Decimation - killing one in ten - was supposed to pretty much wreck morale. Sudden removal of half the population would probably be devastating, whichever half was removed. Actually, across the age ranges, it might be just under half, because women are said to live longer, on average, than men. Still shocking, though.
If, magically, nobody was shocked into headless chicken mode, then I guess there would be a few breakdowns and problems before the relatively few techies left could train a new contingent. Big deal.
A proportion of the work done nowadays is pointless wheel spinning, or potentially avoidable things like coping with an insanely complex tax system. I guess some of the more absurd legal requirements would be suspended to allow the competent people to concentrate on the necessary tasks, even if they also had to do a bit of retraining. If you can, for example, design spreadsheets to cope with capital gains and taper relief, you could, with enough reason to do so, probably retrain fairly quickly to cope with, say, electrical engineering. You'd need comparable mental capacity in either case.
no subject
If, magically, nobody was shocked into headless chicken mode, then I guess there would be a few breakdowns and problems before the relatively few techies left could train a new contingent. Big deal.
A proportion of the work done nowadays is pointless wheel spinning, or potentially avoidable things like coping with an insanely complex tax system. I guess some of the more absurd legal requirements would be suspended to allow the competent people to concentrate on the necessary tasks, even if they also had to do a bit of retraining. If you can, for example, design spreadsheets to cope with capital gains and taper relief, you could, with enough reason to do so, probably retrain fairly quickly to cope with, say, electrical engineering. You'd need comparable mental capacity in either case.