Soldato
- Joined
- 1 Mar 2010
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If you were wondering what happened to Solid Snake... this is it!
World's oldest human being discovered in Indonesia at the age of 145
- Thread starter Old Man
- Start date
Soldato
Plenty of active over 100 people. The problem is most people, come retirement, stop using their bodies. Hell, most of us are probably doing that right now! At that age, you must keep using your body, and stay active or you are going to become too frail to get it back.
Those that never stop being active generally seem to enjoy an elderly life without much setbacks from when they were younger. They're stronger, fitter, less prone to disease and illness than your typical elderly, and can actually make good use of their remaining time versus your typical elderly who are basically waiting to die.
That being said, the first people to live to 150 and so on will likely be doing it through some form of transhumanism, which probably brings us to the path of biological immortality, which is another story altogether.
Well you'll get a minority who are able to save to the point where their money makes more money than they need. for everyone else it isn't really feasible.
At some point in the future the prospect of being essentially immortal is perhaps going to be a possibility for some (perhaps not within the bodies we were born with though). If you can prevent the brain from deteriorating then the prospect that issue of people not being able to work is less of a problem too, though if we do have an abundance of pensioners then the welfare state ought to be scaled back even further, especially for people who are young and physically able to work.
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Google the word ironic, you're using it wrong.
Associate
Actually one of the biggest increases in life expectancy came through better sanitation.
The World Health Organisation estimated safe disposal of sewage adds around 10 years to life expectancy.
Man of Honour
~70 years has been considered a normal full lifespan for a very long time, including in medieval England. The reason for the average lifespan being much lower was that a very large number of people died at a young age, very often in infancy. The term "life expectancy" is misleading in this context. When you see a "life expectancy" figure in the 30-40 range, it seems reasonable to assume that 50-60 would be very old in that time and place. In fact, "life expectancy" is really just "average age at death".
An example with plausible numbers for medieval England:
10 people are born.
1 dies at 1 year old (disease)
2 die at 3 years old (disease)
1 dies at 9 years old (disease)
1 dies at 17 years old (war)
1 dies at 22 years old (childbirth)
1 dies at 65 years old (age-related)
1 dies at 67 years old (age-related)
1 dies at 72 years old (age-related)
1 dies at 81 years old (age-related)
"life expectancy" = 34 years, but it would still be ~70 that was considered seriously old. If a person in medieval England survived to 20, they would probably survive to 70 (EDIT: 60 - the 7 from 7 billion slipped into my head) and if they were relatively rich that probability would be very high.
145 today...well, I think a degree of exaggeration is the most likely explanation but I wouldn't say it was impossible. We're not all that sure how aging happens and there are animals that age far more slowly than would usually be expected, so I think it isn't impossible that extremely rare very specific genetic mutations might slow a human's aging enough for them to reach 145, maybe, and I think it isn't impossible that with >7 billion people alive today even very rare variations could happen.
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thats why they exclude deaths under the age of 5
no one over the age of 10 dies of disease in your world?
given the complete lack of antibiotics and really any kind of real medical care?
small cuts, cold/flu, and minor infections where all huge risks with little hope of treatment.
Also no social care means starvation/malnutrition is a big reisk if you cant work as you get older.
There's nothing remotely ironic about this. It's apt, or a coincidence, but there's absolutely zero irony.
Soldato
- Joined
- 19 May 2005
- Posts
- 6,891
Possible? Probably. Personally I'd be happy to live to 70. Don't want to be depending on people.
Soldato
There are a lot of conditions or infections which can be far more serious in childhood, without modern medicine if you can get through to adolescence then your chances of living a lot longer go up significantly.
Man of Honour
There are only 10 people living in your world?
Age doesn't cause disease in your world?
Silly statements masquerading as questions are a reasonable response in your world?
thats what the rest of the post was about....
Man of Honour
It varies. I know quite a few people in their 80s who aren't dependent on other people. No more than we all are, anyway. We're all dependent on others to some extent, of course. Nobody in this country nowadays is isolated enough to be entirely self-sufficient in all things. I've known a couple of people in their early 90s who weren't dependent more than usual, e.g. they took care of themselves and their own homes. There's a lot of individual variation in aging. A relatively famous extreme example is Ernestine Shephard. She's a bodybuilder (at a serious level - she has an impressive physique) and endurance runner (she runs 10 miles a day as standard and sometimes does marathons on top). She's 80.
Man of Honour
The rest of the post was in the context of and explicitly connected to a pointlessly stupid pseudo-question you wrote to dismiss me. I'm hardly likely to reply to that as if it was a sensible point, am I?
If you have a sensible point, feel free to make it and I'll answer.
Man of Honour
Not true. The average age of the human race has increased not because the older people are living longer, but because far fewer are dying young. All evidence suggests that the maximum age a human can live is around 130 years, and without some massive medical breakthroughs this is not going to be beaten. This old boy has just stolen his father or grandfather's ID. The Russians did this a lot during WW2 to avoid conscription, which is why we suddenly saw a load of supposedly 120+ Russians a couple of decades ago.
70 would have been an exceptional age, not an age easily or commonly achieved by a peasant/villein who formed over 95% of the population. Picking 10 people at random and one of them having been 81 is extremely unlikely.
Yes, the average age can look very low because of child mortality (coming out as something dismal like 30ish). However, large amounts of my research is based on court rolls, inc. heriots (death taxes), which seldom mention children (in my experience), so I'm only dealing with adults and the average age is still only 40-something in 14th C Glos/Worcestershire.
Soldato
I read it and thought there's a good chance he could just have the same name as his dad/granddad and simply doesn't remember or even know where he is enough.