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The biggest problem with cannibalism, is that you spread certain diseases more easily. Things like Mad Cow Disease, is an example, bus just similar things applied to humans. If there is this Extinction Level Event (ELE) then we need to ensure the gene-pool survive, I mean make use of it, to get rid of AIDS. But then we are back at the level where the NAZI's where and that is a loss in humanity no matter how you look at it.

Arguably the strongest will survive, but the sum-of-the-parts will be lower then the whole. The people we need to survive is not necessarily the "strong". Nerds and geeks is what we need, basically a lot of engineers (yup, I am an Engineer), and then physical labor to build things quick or sacrifice themselves for the greater good, like the firemen of Chernobyl. Have you ever considered what will happen once there are no people to look after Nuclear Power plants, I would imagine in a countries like the USA these plants are geographically so densely distributed that if one fails the fall-out will trigger evacuations and thus failures of the others in close proximity, ultimately leaving you with a cascading domino-effect.

The people that you will need to solve this type of problem is not really the "strong". I would imagine, the "red-necks" will probably have the highest change of survival but then humanity will be gone, and we will be back in the dark ages.

I would imagine either things turnout or at least start to happen as it did in the movies, Deep Impact (FEMA) and possibly a messed up society as in Twelve Monkeys or even Mad Max.

As an engineer my biggest problem, would be to effectively restart our technology level in preferably less then 10 years. Else we might loose it altogether. Knowledge transfer would be important, else we might have a society like The Postman or the TV series, Jerimaia. The problem with most of today's technology is that the components are extremely specialized, you need high-tech to replicate them, and most parts are incremental improvements on a previous version. For example, you need a C compiler, to compile the new-improved C compiler. Some technologies are extremely recursive in this manner. So to the point that if a crucial part is lost, it might be lost forever. Basically how many technologies, can you start from ground principles ?

Things like a surface mount sintered Tantalum Cap, or a microprocessor, or even a DVD reader, to learn new generations about reading, math, etc. Can you restore your backups ? Maybe without the magnetic mantle we might have a huge EM pulse that messes up all magnetically stored data. If the step-function input is too big, we might be back in the dark ages.

Ok one part of me feel like, yeah !!! But it is the transients before we get there that scares me.

Something straight out of Jeremiah

Talk about disapointing. A cool sci fi show with a good plot, good scripts and nudity! So close ...

Jeremiah. It's on after Stargate on Showtime, at 10:45 PM eastern.

Don't let the fact that it stars Luke Perry and Malcolm Jamal-Warner scare you off. It's produced (and mostly written) by J. Michael Straczynski, the same guy who did Babylon 5.

Series premise is that a plague wipes out all adults, but spares the children. It's now 15 years after the "Big Death", and the kids have rebuilt, sort of. Lots of post-apocalyptic scenerey and plots, but the general theme and tone of the series is pretty hopeful.

Plus, there's ample swearing/violence -- and nudity. Not as much as the softcore porn on cable, but probably as much as the Sopranos.

yikes

Checking out the few photos on the site, I noticed the Richard Deen Anderson-ish poses of Luke Perry, like in this photo that looks more like some SG1 episode... ;-)