I want to talk about this group of men and women who will spend a long time just burying the dead. Let's think this through. Anyone who is better at math than me, feel free to correct me if needed.
There are more than 7.4 million jw publishers right now. We were always told that not every jw will survive armageddon. But let's be generous in our estimating and say that 7 million jw's survive.
The number of dead bodies that need to be buried: 7 billion.
Now, we can't assume that all 7 million survivors will be on burial duty. According to the 2011 World Population Data Sheet, 27% of the world's population is under the age of 15, and 8% are over the age of 65. Let's assume that those percentages are also representative of the makeup of jehovah's witnesses. That means that 560,000 witnesses are over 65, and 1.89 million are under 15.
Let's assume that j-ho wouldn't ask children and old people to do this horrible, awful work of burying dead bodies. Let's also assume that the mothers of those children under age 15 would be permitted to stay home and take care of their children. Assuming that the average mother has two children, that means that the 1.89 million children will be taken care of by 945,000 mothers.
So we've reduced our pool of eligible gravediggers from 7 million down to 3.6 million. That's the estimated number of men between the ages of 15 and 65, plus women 15 to 65 who don't have children to raise.
We can reduce the gravedigging crew even more... because not every one of those 3.6 million people is physically, mentally or emotionally capable of carrying out this work. It would be VERY physically demanding, and even more than that, many people would find it to be emotionally devastating. And we were all told that armageddon survivors won't attain perfection until some time after armageddon... it won't be instant. In other words, at the very beginning of the 1,000 year reign, survivors will all be just the same people they are right now with very few improvements.
So... I'm just taking liberties here... but I'm going to estimate that 50% of the survivors will be either physically or emotionally incapable of carrying out this task of gravedigging.
So that leaves us with 1.8 million people with their little shovels and picks.
They will need to dig 7 billion graves.
Each grave digger needs to bury 3,888 bodies.
If the gravedigging crew is to complete the job in a month, each digger would need to bury 125 bodies per day. If they each work 12 hour days, 7 days a week... every digger would need to bury at least 10 bodies every hour, non-stop, for 12 hours straight. Seven days a week, for a month.
Will each body get its own grave? Or will mass graves be used?
I know one thing... I'd MUCH rather be one of the bodies getting thrown in a hole, than to be one of the poor unlucky bastards with the job of burying 125 corpses every single day for a month.
