Mating and Death: Modern Life Disrupted

So, if you haven't looked at my previous question: Would a sentient species be able to thrive when mating means the death of the male partner? Please do, as the information in it directly pertains to this one.

In the last question I got a lot of answers and comments talking about the growth of such a species from initial population. There was a lot of focus on how there would need to be a consistent surplus of males on hand to replace those fallen. Additionally in many answers there was a trend towards female and male dichotomy as well as an almost guaranteed enslavement of the males. This was very interesting, but not where I had expected the question to go.

Originally, I was more interested in culture development (which was answered), but much further in the future after the species had been well established. I originally asked with the concept of an already stable population, rather than from the genesis in mind. The previous question has given me a lot of interesting things to think about and plan for if this would work, however, I still have a bit of curiosity.

So, preamble aside, this question asks: How would established culture likely react if this trait were to manifest spontaneously?

I would like to use the same rules outlined previously, but with a couple of addendums. Firstly, the restriction of only being able to impregnate one female is now loosened to be: "Males may impregnate many different females, but with each successive mating, the time they have to live is cut in half." This means that at a maximum of one day, one male can probably get to a max of 8-10 females, provided they're quick enough and have enough partners. (Keep in mind that their body is breaking down the whole time, so they might not have enough energy to sustain that long.)

Secondly, the age restriction of potential childbirth will change from 1/3 of the life span to 30 years. You can assume the average individual will live to 100 years of age.

It's also important to note that the gene only triggers its death knell during copulation. Other "activities" are safe. We will also give some people a fighting chance and say that the gene emerges randomly throughout the population at about 5% per week until it is active in all members, as unexpectedly dropping this on everyone at once would be pretty catastrophic and possibly unrecoverable.

Finally, though I didn't specify this species as humans, it was compared to them, which is fair. For simplicity's sake you may use modern human societies as a model. The reason I'm asking this one is that I feel an established culture is going to handle things far differently than one built from the ground up on these rules. An adopted view versus a born into, molded by it one, if you will.

posted almost 8 years ago

JGaines‭

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