Also you can’t pick Canada.

The reason isn’t important, but say you had to leave the country right now and never come back.

You have to decide right now which country will be your home for the rest of your life. Pretend that upon arriving in that country, you would immediately understand the local language perfectly, so that’s not a barrier.

You wouldn’t have a job or friends in that country waiting for you (if you have friends all over the world, pretend you don’t), so you’d be starting fresh with whatever you currently have.

And once you choose, you can never leave that country for the rest of your life — so considerations like speaking a language lots of other countries speak or proximity to other places you want to travel to on vacation shouldn’t weigh in. Though you can still speak your native language, so watching American TV or calling your parents aren’t a problem.

But once you choose, that’s your home until you die.

Where would you decide to live out the rest of your life?

If you want to make it even more interesting, choose a place you’ve never been before.

*somewhat inspired by this week’s This American Life episode, Abdi and the Golden Ticket.

Imagine we’re in the future. The Earth is about to be destroyed.

Luckily, we’ve discovered another habitable planet that’s like Earth in every way. All the same natural resources. Advanced teams have already pre-built all the same stuff we have here. The only problem: it’s less than half the size.

Before we send people to the new planet, we have to decide who gets to go. We can’t take everyone. We can’t just try to squeeze into less space. 2 out of 3 people have to be left behind.

You and your friends have been chosen to create a 5 question test to select who goes and who stays behind. (This will be distributed and administered by all local governments around the world). As a perk for creating the test, all your friends and family get to go automatically (if you want them to), so if one of the questions would normally eliminate them, they still get to go.

What 5 questions would you use to choose who gets to live on the new planet and shape the future of humanity?

(hat tip to my buddy Alex for this one)