The World Post-Kingsman (Spoilers)

[Balrog]

I know a sequel is coming out which may (or may not) answer this, but after watching the movie again today the thought occurred to me. Samuel B.A.M.F. Jackson manages to activate his "turn everyone into killer psychos" mind-control devices twice, and based on the map display they were having a global impact each time they turned on. That's a lot of people violently turning on each other with the intent to kill without hesitation, regardless of things like familial ties. Then the good guys hack his system and cause a bunch of world leaders in on the plot to have their heads go boom, including Obama's.

How do you see the world recovering from the plot of Kingsman? What kind of death toll would there have been? How do governments, etc. recover from such a situation?

[AniThyng]

Lots of parents who've maimed if not outright killed their children and have PTSD. Somehow I feel it would have been better if they'd found a way to not imply that...

[Eternal_Freedom]

Pretty much every government is gone, so (cynicism mode) things should run reasonably smoothly for a while.

Anyone who survives who does building maintenance/plumbing/carpentry etc suddenly finds themselves working triple shifts and earning loads of overtime.

[Cykeisme]

Lots of parents who've maimed if not outright killed their children and have PTSD. Somehow I feel it would have been better if they'd found a way to not imply that...

Or the other way around. Siblings, too. Or close friends, etc.
Generally a lot of psychological disorders to go around, no doubt exacerbated by the fall out from any lapse of order that may occur as governments experience effective decapitation.

I don't think the disturbing ramifications were considered at the time the first movie's plot was written.
Essentially the effects of the events of the first movie are so far-reaching that the sequel would be firmly in "alternate reality" territory, rather than the sort of heroic spy fantasy taking place "behind the scenes of the real world". That might not be a setting they want, otherwise it would be thematically divorced from the first film.
It would certainly be interesting to see how they address it in a sequel, or if they go the "fun brainless popcorn flick" route and gloss over it completely.

Regarding the actual question itself, as the OP outlined, I would imagine the death toll would easily be into the tens of millions, but I'm pulling the number out of my butt.

[Crazedwraith]

Pretty much every government is gone, so (cynicism mode) things should run reasonably smoothly for a while.

Anyone who survives who does building maintenance/plumbing/carpentry etc suddenly finds themselves working triple shifts and earning loads of overtime.

Considering there lots of disappearances of people that didn't sign up. It's possible all the 'bad' politicians have been wiped out and the decent ones are going to be released by Eggsy and help rebuild.

I can't remember if it was implied the British Royal Family signed up or were just captured.

[Eternal_Freedom]

We see Valentine ticking off the Queen, Prince Philip, Prince Charles and Prince William on his list IIRC. So odds on Britain gets a Regency for Prince George with Harry or Andrew calling the shots for the next fifteen years.

Not that it makes much difference really, as whoever was in opposition probably takes over Britain until new elections.

[LadyTevar]

We do not see anything in the news about Queen Elizabeth vanishing, so it is implied that they are working with him.
Which to me is a Crock... she's far more intelligent than that. I would see her do a double-cross first.

[Gandalf]

We do not see anything in the news about Queen Elizabeth vanishing, so it is implied that they are working with him.
Which to me is a Crock... she's far more intelligent than that. I would see her do a double-cross first.

Or she (and the other royals) see it as a way of restoring their "rightful" place in the world.

[J Ryan]

We do not see anything in the news about Queen Elizabeth vanishing, so it is implied that they are working with him.
Which to me is a Crock... she's far more intelligent than that. I would see her do a double-cross first.

Or she (and the other royals) see it as a way of restoring their "rightful" place in the world.

Don't forget that she and prince Philip were serving members of the armed forces in a war where one man decided which type of people should live and die.

[Crazedwraith]

We do not see anything in the news about Queen Elizabeth vanishing, so it is implied that they are working with him.
Which to me is a Crock... she's far more intelligent than that. I would see her do a double-cross first.

Or she (and the other royals) see it as a way of restoring their "rightful" place in the world.

The only royalty we really see in the movie the Princess flatly refuses to help.

We don't hear that they've disappeared but that's right before the finale he gets to them anyway. We don't see their heads explode either as far as I know. Its probably meant to be ambiguous to avoid pissing people off.

[Eternal_Freedom]

We do not see anything in the news about Queen Elizabeth vanishing, so it is implied that they are working with him.
Which to me is a Crock... she's far more intelligent than that. I would see her do a double-cross first.

Or she (and the other royals) see it as a way of restoring their "rightful" place in the world.

Honestly I think that would be so far out of character for the Royal Family you might as well write in a completely new bunch of royals to feature.

There is the possibility that since he apparently talked to them at Ascot they said "lol, nope" but he wasn't able to abduct them like he did with the Swedish Princess.

[Gandalf]

We do not see anything in the news about Queen Elizabeth vanishing, so it is implied that they are working with him.
Which to me is a Crock... she's far more intelligent than that. I would see her do a double-cross first.

Or she (and the other royals) see it as a way of restoring their "rightful" place in the world.

Honestly I think that would be so far out of character for the Royal Family you might as well write in a completely new bunch of royals to feature.

There is the possibility that since he apparently talked to them at Ascot they said "lol, nope" but he wasn't able to abduct them like he did with the Swedish Princess.

There's a possibility that they didn't go along, but it's a stretch considering they went through the effort of showing royalty on the big bad list. Having the royals in league with Valentine also fits with the film's theme of class warfare.

[Solauren]

Government wise:

There is no evidence of a TOTAL decapitation of every government. We only know of a few governments for sure where the HEAD (i.e the POTUS) has been killed.

For the United States alone, I can't imagine the entire line of succession for the POTUS was killed. Odds are, we see new world leaders very quickly, followed by elections.

I can imagine there would also be a lot of governments screaming at each other over this, over just who was involved, and how much they really knew, etc.

Now, on the civilian level....

Odds are, we are going to see
#1 - Mass distrust of mega-corporations offering anything free.
#2 - Legal reforms preventing anyone from having more then a modest percentage of any market share, possibly for anything.
#3 - Alot of civilian causalties, followed by psychological issues, and possibly alot of suicides or psychotic episodes.
i.e Anyone that killed their children are going to be mentally destroyed, and probably kill themselves.
i.e People will be lashing out at others in their own rage/grief.
"Oh, you and your wife survived, but I killed mine under that tech? You bastards..."
#4 - ALOT of dead bodies, especially in areas with alot of firearms. Some cities might look like war zones.
Imagine the effects of something like this at an NRA rally. Or a high density area with alot of criminal activity associated with it.

The end will probably be a transformed world. Short term, not for the better. Long term, hopefully.

[ray245]

The actual sequel is probably going to ignore the consequences because Matthew Vaughn does not strike me as a writer who actually cares about the consequences of his story.

[Solauren]

or explain them away as

"not many people were hurt, alot of bad people in government were killed, but more bad ones were elected, so it's business as usual"

[ray245]

or explain them away as

"not many people were hurt, alot of bad people in government were killed, but more bad ones were elected, so it's business as usual"

Which is a good reason to turn me off from the franchise. If the movie is unwilling to deal with the aftermath of their destruction, why should I care about the fictional world?

[Tribble]

Well I always treated it as more of a farce/spoof more then anything, are we even supposed to be taking it seriously? If this were taking place in the Avengers or Dark Knight trilogy or something, than ya I think having them follow through with the aftermath would be important. Here though? IMO, not so much.

My main concern is that the sequel just won't have that ridiculous epic vibe that the first one did, it'd be hard to match that. I really don't think a sequel is necessary; either it'd be something like Hangover 2 which more or less repeats what the first one did, or it'd be like Hangover 3 where they switched genres to be more serious... and didn't work out too well.

[Pelranius]

The sequel sounds like might be Neo-Confederate related, since some of the news about it talks about the villains being "Golden Circle" (Knights of the Golden Circle was a group of Confederate sympathizers in the North) and a quote about the Southerners getting their manners from the British.

[Q99]

Fact of the matter is, if you lose a lot of politicians, you actually lose a fair amount of knowledge of how things work and are set up, and experience running things matters. We've seen bad *elections* hurt how things get run.

Things are gonna get bad. The fear is possibly going to let a lot of 'strongman' types get in various places.