I'm a bit obsessed with post-apocalyptic tales. From Stephen King's The Stand and Robert MacCammon's Swan Song, to zombie movies, to TV shows like Jeremiah and Jericho, I'm a big fan. I treasure our society as it is, and have no desire to change it (well, mostly -- I am a social liberal, after all :). But the idea of "what do we do if society breaks down" intrigues me.
In The Stand, one of the characters (Glen) posits a theory about life in a post-apocalyptic world, where those who have technical knowledge and can get the power back up are going to be the new VIPs. Frannie talks about how, in a less civilized world, might becomes right again, and women are much more in need of protection. They become more powerless, more fragile, and once again property of the man who can protect them.
I think about things like: how do we get food when it's no longer delivered to our supermarket? No problem if the world's population is decimated by a plague or something but more of a problem when a good portion of the population is around to clean out all of the supermarkets in a few days. How will I defend myself? Doctors and farmers will become our most important people.
How libraries and books about how to do basic things once known to everyone (washing clothes by hand, making candles, planting crops) will become absolutely essential to life, and that the ability to absorb and apply knowledge will become monumentally important. That's the only thing I've got going for me - not a lot of need for computer software documentation types in a post-apocalyptic world, but god knows i can read and absorb knowledge quickly enough. And at least I know about planting things, composting, etc.
And because I am a kook, I think about the vulnerable parts of my house in case of zombie attack, how much food I have on hand to feed myself, and whether I should learn how to shoot a gun. :)
Hey, all of my blogs can't be full of Deep Thoughts! You got a problem with that? :)
