Killing 50% of your gut bacteria is a big nothing.
These things reproduce on the timescale of hours.
I kill 90% of my sourdough starter every time I feed it, and it bounces back the same day.
I'd have to hear her argument, but...
Submitted 6 months ago by lousyd@lemmy.sdf.org to [deleted]
https://lemmy.sdf.org/pictrs/image/0f2f48e4-ca18-4b03-b3f0-af3523d16dc5.png
Comments
deegeese@sopuli.xyz 6 months ago
Jiggle_Physics@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, I have been on antibiotics that wiped out most of my gut bacteria. It was easy to upset my stomach for a few months, then I was fine.
HonkTonkWoman@lemm.ee 6 months ago
I had the same experience with norovirus this spring.
Probiotics did the trick, but it was t so much fun.
lowleveldata@lemmy.world 6 months ago
50% of all ≠ 50% per person
xXSirDanglesXx@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Right? Taking even the people who disappeared into account, and their guy biomes, would you not consider them all as part of all life?
If so, there may be some survivors with all of their guy biomes perfectly intact, and others who get unfortunately zilched.
loaExMachina@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
If the 50% are homogeneously spread -and it’s implied that it is-, then one may assume 50% per person also applies. Like how he didn’t leave 50% of planets alone and purge the rest.
Enkers@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
I would think it’s basically a coin flip for each living thing. It’s possible, for example, that all humans survive, however the probability is so astronomically small, it’s functionally impossible.
Same with gut biome. Even with several billion attempts, the probability that even 60% of any individual’s trillion gut microbes get snapped would be essentially functionally impossible.
Amputret@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
I’m not sure it’s stated, but I thought the plants that had already been purged by Thanos’ armies, like Gamora’s planet and Xandar were spared the snap.
don@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Or the 50% of all people that got snapped took 50% of the gut bacteria with them, leaving the rest with no loss to their gut biomes. (taps forehead)
rockerface@lemm.ee 6 months ago
or the survivors lost all but bacteria, and the remainders were left over in places of the snapped people
sheogorath@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Ohh so that’s what the dust is. The leftover gut bacteria.
twig@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
Wouldn’t 50% of them die at the same time as the creatures that they live inside? Like unexisting 50% of humans would in fact unexist 50% of the bacteria in the humans who went poof.
How does this argument make sense?
doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
If it’s all a truly random selection, which I believe it was, then half of all people would cease to exist, leaving half of their gut biomes behind, still alive (albeit briefly). I guess the end result would be the snapped people leaving behind a mist of gross intestinal bacteria which would itself mostly die out without a host. Meaning much more than half of all gut biome bacteria would be killed as a result.
Of course it would make more sense to consider a person and their gut flora as one being, but the joke is about how stupid the initial conception of Thanos’ plan is, not creating an academically rigorous argument.
teddy2021@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
This brings up an interesting point. The snap would have to run a multi pass check to make sure that by killing half of all organic life, it’s not causing the other half to die off. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be confirming to the will of the user, but then does it “scan” individual life types independently or as an ecosystem unto themselves, in which case is there precedence? Do food producing things get a pass, because otherwise the snap is just shortcut the process for half of the population. If it does leave the food producing ones alone, then really he’s just snapping away apex predators.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
Each bacteria is an individual living organism. So I’m guessing that (within this framework) the humans disappeared, but only ~50% (on avg) of their gut biome disappeared.
And such, in people who did not disappear, ~50% (on avg) of their gut biome also disappeared.
The math checks out…
Dnb@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 months ago
So you are saying for the 50%who disappeared, 50% of their gut bacteria fell out (and died)
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 6 months ago
E. Coli reproduces so fast that a population can double in size in half an hour, and human feces is 50% bacteria by weight.
If your gut microbiome got snapped it’d be back so fast you wouldn’t even notice. Bacteria are kinda scary.
DillyDaily@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah, worst case scenario stock prices for probiotic yoghurt would increase.
KnowledgeableNip@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Looks like Jamie Lee Curtis is joining the MCU.
repungnant_canary@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Wait, do you have a source for the 50% number?
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 6 months ago
My bad – looks like I misread the Google summary. A healthy turd is 75% water, and of what’s left, 25-50% is made up of microbes.
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Thanos’ plan was unmitigated garbage anyway.
Humanity reached 4M in 1975 and hit 8M in 2022, less than 50 years later. Assuming 50% of humanity died when Thanos snapped his fingers 50 years later we’d be back to 8M people again.
Disgracefulone@discuss.online 6 months ago
Are… you high? You know that back when I last checked in 2020ish there were 8 billion people, right? Maybe that’s what you meant
f314@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They might not be a native English speaker. In my language (Norwegian), the word for “billion” is “milliard”. I think that’s also the case in German.
RunawayFixer@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That’s obviously what they meant. There was probably some translation error. Just cut people some slack, everyone makes small mistakes from time to time. There’s a few (atleast 2) languages where the native word for billion starts with an m and the word for trillion starts with a b.
Hossenfeffer@feddit.uk 6 months ago
Oops. Yup, utter failed to put Bs! Put it down to not having had enough coffee today!
GladiusB@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That is NOT how species replicate. There are many factors where that number comes from. Including food and space to keep them. I read in college the max for humans is something like 10 million. But most scientists think it’s a already slowing down due to the struggles everyone deals with.
IndustryStandard@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Building additional supply depots removes the cap
BallsandBayonets@lemmings.world 6 months ago
10 million sounds great, maybe the housing market would finally self correct.
MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
You mean 10 billion?
Large cities can have more than 10 million people, so I assume you mean the other thing.
Bluntly, half of the occupants of residences would be gone, and their stuff would be up for grabs. It would take a few years to stabilize afterwards, but it would mostly be business as usual for those who survived the snap (apart from the obvious mental trauma).
Enough homes exist for the number of people who live here now, whether those homes are condos, apartments, detached homes, townhouses, or otherwise. A lot of people would be able to move somewhere more permanent, because the housing market would crash pretty hard.
As we refill the homes the population would naturally return to the same level of growth we have seen previously… So after a few years, maybe a decade, max, humanity would be back on the population train straight to 8B again for sometime between 2050 and 2075.
Humans don’t really follow the same population rules as apply to animals, bacteria, or other organisms in general.
Gork@lemm.ee 6 months ago
She makes a compelling argument.
Subscribes
Etterra@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Come to think about it, whenever a macroscopic organism - ie animals - died it would leave behind about half the microbes living on and in them. When those poor fools got dusted it should have left a puddle of horrible slime on the ground.
Sculptor9157@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Maybe that was accounted for in the dust/flake animation of the unlucky deceased.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
Thanos’ snap wouldn’t kill 50% of each survivors’ gut microbiome, it would kill 50% of all the lil buggies that compromise all gut microbiomes, and if the snap effects individuals randomly, you’d see a normal distribution. So some survivors would retain 100% of their microbiome, some would lose it all, with a bell curve in between, probably with the peak around 50%.
explodicle@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
That bell curve would be extremely narrow. You have so many lil buggies that basically every human survivor would lose ~50% buggies.
PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 6 months ago
[deleted]Kolanaki@yiffit.net 6 months ago
That kinda happens in some of the actual TV series from that story arc.
HonkTonkWoman@lemm.ee 6 months ago
It’s also the glut of the plot of The Leftovers. Absolutely brilliant show, & Proxima Midnight is in it.
milicent_bystandr@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
They must’ve done it in the hyperbolic time chamber.
tetris11@lemmy.ml 6 months ago
There were a few instances of that in some of that later films, but I forget which because of how forgettable they all truly were.
AVincentInSpace@pawb.social 6 months ago
This is more or less the plot of the second season of Quantum Leap.
MeatsOfRage@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I think the intention was sentient life as having Thanos stop the film to explain the terms and conditions of his snap would’ve impacted the pacing of the film.
zalgotext@sh.itjust.works 6 months ago
He coulda just slipped the word “sentient” in to the monologue where he explains his plan. I don’t think that would have impacted pacing at all.
Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 6 months ago
Does that mean for the people that got snapped, some will leave some of their sperm behind?
Fredthefishlord@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 months ago
No because a fetus doesn’t mean the criteria of having a soul (:
Also sperm most certainly doesn’t
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 6 months ago
There was never any such ideas being part of it. It affected plantlife and bacteria as well. The idea of a soul to begin with is not even supported by science, although most people consider it to have some kind of validity, even if it’s not quite definable. But the relevant issue is that it’s all life period.
Annoyed_Crabby@monyet.cc 6 months ago
Well OOP said all life, include bacteria, then they most certainly include sperm and fetus.
AndrewZabar@lemmy.world 6 months ago
See… see this is the story content that belongs in the extended cut.
CoolMatt@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
As someome who is fucking stupid, what ghe hell is a gut biome and why would 50% of the world population disappearing affect it at all? And why would people be power blasting their bathrooms with diarrhea
davidagain@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Your gut is full of friendly bacteria that help you digest your food and keep everything running smoothly and efficiency. This vast community of bacteria is called a gut microbiome. People with gut problems like inflammatory bowel disease and irritable bowel syndrome tend to have a much less diverse gut micribiome. Taking a broad spectrum antibiotic can devastate your gut microbiome, letting the bad bacteria thrive while the good ones are offstage, sometimes leading to some of the same symptoms that people with IBD and IBS might encounter, and it can take months to recover.
Killing 50% of all living things might include 50% of gut microbia, resulting in the potential for bloating, gassiness, stomach cramps, and potentially diarrhoea.
CoolMatt@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Ahhh that makes sense. Thank you for this explanation, I appreciate it very much.
Dozzi92@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Because it just makes sense. Snap, diarrhea. It’s simple.
CoolMatt@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
Oh, okay i figured that much but wasnt sure
Illecors@lemmy.cafe 6 months ago
Is virus alive? We have tons of those as well.
Gestrid@lemmy.ca 6 months ago
No, viruses don’t mean the scientific definition of life. IIRC, the primary reason why is because, in order to make copies of itself, it must hijack a living cell’s reproductive system to do so. It can’t simply divide to make more of itself.
Illecors@lemmy.cafe 6 months ago
That’s a very good point! Thank you!
_lilith@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Balance? Fucked up my sour dough starter is what you did Grimace.
SeanBrently@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Even if that were how it worked, which I don’t accept, it wouldn’t be months, it would be a week or two at most of difficult bathroom time.
The question I want answered is: do half of all the yogurt cups in the grocery store lose all of their culture, or do all of the yogurt cups lose half?
EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
50% of each living thing, so each kind of bacteria you have in your gut is reduced by 50%
Not 50% of all the bacteria
Gingernate@programming.dev 6 months ago
Wait… How is that different?
EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
I responded to a different comment explaining more.
Micro biology changes a lot faster than what you see in complex multi-celluar organisms.
kraftpudding@lemmy.world 6 months ago
I have a math problem for you.
10x0,5 + 20x0,5 + 40x0,5 = 5+10+20= 35
(10+20+40)x0,5 = 70x0,5 = 35
You see where this is going?
EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
There’s never an equal number of each bacteria though.
EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
So there’s an odd number of each kind of bacteria in the gut?
Also, one bacteria isn’t equal to another of a totally different kind, there’s some that can survive better than others, there’s good and bad bacteria that has a high survivability against the invasions of others.
There’s probably trillions of different kinds of bacteria and each one has its own capabilities…and let’s not forget, they share genetic information with each other all the time.
So after the snap, there’s probably a lot of people who have fucked up gut biomes and other people with extremely healthy ones. Because there’s a different quantity of each kind of bacteria inside of each living thing.
That would probably cause some insane mutations in the next coming months after the snap too. Half the bacteria being gone means there’s 50% less genetic material for them to share.
lousyd@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Seems like if you killed half of a bacteria that would kill the whole thing, wouldn’t it? You can’t just chop a bacteria in half. I don’t think…
InputZero@lemmy.world 6 months ago
It depends on the bacteria, when in it’s lifecycle half of it is killed, and what half is killed. To keep things short, the odds are in the bacteria’s favor. Suppose if half the bacteria in your gut died right now how long do you think it would take for the bacteria population in your gut to return to pre-snap levels? A month? A year? Decades? How about less than an hour. Bacteria reproduce exponentially and on average, a bacterial generation lasts 20 minutes. Meaning that every 20 minutes the population doubles, assuming there are no deaths in the population during this time. If there is space for bacteria to grow, they will.
nialv7@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Do the HeLa cells all die together, or do only half of them die?
FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Yeah well, movie Spider-Man cums out of his wrists, so we’re in a whole weird area already.
Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Not just the bathrooms, but the livingrooms and childrenrooms too.
||(I would have used “kitchenrooms” but I couldn’t bring myself to make that kind of joke)||
WhiskyTangoFoxtrot@lemmy.world 6 months ago
They were mostly part of the bacteria domain but I slaughtered them like animals.
dan1101@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Since we’re talking about magic, maybe life that’s inside or attached to other life not disappeared by the snap gets a pass.
lousyd@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
Then humans would get a pass, since we’re attached to our gut biome.
Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Nah the 50% left would quickly replace what was snapped away to the limits of their environment. They multiply fast.
JusticeForPorygon@lemmy.world 6 months ago
More like in this dissertation
crawancon@lemm.ee 6 months ago
distensión dissertatión
Smoogs@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Well no, That would be 75% if the other 50% already existed within the organisms he killed. Math fail.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 6 months ago
It literally specifies of the survivors.
ivanafterall@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Could also be a lot of legless torsos flopping about, as well as torso-less legs, and all sorts of other less-precise halves.
deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz 6 months ago
Zebras probably took it the worst.
Paradachshund@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Wait, are you telling me marvel isn’t thought through all the way?
ouRKaoS@lemmy.today 6 months ago
Well, my corn maze just got really weird…
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
That would imply that 50 percent of the snapped people’s biomes remained behind. All of the produce in the grocery stores would be covered in airborne E. Coli, and snapped surgeons mid-operation would give their patients staph infections, assuming the suriviving surgery team was able to stablize and close them up before they died anyway. Neat.
Also when those snapped people returned with the half of their biomes that also got snapped, you would get a sequel to the diarrhea. Diarrhea 2: Electric Boogapoo.
Nurse_Robot@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Do viruses get snapped too or na
Boxscape@lemmy.sdf.org 6 months ago
And da babies in-utero? Did the Infinity Gauntlet go by conception or 24-weeks?
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
Finally someone asks the real question. Is there an objective definition to life that Virus may or may not fall under? Or would it depend on Thano’s subjective opinion on the matter?
Bishma@discuss.tchncs.de 6 months ago
You’ve opened your inbox to a scientific debate that has raged since virology began.
Kyle_The_G@lemmy.world 6 months ago
technically viruses aren’t alive. They just use cellular machinery to replicate and thats it.
NutWrench@lemmy.world 6 months ago
So just how much diarrhea DID Thanos cause, anyway?
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 6 months ago
A shit ton. Bum dum tss.