If you've ever seen any "Avengers," "Guardians of the Galaxy," or Marvel superhero movies, you'll know who Thanos is. He's portrayed as the evil father of Gamora and his goal is clear: to wipe out half of the population. Many of us were not expecting him to actually succeed — because, in every other movie, the Avengers prevail. But in "Avengers: Infinity War," this was simply not the case. He successfully wiped out exactly half of the population and we watched some of our favorite characters like Black Panther, Vision, The Witch, and Groot disintegrate. But why was this such a bad thing?
Thanos' logic isn't really off — overpopulation has been a real-world problem for years now, with the rate growing at two percent per year. Even though this doesn't sound like a lot, it's faster than any other time period in history. This means that death rates either need to go up, or the birth rate needs to decrease.
According to the World Population Census, in 2015 there were approximately 7.2 billion people in the world. But in 2016, it was approximately 7.3 billion. In just a year, a little more than 100 million people were born. At this rate, overpopulation will affect the amount of food available, poverty rates, and air quality. With so many people continuously being born, factories are going to be forced to produce more products, releasing more CO2. Poverty rates will rise because there won't be many jobs available so people won't be able to afford much. While this sounds like a very grave diagnosis, Thanos found a solution to this in the "Avengers: Infinity War" film. By collecting the infinity stones of mind, power, reality, soul, space, and time, he succeeded in fixing this overpopulation problem — that is a serious problem today.
Since infinity stones, unfortunately, don't exist, what can we do to prevent overpopulating our beautiful planet? The answer may lie in finding more effective ways to use our natural resources better, or it may not, we have no way to know for sure. Maybe the Earth can hold more than eight billion people and still maintain other species. While we may never be able to accurately predict what could happen, we know that overpopulation is eventually inevitable. So far, there isn't an answer to solve this issue either, which may sound like a very depressing fact, but it's true. Multiple theories have been suggested but, none have been enacted. "Avengers: Infinity War" was a cinematic wake-up call, and proves that maybe Thanos isn't so crazy after all. While infinity stones would be a great answer to this problem, they don't exist. So, in the wise words of Tony Stark, " Let's do something insane — let's save the world."
