I once saw a reality show on apocalypse "preppers" at Hell House and had to leave within minutes from the crushing depression. A Houston area banker had bought a farm house out in rural Texas somewhere. It had ten years worth of canned food bottled water etc. He gave his wife & daughters a rifle each and had them run perimeter drills for how to shoot down the unwashed hordes that would surely come for their canned food. He had assistance from local sheriff's deputies; and the fact that men with the authority to arrest or employ lethal force as they saw fit thought it perfectly right and proper to aid a Respectable Businessman on his Armageddon drill is a less than ideal thing. His daughters spoke of how they admired their father for making them "strong". Soon they will go out into a patriarchal world with no mental defense against cults of "Great Strong Men". And my God but how this man must trip on himself. He has skills that happen to be valued by the culture that he was birth-lotteried into, fine. But there is no singular success and he is not some genetic Tarzan who would always triumph in all environments. What must this man's relationship to the world be, to say nothing of his politics, if he truly believes that the vast bulk of humankind are fiends controlled only by harsh law who'd go Mad Max on the Clean Respectable Elites at the first opportunity?
My guess is that he doesn't really believe it. No one of healthy adult mind can unaffectedly "believe" such rot. He just likes to win is all. I'm sure we've all had the kid in our childhood circles who'd change the rules of our make-believe games on the fly in whatever way they needed to so that they would always win.
Of course if you happen to survive the apocalypse then running off to live along on Tang and Chef Boyardee forever is the worst thing you could do. Our loss would after all be very much the gain of cougars grizzlies wolves etc. Newly feral cattle would be as hapless to their attacks as the bison were to our predation. Carnivores would absolutely soar in number. Post-America would be like the African Savannah with different breeds of bio-tank virtually tripping over each other and still getting fat. And if it's just them and you out there Superman well you do only two arms at a time to fire one rifle at a time now don't you? For every bear you put a bead on in front of you there will be eight leopards and eighty coyotes sneaking up from behind. Think about it.
Then again if we set the apocalypse survival rate at 1% that would leave a few more than twenty thousand people in greater KC. In a community of that size one will find multiple doctors, dentists, electricians, engineers, teachers (even a few professors) computer techs, musicians, war veterans or police to provide defense against mallard worshiping biker gangs as need be etc. Material living standards could be quickly restored to at least a 1920's level with a bit of teamwork. If you're one who considers any hint of communalism to be immoral in itself than fine. This supposedly tough attitude is in fact a luxury afforded by unusually comfortable historic circumstance. If shit leads to shit then there are no rugged individualists in a foxhole. Even those who choose suicide at the sight of their world murdered will want someone to hold them while they do it. And capitalism as such will necessarily be a dead letter for at least awhile. There would simply be too vast a surplus of dead people's shit for private property to mean much. Never mind whether or not it should; that supposedly vital question is no more.
It would be fascinating to be a sole survivor who sees what becomes of these Plains without us. My guess is that a remnant of the feral cattle would ultimately survive the feast. Revert to a Eurasian Aurochs from while breeding with the bison; becoming once again a creature tough enough to be an alpha herbivore, so that in time this environment would again be effectively owned by bovines. And as for those folk who were shuffled off to West River Dakota, or somewhere else as far from where we intended to build our cities as possible; Lakota, Crow, Cheyenne etc. I suppose that they would fucking ay well have the country back alright. Provided they could survive the fallout from Denver Billings Rapid & Bismark then yeah they'd have it back; with all the Buffaurochs they can eat through bicycle hunt, and the odd pair of blue eyes from rancher descendants who turned to them for refuge and society. Ghost Dance as mechavirus.
Fuck anyone who exaggerates themselves to be heroic. The human species is Heroism in the flesh. We take what happens to be in front of us knowing that we are going to die and we fucking live with it. This is what we will always do and there will be no end except yours and my own.
No comments:
Post a Comment