Suppose some kind of shock makes Earth briefly uninhabitable, and things don’t work out with people who immediately emerge from bunkers and submarines, but 100 people can come down again from space shortly afterwards and recolonise it.
I don’t have a specific one in mind but nuclear winter, or a catastrophic problem spreading through the atmosphere, or something bioengineered would be concievable.
It seems unlikely to me that those would kill all of the earthbound population while still leaving the earth habitable enough for our returning astronauts. (If they kill, say, 99.99% of the population then the survivors will far outnumber the astronauts.)
Suppose some kind of shock makes Earth briefly uninhabitable, and things don’t work out with people who immediately emerge from bunkers and submarines, but 100 people can come down again from space shortly afterwards and recolonise it.
What kind of shock do you have in mind?
I don’t have a specific one in mind but nuclear winter, or a catastrophic problem spreading through the atmosphere, or something bioengineered would be concievable.
It seems unlikely to me that those would kill all of the earthbound population while still leaving the earth habitable enough for our returning astronauts. (If they kill, say, 99.99% of the population then the survivors will far outnumber the astronauts.)