If the "magic button" caused a slow irreversible degradation in all things electronic rather than an immediate loss which would result in a mass extinction worse than ******'s death camps on steroids you might find more (sane) folks willing to push it. Have we slaughtered way too many "others" in our video games such that the concept of killing millions of humans is palatable for a discussion, hypothetical or otherwise?
Who among us would "REALLY" push the button knowing there would be a way greater than 50-50 chance they would be dead within 90 days along with their wives, children, and friends? The millions of city dwellers who are fully dependent on modern technology to run the "conveyor belt" which provides a stream of food to them will not sit casually in their dwellings in the dark and die quietly of starvation and thirst in a pool of their own excrement. After exhausting the pitifully small reserves of canned foods and bottled water these millions will look to the countryside for food and drink. Armed roving gangs will take what they can find by force. Few to no armed and disaster prepared citizens are sufficiently prepared for the hoards of city dwellers in their "survival mode." The addicts alone will cause chaos aplenty but with literally millions of city dwellers scrounging the countryside for food and water you so called prepared folks with a shotgun, rifle and pistol or two and your chickens , goats, pigs, etc will be starving within weeks.
Unless you have truly trustworthy friends, well trained in military arts with whom to band together for mutual self defense and have an arsenal including flame throwers, machine guns and the like in hardened bunkers interconnected underground you won't withstand the first few attacks from the city folks.
This is what pushing the button would cause. Of course disease would be an issue as well but you might be killed, starved, or dead from thirst before disease could run its course.
So, if you opt for the button then you may be an insane megalomaniac who may not have a good grasp of the consequences or some demented idiot who thinks the ends justifies the means. Gee, if we just cause a living hades on earth for a few years and cause millions upon millions to die terrible deaths while destroying much of civilization then we can return to a simpler time where life was just one big Disney theme park petting zoo. BALDERDASH!!! It is likely that this pastoral utopia would not happen. It is more likely there would be thousands of little emperors with their armies killing over the means of food production in a chaotic maelstrom of misery. Without a way to cause amnesia so no one could remember when there used to be technology there would always be folks who would want to make life easier.
I may not be prescient but I'd put good odds that my prediction is not so far from what would actually happen. To think otherwise is useless wishful thinking. People aren't just going to, for the convenience of the button pushers, dig their own graves and climb in to await death by starvation and thirst.
Pat
