The Falcon & Winter Soldier

[hungrycrow]

How many nuclear reactor in the world can be abandoned with minimal measures taken by a half trained staff?

Did Tony ever get around to building more big Arc reactors in between all his superheroing? If not, yeah, that's a problem. I think half a staff could safely shut down nuclear reactors without causing meltdowns; missing workers is the kind of scenario they would plan failsafes for. But could other power plants run with just half a staff? Could power lines be maintained?

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Exact numbers depend on aircraft type, but for commercial airliners, half is a reasonable estimate.

Hmm. Do you have a source that clarifies this?

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
A substantial number of airlines also run three pilots. Two is required, but three is very common, and will be the case on *all* flights over 12 hrs for shift tradeoff reasons.

I suppose this depends on the carrier. I’ve done a lot of flying for work, and I’ve always had the impression that two pilots was the standard.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Less if a passenger can land the plane, as has happened several times.

Cockpit access is going to be a major problem for that scenario. If there’s no longer anyone in the cockpit to open it from the inside, most likely no one will be able to get in.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
That's a ton of deaths, an insanely chaotic day, and probably a couple of weeks shutdown, but it doesn't make transportation collapse.

Even losing 10% of the global airline fleet in a single day would be enough to cripple the industry.

Because here’s the thing: No one knows if there will be another Snap.

The Avengers are the only people on the planet who fully understand what’s happened, and I’m not sure how quickly they’ll put out a press release. For nearly everyone else on the planet, this is something terrifying and inexplicable—and there’s no reason to believe it won’t happen again.

That uncertainty by itself would be enough to cause a massive stock crash, with aftershocks throughout the global economy. Less money means fewer airline tickets being bought, and that on top of hundreds of fatal crashes. Add to this the likely shortages in aviation fuel, components, and ATCs, and I think the industry will implode before it has a chance to restructure.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Is it bad that I want to play in a game set post-Snap?

I’d be down for that.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
…you just have a lot of wrecks to clean up, and probably most of the cars can be simply driven off the road into the ditch in the short term.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I wouldn’t worry about the parked cars so much.

Depending on the time of day, major highways will literally be parking lots. Imagine the D.C. Beltway at 8:45 am. When half the drivers suddenly disappear, the wrecks and pileups will be almost continuous, and anyone who survived the Snap probably won’t be able to drive their cars out of the resulting mass of metal.

And there will only be half as many people to deal with this: half the number of first responders, half the number of tow truck drivers, half the number of anyone who could address this in any way. Survivors will be too busy trying to understand what happened—and trying to locate their family members. I agree that the keys will be in the ignitions, but the cars that didn’t crash that hard will be running for hours or days, and they’ll run down the fuel in their tanks. Who’s going to organize a refueling effort to drive abandoned cars out of the road?

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Slightly related, I could easily see bicycles becoming popular post-snap, both for fuel reasons and because it would be simpler to get around any remaining wrecks/derelicts.

This, definitely. Also because any dedicated bike paths will be more likely to be free of abandoned vehicles, so much easier to navigate.

.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

I suppose this depends on the carrier. I’ve done a lot of flying for work, and I’ve always had the impression that two pilots was the standard.

This site says the flight engineer has pilot training but isn’t considered a ‘pilot’, might be enough to get the plane on the ground?

I agree that the keys will be in the ignitions, but the cars that didn’t crash that hard will be running for hours or days, and they’ll run down the fuel in their tanks. Who’s going to organize a refueling effort to drive abandoned cars out of the road?

If the goal is just to get them off the road, and they aren’t badly damaged or tangled up in other cars (which are admittedly big ‘ifs’)...get enough people and you might be able to push them off. Not something I’d want to have to do for an entire highway, mind. But might be possible on a small scale.

[Cikomyr2]

Did Tony ever get around to building more big Arc reactors in between all his superheroing? If not, yeah, that's a problem. I think half a staff could safely shut down nuclear reactors without causing meltdowns; missing workers is the kind of scenario they would plan failsafes for. But could other power plants run with just half a staff? Could power lines be maintained?

Actually. If I was Stark, restarting the world energy infrastructure and replacing it with mass produced arc reactors that have Vibranium to do infinite energy would probably my main work project.

[theNater]

But that's the thing. How do go from a semi collapsing industrial base to the coordination of the manufacturing power that will funnel the raw material and energy where you want them to manufacture these automated cars at a rate thats actually consequential?

Mostly by repurposing existing infrastructure. A hand-held device that can take over an ordinary car, allowing for remote piloting, already exists in the MCU. A superscientist could take a weekend repurposing a cell phone factory to produce hundreds of thousands of such devices, modified for self-driving capabilities, per day. One factory per weekend for six months, then letting them run for two years, covers literally every car on the planet. That's one superscientist working one problem.

And I know what you're thinking! "But theNater, how are the cell phone factories getting their materials?" A fair question indeed! So let's consider a region containing one of these factories, a mine, a smelting plant, and some townspeople including one Dr. Vincent Stegron. Now, these townspeople realize that in order to have food, they're going to need trucks driving food to their town, and in order to get that, they're going to need to supply the cell phone factory. Now, one thing that needs to be done in both the mine and smelting plant is for heavy loads to be lifted and moved around. Normally, that requires a skilled operator of heavy machines, but once Stegron turns several people into superstrong dinosaur people, they can do it unskilled, freeing up the heavy machine operators for other jobs.

My "but" is saying that "the Snap likely had softer impact than our world" doesn't actually mean anything. Clearly this world's infrastructure and economy have been decimated despite all their science, and it's believable.

Yes, there has been devastation, unsurprisingly. But we don't know the full extent or specific effects. Palanan has claimed "Anyone relying on food from grocery stores will be subject to interruptions in availability as the entire system buckles and falls apart. Even if there are local surpluses, the inability to deliver those surpluses will cause shortages everywhere else." This would certainly be the case in our world, but need not be the case in a world where teleportation devices could be manufactured.

That's what I'm arguing against. These sorts of specific claims that are, as yet, unevidenced in the MCU.

I didn't say "the lights/stove are broken." I'm saying that if it couldn't be used to shoot aliens, track down metahumans or help their agents steal secrets, SHIELD probably wasn't interested. Bringing up that their tech is more advanced than our world doesn't necessarily mean anyone in that world would be better off overall.

Okay, you've got two ends of a chain, but not the intervening links. Let me try to fill them in clearly.

1. SHIELD has consistently had supertech for decades.
2. This means SHIELD must have been maintaining a pipeline of superscientist trainees, employees, and retirees.
3. Some of those superscientists would have survived both the dissolution of SHIELD and the Snap.
4. At least some of those can be assumed to have turned their abilities to mitigating the consequences of the Snap.

[GloatingSwine]

Even when he doesn't exist yet, Reed Richards is Useless.

[Traab]

Clearing the roads would be... interesting. The cars have keys in them, but its also a massive multi million car pile up as half the moving vehicles have no driver in them meaning even those NOT vanished in the snap are probably buried in car wrecks. I would imagine though that road clearing would be an ongoing project for some time, but I would think the major highways would be at least cleared to allow emergency transport within a couple weeks or so because instead of towing the cars to lots, they tow them off the road and grab the next vehicle to repeat, when they cant just outright drive the cars off because not every vehicle will be totaled. Probably go for single lane first so emergency crews can get through the pile faster and see who is left to rescue. It would probably involve a massive focused effort to do this as each town clears a path out to the highways then clears their areas highways as much as is feasible, then moves from there to clearing the main roads in town. Im thinking there will be a LOT of cars on the side of the road for the foreseeable future though, as bringing them anywhere is going to be low priority. But getting the roads cleared to at least a minimal level would be VERY high priority as everything else depends on it.

[Cikomyr2]

I mean, the large majority of cars on the road with nobody in them would probably be running, and their gasoline would most likely be consumed in a matter of hours.

And be locked, with the keys inside the ignition, off course.

[Tyndmyr]

Hmm. Do you have a source that clarifies this?

There's some fun, sourced discussion on it here. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/q...or-an-aircraft

I suppose this depends on the carrier. I’ve done a lot of flying for work, and I’ve always had the impression that two pilots was the standard.

Carriers may differ some, yeah. If it's a short haul cargo flight, far more likely to be only a 2 man crew. The snap might hit some carriers way harder than others, depending on what they focus on.

Cockpit access is going to be a major problem for that scenario. If there’s no longer anyone in the cockpit to open it from the inside, most likely no one will be able to get in.

In the real, post 9-11 world, certainly. No idea if that applies to the MCU. No 9-11 there, I think, though they have plenty of security worries of their own, so perhaps the same security exists? Not sure.

Even losing 10% of the global airline fleet in a single day would be enough to cripple the industry.

Because here’s the thing: No one knows if there will be another Snap.

Hmm, that's a really good point. There would absolutely be some fear, and no matter what the Avengers report, at least some people are going to be worried about it happening again. It's also hard to do much about it, but fear and trying to do something might inflict additional damage.

That uncertainty by itself would be enough to cause a massive stock crash, with aftershocks throughout the global economy. Less money means fewer airline tickets being bought, and that on top of hundreds of fatal crashes. Add to this the likely shortages in aviation fuel, components, and ATCs, and I think the industry will implode before it has a chance to restructure.

Oh, I agree that the financial fallout would be catastrophic. We will have a lot of stuff still sitting around, which will be functional for at least a while...but by the end of the five years, given the chaos, it's a safe bet that much if it no longer will be.

Also, playing a game set in this time period would be amazing.

Depending on the time of day, major highways will literally be parking lots. Imagine the D.C. Beltway at 8:45 am. When half the drivers suddenly disappear, the wrecks and pileups will be almost continuous, and anyone who survived the Snap probably won’t be able to drive their cars out of the resulting mass of metal.

Weirdly enough, the traffic is so intense here that it may actually be a lot less lethal then. Tons of mostly parked, stop and go traffic then. I make it a point to never, ever touch the beltway at rush hour. Sure, the resulting logjam will suck, and your schedule for that day is absolutely hosed, but at least you'll live.

Sparse traffic will mostly be fine, really heavy traffic same...but that in between could be really nasty, and it's going to be the case in some places. We can mostly ignore what time the snap happens at, because it affects the whole world, so it's gonna be rush hour somewhere.

Cities might be worse off. DC has pretty much full internal roads and no parking at the best of times. It's difficult to imagine where all the cars could physically go on short notice. Pushing a car into the ditch with a few people is doable, but you're not gonna just...push it all the way out of a city. That's insanely harder. Clearing highways isn't so bad, but clearing the logjam that downtown becomes is brutal.

I agree that the keys will be in the ignitions, but the cars that didn’t crash that hard will be running for hours or days, and they’ll run down the fuel in their tanks. Who’s going to organize a refueling effort to drive abandoned cars out of the road?

They'll probably just flip them into neutral and push them into ditches. Though I could also imagine a *lot* of theft of nice cars. I mean, if they have no owner anymore, some may not even see it as theft. How that whole ownership tangle works out is pretty complex and messy, certainly.

This site says the flight engineer has pilot training but isn’t considered a ‘pilot’, might be enough to get the plane on the ground?

Yeah, all pilot training has a lot of takeoff and landing training, even just for sport pilots(what I'm pursuing). ATC will probably be wildly overloaded with the quantity of emergencies, but if the runway is open, the flight engineer should be able to land the plane.

Actually. If I was Stark, restarting the world energy infrastructure and replacing it with mass produced arc reactors that have Vibranium to do infinite energy would probably my main work project.

He talked about it in his movies some. Apparently he was building at least some reactors after his IM 1 pivot from weapons to clean energy. No idea how many, but Stark Industries appears to remain large and fairly wealthy.

Okay, you've got two ends of a chain, but not the intervening links. Let me try to fill them in clearly.

1. SHIELD has consistently had supertech for decades.
2. This means SHIELD must have been maintaining a pipeline of superscientist trainees, employees, and retirees.
3. Some of those superscientists would have survived both the dissolution of SHIELD and the Snap.
4. At least some of those can be assumed to have turned their abilities to mitigating the consequences of the Snap.

I'm on board with this, but the numbers of such people remain small relative to the population at large. They are likely to make a significant difference to their local area, but the disaster is worldwide.

We could perhaps try to estimate the size of Shield, and how many survived the Hydra problem and then the snap. Might be a fun exercise.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by theNater
A superscientist could take a weekend repurposing a cell phone factory….

Just because someone can design a device doesn’t make them capable of retooling an entire factory overnight. The logistics involved are a little more than you're assuming here.

Also, there’s still the issue of long-distance transportation issues, fuel shortages and everything else. And I assume no one is just giving away these devices. Even if the GIC (genius in charge) doesn’t care about money, whoever actually runs the factory certainly will, and these things won’t come cheap. Trying to manufacture, market and distribute this device in a post-Snap economy won’t be an easy proposition.

Originally Posted by theNater
This would certainly be the case in our world, but need not be the case in a world where teleportation devices could be manufactured.

Wait, what? The MCU is now the Tippyverse?

And slow down, tiger. Despite all the flavors of supertech we’ve seen on-screen, there is 0.00 evidence that any of this has actually been mass-marketed and integrated into society.

Also, remind me exactly where we’ve seen “teleportation devices” before? The only thing that comes to mind is the beaming-ray from Thanos’ ships, which is not exactly homegrown technology.

Originally Posted by Traab
Probably go for single lane first so emergency crews can get through the pile faster and see who is left to rescue. ….But getting the roads cleared to at least a minimal level would be VERY high priority as everything else depends on it.

Agreed overall, and I’d just add that they would likely focus on the shoulders, since a) cars wrecked in the shoulders are easier to pull off the road, and b) the shoulders are likely to have fewer cars in them compared to the primary lanes.

I could also see a lot of thieves and scavengers working their way through the cars, and the more foresighted among them might even be siphoning gas from unattended vehicles. Or, as Tyndmyr mentions, simply stealing the nicer cars outright.

Originally Posted by Cikomyr
I mean, the large majority of cars on the road with nobody in them would probably be running, and their gasoline would most likely be consumed in a matter of hours.

I agree completely.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
There's some fun, sourced discussion on it here.

Interesting, thanks. My first estimate was way off, so this is good to know.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
In the real, post 9-11 world, certainly. No idea if that applies to the MCU. No 9-11 there, I think, though they have plenty of security worries of their own, so perhaps the same security exists? Not sure.

Very good point. This suggests that it did, although this is comics rather than strictly MCU.

But we did see Freedom Tower in Infinity War, so that's a strong indication that it happened in the MCU as well.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Also, playing a game set in this time period would be amazing.

Definitely getting this vibe. It’s a unique kind of apocalypse, thankfully with no zombies, and has the potential for all kinds of stories. There’s even room for low-level superheroes to emerge, if you wanted to take it in that direction, but also space for a gritty survival scenario.

Originally Posted by Tyndmur
Tons of mostly parked, stop and go traffic then. I make it a point to never, ever touch the beltway at rush hour.

I used to work in the area, and I timed my travel very carefully to avoid the Beltway at those times. To say nothing of Route 66, which can be even worse than the Beltway.

Atlanta seems to have a similar situation, and we won’t even talk about L.A.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
This site says the flight engineer has pilot training but isn’t considered a ‘pilot’, might be enough to get the plane on the ground?

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
ATC will probably be wildly overloaded with the quantity of emergencies, but if the runway is open, the flight engineer should be able to land the plane.

The site also says the flight engineer’s position is mainly in older aircraft, pre-1980:

"In newer airliners, most of this work is done by computerized systems, eliminating the need for the flight-engineer position. In the future, it will be phased out entirely."

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
We could perhaps try to estimate the size of Shield, and how many survived the Hydra problem and then the snap.

I was just watching Thor last night, because my brain was that empty. Alas, poor Agent Sitwell.

[Psyren]

That's what I'm arguing against. These sorts of specific claims that are, as yet, unevidenced in the MCU.
...
1. SHIELD has consistently had supertech for decades.
2. This means SHIELD must have been maintaining a pipeline of superscientist trainees, employees, and retirees.
3. Some of those superscientists would have survived both the dissolution of SHIELD and the Snap.
4. At least some of those can be assumed to have turned their abilities to mitigating the consequences of the Snap.

There's a wee bit of irony here. You're arguing against specific unsupported claims from others, while simultaneously making your own.

1) You're assuming a level of universal applicability/transferability to "SHIELD superscientists" that we haven't seen demonstrated in the text. SHIELD has specific goals (espionage, surveillance, enforcement etc) - they're not Oscorp or AIM, working on literally everything at once just to see what sticks.
2) You've made a specific claim that there are or could be "teleportation devices." The only instances we've seen of teleportation in the MCU thus far are not due to technology (magic etc), so such devices don't exist and possibly never will, much less get invented and distributed during the Snap.

You can make the point that the Snap would have hit Earth-1218 (i.e. the real world, ours) harder than it hit Earth-199999 (MCU), without unsupported claims such as these.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

And be locked, with the keys inside the ignition, off course.

This bit at least is easy to fix. Smash the window, reach in, turn off the car or unlock the door as the situation warrants. Naturally be careful of the broken glass if you’re planning to immediately drive it off. (Maybe smash the back seat window, so you don’t have to sit in it?) It’s messy, but this is an emergency and we were going to have to do some window-breaking to remove small children or pets who weren’t Snapped with their parents/owners anyway.

If someone is really thinking ahead, it might be faster to just go down the line smashing windows and turning off cars so they can be dealt with more easily later, though I doubt there will be many people thinking that clearly in the early hours of the crisis.

Just because someone can design a device doesn’t make them capable of retooling an entire factory overnight. The logistics involved are a little more than you're assuming here.

Inclined to agree here. At the very least, you’d have to remove the existing machinery.

Plus isn’t the car-driving tech in question from Wakanda? So good odds of containing vibranium in its design? And the super genius who made them got Snapped, so the super genius trying to mass produce them would at least hit the speed bump of needing to reverse-engineer them first.

Also, remind me exactly where we’ve seen “teleportation devices” before? The only thing that comes to mind is the beaming-ray from Thanos’ ships, which is not exactly homegrown technology.

I was thinking Kama-Taj and the sorcerer portals, but sling rings require training and half the people with that training got Snapped.

I could also see a lot of thieves and scavengers working their way through the cars, and the more foresighted among them might even be siphoning gas from unattended vehicles. Or, as Tyndmyr mentions, simply stealing the nicer cars outright.

This reminded me: gasoline only has a shelf life of 3-6 months. I don’t disagree that people would steal the gas, I just don’t know if it would do them much long term good.

Also, wildlife populations might be halved, but I doubt that would stop squirrels/mice/etc. from building nests in those unattended cars. And the tires would go flat after a while too. So the cars blocking the streets definitely need to be moved sooner rather than later.

Very good point. This suggests that it did, although this is comics rather than strictly MCU.

But we did see Freedom Tower in Infinity War, so that's a strong indication that it happened in the MCU as well.

Even if they didn’t have 9/11, they had Hydra instead. Plenty of reason to fortify the cockpit.

The site also says the flight engineer’s position is mainly in older aircraft, pre-1980:

"In newer airliners, most of this work is done by computerized systems, eliminating the need for the flight-engineer position. In the future, it will be phased out entirely."

So I guess the next question is, what proportion of the fleet is old enough to still have a flight engineer?

[Tyndmyr]

Very good point. This suggests that it did, although this is comics rather than strictly MCU.

But we did see Freedom Tower in Infinity War, so that's a strong indication that it happened in the MCU as well.

Fair enough, I don't keep up on the comics as much. I read them randomly, but definitely not all of them. In any case, given the amount of crime, I don't think it would be unreasonable for them to have some security.

The site also says the flight engineer’s position is mainly in older aircraft, pre-1980:

"In newer airliners, most of this work is done by computerized systems, eliminating the need for the flight-engineer position. In the future, it will be phased out entirely."

There is some intense cost pressures in airlines, and aircrew is expensive. I don't know how old the commercial fleet is overall. Private aviation uses a *ton* of old planes, as does military aviation(I know both of those much better). You'd think 40 year old aircraft would be rare, but there's a surprising amount of aircraft from the 60s still in the air.

I was just watching Thor last night, because my brain was that empty. Alas, poor Agent Sitwell.

Now that you mention it, the apparent casualty rate of SHIELD agents probably also greatly affects the amount of retired SHIELD personnel around in general, even leaving aside the big events, they inherently end up with a bit more risk than the average person.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
Plus isn’t the car-driving tech in question from Wakanda?

Yes indeed, and it seems likely that Wakanda hasn’t shared its tech with anyone after the Snap. So it’s probable that no one outside of Wakanda knows it even exists.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
I was thinking Kama-Taj and the sorcerer portals, but sling rings require training and half the people with that training got Snapped.

Indeed. It’s Dr. Strange-style magic, and not available to the general populaton—and not supertech, so not something a “superscientist” could easily replicate.

Plus, we have no indication that the MCU is actually the Tippyverse. I can’t recall any teleportation technology from any of the movies that’s native to Earth.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
This reminded me: gasoline only has a shelf life of 3-6 months. I don’t disagree that people would steal the gas, I just don’t know if it would do them much long term good.

Also very true. There might be some survivalist types who know how to add a stabilizer, but stockpiling gas without it certainly won’t help long-term.

But those people who steal fuel will probably use it immediately or sell it to someone else who wants it, so long-term storage may not be as much of a factor. Even a lot of non-career-criminals will probably resort to stealing fuel from abandoned cars, simply because gas stations will probably start charging $15 a gallon.

Originally Posted by Kareeah_Indaga
So I guess the next question is, what proportion of the fleet is old enough to still have a flight engineer?

Probably not a large proportion. But Tyndmyr’s link suggests that there won’t be total fleet losses to the degree I’d first assumed.

That said, I think there will still be enough of a catastrophe to shock the industry into collapse. One estimate I found suggests ten thousand planes flying on an average day, carrying 1.2 million passengers. If we assume that only 10% of those planes crashed, that’s still a thousand aircraft, which is by far the worst day in aviation history.

Half of the passengers would have been Snapped, but another 60,000 would be lost when the thousand pilotless aircraft went down. A thousand planes and sixty thousand lost passengers is just about unthinkable on its own, and more than enough to send the industry out of business, given the other factors already mentioned.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
There is some intense cost pressures in airlines, and aircrew is expensive. I don't know how old the commercial fleet is overall. Private aviation uses a *ton* of old planes, as does military aviation(I know both of those much better). You'd think 40 year old aircraft would be rare, but there's a surprising amount of aircraft from the 60s still in the air.

True…although given cost pressures and the price of aircrew, I could see them retrofitting an older airframe with automation to remove the flight engineer. But that’s just a guess.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Now that you mention it, the apparent casualty rate of SHIELD agents probably also greatly affects the amount of retired SHIELD personnel around in general, even leaving aside the big events, they inherently end up with a bit more risk than the average person.

Not to mention HYDRA agents, who have it even worse.

Originally Posted by theNater
Yes, there has been devastation, unsurprisingly. But we don't know the full extent or specific effects.

Yes, we do.

We do have a sense of the effects five years after the Snap, because immediately after “FIVE YEARS LATER” we see the entire Manhattan skyline is dark, we see refugee boats clustered around the Statue of Liberty, and we see the wreckage of cars around a dilapidated sports stadium.

That’s five years after the Snap, and no power in Manhattan. That argues for massive, long-term failures in power supply, and it’s not a stretch from that to assume massive disruptions in transportation and food distribution as well.

[Cikomyr2]

Yes, we do.

We do have a sense of the effects five years after the Snap, because immediately after “FIVE YEARS LATER” we see the entire Manhattan skyline is dark, we see refugee boats clustered around the Statue of Liberty, and we see the wreckage of cars around a dilapidated sports stadium.

That’s five years after the Snap, and no power in Manhattan. That argues for massive, long-term failures in power supply, and it’s not a stretch from that to assume massive disruptions in transportation and food distribution as well.

All of that really makes me wonder about how the people of Westview had such nice lives a few weeks after the Desnap

[Psyren]

I was thinking Kama-Taj and the sorcerer portals, but sling rings require training and half the people with that training got Snapped.

Yeah, that's definitely not technology, at least not in the "mass producible" or "revolutionizing industry" sense.

All of that really makes me wonder about how the people of Westview had such nice lives a few weeks after the Desnap

"Nice lives?" The town was in utter disrepair. Numerous shops were boarded up. Vision probably got that plot for a steal.

[Gallowglass]

Let's be honest here. MCU opened an undeliverable can of worms when they let the Russo's snap away 4 billion humans (and an indetermined number of other lifeforms), keep them gone for 5 years, then not undo button it with Endgame.

They are NEVER going to adequately explore the thought exercise of what that would actually look like, because it would render the MCU so far afield from our reality it wouldn't be relatable to most audiences anymore.

Look at the brief look we got in Endgame. Manhattan was a wreck of abandoned streets, powerless buildings and refugee boats left moored and forgotten at the statue of liberty. That, in my mind, was a somewhat optimistic look at what it would be five years later. Cap was still able to go to a support group and get fast food on his way home. Hulk was still able to go to a diner and get breakfast. Thor was still able to play games against nerds on the internet.

Even the brief semi-lucid look into it we are bandying back and forth here in this forum shows the sheer awesome reality that could come out of such an event. So world changing we can barely wrap out minds around it and get stuck discussing little windows into what it would look like. I mean, really, effects on the fishing industry in new orleans? Small potatoes.

And even MORE world shattering would be the sudden return and influx of the missing 4 billion souls when they come back into a world that has completely changed while they were gone. I mean... that would be an even worst unfathomable catastrophe than them going in the first place.

(And I'm not even going to talk about the billions and billions of aliens outside of earth)

If they were going to actually explore this, then the future marvel movies wouldn't be superhero movies, they would be apocalypse survival films.

Instead, we got Spiderman: Far from Home which dealt with it with:

showing the people returning during a school event identical to the school event from five years ago, a brief off-the-cuff reference to Aunt May working with an organization to help settle snappees who have lost their homes, and then... a few weeks after the unsnap, Peter and his classmates going on a standard european school trip.

Yeah. Seems likely. After 9/11, a tiny speck of an event compared to what we are talking about in this fictional setting, such school events and travel were suspended for over a year. But here, they are off on their coming of age adventure without a care in the world.

All we are going to get is background references to small changes. Like Monica losing out on the job she should've had, Westview having a few boarded up shops, Sam's sister struggling to keep her business afloat, Sam noting his neices and nephews are older. *shrug* then on with the show.

In fairness to the MCU creators, I guess I don't mind. I would love to see a meaningful, thoughtful show exploring the tragedies of this universe altering change and its lingering effects but it would render the MCU universe so dissimilar to our reality it would make for a completely different experience and keep the OTHER creators who ware not named Russo from making the movies they signed up to make.

[Tyndmyr]

Look at the brief look we got in Endgame. Manhattan was a wreck of abandoned streets, powerless buildings and refugee boats left moored and forgotten at the statue of liberty. That, in my mind, was a somewhat optimistic look at what it would be five years later. Cap was still able to go to a support group and get fast food on his way home. Hulk was still able to go to a diner and get breakfast. Thor was still able to play games against nerds on the internet.

Yeah. That's my essential grudge with the current presentation. Nothing actually seemed functionally different, it's just an aesthetic layer of things not being great. For Endgame, they tossed bags of trash in the street, okay. Thor's town seemed basically 100% fine, even beyond the internet. Yeah, he's depressed, but starving isn't on the table for anyone.

In all honestly, the five year timeskip was probably a mistake all round for what the MCU wants to be. It was a really wild way to fold in a very different Hulk and Thor, but it mostly just introduces problems otherwise.

I'd be 100% down with going the crazy apoc version, though. We've already proven that audiences aren't terrified of getting away from bog standard earth. Both GotG and Ragnarok were wild rides, and those are pretty well loved.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Gallowglass
And even MORE world shattering would be the sudden return and influx of the missing 4 billion souls when they come back into a world that has completely changed while they were gone. I mean... that would be an even worst unfathomable catastrophe than them going in the first place.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

That’s the number-one disconnect for me—because even if everything stabilized after five years, global agricultural production would have adjusted to the new normal of half the prior population. Dropping in several billion additional people from one day to the next would have caused an instant worldwide famine.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
Thor's town seemed basically 100% fine, even beyond the internet. Yeah, he's depressed, but starving isn't on the table for anyone.

In the specific case of New Asgard, though…populated by Asgardians and effectively run by a Valkyrie, so not completely representative.

San Francisco did seem to be in much better shape than NYC, though. Some neighborhoods were worse than others, but they did have enough money for a large monument park. I’m guessing that was still relatively new when Scott returned, since it would have taken months if not years just to get all the names organized.

Originally Posted by Tyndmyr
In all honestly, the five year timeskip was probably a mistake all round for what the MCU wants to be. It was a really wild way to fold in a very different Hulk and Thor, but it mostly just introduces problems otherwise.

Well, it also allows for Morgan to have a speaking role, and for Tony to be 1000% invested in his new life.

[Psyren]

I think "mistake" is too strong a word personally. Will the Snap cause fridge logic moments and inconsistencies that MCU writers will have to wrestle with from now until the heat death of the universe? Probably yes. Will it also result in a wealth cool stories, concepts and situations (like the whole Flagsmasher's movement at the heart of this series, or the semi-heel-turn of SWORD from the last one) that prove to be fertile ground for storytelling in this new Earth? Also yes. And will the vast majority of fans be along for the ride through all of it? I can't predict the future, but as of right now, signs point to yes.

Besides, it'd be kind of weird if the MCU had the biggest all-out battle between good and evil that it ever had - that perhaps it ever will have - and for that to have no lasting consequences at all. So a total undo of the Snap itself, on top of breaking this setting's time travel completely, would have just felt cheap to me.

[Kareeah_Indaga]

In the specific case of New Asgard, though…populated by Asgardians and effectively run by a Valkyrie, so not completely representative.

Seconded. They ran into Thanos previously, have better knowledge of the Infinity Stones than the average Earth human, and sooner or later they have Thor on hand to fill them in on any details, so less of an initial panic. And with the super strength they could easily barter help moving cars for basic supplies, even if they didn’t rescue any of their tech during their escape from Asgard and all their magic was completely useless. And even if they were all completely ignorant of Earth tech (...likely, judging by Thor) they’re still a bunch of extra warm bodies when Earth desperately needs more warm bodies to fill vital positions. Give them some of the easier-to-teach jobs and they could help get more of the local infrastructure up and running again that much sooner.

[hungrycrow]

I think "mistake" is too strong a word personally. Will the Snap cause fridge logic moments and inconsistencies that MCU writers will have to wrestle with from now until the heat death of the universe? Probably yes. Will it also result in a wealth cool stories, concepts and situations (like the whole Flagsmasher's movement at the heart of this series, or the semi-heel-turn of SWORD from the last one) that prove to be fertile ground for storytelling in this new Earth? Also yes. And will the vast majority of fans be along for the ride through all of it? I can't predict the future, but as of right now, signs point to yes.

Besides, it'd be kind of weird if the MCU had the biggest all-out battle between good and evil that it ever had - that perhaps it ever will have - and for that to have no lasting consequences at all. So a total undo of the Snap itself, on top of breaking this setting's time travel completely, would have just felt cheap to me.

I feel like the real mistake was leaving time travel a possibility. Now they can bring back any dead characters, or bring back the infinity gauntlet again to solve everything if things get too dangerous. That might mess with building suspense for whatever the next big arc is.

[Kornaki]

Didn't they need pym particles to time travel? Do they even have any left?

[hungrycrow]

Didn't they need pym particles to time travel? Do they even have any left?

Hank Pym got blipped back so I think they can just find more. They're gonna have to if they want Ant-man to still be a thing.

[Psyren]

I feel like the real mistake was leaving time travel a possibility. Now they can bring back any dead characters, or bring back the infinity gauntlet again to solve everything if things get too dangerous. That might mess with building suspense for whatever the next big arc is.

The only dead characters to come back were those that died to one specific phenomenon (reversing the Snap) and Vision, who didn't so much "come back" as he was "copied to a new shell*", which wouldn't really work for any other character except maybe Ultron.

As far as retrieving the gauntlet, their time machine got turned into a glass parking lot by Thanos right after they used it, and the guy who figured out how to build it is dead - that's plenty of justification to close that particular door, though I'm sure they can easily add more if it's needed. We're not getting another time heist (for the stones at least).

*More accurately, his memories in the old shell were reactivated - but the fact that he flew off rather than staying with Wanda suggests that he isn't quite the same Vision even with all his memories restored. He may even have gone off to fulfill his directive of killing Vision - himself.

[hungrycrow]

The only dead characters to come back were those that died to one specific phenomenon (reversing the Snap) and Vision, who didn't so much "come back" as he was "copied to a new shell*", which wouldn't really work for any other character except maybe Ultron.

As far as retrieving the gauntlet, their time machine got turned into a glass parking lot by Thanos right after they used it, and the guy who figured out how to build it is dead - that's plenty of justification to close that particular door, though I'm sure they can easily add more if it's needed. We're not getting another time heist (for the stones at least).

*More accurately, his memories in the old shell were reactivated - but the fact that he flew off rather than staying with Wanda suggests that he isn't quite the same Vision even with all his memories restored. He may even have gone off to fulfill his directive of killing Vision - himself.

Also Gamora.

[SunsetWaraxe]

I really enjoyed Episode 1 of The Falcon & Winter Soldier. It is going to be a very different show than WandaVision.

[Kornaki]

Hank Pym got blipped back so I think they can just find more. They're gonna have to if they want Ant-man to still be a thing.

I forgot that's how he died in the first place.

[Psyren]

Also Gamora.

She didn't "come back," that's a different Gamora entirely.

I forgot that's how he died in the first place.

Pym, Lang, Hope and Janet are all at Tony's funeral to show that they've gotten their family back together.

[Gallowglass]

She didn't "come back," that's a different Gamora entirely.

That's really splitting hairs

As far as retrieving the gauntlet, their time machine got turned into a glass parking lot by Thanos right after they used it, and the guy who figured out how to build it is dead - that's plenty of justification to close that particular door, though I'm sure they can easily add more if it's needed. We're not getting another time heist (for the stones at least).

Except they had a functioning time machine right after that, that they used to send Steve back to return the stones and mjolinor back to their proper places in the timestream.