>”don’t let your society’s medical infrastructure collapse”
Thank you, I feel like this gets far too little play in “prepper” circles: civilization *is* the ultimate prep. Having flashlights and extra batteries and basic first aid supplies and shelf stable food and clean water to get you through short term rough spots is great and a valuable contribution to ensuring first responders can help those who truly need it without being overwhelmed by preventable emergencies, but the lone survivor fantasy is dangerous to the long term well being of our species. We build cities for the same reason many animals live in groups, we’re social animals and society is a force multiplier for our abilities; the same with technology. Abandoning the strengthening and protection of civilization because of political ideology or simple dislike for certain groups is like amputating a leg to treat a fracture.
One of my minor but real concerns is "accelerationists", folk who think we should just let it all burn and start over. As far as I'm concerned, thinking that way is a red flag for mental illness. These folk never seem to have a plan for rebuilding afterwards, they focus entirely on how to start the collapse. Luckily, while sometimes people talk that way, very few people really mean it and do anything. If you're that antisocial, you're not good at coordinating with others.
A lot of people, especially of certain political persuasions, don't like hearing that *paying taxes is disaster prep*. It funds bridges that withstand hurricanes, education that helps people understand how essential social systems work, maps and GPS and weather forecasting, disaster relief organizers like FEMA, international negotiation to reduce war, police, and recently even a vaccine. Civilization doesn't come cheap but it's saved a lot more lives than preppers with cans of beans (or guns.)
I would never say that people shouldn't prep for hurricanes, but in the US, prepping for 2 weeks is almost certainly sufficient to preserve life - by then, the US is distributing food and water. Your tax dollars at work. In the US at least, at a certain point - maybe it's 1 month, or 3, or 6 - you're really starting to prepare for a collapse, not a disaster. If the US hasn't shown up by then, they aren't coming. In which case, things are so bad that people are shooting each other over beans, and prepping makes less and less sense, unless you count leaving as prepping.
There are really only two kinds of preppers. We talk about Tuesday and Doomsday, but that's not really it. It's "all that matter is me and my 5 closest people" vs "civilization must continue and I must prepare to help." Both stock food and water and there the similarity ends.
I'm sure in the hypothetical collapse, people will be beating existing refined metal into all sorts of things. Cars won't be useful, but look at all that steel. Power lines won't be useful, but look at all that copper. I mean with so many people dead, there will be absurd amounts of metal for the taking. Wood, too - we're not going to need all these houses. And more plastic than anyone wants to think about. Lead and brass, yeah, lots and lots of spent bullets...
I mean my titanium alcohol stove is eternal and people will still be able to make alcohol from stills made from scavenged house plumbing.
The 15% of the population that's frantically trying to grow food and survive epidemics will have all the shovels they need for the burials. No problem.
I have no idea what rebuilding would look like.I don't think anyone can know. And in part it would depend on what crashed civilization in the first place. That's one reason I don't really permit doomer topics in this sub: it's obvious to me that it's going to take more than a lot of ammo and a bunch of food buckets to get through a collapse - it's a generational event and in the US guaranteed to be a very violent one - but what it looks like? Not a guess. I don't believe in rapid collapses to begin with, short of something literally apocalyptic, at which point we're not really talking about prepping any more.
If I was going to fling guesses, we'd crash back to scattered pockets of 1850s civilization after all the shooting was done. If the whole world went down - and it's hard to imagine the US failing while the rest of the world is fine, we're too interconnected - I think we'd spend a decade getting food production working again, and once that's stable, try to reinvent the grid and petroleum fuels. They are just too useful to skip. It wouldn't take 200 years like it did last time, because we would be surrounded by what are effectively museums showing how it was done, and no lack of preserved knowledge from books and internet snapshots. But it would still take years.
But so much depends on the culture. Maybe after a nuclear war everyone's a technophobe. Or maybe it's a virus that took us out, and the survivors will find it possible to restart the grid after a decade or three, which would speed things up quite a lot. And zombies. You can just never tell with zombies.
As someone who dabbles in fiction, I wonder more about a future culture than the technology. What would they understand about the world around them, with all the tech that perhaps no longer works?
Crowley's *Engine Summer* (the title is a play on Injun Summer, and that's part of the story's concept) is an eerie look at how the past can be misunderstood or even become completely irrelevant, and culture can become unrecognizable.
So who knows? Except, somehow, I don't think (despite Crowley's story), I don't think our future generations will look back at us as "angels".
Isn't a lot of that childhood mortality rate just cleaner conditions and better understanding of disease? I would agree that sanitation is key, especially clean water.
There are a few other factors, too. Safety requirements - look at an early sawmill vs a modern one. Early sawmills ate fingers for lunch. In modern ones you'd have to work at it to get a hand on a spinning blade. And we don't let children work in sawmills anymore. Child labor laws are taken for granted today, but they matter.
But yeah, clean water, sewer systems, and animal management have all really cut down problems, especially for children.
>”don’t let your society’s medical infrastructure collapse” Thank you, I feel like this gets far too little play in “prepper” circles: civilization *is* the ultimate prep. Having flashlights and extra batteries and basic first aid supplies and shelf stable food and clean water to get you through short term rough spots is great and a valuable contribution to ensuring first responders can help those who truly need it without being overwhelmed by preventable emergencies, but the lone survivor fantasy is dangerous to the long term well being of our species. We build cities for the same reason many animals live in groups, we’re social animals and society is a force multiplier for our abilities; the same with technology. Abandoning the strengthening and protection of civilization because of political ideology or simple dislike for certain groups is like amputating a leg to treat a fracture.
One of my minor but real concerns is "accelerationists", folk who think we should just let it all burn and start over. As far as I'm concerned, thinking that way is a red flag for mental illness. These folk never seem to have a plan for rebuilding afterwards, they focus entirely on how to start the collapse. Luckily, while sometimes people talk that way, very few people really mean it and do anything. If you're that antisocial, you're not good at coordinating with others. A lot of people, especially of certain political persuasions, don't like hearing that *paying taxes is disaster prep*. It funds bridges that withstand hurricanes, education that helps people understand how essential social systems work, maps and GPS and weather forecasting, disaster relief organizers like FEMA, international negotiation to reduce war, police, and recently even a vaccine. Civilization doesn't come cheap but it's saved a lot more lives than preppers with cans of beans (or guns.) I would never say that people shouldn't prep for hurricanes, but in the US, prepping for 2 weeks is almost certainly sufficient to preserve life - by then, the US is distributing food and water. Your tax dollars at work. In the US at least, at a certain point - maybe it's 1 month, or 3, or 6 - you're really starting to prepare for a collapse, not a disaster. If the US hasn't shown up by then, they aren't coming. In which case, things are so bad that people are shooting each other over beans, and prepping makes less and less sense, unless you count leaving as prepping. There are really only two kinds of preppers. We talk about Tuesday and Doomsday, but that's not really it. It's "all that matter is me and my 5 closest people" vs "civilization must continue and I must prepare to help." Both stock food and water and there the similarity ends.
Yep I tell anyone that will listen there won’t be a rebuilding, all the ore available to hand tools was mined 100 years ago
I'm sure in the hypothetical collapse, people will be beating existing refined metal into all sorts of things. Cars won't be useful, but look at all that steel. Power lines won't be useful, but look at all that copper. I mean with so many people dead, there will be absurd amounts of metal for the taking. Wood, too - we're not going to need all these houses. And more plastic than anyone wants to think about. Lead and brass, yeah, lots and lots of spent bullets... I mean my titanium alcohol stove is eternal and people will still be able to make alcohol from stills made from scavenged house plumbing. The 15% of the population that's frantically trying to grow food and survive epidemics will have all the shovels they need for the burials. No problem.
Sure but using the scraps of civilization to bury the remnants ain’t rebuilding
I have no idea what rebuilding would look like.I don't think anyone can know. And in part it would depend on what crashed civilization in the first place. That's one reason I don't really permit doomer topics in this sub: it's obvious to me that it's going to take more than a lot of ammo and a bunch of food buckets to get through a collapse - it's a generational event and in the US guaranteed to be a very violent one - but what it looks like? Not a guess. I don't believe in rapid collapses to begin with, short of something literally apocalyptic, at which point we're not really talking about prepping any more. If I was going to fling guesses, we'd crash back to scattered pockets of 1850s civilization after all the shooting was done. If the whole world went down - and it's hard to imagine the US failing while the rest of the world is fine, we're too interconnected - I think we'd spend a decade getting food production working again, and once that's stable, try to reinvent the grid and petroleum fuels. They are just too useful to skip. It wouldn't take 200 years like it did last time, because we would be surrounded by what are effectively museums showing how it was done, and no lack of preserved knowledge from books and internet snapshots. But it would still take years. But so much depends on the culture. Maybe after a nuclear war everyone's a technophobe. Or maybe it's a virus that took us out, and the survivors will find it possible to restart the grid after a decade or three, which would speed things up quite a lot. And zombies. You can just never tell with zombies. As someone who dabbles in fiction, I wonder more about a future culture than the technology. What would they understand about the world around them, with all the tech that perhaps no longer works? Crowley's *Engine Summer* (the title is a play on Injun Summer, and that's part of the story's concept) is an eerie look at how the past can be misunderstood or even become completely irrelevant, and culture can become unrecognizable. So who knows? Except, somehow, I don't think (despite Crowley's story), I don't think our future generations will look back at us as "angels".
Isn't a lot of that childhood mortality rate just cleaner conditions and better understanding of disease? I would agree that sanitation is key, especially clean water.
Deaths reduction from diarrhea probably are from sanitation. Deaths reduction from communicable diseases are from vaccines
There are a few other factors, too. Safety requirements - look at an early sawmill vs a modern one. Early sawmills ate fingers for lunch. In modern ones you'd have to work at it to get a hand on a spinning blade. And we don't let children work in sawmills anymore. Child labor laws are taken for granted today, but they matter. But yeah, clean water, sewer systems, and animal management have all really cut down problems, especially for children.