be out there fishing as well. I’m also expecting turtles to be aggressively overharvested, since that’s food that doesn’t require the logistics of a stockyard to produce.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
But a small independent business should be a lot easier to pivot with in a disaster of that magnitude than a large corporation - fewer moving parts, not as many people to replace or retrain.

This goes back to what I mentioned earlier, about the loss of unique knowledge. A small independent business may only have one person who knows mission-critical information, so if that person is lost it’ll be difficult to continue functioning. And it may not be that easy to retrain the remaining workers, especially if the necessary competence requires years of education and/or apprenticeship.

Larger operations, by contrast, are more likely to have redundancy in their employees. If a small auto repair shop only has one person who knows how to order parts, losing that person could cripple their ability to do their work. Meanwhile a large dealership probably has a number of people who can order parts, so that’s not as much of an issue for them, although there will likely be long delays in the parts arriving.

Originally Posted by BRC
Even as the number of people has gone down, the number of places people live hasn't.

Very true, and the distances between where they live haven’t changed either, which will have other follow-on effects.

Originally Posted by BRC
Money is going to be flowing out of the local community much faster than it's going to be flowing in, and as somebody trading in a highly perishable good, she's very limited in where she can sell her goods.

…I have no trouble believing that a small fisherman is in deep financial trouble.

Agreed completely.

[theNater]

When discussing logistical and economic effects of the Snap, it's important to remember that we're not looking at a realistic world to begin with. Marvel Earth has supergeniuses like Tony Stark. Stark alone could, using his automated factories, build a robotic workforce capable of filling all manual labor positions and most mid-level technical jobs. So the collapse may not have been as hard as we'd expect in a real-world situation.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by theNater
Stark alone could, using his automated factories, build a robotic workforce capable of filling all manual labor positions and most mid-level technical jobs.

I think people tend to overestimate Stark’s influence with this sort of thing. Yes, he could build an AI-piloted machine to plant corn or whatnot, but there’s a world of difference between building a single robot with his home shop and retooling Stark Industries to produce 3 billion robots.

Also, after the issues with the Iron Legion, he’s probably not interested in building another robotic army for the next Ultron wannabe. And given all the highly public issues with Ultron in general, who would trust an army of robots built by Tony Stark?

[Cikomyr2]

When discussing logistical and economic effects of the Snap, it's important to remember that we're not looking at a realistic world to begin with. Marvel Earth has supergeniuses like Tony Stark. Stark alone could, using his automated factories, build a robotic workforce capable of filling all manual labor positions and most mid-level technical jobs. So the collapse may not have been as hard as we'd expect in a real-world situation.

if there's one thing that Factorio taught me, is that "automated self-building industry" is a lot more complex and resource-intensive than you expect.

I.. am not sure they could have turned around and moved to a labor-less economy overnight like that. Stark's automated Iron Bot assembly line can pop a robot every 20 seconds, sure, but I can only imagine the amount of raw materials and energy this cost.

[Tyndmyr]

Well, Far From Home indicates that Tony tried massive automated killbot armies at least once more...though they also didn't work out super well.

I'd agree that the MCU supports a generally limited impact of automation. We still see people performing normal jobs for the most part. There's some limited adoption of some really high tech stuff, but it's not in mass production, apparently.

And, at this point, it's sort of fair for Tony to have trust issues about passing his tech out to others. That's been a super mixed bag for him. It is perhaps very reasonable to not want to put his AI into a factory that makes tons of additional robots.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Cikomyr2
Stark's automated Iron Bot assembly line can pop a robot every 20 seconds, sure, but I can only imagine the amount of raw materials and energy this cost.

Absolutely this.

Stark can kick out his latest Mark XXXVII custom suit because he’s using his own private workshop and his own resources—but scaling this up to replace half the global workforce would be prohibitive in time, money and energy.

Using Cikomyr’s example above, a quick calculation suggests that at the rate of one robot every 20 seconds, it would take a little over 1900 years to produce three billion robots.

Sure, that’s still 1.6 million robots a year…but how are they all getting to where they’re needed? Stark probably doesn’t want his oh-so-easily weaponized repulsor tech getting out into the world, so the robots will still need to be transported somehow.

That means either they’ll have to be shipped with conventional methods—in a world where long-distance travel and trade is compromised to the point of collapse—or Stark Industries will need to further diversify into a shipping and logistics multinational, which is more time, energy, expense, and institutional drag.

[Sapphire Guard]

Fishing doesn't strike me as the kind of industry than people can just up and join and succeed. Sailing by itself is pretty skilled work.

[JadedDM]

It's also worth pointing out that Sarah is a widow who has been raising two boys by herself for the past five years, on top of trying to keep the family business afloat. I think she mentioned her husband died five years ago, which means he died around the time of the Snap, but apparently did not die of the Snap, or else presumably, he'd be back in the picture now.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

She seems to live in a small coastal community, which probably means that fishing is the primary local industry.

Okay, but most of this is with the assumption that she’s in a small town with no access to anywhere else. The location given is Delacroix, Louisiana correct? Looking at Google maps here, it’s 15-20 miles from New Orleans (about an hour drive), which even post-Snap should have around 200,000 people in it to sell to. And the infrastructure collapse makes it more likely that people will migrate towards the bigger cities, precisely because they can’t get anything anywhere else. So plenty of people to sell to. And not that far away for replacement parts, either.

Also, people do leave businesses they were raised in. Some people might have gone to college, trade school, etc. to escape life on the shrimp boats, but reluctantly returned to the family business when their careers collapsed.

But how are they getting back with no infrastructure? There can’t be that many planes running with half the pilots dusted and a non-zero number of crashed planes.

And anyone with a kayak or a johnboat will be out there fishing as well.

But will they be targeting the same kinds of fish? You can’t take a kayak out in the same areas you’d take a boat the size of hers, and vice versa.

This goes back to what I mentioned earlier, about the loss of unique knowledge. A small independent business may only have one person who knows mission-critical information, so if that person is lost it’ll be difficult to continue functioning. And it may not be that easy to retrain the remaining workers, especially if the necessary competence requires years of education and/or apprenticeship.

But in Sam’s sister’s case, she’s the one with the mission-critical knowledge, so this shouldn’t be a problem for her.

I.. am not sure they could have turned around and moved to a labor-less economy overnight like that. Stark's automated Iron Bot assembly line can pop a robot every 20 seconds, sure, but I can only imagine the amount of raw materials and energy this cost.

Inclined to agree. I also gather Tony just kind of gave up on everything after the Snap, judging by his behavior in Endgame. So he might not have been interested in trying to fix the problem even if he could conjure up the resources.