Armaggedon - a simple affair

[MrBishop]

...civilization is twenty-four hours and two meals away from barbarism

Civilization is made up of individuals who rely on each other for practically everything that they do. No one man, woman or child can (for instance) make a meal by themselves.

By this, I mean that a simple meal like Spaghetti means that someone else knows how to plant wheat and harvest it, someone knows how to turn it into flour, someone knows where to get salt, someone breeds chickens for their eggs, and someone can turn it all into dried spaghetti, someone else knows how to dig wells for water, how to get water into the house, someone knows how to raise cattle, someone knows how to butcher it, several someone's move it to where the materials are needed, someone...well...you get the idea. Everyone is specialized.

Practically no one knows all the skills needed to live autonomously. We rely on each other and technology heavily in order to simple things like putting food on our plates and a roof over our heads.

The quote above got me thinking. Imagine what it would take to plunge mankind into utter chaos. What would be needed to bring about a human-armaggedon? Not a nuclear holocaust...but a social one.

Imagine a sunflare of monsterous proportions...a cluster of electromagnetic patricles the likes of which make physicists piss themselves. From the Sun to here...a mere 20 minutes, and certainly not enough time to shut down power-plants etc...

Satellites down, power surges knocking out power-grids all over the world, telecommunication lines destroyed etc... a world-wide power outtage and disruption of coomunication that would take X days/weeks to fix.

In the meanwhile... we are in the dark. We don't have phones to call friends and family, or the police. We can't cook food, restaurants are closed and probably..so are grocery stores. Prachett suggests that it would take about 24 hours and two (missed) meals for society to degrade into chaos.

I'd give it a week...less time if it happened in the winter. What about you?

What would it take to plunge the world into chaos? Discuss...

 

[HomeLAN]

24 hours is probably a realistic estimate in the population centers. Out in the country, where folks do tend to raise their own food and know how to do a larger variety of self-sufficiency tasks, it'll take longer...at least until the city folks come out there to pillage.

Of course, given the other tendency of those rural folks to keep firearms, it'll turn into quite the fireworks show at that point.

 

[unclehobart]

I figure that the greatest battles will be fought over tobacco in the beginning.. then water.

Bish, I can make a meal by myself. Harversting a big rock takes no skill. I then bash in someones head with said rock and scoop up the yummy brains for food. viola!

 

[paul_valaru]

Social chaos, 24 hours

armageddon, never

things will go to hell, but people will adapt and learn fast how to be self sufficiant.

after a year or so where the cities become deserted, it will the the farms and small villages that will start bringing society back again, sure there will be your religous communes, white power camps, etc, but those will fade in time.

what it will take to get everyone back together (and once they are back on the same track, th lights will come back on) is travelling salesmen, bartering from place to place, bringing news, and knowledge from one place to another, and these salesmen will have to be organized, and will have to follow a trading company philosophy, where you open trading posts after establishing you steady customers......


ok, I read way to much, bonus karma for anyone that can tell me the name of the book that I got all that theory from (It is sci-fi)

 

[MrBishop]

I think that you're forgetting the 6billion or so people out there. If we were to go back about 500 years and try to start again...that'd be a different story, but 6billion people make for one hell of a party.

The number of deaths in that first year alone would be incredible. Followed by disease and an increasing population of rats and carrion feeders. IF the power comes back quickly enough...then it's a matter of putting out the fires, burying the dead, dealing with the minor wars and going on (in a military state at best). If it takes more than a month or so...there won't be too many people around who care enough to try putting the power on...or enough people willing to go through the effort.

Try to imagine going to work under such conditions.... and your'e a lowly linesman or tech trying to find food AND fix power lines so that some small town can get power. Oh...and you're runing out of gas because the pumps aren't working right.

**I understand that there are many self-reliant people out there...or close enough to self-reliant that innovation will make up the rest...I like to think that I'm one of them, with my gardens and water filters and a nice cabin with a well... but that'd mean that everyone would have to leave me alone enough for me to become self-reliant...ya know? If I have to defend my wife and son, and my home, and find food, and protect what food I do have growing, and get wood for fire and... it's a lot to ask of one person.

Grouping together for the sake of co-survival is something else. I can see myself creating a co-op with certain people and sharing the load. In the same breath...I can see other co-ops coming together and squabling for resources, or forming larger co-ops.

 

[unclehobart]

Do you have the sub skills needed to hack out a Canadian winter in all its wrath with only modest supplies onhand? The climate where I live is rather agreeable... although I would probably hoof it to someplace with fishing and a freshwater spring. I would become the emperor of Key West.

 

[paul_valaru]

I I beleive that if you are in a city, you are dead, if you go anywhere near a city for the first year after a collapse, you are dead (the plague from all the rotting bodies)

in north america, it would probably be close to a 90% death toll

80% directly from no lights, the rampaging, and starvation.

10% for the infected cuts after all the medicine goes bad, eating tainted food, appendisidious etc.

but as a race I truly thing we can survive something like that, and in 10years tops we will back and running, in much smaller, almost agragarian societies, in 30 life will be back to what we know, almost.

 

[paul_valaru]

IF the power comes back quickly enough...then it's a matter of putting out the fires, burying the dead

if you get things running that fast, with the death tolls expected, you cannot turn the power back on in large communities, simply because it will cause fires, power comes back on, the iron turns itself it..there goes Manhattan.

It's all a matter of restarting on a bunch of small town basis, burning the dead (individual burial is to time consumming, and mass graves will create methane bubbles, which you don't want near you).

Gas will not be a problem, hand pumps, etc. travelling will be, the traffic jams before people gave up on escaping in there cars.

it's the petty warlords who cracked open an armoury that we would have to worry about

 

[MrBishop]

Do you have the sub skills needed to hack out a Canadian winter in all its wrath with only modest supplies onhand? The climate where I live is rather agreeable... although I would probably hoof it to someplace with fishing and a freshwater spring. I would become the emperor of Key West.

I have enough skills to be able to take myself and my family out to the woods to any fishing lodge that I can find and work my way from there. I can hunt and fish, I'm decent at laying traps (gotta love the boyscouts)...with a trip or two to a seed store and some packing of the basic tools for repair, cultivation, cooking, knives etc...I could probably live long enough to get mauled by a bear

In all seriousness...like Paul said...avoiding cities would be the best form of life-insuarance. I'm not Paul Bunyon...but I've survivied with nothing more than what I can carry on my back for 2 weeks at a time. With a place to 'live'...I could probably go from barely living to 'just plain living' within a few weeks.

It depends on the season too. Winter'd suck...especially up here. Spring would be best...get some crops going...summer...semi-OK (limited growth potential).

Personally...I'd hit the library first. Get me some books on horticultuire, identification of safe 'schrooms and wild edibles, a nice book on local wildlife and a book on healing herbs and poultices. Then grab my family and the 'others' that I'd mentioned and fuck right off to the deep woods bay-be!

 

[paul_valaru]

Personally...I'd hit the library first. Get me some books on horticultuire, identification of safe 'schrooms and wild edibles, a nice book on local wildlife and a book on healing herbs and poultices. Then grab my family and the 'others' that I'd mentioned and fuck right off to the deep woods bay-be!

If it was a looking like years before life resumed I would also get a bunch of books on smithing, cause every commune would need a blacksmith. Making yourself useful would be another great survivial tool.
In theary I know how to make charcoal, and how to build a smithy

in reality, well I read how....

 

[Camelyn]

First off, realistically speaking, it would have to be one hell of a solar flare to knock out power in such a way that at least most industrialized nations couldn't get back online, at least at a subsistence level, within a few days at the most.

But for that short-term disruption scenario:

In those few days, I would expect some pretty heavy rioting and chaos in the major urban centers, as well as widespread panic throughout most industrialized nations, since there would be no way of knowing what had actually happened because all communications systems would be shut down. Once services begin to be restored, and I fully expect that they would, I would anticipate a long, long recovery process, as the huge death and property damage tolls were compiled. But our modern industrialized society would defiantly recover eventually and fully. It's too huge, lumbering and unstoppable not to.

I would expect the impact to be much smaller, for such a short period in the less developed nations, and they would probably ride the wave 'til it was over and emerge relatively unscathed.

As for an Armageddon of global proportions that would cause an extended and/or relatively irreparable shut down of all power and communications systems (what that might be I have no idea.....maybe if all silicone on face of the planet suddenly converted to custard...):

I would expect a complete collapse of urban society at the minimum, as well as a huge death toll, spreading out from the urban centers, but eventually and inevitably reaching rural areas as resources became scarcer and scarcer. Modern industrialized society would degenerate into (eventually) warring tribal factions, and the laws of survival would take precedence, removing the millennia thick veneer of civilized behavior we so pride ourselves on. Once the slate was wiped clean, so to speak, there are many and varied possibilities. From the regeneration of modern society in its entirety, to...who knows really, maybe something, some structure completely new and completely different from anything we have seen before. A scenario which has of course been the basis for countless post-apocalyptic sci-fi novels

Again, the impact would be smaller in the minimally industrialized nations, especially because the possibility of almost instantaneous global transportation would disappear. But, such a long-term disruption of the industrialized machinery would eventually reach all four corners of the earth, and alter the course of human societal development irrevocably.

Yeah I know. I read too much Sci-Fi and I’m a science geek…

 

[MrBishop]

If it was a looking like years before life resumed I would also get a bunch of books on smithing, cause every commune would need a blacksmith. Making yourself useful would be another great survivial tool.
In theary I know how to make charcoal, and how to build a smithy

in reality, well I read how....

I've studied anthropology and archaology...in theory, I know how to make cutters by bashing rocks together..but I doubt that I'd try it. Smithing...that's pretty long term, non? If we've gotten to the point where we have to avoid former towns for several years...well...that'd suck badly too! I'd rather do scavenger runs to local towns to find discarded tools.

 

[MrBishop]

such a long-term disruption of the industrialized machinery would eventually reach all four corners of the earth, and alter the course of human societal development irrevocably.

Yeah I know. I read too much Sci-Fi and I’m a science geek…

Yeah...and OTC'd be gone
BTW...you're invited into the Bish-clan co-op

 

[chcr]

You guys need to read "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. BTW Bish, "The Way Things Work." I don't think I'll want to be carrying a whole library.

Smithing...that's pretty long term

Are you kidding? Smithing would be a piece of cake. You'd already have a plentiful supply of refined metal.

 

[MrBishop]

You guys need to read "Lucifer's Hammer" by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. BTW Bish, "The Way Things Work." I don't think I'll want to be carrying a whole library.


Are you kidding? Smithing would be a piece of cake. You'd already have a plentiful supply of refined metal.

Sounds good(books) ..what I meant is that for a skill like smithing to become necessary would mean that you would run out of finished goods scrounged from local villages and farms (which'd take a while).

 

[Oz]

The reality is that these things are already prepared for.

Go talk to any army personnel that has spent time on a typical military base. They [usually] have provisions is sealed containers that can last a decade or more. They will also have vehicles and other heavy machinery that have already been converted to run on either gas or ethanol (not to mention fuel already stored, during a recent fuel crisis here an army base revealed that it had hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel that could be used by the emergency services at any time). You'll also find that most bases are located near to a water source and in arable land.......and just to make the whole thing complete, the armed forces spend millions building family accomodation, in spitting distance of the army base, if not encompassed in the base itself
Tis a whole community that can survive pretty much anything.

Civilisation springing up on small farmsteads and starting from scratch in hidden fertile valleys is a nice idea, but tis just a sci-fi writers pipe dream.

In a situation like this........we already know who'll win, and its those who have the most "toys".

 

[Camelyn]

The reality is that these things are already prepared for.

Go talk to any army personnel that has spent time on a typical military base. They [usually] have provisions is sealed containers that can last a decade or more. They will also have vehicles and other heavy machinery that have already been converted to run on either gas or ethanol (not to mention fuel already stored, during a recent fuel crisis here an army base revealed that it had hundreds of thousands of litres of diesel that could be used by the emergency services at any time). You'll also find that most bases are located near to a water source and in arable land.......and just to make the whole thing complete, the armed forces spend millions building family accomodation, in spitting distance of the army base, if not encompassed in the base itself
Tis a whole community that can survive pretty much anything.

Civilisation springing up on small farmsteads and starting from scratch in hidden fertile valleys is a nice idea, but tis just a sci-fi writers pipe dream.

In a situation like this........we already know who'll win, and its those who have the most "toys".

Yeah, what he said, and I forgot to add to my long-winded post, prolly cause I got lost in the middle


(Edited cause I'm and idiot and hit send)

Because of the redundancy built into our modern technological applications and products, and the carefully planned disaster recovery scenarios developed by our political, military and national organizations, the type of scenario mentioned above, where technology as a whole ceases to exist for an extended period of time is a highly unlikely to pretty improbable possibility, IMO.

 

[unclehobart]

I have a book that is a field guide to edible plants as well as the special forces medical training and reference manual. Toss in maps and compasses and a fairly decent camping kit with a matchless lighting kit and a decent supply of water purification tablets... and being beset with a fair 'spare tire', I have enough natural bodyfat to live off of a while. The dry goods in my closet would be enough caloric value for a good 5 weeks. That would allow time to stake out a proper plan.

I have already talked with one friend who is qualified for all kinds of goodies... canning, medicine, farming, animal husbandry... that has invited me to trot on over and sit out armageddon if need be.

I would most likely try and make my initial move a long term one. While others are fighting for finished food at the stores, I would go to the local Army surpluss store and trying to sneak off with a few 100 cases of MREs. Failing in that I would also be trying to gather up as many seed packets as I can for all fruits and veggies as can be grown locally. Water purification and storage systems would also be in high order... but easily doable with a little 3rd grade science application. I would snag a good deal of clothes a bit smaller than I am as I would surely be shrinking up. I would trying and sneak into the wreckage of a local grocery and take all of the aspirin and antibiotics and vitamins that I can scrounge.

Being an American, I am armed to the teeth and can fortify accordingly. I won't have to negotiate.

I will have to take a peek into the WW3 box to see what specialty toys I have tucked away. I know that I have a portable saw capable of taking out large tress that fits into a cannister the size of shoe polish.

My ultimate vision for the future would be fairly bleak in that the places of the world that are barely reliant on modern tech would weather the tempest so much easier. A good chunk of Africa would probably survive and end up spreading out to make little feudal kingdoms all over the world. Its just a matter of who can feed themselves, deal with the weather, and keep labor saving devices in long term repair.

 

[Professur]

Paul, we need to team up on that smithy. I've already made a suit of chainmail, so I'm good to go there.

 

[chcr]

Let's not forget the anarchist's cookbook. Humans are greedy, unprincipled creatures and a man (or woman) must protect themselves.

the type of scenario mentioned above, where technology as a whole ceases to exist for an extended period of time is a highly unlikely to pretty improbable possibility, IMO.

Actually, if the earths magnetic field collapses (as it would prior to reversing which many scientists believe is in the works) I'm pretty sure that would destroy all technology (as well as all life) at or near the surface. I can think of several scenarios where it could happen.