1 Billion Breaths

Imagine if you will, a world where the length of our lives was predetermined by our number of breaths.  That is imagine a world where every human being breathes 1 billion times, with the 1 billionth breath being their last.

If you maintained a constant rate of breathing that consisted of you taking 1 second to breathe in, 1 seconds to hold, 1 second to breathe out, that would amount to 3 seconds per breath.  At that rate you would live for 3 billion seconds - or 95 years, and 1 and a half months give or take.

This of course relies on the unlikely scenario where your breathing remained constant your entire life.  That's not likely to happen regardless of any degree of self control as we are not always conscious of our breathing - we're not always conscious either for that matter.  When we are in an agitated state, moving about a lot, doing exercise or playing sport, or even just sleeping our breathing changes pace.

Imagine a world where we knew that we would at most live to exactly 1 billion breaths.  This isn't conducive to a fixed time period.  The more active we became the shorter our lives would become.   If this were a reality for humans, our behaviour could dramatically change.  For one neonatal style classes teaching people how to breathe would probably be taught in our schools.  Having children and raising them would be one of the biggest blows to your breath allowance.  Having sex would also have a big impact on how long we live - would that stop us doing it so much?

Would people shift geographically?  Would you move to a climate that made it easier to breathe or one that was conducive with a relaxed state.  Or would you just say fuck it all and live your life like nothing was any different and know that your days are numbered and there's nothing you can do about it?