The Last Person Alive

[Athenian200]

I've been thinking about this scenario further... I think my first inclination would be to find out as much as I could about the internet and power grid infrastructure so that I could keep everything going for a while, perhaps even go to NASA headquarters (since I live reasonably close to Houston) and use their high-tech facilities. I would probably go and take food from several grocery stores first, and probably gorge myself on my favorite perishable food near the beginning because I knew it was all going away. I would then collect mostly long-lasting foodstuffs which could last for a few years.

Then I would research robotics and anything else I needed to learn, and then try to create robots which could gather raw materials and build/repair things. I would start with basic ones that did farming and resource gathering around the local area. Then I would try to create ones that maintained the vital infrastructure of the city such as power, water, and network infrastructure. After that, I would create ones that were capable of building and repairing all of the aforementioned types of robots, as well as maintaining production/assembly facilities. Then after everything in the local area stabilized, I would go on to create a robot that could take more general commands and break them down into specific instructions for lower robots to follow.

I would then have several of these sorts of robots go around to several major cities and repeat the process, programming them with all the systems knowledge they would need to bring the infrastructure of the cities back online and maintain things such as roads and buildings as they were so that they didn't just turn to ruin. I would try to set things up so that I could monitor everything from a central location. Then finally, I would create a robot that could assess global general situations and advise the lower ones of specific objectives to reach my main goal. That goal would be to continue improving themselves by assimilating new information, and attempt to learn/research as far as possible.

At that point, after the robots had secured everything, I would probably travel around the world and look at various landmarks and going into various homes trying to piece people's lives together from the remaining information in my mind like I said before. I might very well set things up so that the robots held parades, parties, and games for me and perhaps simulated social interactions to some degree, giving me something to do. I might, after I had learned enough, go around doing all the things I had ever wanted to do. I might even consider trying rather crazy things like bungee jumping or skydiving. But I would probably keep messing with what I had created and adding new capabilities until I died.

I don't know why this occurred to me, but I just couldn't think of a better use of my life than that, presuming I was up to it.

 

[Valiant]

"Primary research into the engineering of an artificial uterus was conducted at the Cornell University Center for Reproductive Medicine and Infertility,[1] under Dr. Hung-Ching Liu.[2] In the year 2002 Dr. Liu announced that she and her team had grown tissue samples from cultured endometrial cells removed from a human donor. The tissue sample was then engineered to form the shape of a natural uterus, and human embryos were then implanted into the tissue. The researchers found that the embryos correctly implanted into the artificial uterus' lining and started to grow. Dr. Liu's experiments were halted after six days, to stay within the permitted legal limits of in vitro fertilisation (IVF) legislation in the United States." - Wikipedia, Artificial uterus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


Repopulating the world IS possible even today, whether you are a man or a woman.
I'd definitely start things up by freezing a few bodies of very beautiful women and then grow myself a harem with whom i'd repopulate the earth. Just for the record, i'd not use my own DNA in the original muchachos. =)
I'd probably not want to live in Ithaca (where cornell university is located) so i'd just move equipment etc to the pentagon, where there sure would be a whole lot of nice bedtime reading about top secret stuff, that I later could explore. =)

During this time, waiting for my harem to be born, i'd play around with non-hazardous things like flight simulators at langley air force base.
Ofc i'd also spend my time taking in knowledge about human reproduction like a madman, trying to pile up hot women for later reproduction in my bigass refrigeration unit. Dude, i'm starting to like this morbid shit :O I mean... If i'm the only man around. How cool isn't that!? They'd probably go lesbian on me and I would die lonely...

Again the same conclusion: I'd die. And I just want to be loved!

 

[Cerpin_Taxt]

Maverick's scenario would work for me -- ignoring the hoarding of cars(I’d need at least one, I suppose), the wine, and the video games – but only if I added some mushroom spores. And, like Grayscale, I'd also burn some shit…maybe a Starbucks, then maybe I'd try and find god.

I'm actually surprised by the amount of pre-experiential mourning being professed so far; I’d have imagined, what with all the borderline schizoid INTX’s, that there would have been at least a certain feeling of exhalation at finally attaining such genuine solitude…maybe were human after all, except me apparently.

 

[proteanmix]

I actually surprised by the amount of pre-experiential mourning being professed so far; I'd have imagined, what with all the borderline schizoid INTX’s, that there would have been at least a certain exasperation at finally attaining such genuine solitude…maybe were human after all, except me apparently.

Yeah, I was expecting most people to be rejoicing because they finally get to be alone. I guess all of the fun is in complaining about it not actually having it

 

[faith]

I'm wondering what the long-term plan is for all these sperm-seekers. Suppose they successfully unfreeze the sperm and then impregnate themselves. What then? Are they expecting the children to reproduce? If so, are they going to rear the children with an expectation that they will eventually hook up, or are they going to rear them the way they would normally rear children?

Originally, I just thought I'd pass on to my child the honored status of being the last person alive after I die. Now that you mention it, though, I suppose it'd be possible to have several children who are only half-siblings. Assuming those precious sperm stay frozen and in working order, in a few years the daughters could have children by other sperm donors, and then their children would be half-cousins raised in different "households" and they might could marry. As long as those blessed sperm banks are spared, new genes could be added each generation (which would only have to be about 15 years apart) to prevent too much inbreeding. One would hope not to have too many sons in the beginning, because they'd probably have to wait a generation or two before they had the privilege of making children the old fashioned way. A husband ten or more years older than his wife (who would be the daughter of his half-sister) would be weird to us, but not unheard-of in small family-tribe societies.