Saturday 7 January 2012

Surviving an apocalypse




Surviving a potential man-made apocalypse is easy. It came to me reading the article on wheelbarrows that Talysman mentioned here. The solution? Start rebuilding now.

We do it by putting ourselves in the position of a survivor, in a moment long enough after the collapse that things have stabilised and the decay begun, but in which we can see clearly the outline of what it was came before, or remember it for having lived then too.

A moment suggesting the long path we had to follow just to get to where we are today, so the size of the missed opportunity sinks in. So we see better the steps, methods and tools, and the rigour and imagination needed. So we see there's nothing for it but to pull out the stops, think deep and work hard, for the love of who we are and who we can be.

Which is a great part of the value of post-apocalyptic fiction of course, more than any survival plan. Don't look at the zombies as the bad guys, look at them as allies lost.

And if we start rebuilding now, we might stop the thing happening in the first place. The wheelbarrows are a fine start, for a look at the chance in history and time lost already.
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