Tangentially related:
- All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
- Through the Flash in Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
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People become ultra violent, majority starts killing each other, anyone slightly bad starts doing bad things, most of them get killed by the other people they do bad things to. Total rampage.
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Cycle repeats and repeats 100 times. Pacifists / smart people GTFO of town and hide in forest.
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On 100th day, cycle stops unexpectedly. Only it stops at night, after the daily rampage is over. Nobody regenerates.
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Cycle starts unexpectedly again, every once in a while.
Groundhog Day becomes society’s Russian Roulette.
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There would be a lot more respect between people, if everyone was in an iterated game with everyone else and they knew it.
Respect or a general mutual indifference? I feel that eternity is a long time to maintain pleasantries
Day 1: World experiences “The glitch” simultaneously and gets set back 24 hours. Dead come back to life, religions take it as proof of god
Day 2: Media: “ground hogs day?” memes: “Its def groundhogs day grandpa has come back from the dead twice.”
Day 3: Religious freak out, no one is saying they went to heaven when they died, reincarnation cycle has been haulted, souls bound in earthly bodies
Day 4: Various religions attempt violent crusades, general violence, and mass suicide
Day 5: Nukes
Day 6: No fighting because dying by nukes hurt the whole time
Day 7: Hey want to eat the chocolate bar today? I had it yesterday
Day 8: Live television and internet broadcasts become only new form of entertainment. Massive downloads for rogue like games and short games you can beat in a day. Money starts to lose meaning
Day 9: General Hedonism, people pursue self gratification / or self betterment as nothing else lasts
Heh, I sort of believed that people would not be on their smartphones much - but you’re right there will be plenty of live broadcasts, and no way to record or share them, so you just have to watch everything everyday
All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka
Book was great. Never bothered to see the movie with tom cruise.
The film is pretty good. I’d treat as a separate thing altogether, the film is very loosely based on the book.
Plus there’s a manga illustrated by Takeshi Obata (of Death Note fame) that’s half decent. The illustrations of the book were done by Yoshitoshi Abe (of Welcome to the NHK fame)
I haven’t read the source material but the movie is one of the best sci-fi films of the new millennium, and certainly one of the most enjoyable. Films like Arrival, Dune, Blade Runner 2049 are visually striking and thoughtful but Edge of Tomorrow is also great fun.
We would not be about to store data. Any changes to digital (or analogue) data would be reverted. So even if we all collectively try to ignore the fact that time is repeating and live as normally as possible, we can’t have a society that keeps track of things in anything other than human memory. Advanced accounting, modern engineering, and scientific research would be impossible.
Somebody mentioned that the scenario doesn’t make sense because of time zones. Consider this scenario: Things are only reset locally at midnight. If you pass something across a time zone boundary, it doesn’t get reset until midnight in the new time zone. You could theoretically carry forward information or important objects indefinitely if you swap them before midnight in your time zone and then swap them back before midnight in the holding time zone. Things for which this cannot be done for cannot be preserved from being reset.
Wow, brilliant scenario - and fantastic hack! You could technically create an infinite amount of any items that way.
I’d envisioned that the world reset globally at say 2am GMT or something. I can now appreciate how that would suck for someone in Hawaii who misses half the day asleep
Wouldn’t that remove the aspect of no one else believing you?
I’m not following
One of the issues with time restarting for one person is that no one else knows it is. And they’re alone in their condition. If everyone’s were to reboot, then everyone would notice
Yep, everyone’s aware
Great post OP, really made me think. I love time loop stories, but “literally everyone is in the time loop” isn’t one I’ve encountered yet. Will definitely check out your links.
If everyone is reliving the same day over and over again most people can go a day without eating with some mild discomfort, pretty much all agriculture, grocery, etc would become luxury and less needed or used.
All travel would become short distance you can’t spend 24hrs traveling to the other side of the planet just to get reset back home. Markets would go into stasis and stay closed there’s no interest earned over 0 days, which means most people would stop working as most jobs wouldn’t be necessary if everything just resets after 24 hours, you can’t build or destroy anything permanent.
I think most people would panic or just vacation for a few months worth of repeated days before organizing around new myths and practices and traditions around what caused it and how to change it back.
pretty much all agriculture, grocery, etc would become luxury and less needed or used.
But if everything is reset every day, you still have the same stock of food available every day, and it never depletes (beyond the depletion that happens in 1 day, but that gets reset quickly). And any money made from selling food is also not kept. I can’t imagine food sellers would be bothered to try enforce their prices when profits etc don’t matter. Maybe food just becomes free. If we’re optimistic, people might prioritise getting food to people who are already starving, since the people who are well-fed won’t be too bothered by going a day without food.
Not sure how this would work with different time zones. Unlike the movie, things would be resetting mid-day for a majority of the world, rather than mid-sleep. Even in the time zone where it lines up with a majority of people’s sleep, those with non-traditional sleep cycles will have mid-“day” resets
I mean people would just adjust to the new time patterns. In every time loop story, people try staying awake past the reset and usually it just resets regardless of whether they’re asleep or not. The exception i can think of being palm springs, where they only reset once they fall asleep or die. But if the reset happens at a constant time for everyone, everyone would just adapt. Day and night already barely matter now that we have electric lighting and instantaneous communication. ‘Days’ would just start at the reset, and either last until the next reset, or 8 hours before it happens, or whatever the equilibrium ends up being. Maybe sleep would stop being necessary for most people altogether, if their bodies’ clocks reset along with everything else. That could be kind of interesting.
If we all retain our memory, as is usual for a time loop, then we all have agency in the next loop, as is usual for a time loop, and the only things that “repeat” are natural things like acts of nature.
So eventually we would know where the things happen and they would become sources of energy. Billionaires would buy them and other means of life, everyone would become dependent on something that the oligarchy would gain control of, and everything would be the same as it is now, essentially.
Possibly they threaten the masses with quick death unless they serve is some capacity? I’m being terribly pessimistic, but I do think all it takes are a couple of assholes to ruin things.
That’s an interesting take. People are indeed whipped already, with money being the carrot. In a time loop I can definitely see the powerful threatening nukes to “incentivize” everyone.
Though, I think this would only be a pattern in the early stages. Once you’ve been nuked, you get used to it, and the threat wears off
How are the money not reset? People working as “transaction secretaries” to uphold the oligarchy is very slim
I am shocked no one mentioned the possibility of nuclear warfare every day. If everything resets, what’s stopping a few people from just nuking the world on a daily basis. One country does it first, the next day the other country does it back in retaliation. The entire world may just suffer horrific deaths every single day. Even if it only happened once, the trauma of living after having experienced it once would be enough to ruin peoples mental health (I guess you could say it would nuke their mental health). I cannot imagine people finding peace and living freely. I imagine it would be endless suffering.
I don’t see how any government functions after the first few days. By that time, everyone knows they’re looping. So why go work? Maybe a small percent will but a vast majority of people will just do their own thing. No need to worry about job security when you’ll wake up tomorrow with the same amount of money.
Personally, I think the world would probably be very pleasant if we all looped. No one would be able to take anything from you, since you’d get it right back the next day. Might just be boring after a couple thousand loops, as no new movies, games or news would be able to be produced.
Definitely read the Friday Black book I linked above, it touches this briefly.
I think after the first few initial times it happens, it just becomes a bit boring after a while and nuke-inclined leople will shift their focus to other things.
As for the trauma, well, time heals all
A lot of answers seem to skip over that people wouldn’t know if the repeat is forever. So many people might try to figure out how to make it stop. Others might not want it to stop… that could get interesting.
What I find interesting is that potentially the time loop wouldn’t even be discovered immediately. Most people would wake up in the morning and head to work as normal. There wouldn’t really be an obvious sign we’re in a Groundhog Day, since the usual indicator of that in fiction is that other people are doing the same thing they did yesterday. Which they won’t be, if everyone is experiencing it.
There would be sparse stories worldwide initially of people claiming that it’s the same day as yesterday. Your phone might still have yesterday’s date, which most will attribute to a global software glitch. Maybe some investigation is done, hardware that tracks the skies shows the earth in the same position. But final, global, acceptance would filter down slowly, since you’d only be getting news for one day via technological means, and the only up to date information you’d reliably get is direct communication. Unless of course the technology still works - phone calls etc, wouldn’t just immediately be unavailable.
If you lived remotely, off grid, or alone, how would you even know unless you started to notice actual physical repetition. Rain starting at the same time every day etc. It’s genuinely fascinating.
Wouldn’t you notice that the coke you drunk yesterday is still in the fridge, and the trash you emptied last night is back in the kitchen?
Potentially, but I can’t imagine your first thought would be “I must be reliving the same day” rather than “I could have sworn I took the trash out yesterday”.
I’d definitely be questioning my sanity before the third law of thermodynamics.
I think it would be the people who died or gave birth that day who would be pretty conclusive and immediate evidence for people, but that wouldn’t apply for those who are disconnected from the rest of the world.
Hahaha, very true
That’s a interesting angle – I think eventually (past the 20 year mark) there would be a very popular and concerted effort into researching how to make it stop.
Property would lose all meaning, since everything just resets anyways. Experiences are the only thing that would have value. Some property lets you have experiences, but like… just steal it. What does the owner care? No matter what you do to it, it’ll be there again tomorrow in perfect condition, and both they and you have unlimited time to use it.
Are you supporting pirating media?
That sounds like you are supporting pirating media…You should never ever pirate movies and tv shows by going to vumoo.com or 123movies
If everyone resets, and their memory is retained, then perhaps less would change than you’d expect. For example, if you wanted to organise an event for the following day (ie today, but again), then it’s still possible to plan. In which case, many things about life actually stay the same. Only the physicality of things actually change. For people not already suffering, it’s actually a great mechanism for freedom, since the shackles of money, food, health etc are no longer a concern.
Many things change when material needs are vanished. I’d like to think people would eventually find ways to start the day by bringing food to starving, euthanasia for suffering, and similar since this is the only real gratification when self gratification finally runs out
I think the opposite. The starving and suffering would be abandoned, because any attempt to ease it is futile. Their suffering begins again tomorrow, right where they were today.
I think people would help initially, but eventual acceptance that it’s pointless and nothing you can do for them makes any difference, would inevitably lead to anyone that can’t be helped being forsaken. There would be a few saints no doubt, but they’d be in the minority. How many times could you euthanise someone before there’s no longer any emotion it?
It’s bleak, but it’s human.
What can you do that makes a difference? Only things for people
Point being, that it doesn’t make a difference. All it really does is make you feel briefly better for trying to help. Next day, back to suffering.
Unless you loop on the last day of the worst pain of cancer.
The key difference in planning would be lack of physical object storage. No notes would be retained.
Yeah, as I say, for those not already suffering.
Those that were suffering, would be abandoned. Once people realise it’s hopeless, their care would cease. Maybe not initially, but inevitably. Like the guy from The Beach that gets wounded by the shark. The rest will go on and the sick will be forgotten.
For the planning aspect, lack of notes shouldn’t matter. Populations would coordinate locally, and as long as you can remember what you’re supposed to be doing the “next” day, you’re golden.
That would be hell for the dying person to die every day and hell for the caretaker of that person to either kill them every morning or leave them to suffer.
Exactly. At some point, most people will choose to forget, for their own sanity. We’re talking infinite repetition. How many times could you help someone for literal eternity before the acknowledgement that it’s futile hits, or the number of times you’ve had to put a loved one out of their misery pushes you over the edge?
I like that, people’s relationships would continue to develop and probably large frivolous events would happen everyday (aided by ample looting of champagne and cake) until maybe people have literally nothing else left to say to each other
So basically marriage? ;)
Yeah, relationships would begin and end as normal I’d expect. The only limitation to meeting new people is how far you can reasonably travel within the window.
I’m so happy you are a person. Thank you for living.
I will read your book recommendations and follow you. Please feel free to add more.
