Often in my life, I’ve had a lot of different ideas for new inventions, only for those inventions to either have already been discovered or for them to be invented years later well before I could ever do anything about it. Believe in or not, this is a phenomenon that has happened repeatedly over the course of my life. When I was a teenager, I remember thinking of an invention that was an alternative to the plunger, thinking about how the accordion pushes air through itself or how a bellow breaths air into a fireplace. Of course, growing up in poverty and not having much of a will to act on my thoughts, I kept it in mind for years until I saw it on TV being sold by someone else who had the same idea.
I once had an idea for a story that I found to be an interesting idea for a thriller short film about how everyone in the human race’s children would immediately die after childbirth and no other children could ever be born due to overpopulation and exponential growth in the human population and how that would impact the world at large. I never wrote this film out at all, but I wrote the concept down in one of my many personal writing archives (aka a journal in my closet) and left it in the back of my mind, never really touching on the idea too much. I told myself it was too dark due it being about dying babies and never really made anything out of it.
However, I was browsing through Bluesky today after talking with a potential guest for a podcast I am about to host (if you are interested, subscribe to The Avram Davidson podcast on YouTube and you’ll see me hosting episodes soon enough) and I saw this article that peeked my interest.
This, of course, gave me that same sense of “I saw this coming” as the toilet invention I mentioned earlier. I mean, infant deaths overall have decreased, but the fact the ones that have died have died unexpectedly is what drew me to write my current article. Of course, at the end of the day, these situations (the unexpected baby deaths and my idea about a short film about unexpected baby deaths and the end of reproduction) aren’t really a sign of anything other than something coincidental, but being as how I am human and therefore selfish in nature, I made these deaths about me and my idea. A catastrophe.
Which begs the question; is the world headed to an eventuality of reproduction being an impossibility for us? If so, is there anything we can do about it? My first instinct is to say “No and no”, but I decided to research for more signs of this eventuality for the purposes of building a conspiracy. Because why not.
https://www.who.int/news/item/04-04-2023-1-in-6-people-globally-affected-by-infertility
According to this article, 1 out of 6 people are infertile worldwide, which, ok, that is kind of concerning. but, that is still a minority. So, between that and the unexpected child deaths, alongside the lack willingness of individuals wanting children rising, it is looking bleak. However, the article above is all people being infertile and attributes that to outside factors such as lifestyle choices, but is the rate in which individuals are being born infertile increasing? There is really no way to tell, unfortunately, due to how the body develops. A baby can’t come out of the womb having babies.
However, there are some genetic components that can be seen at birth that attribute to infertility. One of those is Klinefelter syndrome.
https://www.nichd.nih.gov/health/topics/klinefelter/conditioninfo/risk
According to this article, 1 in about 500-1,000 newborn males are born with this syndrome. Also, this condition is underdiagnosed due to it’s lack of prevalence in the medical community, so that number could be different as more research is done. A quarter of people with this condition seem to have some sort of neurological or physical impairment that coincides with this diagnosis, but that isn’t all individuals. There is a possibility that this could increase in the coming years, which would be a sign of reproduction capabilities ceasing to exist.
There are multiple reasons why a women would be infertile. Way, WAY more reasons than in males.
According to this article, it’s estimated that up to 30% of infertility cases in women can be attributed to genetic factors. That is a third of all infertility. Which, to me, is concerning. So, if my “film idea” were to become a reality, it would be women who would lose the ability to reproduce first and not so much men losing the ability to provide healthy sperm. Which was the idea in the film to begin with anyways.
According to this article, however, research shows that overall, male sperm counts have decreased over the years. So, the eventuality that men are the ones who will lack to provide first is also a possibility. This leads us into the common knowledge that overall babies being produced is declining over the years. This is common knowledge at this point, and while there are several other factors to consider, genetics is a factor we cannot change and could be the eventual reality.
I had one more question that I was looking into; is it possible for an organism to no longer have the ability to reproduce due to overpopulation, even if resources weren’t a factor?
According to this article, yes. Simply put, stress is a factor that could even cause infertility.
So in a world where most of the population is being exploited for the wealthy few, stress is accumulating. And between that and genetic factors, it is only a matter of time before we stop being able to have children. Will it happen like I imagined, all at once all over the world instantaneously? As interesting of a story as they may be, it is far more likely for it to happen over time, as we continue try and sustain our current social structure into our own impeding doom. Thank for reading, and have a good day.
Damon Leif 
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