05 September 20XX+1
My Dear Lucilius:
The heat has broken and for the last three days, the temperature has been dropping back to what would typically expect for this time of year. Warmish days, coolish nights – we have already touched sub-40 F temperatures. If this holds, Winter is coming early.
In the rather overwhelming events of the last communique, I realized upon reviewing it that I had completely failed to denote the formal anniversary of The Collapse – or at least, when I formally date it, that being 02 September 20XX with the declaration of the multi-day banking holiday. Yes, I know that there were some signs prior to that, but that was the day that the whole thing became “formalized”, at least in my mind.
It is odd, how much time seems to have passed since then. Far more than the year that it seems to have actually been. And in some ways, it already seems like a very distant world.
I can certainly very easily recall what it was like to have unlimited and abundant energy instead of the almost complete lack that we have today, with the except of small solar powered items or the last bits of fuel that are stored for trucks or generators. I can remember a life of lights at night and days of not thinking to what would be available to eat next season. I can remember when there was a world away from this place.
Away from this place. That seems to be the oddest thing at all about this. With few exceptions – the military in September of last year (sadly, I think my truck is truly gone) and the issues with The Locusts in July – we have heard nothing from the outside world.
It strikes me as eerie and disconcerting. One always imagined that somewhere out there in an actual event, there would still be evidence of people and activity: a war being fought for example, or efforts to hold things together in a way that was more visible to the population. Instead, there has been a great deal of silence.
Surely, I think to myself, things cannot be that bad. How many billions were we as a race? And now, almost nothing. Can it have really gone that badly?
Who knows what other dangers this may have provoked beyond an economic collapse? Wars? Environmental Catastrophes? Plagues? Famines? Aliens?
(Well, not that last one. I feel we would have known if that was the case.)
It is not that I mind it at all. Given the option of contact and complete instability or no contact and some degree of stability, I will happily take the latter. It is still less stressful and I at least do not worry every moment about any number of potential disasters.
We know from folks like Epicurus and Themista and Cato that there are still people out there, people farther away than our neck of the woods. But we do not seem to pay them any mind, we are so busy with worrying about ourselves (which, of course, is only bound to get worse).
I wonder if they, in turn, think about the places they used to go to “Get Back To Nature” at all either.
Your Obedient Servant, Seneca
The World shrinks considerably when there is a Collapse, how far can you walk or bicycle or ride a horse, urban dwellers will have very few of the latter. With a Collapse Nature gets back to YOU quickly.
ReplyDeleteNylon12 - I think part of what kicked off this installment is I-Bun's passing. For the past three or four days I have followed the outside world minimally at best, if not at all. Turns out I hardly miss the fact that I do not know what is going on "out there". I suppose in Seneca's case, it would be that - multiplied by 1000.
DeleteIf someone were to offer me a year away from society, with a bit of reassurance that I would have plenty of food supplies like a garden and beef cow/pigs, I would have to thing long and hard about not accepting it. It sounds delightful. I could channel my inner Dick Proenneke.
ReplyDeleteEd, I have to admit I am less enthusiastic about that than I might have been. I do love the idea of being alone in nature, and guaranteed food supply would be a double win. Having spent the last 6 months more or less without family around has turned out to be more of an issue that I thought it might be.
DeletePlenty of food available, ability to repair shelters, safe water.
ReplyDeleteThose are the hardest things in a social collapse historically.
I remember hurricane Sandy and was horrified by how stupid people were, toilet failure, go do "your business " in the apartment common areas.
So safe water depends on folks being reliable in doing the right thing.
Just one drunk can nasty up your water supply.
Anon - Water has been on my mind of late, especially because of the fact that for most of where I have lived were separated into "dry" and "wet" seasons. Cities tended to form where water was plentiful, not absent - or in those cases, developed a culture that learned to maximize every drop. Western civilization is certainly not in that second category. Given that so much of modern water is pumped from somewhere else, having a reliable/easily accessible water supply is much on my mind now.
DeleteThe good news is with the filtration technology I have used on hikes, I can filter stream water very reliably (down to 0.2 microns, which will not catch viruses of course. But you cannot filter what you do not have.
I think one of the hardest adjustments would be the not knowing anything beyond one's own experiential existence. Humans are pretty adaptable when required, but we moderns are used to instant global knowledge at a click of the mouse or tap on a screen. Losing that would be a challenging adjustment for many.
ReplyDeleteI think it would be too, Leigh. Especially in "The Modern World", where we are used to almost anything being available 24/7/365.
DeleteThe even worse part, probably not recognized at the time, would be that so much of the knowledge that 150 years ago would have at least been available in the printed word will be locked away for so many on systems that will either not function because of power or not connect because of loss of coverage. I cannot imagine what being bereft of effectively all of almost 4,000 years of everything - history, music, art, literature, entertainment - would be like.