(OT) Monte Cook's most recent rant.....

[mmadsen]

Re: Re: Re: (OT) Monte Cook's most recent rant.....

wow, interesting take, i have spent all but 2 of my years in areas where i could hunt within a 5 minute walk, never thought about looking at it from a city-dwellers point of view!

Yeah, imagine living in NYC when the power goes out -- forever. What do you do? When you realize that the World Trade Center had the population of a small town, you realize that NYC has a lot of people shoved into concrete towers, with a steady stream of food and water coming in from the outside world.

 

[Zappo]

Y'know, I hate to be the one who brings up this point, but, even if our entire society crumbled into chaos this very moment, you could still get your hands on a gun or leather jacket.

Yep. You could still get your hands on a computer, for that matter. Unless something really nasty happens, even the Internet would partially work. Assuming the standard nuclear holocaust scenario, the problem would be finding and gathering the people who can rebuild technology. Gathering food would not be useful, knowing how to light a fire would not be useful, making crude weapons would not be useful. The reserves of preserved food, fuels, and firearms, would last far longer than what it would take to becoming able to replenish them.

 

[Zappo]

In a different, more post-apocalyptic vein with PCs:

What are you talkin' about? You could just repair one....besides, that's why you get other people to help out. And besides, there's lotsa human bones everywhere....you could make a bichin' case. You know, with a skull on top, and little hard drive access lights in the eyes.

That's just too cool! I've got to make it sooner or later!!

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Re: Re: (OT) Monte Cook's most recent rant.....

Seriously, most of us have roughly zero wilderness survival skills. Further, most of us couldn't even get to something resembling the wilderness if we wanted to, assuming some kind of apocalypse. And how do you sustain life on a vast asphalt plain in a desert? (That's southern California.)

Hunt 'long pork'?

 

[mmadsen]

I find it's pretty normal that we don't know how our technology works.

It's certainly normal, but it's still odd that most people have no idea how a car works or how a radio or TV works. These are major, major parts of our lives.

There's no way on Earth that a single person, in a post-holocaust scenario, manages to build a working computer from raw materials.

This reminds me, does anyone know of any books on technology from the ground up? Like how to build things starting from scratch?

Jules Verne's Mysterious Island stars an American engineer -- this is during the American Civil War -- who's able to "bootstrap" his little group's technology level by synthesizing the chemicals he needs (from potash, etc.), by building tools from other tools, and so on. Very MacGiver.

I'd love a book on that -- what a modern scientist could do with no modern technology -- but I haven't been able to find anything.

 

[Hejdun]

The reason we don't know all these things is because we don't have to. Why would I need to know how to skin a deer with a grocery store right down the street? Why should I be expected to build a car when car companies can do it for me? Basically, every person is knowledgable in whatever field that they are required to be knowledgable. A mechanic knows about cars, computer technicians know about computers, etc.

In the case of an apocalypse, most of us would be screwed. Some of us would adapt, however, and learn how to skin animals, hunt effectively for food, and live cave-man style. And of course those who already know how to do all that would probably survive.

 

[mmadsen]

Gathering food would not be useful, knowing how to light a fire would not be useful, making crude weapons would not be useful. The reserves of preserved food, fuels, and firearms, would last far longer than what it would take to becoming able to replenish them.

Huh? How much preserved food do you think is out there? And how do you think you'll get your hands on it after a societal breakdown?

Certainly, in the short term, hunting for squirrels makes less sense than looting a grocery store, but after a few weeks, where do you expect food to come from?

And wouldn't weapons certainly become an issue as soon as you found out where large amounts of food and fuel were stashed?

 

[Zappo]

Re: Re: Re: Re: (OT) Monte Cook's most recent rant.....

Yeah, imagine living in NYC when the power goes out -- forever. What do you do?

Phone the electrical company?

Seriously, if something happens that is so bad that there is no longer any way to provide food and energy to NYC, and no way to restore it within a few days, then NYC has certainly already been destroyed too. At the very least, the population has shrunk by 99% - which means that they can live on preserved food and local fuel reserves for years. In those years, they can restore power (statistically, they are bound to have a few electrical engineers among them).

 

[Virginia Wilde]

years, they can restore power (statistically, they are bound to have a few electrical engineers among them).

Yes. Don't forget the strong, independent woman, her ex-husband (the grizzly, well-greased hero), the black guy, the kid, the politician, the survivalist, and the movie star. Then, they learn to work together through various trials, and a trite little cliché ex-spousal reunion occurs.

 

[Davek]

I think that the question shouldn't be whether we have the skills to survive this scenario, but rather do we have the mental toughness to adapt to the scenario.

Unfortunately our western societies have long held the belief that we are 'civilized beings' many steps removed from primal barbarians. I think that this 'civilization' is rather a thin veneer that is easily torn, but because people believe so strongly in it when it is torn they cannot psychological adapt to it easily.

I think in most heavily urbanized regions many would die quickly, then starvation would begin for the remaining and this would be followed by canabalism when individual survival instincts take control of the survivors actions.