The Rise of Apocalyptic and Survival Fiction

[VydorScope]

Originally Posted by TimW

BTW, is "corrrected" pronounced with a "rolling r?"

ZING!!! LOL!!!

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Would anyone like one of the words from the title of this thread corrrected?

Don
(Moderator)

Yeah, I got an O instead of an A, didn't I? lol. Just saw that. Oh dear, spell check has failed me again. lol. Yeah, if you wanna correct that, I'd appreciate it.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

2:1 over what timespan? Per lifetime? (Which is what it sounds like.) Any idea how that would translate to, for example, a 10-year period? How fast does a population need to grow in order to be stable-and-growing?

The time frame typically referenced is 1 generation. So for every 33 years you need to have 2 births for every 1 person. IE, you need communities where families consistently have a minimum of 4 children to be considered as growing, because disease and other ailments can very quickly take out a large slice of the population. Just look at our ancestors. It was not unheard of to have families with 6-7 children. In fact, that was somewhat expected of you. There's even Amish and Mormons today who have 10-13 children or more (as in the case of the duggers), and a family with just 4 children is considered small.

Another example is America. Right now we have a birth rate of 1:1, so we're not experiencing any population growth, and haven't since about the 60's when the baby boom tapered off. Well, at least nationally anyways. Around here they're still breading like rabbits. But either way, the official growth rate is 1:1. In Europe it's something like 1:1.5 if I remember correctly, and the only population growth they're seeing is from immigrants. But anyways, large families are needed in order to rebuild the population and get them up to the minimum number required to restart previous endeavors that would currently be impossible due to low population numbers.

Another benefit of higher population is that you can get away with controlling greater swaths of land, as the more people you have, the more land you can control, and thus the more food you can grow. Once you have that consistent surplus, and a bank against future disasters, you're now free to begin engaging in enterprises and activities above and beyond simple survival or subsistence farming. Another good example of this comes from Stargate Universe where a copy of the Destiny's crew gets sent back in time to a planet and they're left with essentially just the cloths on their backs. They then spend the next 1000 years (via various generations) getting to an advanced modern form of technology. The first 100 years is all lived pioneer style, but as the population improves and grows you see the technology improve with it.

Yeah, sure, they cheated a little because they had a whole crew of super smart people, and a bag full of Ancient technology (compliments of Eli) to study once they'd advanced far enough and recovered their lost technology, but even so it took them 1000 years of uninterrupted growth and development before they reached the technological level you see them using when they're discovered at the beginning of the show. Heck, as one person pointed out, if it hadn't been for the dark ages, we'd probably be skipping around the stars like little kids right now.

[Dr. Drib]

I'll fix it now.

(But I'll leave my misspelled 'corrrected' from above as a reminder of my fallibility.)


Don
(Moderator)

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

You could have capitalized it as well.

[Steven Lake]

SLJ: lol. Yeah, I just saw that too. Score two for our venerable Dr. Drib!

Oh, and on the topic at hand, I was talking with my dad today after Sunday dinner about this thread (he's interested in the genre too) and one of the things that came up, which I didn't even think about, is the rise of cottage industry. Since 90% of our stuff comes from overseas anymore, a complete collapse of global trade would mean the survivors be stuck having to manufacture their own stuff as you couldn't huff it to the local store to buy it anymore. So since there's already a lot of people out there doing paid and unpaid hobby work covering pretty much every field of expertise, I can easily see a lot of artisans and craftsman (assuming they survive) rising up to fill the void created by the collapse of the current system by whatever means the disaster takes.

The only one who might not show up right away would be cobblers and show makers as I don't know of anyone who does this anymore either as a hobby or otherwise. Well, except maybe the handful of leather smiths around the area. They might take up shoe making, but that's a big *maybe*. Oddly enough, another thing that'd come into full time use would be antiques. Seriously. If there's no outside source for dishes, plates, etc, all those old antiques, including oil lamps, darning balls, and so on would suddenly be in high demand as daily use items. I mean, they were once before, so having them return to that use is not all that unlikely.

Anyhow, just a few more things to think about.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

I can easily see a lot of artisans and craftsman (assuming they survive) rising up to fill the void created by the collapse of the current system by whatever means the disaster takes.

Plenty of artisans and craftsmen will survive. Maybe not "enough," by any objective standards, but at least in the same percentage as any other profession or lifestyle.

The only one who might not show up right away would be cobblers and shoe makers as I don't know of anyone who does this anymore either as a hobby or otherwise.

I hang out with a number of renaissance faire & SCA people... shoemaking is not a dead art.

Oddly enough, another thing that'd come into full time use would be antiques. Seriously. If there's no outside source for dishes, plates, etc, all those old antiques, including oil lamps, darning balls, and so on would suddenly be in high demand as daily use items.

Those are "antiques?" I know people who use all those things. (I don't use a darning ball because I can't knit.) More crucial than odds-and-ends with obvious uses is ability to cook on an open fire; while my family & friends know how to do real cooking in a dutch oven on coals, we're aware that most of the public is very, very lost if they're away from a stove with LOW-MEDIUM-HIGH knobs. (I don't think I can bake bread in a dutch oven. But then, I'm terrible at making bread in the oven now; baking bread is my husband's area. I do sewing.)

Refrigeration gets difficult quickly. Those who know how to preserve food by pickling have an advantage.

[ScalyFreak]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Refrigeration gets difficult quickly. Those who know how to preserve food by pickling have an advantage.

Drying, salting, smoking... and if you live where it gets really cold in the winter, dig a deep hole in the ground and stack it with ice.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

Drying, salting, smoking... and if you live where it gets really cold in the winter, dig a deep hole in the ground and stack it with ice.

Unless I force myself to think about it, I forget that ice exists in nature. We get frost a few mornings a year, and a flurry of snowflakes about one year in seven. (Something about having a multi-billion-gallon temperature regulator a few miles away. The air has trouble maintaining more than a few dozen degrees difference from ocean temperature.)

[Dr. Drib]

Now capitalized! ACK!


Don
(Moderator)

[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I hang out with a number of renaissance faire & SCA people... shoemaking is not a dead art.

Ah, see, I didn't know that. Then again, I'm not a Ren guy, so I'm not around stuff like that. So that's good to know. I can definitely use that in my books.

Those are "antiques?" I know people who use all those things. (I don't use a darning ball because I can't knit.)

Yeah, the Amish use them still too, but the vast majority don't, thus they're seen as antiques. But either way I get your point.

More crucial than odds-and-ends with obvious uses is ability to cook on an open fire; while my family & friends know how to do real cooking in a dutch oven on coals, we're aware that most of the public is very, very lost if they're away from a stove with LOW-MEDIUM-HIGH knobs.

Well, given the whole "Microwave" and "Instant/Fast Food" culture we have these days, if TSHTF, a LOT of people are gonna starve. Oddly enough, guys like me with culinary training (I'm a certified chef, although I don't work in culinary anymore) would be in very high demand in that kind of new culture. In a colony type survival scenario, I'd probably get put to work as the chief cook for everyone. It's not something I'd enjoy, but it's something I'm good at which is what counts.

Refrigeration gets difficult quickly. Those who know how to preserve food by pickling have an advantage.

Originally Posted by ScalyFreak

Drying, salting, smoking... and if you live where it gets really cold in the winter, dig a deep hole in the ground and stack it with ice.

Oh, absolutely! You'd see a LOT of root cellars and ice houses popping back up again. Believe it or not, they're surprisingly easy to build and maintain. I did some research on them a while back for something else I was doing and it surprised me how simple, yet effective they are. The other forms of preserving, including pressure canning, would be huge as well. The only downside to home canning would be the limited supply (assuming they survived at all) of canning jars, lids, the canners themselves, etc. There would also be the issue of finding a viable source of salt. Yeah, there's some big salt mines floating around the world, one of the biggest being over in Detroit, MI, believe it or not. So for the early part of things, until some degree of trade resumed, drying and smoking, along with the root cellar and the ice houses would be all you'd have. Of course, if you had some way to make your own vinegar, you could pickle stuff too. Once trade resumed, then you could add salt to the list, along with canning supplies, assuming someone began manufacturing those again.

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

Unless I force myself to think about it, I forget that ice exists in nature. We get frost a few mornings a year, and a flurry of snowflakes about one year in seven. (Something about having a multi-billion-gallon temperature regulator a few miles away. The air has trouble maintaining more than a few dozen degrees difference from ocean temperature.)

Well, actually, at first you wouldn't have ice or any form of refrigeration out there. But since the mountains are only a few hundred miles away, you could ultimately do the same thing the Romans did and have the ice shipped in. Believe it or not, even during the hottest summers, the Romans had fresh ice available to them 365 days a year. They'd send some big hulking guys up into the Alps, they'd hack some big chunks off the nearest glacier, cover it in straw, wool, and some other insulating materials, toss it on a wagon, and then huff it all the way down to Rome via the nearest road. In fact, that's how the early Californian pioneers got their ice, so for you guys that would be one way to get ice again for refrigeration. It'd work the same for anyone else within easy distance of a mountain with a permanent glacier on it, such as the center US.

Now for those in the south would be pretty much screwed. With no reasonable freeze (assuming the disaster didn't turn the south, or the entire world, into a gigantic ice chest, ala nuclear/volcanic winter) and no easy access to ice from the mountains (the Appalachians thaw during the summer) they'd have to get their ice shipped in from the north. Oddly though, given that anyone north of the Mason/Dixon line (ie, Kentucky and all states north) tends to get at least a decent freeze each winter (save for this last one which was uncharacteristically warm) they could probably produce enough ice to not only meet their own needs, but also enough excess to trade with those in the south once some kind of commerce was reestablished somewhere around Stage 3 during the initial recovery period. Of course, that's all speculation. But considering that ice trade during the early days of this nation was quite vibrant, I can't see where it wouldn't resume again should the situation require it. Of course, that's assuming that we lose all ability or access to modern refrigeration and freezing methods.

Originally Posted by Dr. Drib

Now capitalized! ACK!

Don
(Moderator)

haha. No problem. It happens to the best of us.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

Now for those in the south would be pretty much screwed. With no reasonable freeze (assuming the disaster didn't turn the south, or the entire world, into a gigantic ice chest, ala nuclear/volcanic winter) and no easy access to ice from the mountains (the Appalachians thaw during the summer) they'd have to get their ice shipped in from the north. Oddly though, given that anyone north of the Mason/Dixon line (ie, Kentucky and all states north) tends to get at least a decent freeze each winter (save for this last one which was uncharacteristically warm) they could probably produce enough ice to not only meet their own needs, but also enough excess to trade with those in the south once some kind of commerce was reestablished somewhere around Stage 3 during the initial recovery period. Of course, that's all speculation. But considering that ice trade during the early days of this nation was quite vibrant, I can't see where it wouldn't resume again should the situation require it. Of course, that's assuming that we lose all ability or access to modern refrigeration and freezing methods.

Absolutely fascinating stuff, Steven. Imagine, we could be one Carrington Effect away from a wrecked power grid and an extended return to a simpler time. The nostalgia for a simpler time might wear off rather quickly for most.

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by Steven Lake

Ah, see, I didn't know that. Then again, I'm not a Ren guy, so I'm not around stuff like that. So that's good to know. I can definitely use that in my books.

Almost every low-tech trade is available at some level in the historical recreation groups--SCA, Civil War reenactment, regency dance societies... someone knows how to make parchment from sheepskin. Someone knows how to make dye from local plants. Someone knows how to make acorn flour. Someone knows how to put crucial and complex information into poetry with a tune so it's easily memorized. And so on.

The only downside to home canning would be the limited supply (assuming they survived at all) of canning jars, lids, the canners themselves, etc.

I tend to assume we'd have plenty of supplies... after the first three years, when there'd be a huge round of deaths, because we've packed millions of people into spaces that can't survive if truckloads of food aren't brought in daily.

There would also be the issue of finding a viable source of salt.

Heh. Another thing I don't think much about; I live a couple of miles from what's possibly the world's largest salt-water repository.

But considering that ice trade during the early days of this nation was quite vibrant, I can't see where it wouldn't resume again should the situation require it. Of course, that's assuming that we lose all ability or access to modern refrigeration and freezing methods.

There's the weird issue that we have refrigeration *devices* that run on electricity, which will no longer be piped into every home. However, wind- or water-powered electricity are widely available. (They don't work on a large scale, but they're fine for individual families and sometimes communities.) And while a low-tech society can't create good electrical wiring and whatever makes a freezer work, it *can* create enough electricity to allow a freezer to be plugged in. I tend to think even very hot and dry regions can have some refrigeration--but it'd be limited to either "the person skilled enough at tech to set it up *and* skilled enough at social to keep it" (social may include quite a bit of combat skills, in this case), or, in a more communal group, reserved for various medical uses.

[VydorScope]

I dunno, I still think what will happen, is the handful of ppl that have good access to weapons will take over areas. Each of those areas will have some mix of skills in it, and people will barter those skills for items and protection. The guys with guns will want people that understand gun powder for example.

Generating electricity and tieing it to a local power network with existing wire should not be to hard. One the political power structure is stabilized these feudal states will slowly become the norm and competition between them will push them to advance quickly back up to "civilized" levels.

[TimW]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

I tend to assume we'd have plenty of supplies... after the first three years, when there'd be a huge round of deaths, because we've packed millions of people into spaces that can't survive if truckloads of food aren't brought in daily.

That's a salient point. Consider the adage "We're only three square meals away from a revolution." It's difficult to imagine the mayhem and cruelty committed in any (ALL!) of our larger cities by those in search of a meal and clean water. We would quickly discover just how paper-thin the veneer of civilization covering our true animal nature.

[QuantumIguana]

In an acute crisis, people are likely to pull together. Lord of the Flies was not written in stone.