All Bridges are Gone

[Sailor.X]

In this scenario the ROB being a major dick decides to screw everyone on the planet by removing every single bridge on Earth. Everything from the smallest foot bridge to giant bay spanning bridges. But to not be a complete dick anyone who was on or near one of those bridges is transported back to their homes. This is a one time event. Humanity can build new bridges to replace the old ones. And the new bridges will not be targeted by the ROB in the future. So how do the nations of the world deal with this unexpected calamity?

 

[Arlos]

Everyone is confused; there is nothing in the holy scripture saying that bridges are bad?

I’d imagine we would see a disrupted supply line for a few days, before we placed temporary emergency bridge to make sur goods keep flowing.
Construction company rub their hands in happiness.

 

[Sailor.X]

Everyone is confused; there is nothing in the holy scripture saying that bridges are bad?

I’d imagine we would see a disrupted supply line for a few days, before we placed temporary emergency bridge to make sur goods keep flowing.
Construction company rub their hands in happiness.

In other words Construction Company CEOs will be beating off to money. Due to the size of the Government Contracts.

 

[Arlos]

In other words Construction Company CEOs will be beating off to money. Due to the size of the Government Contracts.

Pretty much yeah x)
Having to rebuild EVERY bridges around the world? That’s a hugggggge amount of work, so they are set for a long time.
I’d probably go into construction in that situation tbh

 

[Emperor Tippy]

Everyone is confused; there is nothing in the holy scripture saying that bridges are bad?

I’d imagine we would see a disrupted supply line for a few days, before we placed temporary emergency bridge to make sur goods keep flowing.
Construction company rub their hands in happiness.

You are drastically underestimating the damage. Being blunt, the instant removal of all the world's bridges would make COVID look like the common cold.

For example, every highway in the world (and every road outside of, maybe, a purely local area) becomes impassible. Every train line ceases to function.

Overpasses? Those are bridges. Bridges over small streams? Well they are still bridges. River crossings? Bridges.

Every single supply chain in the world ends up broken overnight and won't be restored for years to decades. You are going to have to fly in bridging equipment simply to build the bridges that you need to be able to move the raw materials to the factories so that you can produce what you need to build bridges at scale. Every grocery store has empty shelves inside of a week. Every farm has it's production cut by an order of magnitude come the next growing season as they are unable to get the fertilizer that they need delivered.

Being conservative? You are looking at a billion plus people dead in a year. Being realistic, the global population probably halves in that year.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

Why do ROBs seem to have such a boner for mass displacement and death?

 

[Emperor Tippy]

Why do ROBs seem to have such a boner for mass displacement and death?

Because conflict brings out the truth in people far more than utopia can ever manage.

 

[Hlaalu Agent]

Because conflict brings out the truth in people far more than utopia can ever manage.

That is true, unless there is a catch. After all some would walk away from Omelas.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

That is true, unless there is a catch. After all some would walk away from Omelas.

The most insidious catch is to have no catch at all. Humans being what we are, we will always search for the catch and become ever more paranoid and convinced it is there when we can't find it. ROB imposed perfect utopia will never succeed without changing humanity or large scale mind control. And even if it was, humanity would become a boring waste of space of no real value.

To have more, to know more, to experience more, to be more; that is humanities driving principal in every instance. Even those after utopian peace and self enlightenment want to become more enlightened, make this more peaceful, become more.

Conflict drives growth and to be a utopia there must be no conflict.

So really, the most assholish ROB possible is not the one who creates mass death scenarios (like removing all the bridges) but is instead the one who makes Earth akin to the Culture,

 

[PsihoKekec]

Economy crashes completely, worldvide starvation...

Does the asshole ROB also remove hydro power plants? Because most can be used as bridges.

 

[Deleted member 88]

Bridges are essential infrastructure in that they allow overland transportation of goods without needing either boats or planes. The devastation would be incalculable. Even if just lost GDP.

The world economy(and every economy) needs bridges to function. In theory sure it could be re routed to drones, boats, and so on, but not before global supply chains collapse and lots of people die as a result.

 

[Sailor.X]

Economy crashes completely, worldvide starvation...

Does the asshole ROB also remove hydro power plants? Because most can be used as bridges.

He made the distinction between bridges proper and things that can be crossed like a bridge. So no the Dams are still in place.

 

[Sailor.X]

Bridges are essential infrastructure in that they allow overland transportation of goods without needing either boats or planes. The devastation would be incalculable. Even if just lost GDP.

The world economy(and every economy) needs bridges to function. In theory sure it could be re routed to drones, boats, and so on, but not before global supply chains collapse and lots of people die as a result.

It will be bad really bad. But in the USAs favor we have the Army Corps of Engineers and the Seabees. So in a years time we will have a lot of temporary bridges over the smaller bodies of water. And I can see the Air Force and Air Freight doing double duty moving Food and other supplies all over the country. But is will be a year of hell for sure.

 

[Knowledgeispower]

Do the roads on top of large dams count?...if they do that's a lot of dead people and extra damage from floods

 

[Sailor.X]

Do the roads on top of large dams count?...if they do that's a lot of dead people and extra damage from floods

Already answered that. Bridges are bridges and Dams are dams.

 

[Emperor Tippy]

It will be bad really bad. But in the USAs favor we have the Army Corps of Engineers and the Seabees. So in a years time we will have a lot of temporary bridges over the smaller bodies of water. And I can see the Air Force and Air Freight doing double duty moving Food and other supplies all over the country. But is will be a year of hell for sure.

A year's time is about 360 days too long to wait. With all the bridges suddenly gone there is basically no grocery store in the nation that can actually be reached by road from the warehouses and going from the farms to the processing plants to the distribution centers is even worse. Between grocery stores and what people have at home, we have about a three day supply of available food per person.

Literally, the US is looking at mass starvation being an insoluble problem inside of two weeks.

There is also no longer any economy. All production involves goods & materials that are being transited via road or rail bridge and all delivery of products from the production point to the end user also must transit bridges.

In the case of the US, it would not surprise me at all if you have a death toll in the double digit millions by the end of the first month and in the triple digit millions by the end of the year. Globally? You are looking at a hundred million plus dead in the first month and billions by years end.

You have to remember, removing bridges means that every single highway overpass goes away. Every single tiny, insignificant, stream becomes an impassible break in the road. Every river crossing is gone for months even on an emergency priority basis.

 

[Sailor.X]

A year's time is about 360 days too long to wait. With all the bridges suddenly gone there is basically no grocery store in the nation that can actually be reached by road from the warehouses and going from the farms to the processing plants to the distribution centers is even worse. Between grocery stores and what people have at home, we have about a three day supply of available food per person.

Literally, the US is looking at mass starvation being an insoluble problem inside of two weeks.

There is also no longer any economy. All production involves goods & materials that are being transited via road or rail bridge and all delivery of products from the production point to the end user also must transit bridges.

In the case of the US, it would not surprise me at all if you have a death toll in the double digit millions by the end of the first month and in the triple digit millions by the end of the year. Globally? You are looking at a hundred million plus dead in the first month and billions by years end.

You have to remember, removing bridges means that every single highway overpass goes away. Every single tiny, insignificant, stream becomes an impassible break in the road. Every river crossing is gone for months even on an emergency priority basis.

We have enough Airlift capacity to get food to tons of places around the US. Military Airlift Command - Wikipedia

People can survive off of Rice and Beans. And many water supplies won't be affected by lack of bridges. Personnel will be moved to man the powerplants by Helo.

 

[Shadow of the sky]

There's a much simpler solution till the new bridges are built.
Use ferries

 

[Emperor Tippy]

We have enough Airlift capacity to get food to tons of places around the US. Military Airlift Command - Wikipedia

People can survive off of Rice and Beans. And many water supplies won't be affected by lack of bridges. Personnel will be moved to man the powerplants by Helo.

Does not even begin to approach the amount actually needed. You would need to helicopter in the equipment to build the emergency runways to land the planes next to the distribution centers, and then you need yet more helicopters to transport the good from the airport to the local distribution points. This needs to happen on a national scale as every single city, town, and village is hit simultaneously.

We don't even begin to have the air transport to move food on the scale required.

Manhattan alone has a population of ~1.7 million people. At a mere pound of food per day you are looking at airlifting in 1.7 million pounds or 850 tons. That is six C-5's fully loaded each and every day just to feed one island of one city. We only built 131 of them.

Even seizing every commercial airplane in the US and dedicating them all to food transport, you are still woefully short of what we would need. And again, that is just to go from runway to runway. Most airports aren't ideally situated for acting as distribution centers when all the bridges have gone away. In the majority of cases, you are going to have to use a chopper to get the food to the runway and from the runway to the grocery store/local drop off point.

How many transport choppers do you think we have?

And all of this has to happen immediately. Because the first thing that is going to happen the instant it hits cellphones that all bridges are gone is that everyone with a brain is going to run to the nearest grocery store and start stuffing everything that they can grab into their cart to buy it all before the stores start limiting purchase amounts. Within an hour of it happening, there will not be a single non-perishable food item on the shelf of any grocery store in the nation. Then you have all of the riots and general chaos as parents suddenly find it difficult to impossible to get home from work and kids find it difficult to impossible to get home from school. Every roadway is going to end up effectively impassible because of abandoned cars.

You need airlifted emergency food shipments to every single city and town in the US going out literally day one.

And all of that is also ignoring the other issues, like getting the soldiers to base in the first place.

If you don't already have enough cultivated land to feed your family or enough stockpiled to last until you can bring in the crops and the needed skill & tools to grow your own food then you are most probably dead.

This also ignores the thorny triage issue. Every single city has become a death trap and will breakdown inside a week. Letting the cities starve and using the available transport and people to distribute food in the rural areas is the correct choice.

 

[Sailor.X]

Does not even begin to approach the amount actually needed. You would need to helicopter in the equipment to build the emergency runways to land the planes next to the distribution centers, and then you need yet more helicopters to transport the good from the airport to the local distribution points. This needs to happen on a national scale as every single city, town, and village is hit simultaneously.

We don't even begin to have the air transport to move food on the scale required.

Manhattan alone has a population of ~1.7 million people. At a mere pound of food per day you are looking at airlifting in 1.7 million pounds or 850 tons. That is six C-5's fully loaded each and every day just to feed one island of one city. We only built 131 of them.

Even seizing every commercial airplane in the US and dedicating them all to food transport, you are still woefully short of what we would need. And again, that is just to go from runway to runway. Most airports aren't ideally situated for acting as distribution centers when all the bridges have gone away. In the majority of cases, you are going to have to use a chopper to get the food to the runway and from the runway to the grocery store/local drop off point.

How many transport choppers do you think we have?

And all of this has to happen immediately. Because the first thing that is going to happen the instant it hits cellphones that all bridges are gone is that everyone with a brain is going to run to the nearest grocery store and start stuffing everything that they can grab into their cart to buy it all before the stores start limiting purchase amounts. Within an hour of it happening, there will not be a single non-perishable food item on the shelf of any grocery store in the nation. Then you have all of the riots and general chaos as parents suddenly find it difficult to impossible to get home from work and kids find it difficult to impossible to get home from school. Every roadway is going to end up effectively impassible because of abandoned cars.

You need airlifted emergency food shipments to every single city and town in the US going out literally day one.

And all of that is also ignoring the other issues, like getting the soldiers to base in the first place.

If you don't already have enough cultivated land to feed your family or enough stockpiled to last until you can bring in the crops and the needed skill & tools to grow your own food then you are most probably dead.

This also ignores the thorny triage issue. Every single city has become a death trap and will breakdown inside a week. Letting the cities starve and using the available transport and people to distribute food in the rural areas is the correct choice.

The Pandemic showed us exactly what our food situation is. The Rural Areas of the country. Which is the bulk of the US had really no food issues. Most rural people have a few weeks to a few months worth of food already. The real problem was in the Suburbs and Cities. Those were the areas that had food shortages. And those will be the areas that will get targeted first. Food will be brought in by ship and barges. Because a lot of cites in the US are built along waterways. A decapitating scenario is nothing new for the US. Back during the Cold War they war games major infrastructure collapse and how to get supplies to people. Those plans are still on the books.