If Humans Lived 400 Years, You’d Still Be a Teen at 80

“Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday to you! Happy birthday dear best friend! Happy birthday to you!!!” You’re so excited! All your friends and relatives are here! Your adult life has just begun!

You’ve graduated from several colleges, got a driver’s license for all kinds of vehicles, and read several thousands of books! You’re full of energy! And you’re only 80 years old! You blow out the candles with this number on your birthday cake.

Your parents are here. They are more than two hundred years old. Your best friend has recently celebrated 112 years, and your younger brother is only 75. And you all look young for this age. Welcome to the world where the average human lives 400 years!

Throughout the centuries, the dark, cold waters of the North Atlantic were hiding the secret of such longevity. The Greenland Shark is the longest-living vertebrate on Earth. In 2016, marine researchers found out the age of the oldest shark. It was a 400-year-old, massive creature. That shark swam in the oceans during the era of pirates.

In 2050, scientists found an unusual gene in the shark’s DNA. It helped to slow down the aging of the animal. The researchers managed to combine this gene with human DNA. And the life of all people on the planet changed dramatically. Fifty years later, at the beginning of the 22nd century, everyone got the opportunity to live for 400 years.

The first 80 years of life are considered to be the youth. Mentally, you’re developing as quickly as a person from the past. At the age of 80, those people were wise but already old.

In your world, you are as intelligent as an 80-year-old person. But your body, your psyche, and your health are those of a young person. Until you get 20 years old, you grow like a person from the past. But after that, this process slows down by 5 times.

During these 80 years, a lot of things happened. You finished school and graduated from college. It took you about 15 years. After that, you received another education. And another one! You can get about 10 diplomas in different spheres.

Throughout this time, you don’t have to work to earn money. Your studies are paid for by the state. And your family gives you enough money to live a happy life. Almost all people on the planet have this opportunity.

In the first 80 years, you gain life experience. You find love, have your heart broken, worry about unimportant things, get into troubles, do rash things, fail, and achieve success. You make new friends; you lose old ones. You make scientific discoveries and learn several languages. When you’re 40 years old, you feel like an adult. You no longer want to study.

You want to get a good job and live your own life. At the same time, you still look like a teenager. Unfortunately, no company will hire you until you’re 100. They believe that you aren’t ready. You’re still controlled by your emotions and ego. You need to spend 60 more years getting more life experience.

If you don’t want to study a lot, you can travel around the world and learn about the cultures of different countries. By the age of 100, you can’t but go through a lot of conflicts and problems. But it helps you overcome vanity, arrogance, greed, selfishness, and other human vices. And only after you do this, you begin to gain real wisdom.

You don’t forget about keeping your body fit. You can get a black belt in judo, karate, and other martial arts. Or you might become a professional in boxing and figure skating. You train your body and, this way, prolong your life even more.

Now, you’re 100 years old. Adulthood has begun. You want not only to explore the world but also to improve it. You’ve already decided what kind of business you want to get into. It can even be several projects.

You might make a revolution in genetic engineering! Or invent a bracelet that can help you escape gravity so that you can fly. You can explore space and other planets. For the first 100 years of your life, you’ve realized that the main goal of any person is to work for the benefit of humanity. You make loads of scientific discoveries.

Several billion people are doing it together with you. Someone has chosen psychology, others have picked biology, you’ve chosen space. In your lifetime, you alone can do more than five generations of people did in the past. You earn enough money to lead a comfortable life. You invest in charities and support your family. Also, you pay taxes so that younger generations can explore the world.

Every day, scientists, doctors, IT engineers, and astronomers create things that improve people’s lives. Like an invention that records your dreams and reproduces them as a movie. Or a taxi that can take you to Mars, underwater and aerial cities, and many other things.

Almost every person keeps track of the history of their life. It’s necessary to remember who they used to be, who they’ve turned into, and who their ancestors were. You record the knowledge you’ve got, your achievements and failures. The next generation will also keep a record.

Science is developing at an incredible speed. Some kind of a time machine has been invented. It can’t take you to the past, but it can show you the events you’re interested in. People are wise enough to understand that traveling to the past or future can turn into a huge problem. But thanks to this invention, you can see your ancestors who lived in the early 21st, 20th, and even 19th centuries! You realize that your descendants will also be able to see you a thousand years later.

People have always wanted to explore new worlds. So, they begin to colonize other planets. Some of them are even beyond our Solar System. At first, people used to spend a lot of time and resources looking for a suitable planet. It took a long time to get there.

After that, people had to adapt to the conditions on the new planet. And it didn’t always end successfully. Some planets were so harsh that people had to leave them. Many spaceships had to surf the expanse of space for years.

And then, you, together with a group of other scientists, created a technology that could turn the atmosphere of any planet into the one we have on Earth. A planet where it rains diamonds, a planet with lava flowing on its surface, a planet with icy winds blowing non-stop — all of them could now become habitable. In the past, rich people bought large houses. Now, they can buy a planet.

After a person turns 100 years old, they stop celebrating their birthday every year. For such a long life, this holiday becomes too frequent and loses its value. Besides, you have too many friends.

If all of them celebrated their birthdays every year, you would have to buy gifts and go to parties almost every day. So, you only have celebrations every 10 or 20 years. Once, you rented an entire planet with zero gravity and celebrated your 250th anniversary for a month.

The human race is at its peak. Scientists and doctors are improving the structure of the human genetic code. Now, people can already live for 500 years. And in the future, the average life expectancy will reach the mark of a thousand years

During their last hundred years of life, people spend their time relaxing, meditating, and thinking about the world. You can continue to work, or you can just live by the sea and watch sunsets every day. You deserve it after having spent the last 200 years of your life on creating an engine for intergalactic travel!

When you turn 300 years old, you decide to go on a journey through the Universe. You can explore planets thousands of light-years away from Earth. Someone might decide to spend the rest of their life with their family.

In the past, the human heart used to beat around 3 billion times during an average lifetime. YOUR heart has already beaten more than 15 billion times.

The person from the past used to make more than 200 million steps during their life. That’s about 110,000 miles [(180,000 KM)]. You’ve already covered a distance of more than half a million miles [500,000 mi (800,000 km)] — which is 1 billion steps. During the 400 years of your life, there have been more discoveries than during the entire history of humankind.