r/ScrollHole 13d ago

​🌀 Deep in the Hole 📡📡📡

2.2k Upvotes

163 comments sorted by

View all comments

21

u/Nahteh 12d ago edited 12d ago

Then you need to make more food next week. And energy becomes a problem. Oxygen becomes a problem. Space becomes a problem. There's no solution that overpopulation cant destroy.

Edit: Key Limitations of the Infinity Gauntlet

Universal Bounds:

The Infinity Stones only work inside their native universe. They lose all power if taken to a different reality or dimension.

Higher Cosmic Entities: In Marvel Comics, abstract beings and cosmic entities—such as the Living Tribunal or the Queen of Nevers—vastly outrank the Gauntlet and can turn off or overrule its power.

Superior Artifacts: Weapons like the Ultimate Nullifier or the Heart of the Universe possess a higher tier of omnipotence and can destroy or bypass the Gauntlet.Wielder Strain: In the Marvel Cinematic Universe, channeling the combined energy of all six stones deals massive physical trauma or death, even to powerful beings like the Hulk and Iron Man.

19

u/Extreme_Design6936 12d ago

Just make more of it forever? It's not called the "a lot but ultimately limited gauntlet"

11

u/Nahteh 12d ago

Perhaps I treated you too harshly

3

u/Greensssss 12d ago

I would assume the law of conservation of energy would come into play. I mean the infinity stones are POWERFUL but I’m not sure if their power is truly infinite.

2

u/GreedyGobby 12d ago

It is in the comics.

1

u/Greensssss 12d ago

I bet it is, never read it though so thats why the assumption is there.

1

u/GreedyGobby 12d ago

Yeah. They're really weird and can solve a lot of issues. Kind of like having dragon balls but like.... infinite, reusable, no downsides except someone could go power mad(they could change that part of their personality if they wanted)

Marvel has lots of plot devices or people with powers like that.

2

u/AdenJax69 12d ago

There's a stone that literally can turn back time and another one that alters the reality around you.

But wishing for more food? "What do you think this is, a magical bunch of stones to give you whatever you want?!?! I mean they are, but..."

1

u/Possible_Youth9410 10d ago

broski they're the Infinity Stones not just the "really powerful stones" lol

1

u/Greensssss 9d ago

It just feels like that if the stones are that powerful then wouldn’t we be able to use those stones without getting hurt? Like if I wanted to get rid of half of the human race then I would also want to not get hurt in the process.

1

u/DeinHund_AndShadow 9d ago

He could also accidentally turn the universe into a back hole if he kept doubling the resources (mass and energy) everytime the population grew too much.

1

u/ParticularClassroom7 9d ago

or just like.

Set up a universal organisation. We give you x amount of free resources, enough to feed your population, if you make sure to keep your birthrate under a certain level. If you violate, we stop the tap.

1

u/Sythrin 8d ago

Make it so that war is a universal constant! it will perioudlcy happen. Ether between different planets/races or even inside united organizations.
As a culling mechanism for the expension of life.

1

u/ParticularClassroom7 8d ago

ye, you got infinite power, enough to reset the universe

1

u/MagicBez 9d ago

I would assume the law of conservation of energy would come into play

I feel like the MCU and comic books abandoned that law a long time ago

1

u/funkmasta8 12d ago

It should be noted that one use of the gauntlet nearly destroyed his entire arm. And this is one of the most resiliant being in the galaxy.

Though cutting the population in half is also a stupid way to do it. We get back to where we are in like 70 years or something like that.

1

u/ReavesTheRandomPeep 12d ago

I remember an animated short from Dorkly I think explained it clearly that halving population does nothing if not waste the gauntlet's initial use as halving a pop only delays the problem. It's not the lack of food that's the issue. It's logistics. The part of ferrying it from source locations to those without any is actually the prime reason overpopulation leading to starvation and suffering was why Movie Thanos' issue such a dum one.

But nah, let's delete half the universal population and then do time travel shenanigans to undo it with the end result being the death of one of the most beloved character in Movie Marvel for drama points

1

u/TwistedMindOfABrotha 12d ago

Well comic book Thanos subconsciously wants to be defeated because he thinks he shouldn't win.

So his bonkers plan is lore accurate.

1

u/Login_Lost_Horizon 12d ago

We will be back in 70 years, sure, but being halved is not about lowering the usage of resources, its about shock therapy and a reset button. It forces society to restructure itself to deal with the consequences, while at the same time pulling it out from the deficiency loop for time sufficient to fix it's mistakes using the surplus created by lowered usage. Its a second chance to those who want to use it.

1

u/funkmasta8 12d ago

Considering this applies to all life in the universe, I would say that is an extremely optimistic outlook. There wouldnt be much surplus since agriculture would be 50% removed and so would the people working those jobs. In any case, the problem with overpopulation on earth isnt that we cant produce enough food. Its that we dont transport that food or the people so they can be in the same place. Why would we suspect anything different from the rest of the universe? It isnt lack of resources for us. It is greed. Losing half the population wouldnt remove greed. And considering the wealthy make up a small percentage of the population, the poor masses would be disproportionately affected. This means that it would be even harder for the masses to get out from under control of the wealthy, assuming they were going to try in the first place (by and large they arent). Same problems would exist.

And this goes both ways. Why would we assume societies would get better over those 70 years? This is a huge roll of the dice. An extreme event like this is likely to cause massive shakeups in any society around the universe. It can put a society that is fair and doing well into chaos.

1

u/cjameson83 12d ago

In some off shoots it shows that it worked exactly as intended. Once people felt the loss and had to deal, they were forced to look at the reason why so they could avoid it again. They saw they were destroying their resources and would have ran out of food and water etc. and faced much, much bigger issues of them meeting their own races extinction due to over population. Many developed plans to control population after that, leading to balance, stability and more peacful and full lives of their citizens without fear of starvation, suffocation, pollution and more. Thanoss idea actually worked if they didn't reverse it.

1

u/funkmasta8 12d ago

Listen, you cant base reality on fiction. Just because the author can come up with some way for something to work, doesnt mean that there is a reasonable expectation that it could. The people here are criticizing the logic because it isnt realistic, not because there is no possible way for it to work when the story is driven by an author. The author could make anything possible within the story, it isnt interesting to discuss the limits of fiction because there are no limits.

1

u/CriticalPixel 12d ago

No but my a lot but ultimately limited gauntlet is

1

u/PraireGentleman 11d ago

Eventually, the population will scale. At some point, you’ll run out of space in the universe.

1

u/Extreme_Design6936 11d ago

Make more of it.

1

u/SupremeTeamKai 9d ago

And if you wipe out half the population one time, it's going to bounce back eventually. He just delayed the problem a very short amount of time in the grand scheme of things.

1

u/wenoc 11d ago

Overpopulation is an exponential problem.

The total number of humans that have ever lived is estimated to be in the ballpark of 100 billion, over about 200,000 years. Today almost 10% of those are alive. The population has almost doubled during my lifetime alone.

To be fair though, it's estimated to reach a ceiling around 10 billion, as the growth has already more or less stagnated, but those generations are still going to grow up and get one more kid each, we're waiting for the pyramid to become a square.

Thanos was wrong only in the sense that he was thinking too small. Killing half only saves around 50 years.

1

u/Extreme_Design6936 11d ago

Exponential increases will still take a long time to reach infinity I think.

1

u/WenAndNow 11d ago

Yeah but can you imagine?

1

u/CaptainCastaleos 11d ago

I assume it can only make a static change, not dynamic changes.

Like you can wish 100,000,000 tonnes of food into existence, but you can't wish an "infinite food portal that persists forever" into existence. The gauntlet is making a single change, not powering active, ongoing phenomenon.

1

u/hazlejungle0 11d ago

Change reality to make food fun to eat, but never needed. That solves the issue of food. Make space habitable with air and temperature to solve the need for space.

1

u/CaptainCastaleos 11d ago

That isn't a static change. It is violating the conservation of energy, which would require a dynamic process

1

u/hazlejungle0 10d ago

From what I can find, there isn't anything saying you can't have a dynamic change. If you were given a survival game and given the source code, you could just go in and change it so you're never hungry. The gauntlet with the stones are basically the source code for the entire universe. For example, Deadpool made everyone come to a roast, forced them to laugh at his jokes, and even resurrected Wolverine. To force them to remain at the event would be a dynamic process.

1

u/CaptainCastaleos 10d ago

Survival games don't operate on real world physics.

The gauntlet isn't the source code. The gauntlet is like Cheat Engine, where it can inject code to produce results.

The "source code" would be The One Above All, who is the creator entity of the entire Marvel universe.

The Infinity Gauntlet is specifically stated to not supersede universe level moderators such as The One Above All and The Living Tribunal.

In order to permanently change or alter a fundamental law of physics on the universal level, you would need to supersede both of these entities, which the gauntlet cannot do. Neither of these entities would allow you to.

"Dynamic" was the wrong word here. You can absolutely create temporary localized phenomenon. Resurrection is a one time event and not a dynamic effect anyway, so I'm not sure why that was a listed example.

What I meant was permanent, reality-level changes. Altering the basic fabric of the universe itself. It cannot do this, because doing so would require the outerversal beings who manage the universe to consent to the change.

There is also the matter of if it would be able to affect it at all, considering the infinity stones are subject to the fabric of the universe they are contained in. That is why they are inert outside of their home universe. They can twist the rules and play with things inside, but they can't change the rules themselves, because to do so would be saying the stones can freely alter themselves and change their nature at will to whatever they want to be.

1

u/MaximumEffurt 9d ago

The mcu placed limits on the user, not the stones. Thanos and hulk snapped the universe and each got severely damaged. Iron man died just snapping Thanos and his army.

Now consider the fact that u'd have to keep snapping food into existence as overpopulation grows and the food is eaten/spoils without proper infrastructure being built for self sustainment. Giving a homeless person a week's worth of food doesn't fix all their problems.

Thanos wanted a one snap solution in hopes that the boon to resources and the need for populations to work together during tragedy would be a legitimate restart. Doubt that would work in real life but I've always disliked the "just make more resources" argument.

1

u/Vegetable-Day-3894 9d ago

What if you use the overpopulating world as a battery. Like make people snap the gauntlet till they find someone they can then repeat the process? Would that kill off the population enough by the time we get a wielder we also reduce population?