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Walking home from a doctor’s appointment and, as usual, lightly contemplating my own mortality I was thinking about whether I would have lived my life differently as a young man if I knew that I would definitely live until I was 47. I was convinced as a teenager that I would die tragically young and unfulfilled (personally, professionally, but let’s face it, mainly sexually) and was scared to take chances or sometimes even to just go out of an evening in case something terrible happened (unaware perhaps that most accidents happen at home, so I was actually in more danger where I was). Whatever the case I knew that I wouldn’t live beyond the age of 32, as Nostradamus had clearly predicted the end of the world in September 1999.
So getting to the frankly ridiculously old age of 47 seemed unlikely if not impossible. And I can’t blame my younger self for thinking that. 47 is really old. I still can’t get my head round it.
But if I could travel back in time to the 16 year old me and tell him that he definitely won’t die for at least 30 years, would he/I have acted any differently? Would it have freed me or imprisoned me? Would knowing your own death date make you happy or sad? Would it make you take ridiculous risks, knowing that you couldn’t be killed or if you didn’t know the manner of your death might you still fear that a death date meant very little. You couldn’t just run into traffic, because you might be run over and end up in a coma for 30 years. Your physical death date remains as predicted, but you have no actual life. And as nice as it would be to know that you were safe for a while, would the approaching date weigh heavily on you as it neared? And how would you feel if you got given your death date and it was tomorrow?
I am sure this must be a subject that has been covered by fiction or a lightweight, poorly planned and written American sci-fi series in the mould of “The 4400”, but I wondered what would happen if a document or computer file was sent back from some anonymous, Assange-like whistle-blower from the future. He has compiled a list of every single person who is alive (and will be alive) and their death date and somehow found a way to get it back to us. He feels it is our right to know. Why should this vital fact be kept from us? Perhaps the list initially goes to one person who is sceptical that it means anything, until he or she notices that the names are of real people and that the dates are indeed when they die. They organise the info into date order, are able to google the names and find their death notices. Do they release the information to the world? Or keep it to themselves? Do they dare search for their own name?
Do they try to warn people of their upcoming deaths? If so it makes no difference, or it is the warnings that cause the people to die. This future cannot be changed. It’s not meant to be a warning, or an attempt to change the outcome of people’s lives. Whoever has sent this just wants to let people know how long they have. If people realised that the dates were immutable and unchangeable would they resist their own deaths or accept them. If you knew your death date and you were taking a plane that day, would you not take the plane? Because you’d know you’d die another way if you did that. What if you got to the airport and talked to the other passengers and they all had the same death date? Would you get on the plane? You might as well. This isn’t final destination. This isn’t death hunting you down. This is a list of all the deaths that will happen, made after they have happened. You might as well just go along with it. Disasters could be predicted, which plane would crash - even where it might go down - but not averted. Once that became clear would you just accept that that was your allotted span and go along with it? Might searching for the mechanical fault on the plane, be what actually causes the crash?
The only way out might be to try and fake your own death on your death date in such a way that the official records are fooled and you can go on living under an assumed identity. And I suppose if you got away with it and live even one day longer than your records show, you would know that you will never get caught. But there might also be a government agency whose job it was to ensure that no one attempted to cheat the system. If anyone refused to get on a doomed plane they might be hunted down and killed.
There have certainly been films that have dealt with prophecy and things like knowing when accidents are going to happen. But this has a different twist on it, I think. It would be interesting to explore whether people would accept their inevitable fate to try to fight it. As well as to know how people would behave if they knew they were temporarily at least, indestructible (or at least couldn’t be snuffed out entirely).
It’s unlikely to happen in real life though.
