Dead Hand (or "Perimeter" as its name is) needs to be activated before it can do all that terrible stuff. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Hand_(nuclear_war)

Yes it does. There is no denying it.

Please give a source for this if it's true, or make it clearer if you're presenting a scenario based on fictional facts. The Wikipedia article that Michael linked to says that not only does the "Dead Hand Protocol" have to be activated, it will only launch missiles if it detects a nuclear attack. Other sources I've found say the same thing.

That is true. But you cannot guarantee rogue nations like North Korea and maybe Israel don't have such protocols activated. One nuclear missile launch is all you require to get a lot of missiles flying. I am not mentioning fictional scenario here, but a very plausible scenario. Not that we know for a fact that such protocols are activated or not, but we definitely expect them to be active in at least a couple of nations (mentioned above).

@sumelic how do we know what the criteria for nuclear attack might be? For all we know 99 red balloons might trigger a response without human verification overriding it!

What I mean is that this part of your answer—"Basically, in several countries with nuclear weapons, they have missiles with nuclear warheads in underground bunkers. Their coordinates are set and they are ready for launch. Everyday they program the computers to launch the missiles 3-5 days from today"—sounds like you're stating a true fact about how this protocol works our world. But in reality, it seems to just be your own speculative scenario. This site deals with speculation a lot, and that's fine, but I think it's important to clearly distinguish between this and reality.

Moral of the story => ... ok, she has read your answer and repented from the error of her ways. Now her virus doesn't kill all the men, instead it turns them into women. No more death or loss of life, but still no more men, ever...

@Michael: Now that you mention it, I recall there was a short story written on that theme. Btw, good luck with converting all men into women instantly. Even within a few hours/days would be an unprecedented biological feat.

@sumelic: What I stated was a proven and known state of affairs during the cold war. Now it is upon you to prove that this is not the state of affairs now. I presented the facts as they were, by the last well known era. it is upon you to prove how and when they changed.

This would be a great answer if the claims were true. Agree with the others that you should make it clear this is only possible.

"Was true during the Cold War" is not "I know this is true now." The "burden of proof" claim is just silly and argumentative. Happy to change -1 to +1 if you include your assumptions in your answer.

@djechlin: The whole thing has been researched and rewritten. p.s. the change of your -1 to +1 vote is neither required, nor encouraged.

Thanks for detailed answer (after your edit). I like it because it clearly outlines that by trying to fix the world Mad Scientist caused the apocalypse and possibly wiped the entire population in not so far future.

You have provided no support for your claim of "end of world scenario" within 3-4 years. What's more, you're actually contradicting it in the last part.

@cst1992 This would result in a quick (within 3-4 years) end of the world scenario (for human civilization, that is). A bit of attentive reading goes a long way ...

-1 "A lot of suicides and heart failure deaths are expected" I wonder what you are thinking. Random deaths of men occasionally happens even in our world. (It might be a lot, though, even if 0.001% women do so, but quite irrelevant.) And without at least one next generation, old times and the human technologies being forgotten is unimaginable. I recommend posting separate answers if you change it too much. But I'll give both a -1 for this case.

@user23013: You are welcome to give it -1 two times actually, if not more. Somehow it happens most of the people on this site have a different perspective than you. I just went through the answers to this question and learned that none was posted by you. Maybe you know that it takes effort and time to research and post answers. And that answers are posted basically in response to questions posted by people, not to suit whims and fancies of random people. So yes, good luck being a hater.

I agree with most of the early stuff, but not the later stages. I think you're completely ignoring the possibility of strong leaders arising, and enclaves of technology and civilization surviving. Basically, you're not giving women enough credit, although I agree that 90% of civilization would be gone.

It's not that I'm not giving women enough credit. It is that men are in the most prominent positions and the technology and social structures are all based around men.

Sorry if this sounds like a nit, but I did think the Dead Hand point was extremely interesting and relevant, even in the form of "What would have been a huge problem in the Cold War." It certainly drives the point home that not only is nature and accident rigging the destruction of mankind in event of cataclysm, so is mankind.

People starving after one day without food? I find your answer amusing, but very unrealistic, not just in this issue but throughout the entire thing - there are too many problems to pick apart in comments.

I believe it takes a little longer than 10 - 15 days to die of starvation. This answer on the Great Outdoors seems to indicate this: outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/1024 Having water services shut down would probably kill many more people than starvation by the 10 - 15 day mark.

@Tophandour: +1 for pointing that out. Yes, a normal, healthy person can indeed survive without food for a long time. But what about type diabetes (type 2) patients? And people weakened from chronic diseases? These are the people I was mentioning, not random women. It didn't feel right to name diabetics and sick, old women thus I used the general word of "many".

@YoustayIgo I see what you were going for now. I would have personally worded it differently, but it's fine.

I'd also like to state that it is mostly man that are engineers(at least in CS). This makes many critical infrastructure dangerous if they suddenly die - there's no one to take care for these things.