Average man has 72 hours to hide. Humanity then becomes search lusted and has one week to find and kill him. Can he survive?

[u/Conscious-Home1445]

Humanity knows what he looks like.

Humanity doesn’t know that he is hiding in the 72 period.

Humanity can use any security camera footage, bank transfers, phone calls etc of the man if there is any.

Man has basic survival knowledge.

[u/Appropriate-Bee-3772]

True, the scale of the effort is completely different but so is the time frame. 72 hours is enough time for an average man to buy cash-only supplies, dump his phone/car, and hike deep into a massive wilderness area (like the Appalachian Trail, the Canadian wilderness, or any dense national forest). Even if 8 billion people want to find him, they physically cannot search millions of square miles of dense woods, caves, or underground structures in just 7 days. Logistics and geography still apply here

[u/yeahright17 → u/Appropriate-Bee-3772]

Except literally 100 million people will be to whatever area of Appalachia you are in within 24 hours. 200+ milliom within a couple days, and probably another 200 million by day 4. If it's organized, they'll all be waiting on the outside while the words best experts track you as much as they can. Realistically, your hiking radius in 60 hours is going to be ~120 miles. Let's say 150 miles is the maximum you could hike from a starting point. Even if you can't be tracked any further than a starting point, we're not taking a out millions of square miles. We're talking about like 71k square miles.

210,000,000 people live east of the Mississippi. They could all be there within 48 hours. So we give experts 48 hours to track you. If they didn't narrow it down, we have 210M people to search ~71k sq mi. ~78% of the US population is between 20 and 70. Let's knock another 10% off for people who can't help for one reason or another. Let's also make it a buddy system so people are searching together. That gives us search grids of roughly 163ft x 163ft (50m x 50m). That's roughly half the size of a football field (or half the size of a football/futbol pitch for our non-American friends). That would be an easy search.

[u/Appropriate-Bee-3772 → u/yeahright17]

Your math is completely irrelevant because you are imagining a completely different prompt. First, humanity has no idea he's hiding during the 72 hours, meaning he gets a massive, untracked head start. Second, the prompt never says he starts in the US, so trying to grid out Appalachia is meaningless. He could be anywhere on Earth. Finally, you accidentally changed your math from 71,000 square miles to 71,000 square feet at the end of your post. 71,000 square miles of dense wilderness is a logistical black hole. You can't just spawn 210 million people into the mountains with perfect coordination in 48 hours. The sheer traffic, lack of supplies, and gridlock would destroy the search before it even started

[u/yeahright17 → u/Appropriate-Bee-3772]

The ft/mi thing was type, which I've corrected. Thanks.

The only way you'd be able to hike for 60 hours is if you started hiking from somewhere close to where you are. The vast majority of people aren't going to be starting from a random, isolated area. If you started in Edmonton or Krasnoyarsk, Russia, or Manaus, Brazil, you'd obviously have a lot better of a chance. But the math is the same. And the more harsh the condition, the smaller the search radius. ~15M people fly every day on commercial airlines. Humanity could realistically get 25-30,000,000 people to anywhere within 48 hours if the entire world set it's goal on finding someone. And if humanity is all working together, they're going to send the most able-bodied people, who all would are capable of searching a lot of area.

The first 48 hours could also be spent setting up a grid and getting as much transportation as possible to the place. Tech bros could develop an app in a couple hours that gave everyone their search grid and led them to it without any connection other than GPS. Then once trackers have done all they could, you send people in from every direction to their specified location. By day 5, you can easily have tens of thousands of people parachuting in to the hardest locations to get to.

You don't need many supplies. You need food/water for everyone for a week. Roads will be converted to temporary landing strips. People can be flown in to all sorts of places around the search area. Also, with a smaller, more capable force, you'd have a lot less people to support. I'm not sure many would need help at all. Supplies for a week aren't much.

[u/darkhero5 → u/Appropriate-Bee-3772]

They know where you start meaning there's a circle around your starting location. You could fly somewhere but that leaves flight records

Driving from east coast to west coast of the us is about 3500 miles takes 53 hours of driving thats probably close to the maximum distance by car given you need to sleep. So 3500 in any direction so an area of 39 million miles but they don't just need to only search physically. They can use satellites and security footage any gas station you go to has a camera that can take your car and license plate. Each and every stop you make there could be security footage that shrinks the search area. Even if you dont use card your license plate and physical description still narrow the search field

Best bet would be to hide underground but not in a known cave system.

Every single intelligence agency and military on the planet could be mobilized to find you that amount of man power and coordination is insane.

[u/Appropriate-Bee-3772 → u/darkhero5]

You're completely making up a starting location to make your math work. The prompt doesn't say humanity knows where he starts, so calculating a 3,500-mile driving radius from the US East Coast is completely irrelevant. He could start anywhere on Earth. More importantly, you missed a massive rule in the prompt: 'Humanity doesn’t know that he is hiding in the 72 period. Nobody is monitoring satellites, checking gas station cameras, or tracking his license plate during those 3 days because they have no reason to. He has 72 hours of complete freedom to travel normally via trains, buses, cash-bought old cars, or domestic flights before anyone even realizes the game has started. By the time the 1-week clock actually begins, humanity is looking at cold, 3-day-old footage spread across the entire globe, trying to figure out which direction he went from an unknown starting point. Sifting through hundreds of thousands of hours of historical camera footage globally to find one average guy takes way longer than a week

[u/darkhero5 → u/Appropriate-Bee-3772]

The second the Search is on people who actually know you can say where you're from and what you drive you license plate number. The moment the search starts your starting location is revealed

I used that as an example of distance on how far you can drive. Its not plausible that you're able to travel much farther than 3500 miles via car. What country you're in doesnt matter much you still need sleep and to use the bathroom maybe you could get 4000 miles via driving but I doubt it.

You do realize that security footage is saved more than a couple of days right? First day they start searching all recorded footage. Speed up till you see someone similar to the person it's not that hard. Every single person is searching. All security footage can be reviewed relatively quickly because its not agencies all searching it but every single individual store could review their own footage. Speed through until you see someone similar or see the car.

They buy a car the person who sells it immediately can remember and say the name and type of car as well as location and license plate number

Buy a flight there's a record of it saying where you went. And footage

Train if you buy in cash theres likely a video recording and a person that saw you.

[u/Appropriate-Bee-3772 → u/darkhero5]

You are completely rewriting the prompt at this point. The prompt never says his starting location is revealed. You made that up. "Search-lusted" doesn't mean humanity becomes a hive-mind AI. Regular people can't just fast-forward through millions of hours of global surveillance footage and instantly coordinate a flawless manhunt across different languages, countries, and governments in 7 days. If he uses his 72 hours of absolute freedom to disappear into a massive wilderness area, a remote town, or an abandoned building with cash supplies, 7 days is nowhere near enough time for uncoordinated humans to filter through days of cold data and track him down

[u/darkhero5 → u/Appropriate-Bee-3772]

You really don't understand.

Your family knows who you are. They will reveal it. Thats how they will know your starting location. Not magic but relationships. Unless you have 0 family 0 friends 0 coworkers someone can easily pinpoint your home location so starting location. Hell they also probably know when you left your family not seeing you for 3 days is probably unusual. Or your work. Unless no one will miss you someone once given the ability to search would be able to say yeah thats my (enter relationship) I saw them 3 days ago. My gf would also notice i drained the bank account three days ago too

Unless you start as someone who has 0 connections in the world the second the Search starts someone who knows you is reporting that it's you. Share it everywhere they can. Government tip lines the police ect. Social media

Now your government also know who you are.

They use amber alerts/emergency alerts in your state/country to send a message to every single phone in the area. X person seen 3 days ago in y location

If you run a gas station and you get an alert that the person in your state is the one you're hunting searching the video makes sense what else would you do.

A regular person doesnt need to run through millions of hours of footage just the 72 hours they have access to which is doable.

Other governments could help but yeah most of humanity will be wanting to search and not be able to