r/whowouldwin • u/ThePriestofVaranasi • Jul 09 '25

Challenge Every human on Earth vanishes, except for one random person in the US. A button is placed on the summit of Mount Everest that can be pressed to undo this change. Can humanity be restored?

Every human on Earth vanishes without a trace, except for one random survivor: Ethan from the United States. Moments after the disappearance, a mysterious device materializes before him, displaying a message:
"Humanity can be restored. To activate revival, you must press the button housed at the highest point on Earth—the summit of Mount Everest."

Ethan essentially has as much of a prep time as he wants to gather all the essentials like food, water, weapons, vehicles and everything else that has been suddenly abandoned. He can raid supermarkets, libraries, military depots, and pharmacies for supplies. Ethan can still die of old age so this prep time isn't unlimited.

Now, Ethan faces an impossible gauntlet:
He must travel to Nepal and ascend to the summit of Mount Everest without dying.

Can Ethan survive long enough to reach the button and restore humanity?

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212

u/redditisfacist3 Jul 09 '25

most of those require an experienced crew needing multiple people, the ship needs to be serviced by other professionals, and the supply chain to get all materials needed to that ship.

Also GPS probably wont work in this scenario completely unmanned. so good luck navigating off a map

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u/IEatGirlFarts Jul 09 '25

GPS would work for years with no human intervention.

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u/TheRedditorSimon Jul 09 '25

Maybe 7-25 years, as they will drift out of orbit due to gravity peturbations and there are no ground operations to provide station keeping updates.

Also, the power grid goes offline almost immediately. User grade solar cells degrade about 1%/yr.

1

u/DeadHeadDaddio Jul 11 '25

The fuel needed to power the ship will go bad within a few months.

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u/TheRedditorSimon Jul 11 '25

Most any ship engine bigger than an outboard motor will be fueled by diesel, not gasoline. Diesel is far more tolerant for storage, especially if you have the stuff without biodiesels mixed in.

Additionally, if Ethan can find an older diesel motor, they're much more tolerant of diesel fuel variations.

Lastly, you can "polish" diesel to recondition it. Just drain out the stuff at the bottom and use filters and mild heating on the rest. Most boats have this set up on board, already.

1

u/TurnoverInfamous3705 Jul 14 '25

They would fall in 2 years without intervention.

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u/Glittering_Season141 Jul 10 '25

Ethan doesn't know this.

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u/guyblade ​ Jul 10 '25

This is flagrantly incorrect.

GPS works by each satellite knowing the precise time and where it is going to be at that time. Given the precision needed, that information is computed on the ground and uploaded to satellites based on ground-based observations of them (e.g., laser & radar range-finding + models). Generally, those satellites only have a few weeks of forward-looking data on them at any time.

If humans aren't doing those uploads, then the system breaks down within a month.

2

u/Leninlover431 Jul 10 '25

My understanding was that GPS is calculated solely from time-of-flight of the signal, and its the various correction services that rely on the ground-based observations (SBAS). So the accuracy of the system will degrade, yet it will remain functional as long as the GPS sats remain in orbit with functional clocks.

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u/guyblade ​ Jul 10 '25

Flight time is important to the calculation, but you have to know where you're measuring from with high accuracy. That's the ephemeris data.

If you look at the GPS spec, it includes an error budget relative to how old the data (ephemeris and other) is on page A-12. Notice that after the ephemeris is only 15 days old that the error is over 200 meters.

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u/EncabulatorTurbo Jul 10 '25

to miss getting a boat to china you need a good deal more substantial drift than 200 meters

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u/guyblade ​ Jul 11 '25

It is important to keep that 200m in context. This image from page A-7 of the doc shows that the degradation seems to get exponentially worse as time goes on.

That section also references this document. While I'm not certain that I'm interpreting the table properly, it seems like the table on page 135 of that document implies that a (block IIR or later) GPS satellite just won't have ephemeris data past 62 days after its last upload. If that's true, there would be a slow degradation, then a complete loss of function at ~2 months.

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u/IEatGirlFarts Jul 10 '25

You could also correct with your compass and heading.

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u/LigerZeroSchneider ​ Jul 09 '25

Yeah there are no gps servers, the infrastructure is solely satellites.

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u/guyblade ​ Jul 10 '25

This is very, very wrong.

The whole way that GPS works is by having the satellites broadcast the current time and their current position with very high precision. The satellite can't know that information, on its own, so that information is computed on the ground via models and observations of the satellites from monitoring stations (e.g., radar or laser-based rangefinding). Once that information is computed, it is uploaded to the satellites. Usually, the models can only predict a few weeks into the future because of the precision needed and the general chaos of complex systems. Those machines on the ground are doing the real heavy lifting that makes the constellation functional.

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u/IEatGirlFarts Jul 09 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

...an actual, proper gps has its own actual antenna connecting to an actual sattelite constellation...?

Edit: Jesus christ people i was being sarcastic since the dude before me mentioned GPS servers...

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u/StarKnight697 Jul 09 '25

…very often, yeah. How do you think people navigate with them in remote regions?

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u/IEatGirlFarts Jul 09 '25

No, i was being sarcastic. The user i replied to was talking about GPS servers...

1

u/StarKnight697 Jul 09 '25

Ah, gotcha.

1

u/DelcoMan Jul 09 '25

wait until you learn about satellite phones.

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u/AbsoluteSupes Jul 11 '25

And how about the engine for a vessel capable of crossing an ocean?

13

u/ObnoxiousOptimist Jul 10 '25

If GPS doesn’t work, I wouldn’t trust myself to find Mt Everest even if started in the center of Nepal.

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u/redditisfacist3 Jul 10 '25

Oh id die for sure. Everest is a beast. Without a Sherpa you'd need to be an expert to get up alone. 100s have died that even had experience

1

u/RocketDog2001 Jul 16 '25

Stop by the local AAA office and raid the vending machine full of maps.

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u/averageredditcuck Jul 09 '25

Easy, US to Canada to alaska to russia to nepal. What kind of doofus would cross the atlantic?

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u/schumachiavelli Jul 10 '25

Crossing the Bering Strait is the doofus way of doing it. There are no roads to the western coast of Alaska: you can get a little bit beyond Anchorage and then you’d have to go overland on foot, fly, or round the Alaskan Peninsula by boat. Not an easy task given weather and the shoals.

Assuming you make it to Russia you have the same problem: there’s no overland transport from the Russian Far East to… anywhere. Good luck hiking across hundreds of miles of inhospitable Siberian forest, the home of tigers, bears, and wolves.

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u/averageredditcuck Jul 10 '25

I did no research and you clearly know more about this than I do, but I still think I like my odds better against that than crossing the Atlantic

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u/schumachiavelli Jul 10 '25

I just know geography really well and boats almost as much, so I have faith most people could figure out a boat capable of the transatlantic crossing. It doesn’t have to be a huge cargo ship or anything: there are plenty of boats below 100’ that can make the trip, and they can be handled by one person who doesn’t care about scratching the paint a little.

You could do it, I’m sure, given time to prep and practice. I believe in you :)

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u/The_Purple_Banner Jul 16 '25

This is a late comment but you could do a boat and still do the Bering strait route. Just follow the coast. ez pz

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u/ArmenianThunderGod Jul 10 '25

There are no roads to the western coast of Alaska

Why would this be a problem? Couldn't you just take an SUV that's particularly good at off-roading and just drive, not on roads? Is it all forest?

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u/sharkMonstar ​ Jul 10 '25

do you think its just gonna be easy to trek any suv or whatever wont even have enough gas to make it

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u/ArmenianThunderGod Jul 10 '25

No, I don't think it would be easy. I think it might be easier than learning to operate a ship that can handle a transatlantic voyage. Not to mention learning naval navigation.

Gas is a good point, but you can always fill up some tanks and throw them in the back.

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u/Wide_Lock_Red Jul 15 '25

Piloting a ship isn't that hard with prep time and it has a lot fewer variables. You can find yachts that are made for 1 man and its a straight shot.

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u/schumachiavelli Jul 10 '25

Nah, it’s impassable forest. That’s why those remote Alaskan towns are serviced by bush pilots in small airplanes.

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u/dave3218 Jul 10 '25

There is no overland transport from the Russian far east to anywhere.

Was the Trans-Siberian railroad blown up or something?

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u/schumachiavelli Jul 10 '25

Was the Trans-Siberian railroad blown up or something?

You don't seem to realize just how absolutely fucking huge the Russian hinterlands are; the Trans-Siberian railroad is, at its closest, roughly 2,000 miles away from the hypothetical western landing point of anyone crossing the Bering Strait at its narrowest.

Reference this map showing the rail network. See the pointy grey bit at the very top right of the image? That's where you'd land boating from Alaska to Russia.

-1

u/dave3218 Jul 10 '25

I’m assuming you wouldn’t be dumb enough to just land on the first piece of land you see and actually bring enough supplies to try to skirt the shore until you reach Vladivostok.

So, my question stands, was the trans-Siberian railroad blown or something?

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u/schumachiavelli Jul 10 '25

No, the TSR's not been blown up. Is your focus on the TSR simply a pedantic one, i.e. that I should've been more specific and said that there's no overland transport from the Russian far northeast to anywhere? Because if that's what you're getting at... OK, fine.

Alternatively if your focus implies that the TSR's continued presence in this hypothetical makes the Bering passage a better option than the Transatlantic route then that's simply still very much wrong.

Skirting the shore as you suggest until you reach Vladivostok is a journey of over 5,000 miles along a shore with practically no settlements, no good nautical charts available to a random American, dodgy weather and sea conditions, and plenty of rocky islands, outcrops, and shoals. This, of course, is preceded by a similar journey of about 2,000 miles on the American side from Seward, threading the Aleutians and whatnot prior to the actual crossing itself. Finding a vessel that is capable of such a journey, manageable by one person, in the backwaters of Alaska, and stocking it sufficiently might prove challenging.

That's 7,000 miles of navigation along coastlines that are dangerous and inhospitable to humans even before everyone else was Thanos'd. That seems exceedingly stupid when the alternative is crossing 3,000 miles of Atlantic Ocean that's open, well-charted, ends up in Western Europe where plentiful supplies await, and in a yacht that can be easily found, fueled, and stocked up essentially at your starting point.

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u/dave3218 Jul 10 '25

You are more knowledgeable than me in matters that involve the sea, so I won’t discuss that.

But yeah, my issue was with the Russian Far east, because AFAIK it includes Vladivostok and anyone with common sense would attempt to start their trip there instead of landing on the middle of bumfuck nowhere.

The trans-Atlantic option seems like a better alternative, but really being honest I think that flying a plane or learning to fly a plane to cross the Atlantic and reach Europe then go from there would be better than going by boat, I guess the main issue would be the pre-flight checks if this takes too long to learn though so probably grabbing a big yacht as you said and crossing the Atlantic would be better.

I wouldn’t discount flying a plane though, because once you grasp the basics it’s not really that difficult, it’s just that it is extremely regulated and the competency level expected of pilots is very high because the take offs and landings are the most dangerous parts of any flight, and any mistake can instantly cost hundreds of lives and there are thousands of flights happening every minute, so the regulations have to be very strict to make every single landing perfect.

But if you are traveling once, you only need perfect once, and as long as the guy doesn’t panic he will do it just fine.

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u/schumachiavelli Jul 10 '25

OK I get what you're saying and I could've been more specific, but in my defense so very many people in this thread seemed to think they could simply drive to the narrowest point, boat (or snowshoe or snowmobile, as some have suggested!) that comparatively small amount of open ocean, and drive away once they reached the Russian side.

I'm not against the thought experiment of learning to fly, but IRL I'm very familiar with boats so that crossing truly doesn't intimidate me. I do agree that flying it wouldn't require perfection: as long as the pilot could take off he could probably parachute on the other end and obviously not worry about landing!

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u/CrabAppleBapple Jul 11 '25

I’m assuming you wouldn’t be dumb enough to just land on the first piece of land you see and actually bring enough supplies to try to skirt the shore until you reach Vladivostok.

Why? Unless the last person left is Captain Explorerman McTraveller.

The vast majority of people wouldn't know where they are. Wouldn't know the best place to land. Wouldn't know sandbanks/shoals/shallows of a bit of Russian coastline. Wouldn't know how many supplies they'd even need to do that.

Some people might know bits of the above. But all of it? No, absolutely not.

Humans are pack animals, our world works and the navigation you're assuming is easy, only works, because there are lots of us all working together, all the time.

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u/RocketDog2001 Jul 16 '25

Assuming I am Ethan, I can fly a plane big enough to do the job.

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u/NarwhalOk95 Jul 13 '25

Ethan from the U.S.?

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u/redditisfacist3 Jul 09 '25

Enjoy icebergs and other issues without any warning

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u/forever_a-hole Jul 09 '25

The Bering Strait is notoriously dangerous, but wouldn’t that still be easier than trying to navigate across the Atlantic with no navigational knowledge?

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u/redditisfacist3 Jul 09 '25

Both would extremely dangerous especially as a 1 man crew.

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u/GateGold3329 Jul 10 '25

Multiple teenagers have done it alone.

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u/arbitrageME Jul 10 '25

highly trained teenager with support staff and a satelite phone.

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u/Level9disaster Jul 10 '25

Also, he's on a short time limit, because fuels and lubricants actually degrade surprisingly quickly. Most vehicles , including ships, will be inoperable within 3 years, as chemical plants stop supplying those irreplaceable fluids.

Good luck learning to navigate the Atlantic with a sailboat, and then reaching Nepal without a car.

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u/EveryAccount7729 Jul 13 '25

best bet may be training on aircraft flight sims and just take off and fly to near everest, and then jump out and crash the plane. Some huge military bird.

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u/CannonGerbil Jul 10 '25 edited Jul 10 '25

Most of that servicing and supply chains are required to keep a ship going for years or possibly decades on end, if all you care about is getting it across the ocean in a one way trip then it doesn't really matter that you don't have the best tools and the maintenance isn't up to date.

A similar deal goes for the GPS, it'll be mostly functional for 5-7 years, and even after it starts degrading it'll still be mostly usable for 25 years ish before it becomes unusable for ship navigation, and if you haven't made it across the ocean in 25 years, I'm going to assume that you will never make it across.

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u/thatonezorofan Jul 10 '25

Not true, there was this guy on TikTok that crossed the entire pacific from the coast of California to New Zealand with a small sailboat and I took him around 50 days or so. The dude is called sailing songbird. However, that's very obviously a huge outlier. There's probably not many people on the planet that have the knowledge and experience to do a voyage that insane, but if there's anyone I would be willing to bet to complete this challenge, it would def be him. Here's his TikTok account for those who curious: https://www.tiktok.com/@sailing_songbird?_t=ZT-8xuwKmoB6wX&_r=1

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u/ashlati Jul 10 '25

The GPS would work for most of his life time. Even if it didn‘t he‘d just have to straight east or west, depending on the ocean until he made landfall on the Eurasian landmass. Like Columbus in reverse

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u/Acrobatic-While3208 Jul 12 '25

We truly live in amazing times, for better or worse