I will not hoard food - I will share what I have - I will not use guns - if I die, so be it - I will anyway - I stand with the monks walking for peace and that is my path
I continually refer people to your serial story, The Priest. You outline pretty much how it's going to look if another virus rolls through the world population and this time, the death toll is a lot more massive than back in 2020 and the subsequent years afterward. People being people, they will kill each other in their quest to hoard as much food, clean water and defensible shelter as they can. The genocides we're witness to now will pale by comparison.
Unless you're willing to kill other people to defend yourself without thinking about it, you'll just be another dead victim. All the disaster prepping in the world won't save you when a human predator shows up with a gun or some other killing tool intent on taking you out in order to get your stuff, and you hesitate to take them out before they get the first shot off. Morality about taking another life is a sure fire death sentence when the world collapses.
The only place to run to is somewhere that you can defend fairly easy with minimal prepping. Going it alone is another likely death sentence. Community is best in numbers. The more of you there are with weapons and a reputation for taking out bad people with no hesitations, the better chance you will survive another day.
And that's another thing, during a total collapse, time is measured in hours, maybe in days, if you're fortunate. It's measured in the number of hours or days between meals, the time you have to sleep before the next attack, or some other existential event.
These are basic combat survival tactics that every soldier is taught starting in basic training. When the glue that holds societies together breaks down, all rules, except survival of the fittest, are thrown out the window like dirty water.
I've read some convincing arguments that our species has not survived due to survival of the "fittest" but rather, the "friendliest".
We evolved biologically to perpetually co-nurture one another.
We now live in a relatively new and novel global system based upon misogyny (which is the hatred of nurturing) which is actually anathema to our basic evolutionary biological nature.
If the psychopaths don't blow us all up with nuclear weapons, and when a HUGE percentage of people die from airborne and other diseases (including the psychopaths), I hope I'm around to see what the few of us who are left do to care for each other.
Most of us will not survive, but for the generation born into collapse, it will just be another day at the office (scavenging), as George R Stewart points out in Earth Abides in 1949.
The next pandemic of H5N1/Bird Flu will have a case fatality rate of 52%. It will make SARS2 look like a day in the park. Tragically those from the ages of 14-28 will have the highest rate of death.
I will not hoard food - I will share what I have - I will not use guns - if I die, so be it - I will anyway - I stand with the monks walking for peace and that is my path
I'm with you.
XO!
We will die first, ensuring that only the BRUTAL have a chance of making it. Poetic response to biological Reality?!? Why?
There's not going to be anywhere to run to anyway. Other places will just be more or less very shitty.
Spot on!
Thank you
I have been, at times unwillingly, preparing for this collapsing world all my life.
I am curious how long I will be able to live (I've got the genes for 100 years plus).
I can do without just about everything but my breath.
I can be happy on a flat rock by myself.
I live on Maui, Hawai'i where Aloha, although buried under oppressive colonialism, is still very much alive. And food grows all year round.
Care to join me?
I continually refer people to your serial story, The Priest. You outline pretty much how it's going to look if another virus rolls through the world population and this time, the death toll is a lot more massive than back in 2020 and the subsequent years afterward. People being people, they will kill each other in their quest to hoard as much food, clean water and defensible shelter as they can. The genocides we're witness to now will pale by comparison.
Unless you're willing to kill other people to defend yourself without thinking about it, you'll just be another dead victim. All the disaster prepping in the world won't save you when a human predator shows up with a gun or some other killing tool intent on taking you out in order to get your stuff, and you hesitate to take them out before they get the first shot off. Morality about taking another life is a sure fire death sentence when the world collapses.
The only place to run to is somewhere that you can defend fairly easy with minimal prepping. Going it alone is another likely death sentence. Community is best in numbers. The more of you there are with weapons and a reputation for taking out bad people with no hesitations, the better chance you will survive another day.
And that's another thing, during a total collapse, time is measured in hours, maybe in days, if you're fortunate. It's measured in the number of hours or days between meals, the time you have to sleep before the next attack, or some other existential event.
These are basic combat survival tactics that every soldier is taught starting in basic training. When the glue that holds societies together breaks down, all rules, except survival of the fittest, are thrown out the window like dirty water.
I've read some convincing arguments that our species has not survived due to survival of the "fittest" but rather, the "friendliest".
We evolved biologically to perpetually co-nurture one another.
We now live in a relatively new and novel global system based upon misogyny (which is the hatred of nurturing) which is actually anathema to our basic evolutionary biological nature.
If the psychopaths don't blow us all up with nuclear weapons, and when a HUGE percentage of people die from airborne and other diseases (including the psychopaths), I hope I'm around to see what the few of us who are left do to care for each other.
A girl can dream.....
interview with the brilliant gail zawacki RIP, always ahead of the curve: "You're Not Gonna Be Able to Survive This, No Matter How Much You Prepare"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBv36JRUkL0
Most of us will not survive, but for the generation born into collapse, it will just be another day at the office (scavenging), as George R Stewart points out in Earth Abides in 1949.
The next pandemic of H5N1/Bird Flu will have a case fatality rate of 52%. It will make SARS2 look like a day in the park. Tragically those from the ages of 14-28 will have the highest rate of death.
It will be ugly and brutal beyond comprehension, the air will be laced with a cocktail of pollutants, ionising radiation the worst.
The living will envy the dead.
As Erik often says, "Live Now", it's great advice!
https://kevinhester.live/2022/07/05/chronicling-ecosystem-collapse-from-the-tropics-to-the-antarctic/