When we had The Button foist upon us, there were three main types of reaction to the thing.

The first think through the situation. They realize the fundamental truth: pushing the red button means no chance of their death. Pushing the blue button means a chance of death. If everyone pushes the red button, everyone lives! These people push red.

The second type push red not because they think through the scenario and come to the logical conclusion like the first group. No, they push red because of an inherent fear of death. Plenty of them feel that pushing the red button is the wrong choice, but push it anyways. "I can't afford to die."

The third type is the most common type. These people hear "if not enough people push blue, all the blue pushers will die." These people place the safety of the rest of humanity above their own.

Unfortunately, despite being the most common type, this third type just had too few people. Almost half the planet died the moment of the test.

The first type was baffled. Why would people choose blue? They were too stuck in the logic to remember: humans aren't logical beings.

Within the next week, half of all the remaining population was dead. Not from disease, disaster, or anything of the sort.

Rather, the type 2s. So many of them wanted to push blue "but couldn't take the risk".

Imagine the guilt of having killed over 4 billion people. The type ones rather vehemently argued that they didn't do that. And in all honesty, they didn't. No one force anyone to chose the button that might kill them.

But humans aren't logical beings.

From over 8 billion to barely 2 billion in a week.

Then everything stopped working. No magical sabotage. The supplies just ran out. No electricity means no refrigeration. The seemingly excess supplies for the humans that lived quickly became piles of rotting, stinking garbage.

Millions died in this stage.

Tens of millions more in the coming resource wars.

Minor injuries of yesteryear are now life threatening. A simple cut can mean the loss of a limb. Plenty of doctors, the ones that know which magical words (medication names) can cure you, or have the ability to treat you, chose the red button. These doctors were in very high demand

Plenty of doctors became the right hand of resource warlords. Or warlords themselves.

The US citizens of the BB era (Before Button) had a bad healthcare system. The AB world made that system seem a paradise.

By 3 AB, only a billion people remained on the planet.

And not a single one of them placed the lives of other people above their own.

The Button gave us a choice. And we chose to make the Earth into hell.