WI: Bears gained human intellect and morality of the 1940s?

[OldGreenGrolar]

With the the sapience and sentience to communicate with each other and those they view as friends or enemies as well as the means (opposable thumbs) to make weapons of war. How screwed is the human race? This shall happen the very instant you woke up this morning, have fun!







*Also this OP includes all bears of all sizes and species in every country with a population of bears endangered or otherwise.





forums.spacebattles.com/threads/wi-bears-gained-human-intellect-and-morality-of-the-1940s.889300/page-2#post-71111743




I found this discussion on another forum and thought it will be an interesting topic for us to discuss here. How will it affect us humans?

[OldGreenGrolar]

My answer:

Bears are among the most intelligent animals on earth. They are also among the strongest pound for pound. Bears with human intellect would mean extinction for humans in some areas or a powerful ally.



Lets not forget Wojtek





Bear strength:

[OldGreenGrolar]

Somebody disagreed with me. His answer is below:

Are you serious? There are less than a million bears in the world. The most populous bear species, the Brown Bear has a population of just 200 000, with members spread across multiple continents, with other species like polar bear (22-31k) or worse yet pandas (at best 2k) having even fewer. Unless the change happened during prehistoric times, they have only three options; assimilate into human civilisation, retreat into whatever uninhabited corner of earth to wage subsistence lifestyle (bears have only human intelligence, not knowledge or infrastructure of even Sentinelese people) or get shot if they try to attack anything beyond random hikers.



All the muscles in the world are quite useless compared to ubiquitous armed and trained police, paramilitary and actual military organisations around the world.



Like, seriously, even if OP gathered all the bears in the world and placed them in a modern 21st century city tailor-made to house all the bears and mind-controlled them to form a coherent, militarised society, they would still probably lack the numbers and industry to wage a successful military campaign against any but the weakest banana republic, much less cause much if any issues to humanity at large.



It is not us who are screwed, it's the bears who one day woke up with human-level intelligence and opposable thumbs (and outdated beliefs of 1940s America? Soviet Union? Germany? Britain? France? Brazil? Japan? China?) and who lack even cavemen level civilisation. Even the bears which managed to join human society are most likely going to be second class citizens in most countries, as no laws exist that would provide legal protection to sapient bears. With such tiny and scattered population they are also unlikely as a group to ever gain any sort of political platform, their well-being completely dependent on goodwill of humans and how popular human-made and lead Bears Rights Movements will be. Considering how much of total pieces of Crap we consistently are to each other, I expect Bears to suffer truly terrible discrimination.

forums.spacebattles.com/threads/wi-bears-gained-human-intellect-and-morality-of-the-1940s.889300/page-2#post-71111743

[brobear]

By "WI" I am assuming "What If"... What if we keep the syfy/fantasy where it belongs; not in the "Bears in General" section. 

[OldGreenGrolar]

Oct 12, 2020 12:02:08 GMT -5 brobear said:

By "WI" I am assuming "What If"... What if we keep the syfy/fantasy where it belongs; not in the "Bears in General" section. 

No worries. May I know your opinion on this topic? 

It was created by someone on another forum.

[brobear]

Humanity does not have a history of sharing. It seems to be human nature to just move in and take it all. There will always be that handfull of people who will stand-up for wild animals and/or aboriginal people. But in the end, they are allowed only a "small piece of the pie".
If it were discovered that bears have gained intelligence on par with humans; the bruins would then be kept tucked away in safely guarded chosen locations ( reservations ). Any trouble from the bears; they would likely be exterminated. ( IMO )

[OldGreenGrolar]

Still it is not far fetched to say some bear might actually work with humans.