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Gentle End: Life after Apocalypse
Having the
time to think, to react, and to frantically plan, is worse in
some ways than gut-wrenching terror and desperate action. A sudden
attack and viral overload are wrapped in tales of societal niceties
disappearing and ravening beasts tearing from suburban homes to
feed on the offal of a collapsed society. The movies minutely
describe the people who scream from buildings in the city, how
hundreds gutter in gas attacks or die when shrapnel shreds their
town, but they tell us little about how people respond to a disaster.
Reality is never as explicit, life never as exciting, and cinematically,
drudgery is not inspiring.
People merely
struggling to eke out a living despite a gradual collapse of their
society is the real survival story, it is a tale of grasping for
a landmark while quicksand opens under your feet. When infrastructure
crumbles, media services have been closed or are lost without
electricity and transport, goods are no longer imported and the
story frays at the edges. Some recognize what is happening, and
therefore they prepare. Others are caught unawares, the highways
emptying before neighbours become suspicious and aggressive.
Despite the
stories of generalized horror and despair, there are those who
attempt to preserve laws and books and machines, those who have
the forethought to plan for a society when people again want it.
They might only be feeding a stranger, stacking books in a library,
or banding together for protection, but that is how the cultural
edifice is rebuilt, one brick at a time.
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