Would society fall into chaos if all of the police and militaries from every country just vanished?

Check out what happened to the European Continent and the British Isles, when the Romans withdrew and they (the citizens of what they once called Christendom) had to figure out what to do what to do with the resulting void in civic law and structure. It took about 1000 years, and in fact it did not get settled until WW I, the treaty ending which was a cause of WW II.
Did you take history in school?

@josie I failed history. My ancient history comes from Xena Warrior Princess and the Bible. I flunked medieval history in university. 3 out of 9.

@talljasperman
No surprise

Just because you take a title away doesn’t mean people won’t “police” another person. Let’s pretend what you say happens. No more police and military. So when someone is out of line, say, someone becomes a killer, and a group of people find the killer, and drag him to court. That group of people are, “policing” the situation are they not?

Same with military. Say we disband all militaries. But a renegade gang decides to rob neighborhoods. So a certain neighborhood decides to work together and become watch dogs of their neighborhood while armed. Each night a certain memeber from the neighborhood is on duty. This is a militaristic sort of strategy.

You can disband the label, but humans, will never stop, “policing” and working together with weapons in order to survive.

Someone would step up to be the enforcer(s) eventually. Sometimes they are called warlords. I believe the rules would be much simpler as well as punishment. No more appeals or lawyers or wiggling out of evil deeds. Some would rather approve of this kind of rule. And there would be many who would really hate it.

@josie you don’t have to go that far back. Look at Somalia since 1982. You can see the beginnings of it in Mexico with the drug gangs and the near civil war.

Mexico hasn’t been completely lost yet, but they easily could with a few bad breaks.

The important thing to keep in mind is, that we live in anarchy right now. This, what we have, is exactly what happens when you leave a bunch of homosapiens on a planet to live in chaos.

So, if we did do away with all the police, it would really just be temporary. However, I do think you could do away with military for the most part, and the world would not be affected so much.

If all the police vanished, and it took a month to fix it, I think that for the most part life would go on more or less the same as it is now in the beginning. But eventually the word would get out, and problems would start.

For me, having no police would actually put me off of committing crime. At the moment, if you have 50.00 bucks cash in your house, and I come steal it and get away with the money, and you don’t have proof, there is not much you can do, the police wont help you, and if you hurt me you are the bad guy. However, with no police, there could be any consequence for anything.

I think that you would find, that some parts of society would club together sooner than others, and you would get pockets of no law and vigilante law, until the network gets big again.

I would drive faster, but everything else would stay the same for me.

At least the gun debate will be over finally.

Depends where you live. At first, if you live in a peaceful, mostly law abiding society, where there is no organized guerilla warfare type group around and no significant mafia, then yeah things would carry on without much change for a while. Eventually, some criminal behavior would pop up and something would have to be done with them. Someone or some people in the society would have to step up and deal with them, deal with the problem.

It always has in the distant past, as in the Dark Ages following the fall of Rome. And just a few years back, Somalia had a Dark Age when the rule of law broke down. Every failed state in recent history has. I definitely agree with @woodcutter that the whole world becoming a failed state would end the gun debate. I don’t agree with his romanticized view of Warlords as reasonable and fair replacements for the rule of law, though. The biggest, richest, baddest sociopaths in an area quickly rise to the top of the King of the Mountain game of Warlords. They rape, pillage, and kill in an orgy of brutal gluttony till a bigger, badder psychopath kills them. Careful what you wish for, @woodcutter.

I don’t care, but i’m definitely having me one of their squad cars, assuming they were left abandoned when the cops vanished & a tank, a big fuckoff one with machine gun turrets & a custom built mini-bar inside.

It would be chaos – and bad chaos, like what we see in Egypt right now.

The problem is that in any society, there are good actors and bad actors. The good actors would probably get along just fine and live peaceably. However, the bad actors, without some level of law enforcement (and a system of penalties) would take advantage of the good actors. And the good actors, based on their generally pleasant and peaceful demeanor, would not be equipped to deal with the bad.

Any society requires structure, because not everyone in a society is altruistic and idealistic. A society without police/army would devolve into anarchy, and eventually, totalitarianism.

There are two types of people there are natural born leaders and natural born followers.

In any mammalian society we have learned that we need both followers and leaders to profit and move forward in a manner that works because the followers thrive on needing leadership because they lack skills and the leaders have the skills to teach them. If such a thing like this were to take place I think a leader will stand and try to take the podium and many will follow.

I also believe a great leader will teach followers great skills. And..to achieve peace, a great leader will teach peace.

Chaos depends on the leadership and the leader who teaches the choas and the rules governed within and enforced or not.

Typically if no police exist then these groups become their own police.

If it were a hitler type movement, this to me is the wrong type of leadership, so then I think they would be in chaos.

If it were a peaceful treehugging movement, well then I’d assume it would’nt be so chaotic.
Though this group may be peaceful, it may not be the group or type of leadership for everyone.

Choosing a group would be either a forced decision through mind manipulation, just plain recruitment style or even just personal decision. Of course again that will depend on the different types of “groups”/“gangs”. Every leader I believe has their own personal leadership style and we would be subjected to it, it’s the way we run things. And if we can’t sort something out between the groups the ultimate chaos is war. But isn’t this all happening now around the world?

Police and Military only?
Then the Politicians would create another form of control.

There are no police on some of the Scottish islands and no military and people get along just fine. There isn’t really any crime but if there was they would have to send police from the mainland.

@ETpro I didn’t say that Warlords would be for the benefits of us all, mainly to themselves and those they like. I said sometimes. Warlords only crop up when they are unopposed. There but a scant few ways to do this. I think you know what they might be?

@woodcutter If I had to do it, it would be via founding a cult.

You might want to get the jump on that

@woodcutter Ha! You might just be right. And if I don’t need an army of minions, the boatloads of money cult leaders extrot are given by their loyal followers would always come in handy even in a stable society.

Yeah it’s called a church. Get busy.

One group of people will always be able to overpower another group of weaker people, and eventually the stronger group will attempt to do this. The way I see it then by default anarchy is just a temporary condition between some type of ‘order’.

@Paradox25 It would be a good idea to be with the stronger faction in any case. And I have a hunch that faction will have no parts of lawyers about. Unless they are wearing their ears as jewelry