Quote Originally Posted by dragonrider
Good idea for a story. Are you thinking about a short story or a novel-length book?

If the life expectancy were to rise suddenly, it would not take long at all for some very serious population problems to begin happening. The planet is already very overpopulated. We are already running low on fresh water, and water will be a big problem before food is. The oceans are overfished, so any more stress on those ocean ecosystems, and the major fisheries will completely collapse as they have already done in some areas.

Some other ideas: We already have some social problems because of longer life expectancies. In the US, when the Social Security system was estabilshed, most people didn't live to 65, and those who did, didn't live much longer than that. So setting 65 as the age when you could start collecting benefits did not put much of a burden on those working to support the system. And it just meant that the very oldest people did not have to work into their very last days. Now the life expectancy is over 80, and it goes up something like 3 months every year. People go on Social Security and live on it for years. It is beginining to cost huge amounts of money to support people on this porgam for so many years. If life expectancy suddenly jumped to 100, there would be some major disruption to programs of this sort.

It started out as a short story, basically i always used to have a bit of a talent for writing, but i could never think of what to write, i just seemed to have no knack for the ideas side of it. I decided a few weeks ago to force myself to come up with something as i just wanted to write again. I started off with a terrible idea and evetually i turned it into the current one, but as that's happened the story just seems to keep growing!! So i'm going to write it with no expectations and see where it takes me.

I like the social security idea, maybe the government could retract all benefits to the over 65's as an emergency measure, effectively leaving the 'golden generation' to die.

See what i mean about the story just growing? There are so many possible stories within the story!
Chufty Reviewed by Chufty on . Skeleton Cure Hi, i've 'lurked' on these boards for a while now and it's pretty clear tht the majority of you guys are pretty intelligent and very conscious of social politics and stuff (i'm hoping flattery will get me everywhere!), so with that in mind i was hoping i could get some advice on a story i'm going to write. The basic plot is that one of the main characters will discover a cure for all disease (I'm sure it's absurd but i dont care) which will initially be heralded as the greatest moment in Rating: 5