What if half of everyone dissappeared? Building/Gaming a Rapture Scenario

[PTTG]

I expect that anyone who really cares about the Marvel Cinematic Universe doesn't need spoiler warnings anymore, right?

So this can be a gameworld as a whole, or it can be a worldline in a larger infinite worlds setting. I've been thinking about this for a while (Since early June, in fact,) but I have realized that the basic question is too huge to really consider without input from the skilled worldbuilders here...

The main approach I'm thinking of using is that the PCs are natives to a world identical -- or seemingly identical -- to our own. My preference is for it to feature ordinary people, but the setting is not intrinsically limited in any particular way. That said, for the purposes of this discussion, let's assume that any magic, supertech, or powers are rare enough to be irrelevant for our purposes even if they are present.

The scenario begins like so: The PCs happen to be together in one place. Maybe they're all students. Maybe they're all on a bus. Maybe they're all in a staff meeting. For most immediate effect, they should probably be in a public place.

Then 50% of everyone vanishes in something that looks like it'd be very expensive to reproduce through special effects.

From that point forward, I imagine that things get complicated, but the transition from screaming and crashing to, like, three hours later, is hard to conceptualize.

Some questions to start this off:
1: What's a game-able time and place to start this off?
2: What are the most immediate effects of the sudden disappearance?
3: Are there any character contexts that seem especially interesting? First responders?

[zoncxs]

1. Anywhere and anytime. More modern means world wide communication before it goes offline since half the people working them vanished. Do it before then and you get very scary.

2. Immediate effects are millions of more people dying. every plane that has the pilots vanish crash, every car crashes, every boat drifts. every patient in ICU would most likely die, anyone needing care from another dies. babies dying if they don't get help. Babies being born, etc.

3. first responders would be good.

[The Colonel]

3. Anyone in charge of a response centre might also be a good character - what's going on? why? where are my resources? why can't I get X? how do I arrange Y given A, B and C?
Anyone who has been involved in business continuity drills or any other kind of emergency response exercise should be grimly familiar with the idea...

[David Johnston2]

There is a 1 in four chance for every airliner that they will suddenly be left without a pilot. But even more devastating is the fact that all high traffic thoroughfares will suddenly be jammed by the all the crashes. Those are the means by which cities get food. Within a matter of days the larger cities are all looking at starvation as the survivors go into loot 'n hoard mode. There needs to be a widespread and immediate mobilization of the public to walk out onto the highways and clear them them by pushing the wrecks off the sides.

[aaron819]

Nice try, Thanos

[tanksoldier]

If hats actually something I don’t think anyone realized in the movies, at least until the after credits scene.... WAY more than 50% of the universe died.

[(E)]

The majority of children would become unaccompanied.

[PTTG]

Ok so 25% of planes have no pilots, but they still have 25% of their passenger compliment, so maybe if one of the remaining passengers is an amateur pilot or something... on the other hand, the air traffic control network goes down hard because 75% of all planes are simultaneously radioing in to report something really weird happening. Without good ATC, even a skilled newbie is not likely to land a major airliner safely.

That all said, while secondary disasters are likely to cause a huge number of casualties following the vanishing, I'm not sure how distributed those disasters are likely to be. If 25% of planes crashed right this instant, it'd be very, very bad, but I suspect that most people wouldn't know about it until it got on the news.

So the PCs are all in one place. The exact time of day could do a lot, thematically speaking. If it's midmorning, then the first flood of panic comes across in the broad daylight, which is a nice contrast. If it's dusk, the fall of darkness over the world is complimentary. Starting it all at 11:00 at night reduces the local catastrophe but means that the PCs are probably going to be dealing with their problems while taking exhaustion penalties.

The starvation thing is a key component. We're looking at a global migration going on in the weeks after the disaster, with some locales being able to fix the problem quickly.

(E), you raise a good point, though I think since it's 2.5 children/woman, "only" 25% of children with two guardians would become unaccompanied. OH, what if the PCs were children?!

One other thing, with reduced oversight and the shock load, how functional would the internet be over the near scale after the vanishing?

[(E)]

The point about children was focused on the shorter term. Day care, preschools, primary schools all have less adults than children.
A game focused on children might be a bit dark, but traveling from school to a safe location through a shell shocked city has many interesting challenges.

[TGLS]

Missing pilots are not that big a problem. Modern autopilots are actually capable of landing a plane. The flight attendants would open the door with the override code (if possible), then follow ATC instructions to program the autopilot to land. Far more reasonable. Of course, ATC might be swamped.