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In Avengers: Infinity War

Thanos snaps his fingers and half the population of the universe is destroyed.

We also know that

Thanos has destroyed half the Asgardians, half of Gamora's people and half of many more civilisations already through the old fashioned method of having them shot.

So are those civilisations immune to the effect of his actions or are they impacted a second time?

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    This would seem to be a duplicate of this question which essentially boils down to "how is it determined who/what gets disintegrated?"
    – ThePopMachine
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 16:56
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    @ThePopMachine You seem to be asking something else ("how did Thanos distinguish people from their clothes?", or "organic vs inorganic stuff", etc). This is asking whether the same people could be culled twice; if anything, a subquestion of "how did Thanos choose his victims?".
    – Andres F.
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 17:04
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    Voted to leave open, since neither question is likely to answer this, which is specific to the planets Thanos already decimated (halfimated?). Pop's question is about something completely unrelated, and the possible dupe is about who decides with neither current answer related to this question.
    – Dave Johnson
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 18:18
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    @ThePopMachine Your interpretation of the policy seems wrong (as I explained in my comments above). I agree with Dave Johnson. Neither questions seem like, if answered, they would automatically also answer this question. If you disagree, you can always take it to meta.
    – Andres F.
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 18:33
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    @ThePopMachine Why would it be obvious? I wouldn't even say that his reasoning for his original culling was obvious. After all, he continued (both before and after snap) to cull civilisations that 1) had already gone through a catastrophic event, 2) had no concern of overpopulation, especially thanks to 1, 3) couldn't even be considered part of a specific civilisation.
    – DariM
    Commented May 9, 2018 at 23:15

3 Answers 3

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TLDR

  • We don't know yet...
  • One can assume the stones know the intent of the user
  • There is a good chance that a second attack would not occur

There is no evidence yet addressing what has happened. The only effects we have seen from Thanos' actions affected the heroes we have come to love. Beyond this we don't know.

However, based on the events of the film we may have some idea of the result:

We know that Thanos simply is trying to help everyone out by reducing the strain on the universe's finite resources. That is his plan and his motivation; to keep the rest of the universe from befalling a fate similar to his home planet...

During the events of the film:

We also know that when engaging the Guardians on Knowhere Thanos was manipulating reality in real time. I do not remember who but of Drax and Mantis he turned one into blocks and the other into strips, an homage to the comics as I understand it. (I think the characters were affected in that order respectively). Whether this was done intentionally by Thanos or how the stone understood his desire is unclear, but either way the stone acted based upon his desires in the situation. He wanted those characters to not be a threat so he could "consult" with Gamora and Quill. I feel pretty safe in my assumption that Thanos was not thinking "I want there to be (this many) blocks of him exactly (this big) and (this many) strips of her (exactly this wide and long) falling to the floor. Unless he did, the stone took some artistic license in its actions, but the desire was still adhered to.

Considering your question:

Given that interaction I think it would be safe to assume that the gauntlet as a whole would act similarly. If it did exactly as Thanos desired to the letter then the only reason those societies would be affected again is if he desired it to be so. Despite his hardliner actions Thanos is still acting... rationally... so I would not see those civilizations affected again. If the gauntlet acts without specific direction from its wielder then it would take the subconscious desires into account when acting and again, I would not see those civilizations affected.

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    Speaking of Drax... his planet had been culled, yet he was still effected by the snap...
    – Skooba
    Commented Jan 11, 2019 at 13:43
  • Good point... Maybe because technically he wasn't on a planet that had been culled before?
    – Odin1806
    Commented Jan 13, 2019 at 19:51
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    But maybe if Gamora's planet had its population halved again, it would get even nicer!! Worth a try, surely!
    – Paul D. Waite
    Commented Mar 29, 2019 at 12:38
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Based on @enumaris's comment in the linked dupe question:

Drax disappeared and iirc his species was previously culled (hence his hatred for Thanos)...so it would appear that at least his species got cut in half again. Not sure about the others. – enumaris Jan 9 at 23:55

Absent direct canon answer, this points to the fact that Drax's species was halved again.

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I'm pretty sure that since he only destroyed half of each of the planet's populations, the other half is fine. I am backed up with the conversation between Gamora and Thanos about her home planet, which goes something along the lines of:

Thanos: You were poor, always scraping for food with a growling belly each night. Your childhood was miserable. But the children now know nothing of hunger. They go to bed each night with a full stomach and their childhood is a happy one.

I don't know if these are his exact words, and he might have destroyed some of the other planets, but he has clear, defined motives to basically solve overpopulation (in an extreme way).

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    Welcome to SciFi! I think you might be misinterpreting the question. The question isn't what happened after Thanos visited and wiped out half the population, pre Infinity War. The asker is asking if they were immune from the second round, when Thanos killed half of the population, everywhere.
    – Gnemlock
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 8:22
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    Hello and welcome to SFF! As @Gnemlock has said you appear to have misinterpreted the question, or at least the dialogue from that scene. However, this is a nice attempt at a first answer and we'd be more than happy to keep you around! Don't forget to register your account and take the tour!
    – TheLethalCarrot ♦
    Commented May 10, 2018 at 8:33

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