Armaggedon - a simple affair?

[MrBishop]

Originally Posted by Terry Prachett

...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...

[Insidious Rex]

ha ha Bish you realize us mooters wont know what to do with ourselves when actually quality message boarders start making quality threads left and right. we arent used to that here.

Id say chaos wouldnt be far off if a huge disaster struck but we tend to be a pretty dynamic lot and we would by nature organize ourselves in ways we could and make things a little better. you see this when you look at people who have been stuck on islands or in hostage situations. even stuck on elevators. everyone assumes a roll that makes the collective work better. its how we have been programed.

[Jonathan]

I dunno, the 2003 blackouts in Eastern US and Canada, in all of Italy, in Southern Sweden and Denmark (and I think there were even more major blackouts that year!) didn't turn out as mini-Armaggedons. So I think we'll all be more or less fine for a lot longer than a week.

[Nurvingiel]

Wow, for someone with only 19 posts, you sure have started a lot of quality threads! (LOL IRex! )

I agree with Jonathan. At worst, there might be riots or looting of stores, but I think it would take more than a couple missed meals for us to abandon civilization. And what is civilization? I think it's knowledge, which leads to specialization (as you mentioned). If we had to actually rebuild society we'd probably form into groups with the necessary skills.

Besides, if the power went out right now, I wouldn't even miss my next two meals. There's a lot of things you can eat cold, or that I'd start eating from the fridge so as not to let them go to waste. (Starting with leftover pasta that I'm saving.)

Suddenly, I'd live my little Leatherman even more (it's like a Swiss Army knife, but it has pliers too).

[MrBishop]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Wow, for someone with only 19 posts, you sure have started a lot of quality threads! (LOL IRex! )

I'm plucking from my over 600 thread starts on one forum and over 200 thread starts on another. Rehashing to a new audience.
If you prefer, I can start fluff-threads....umh...

Smurf Sex and the little blue pill (Viagra) - are Smurfs actually blue or is it a side-effect? or something equally irrelevant

[Spock]

In my neck of the woods, litterally, we stock up on ammunition first and worry about electricity later.

[MrBishop]

I've been known to spend my holidays canoe-camping with nothing more modern than my boots. Mind you... the food that I've brought with me was prepared and dried by others, the water-filter isn't my own making etc...

I can hunt, fish, trap, build shelters etc... but I'm more the exception that proves the rule. Go to a metropolis...pick someone at random... odds are, they'd die within a few months if everything but their own skills were taken away. :shrug: