You can come up with the details on the kind of collapse.
World collapses and all maps of New Zealand are destroyed. Everyone forgets we exist. We continue to grow food and live and all our technology eventually fails.
Maybe lots of people will die in nz but not me I’ll survive because it’s my fantasy.
Genuinely thought this had happened when I was there last and the air raid sirens woke me up in the middle of the night - the noise every 80s child had drilled into them as the herald of the Soviet ICBMs - but at least I was as far from civilisation as you could hope to be in the situation.
Turned out they just use them to wake up the volunteer fire brigade, and it was nothing to do with the Middle East kicking off WW3.
A few years back my dad sent me a video of sirens going off at 3am and it was a tsunami warning. My dad in his infinite wisdom wanders down to the beach to see if there’s any big waves
A confederation of autonomous zones run horizontally under anarchist principles, a la Rojava, the Makhnovshchina, Catalonia, etc etc. Presumably for many types of collapse, there’d be a gradual period where the government just cuts off services to increasingly populated areas and abandons them. Autonomous zones like these could spring up to fill the void, and eventually be better than what they’re replacing.
Humans go extinct; orangutans evolve to become the chillest high intelligence in the history of the universe.
As a programmer, I’m very aware that my best hope is to heavily arm myself and spend my time defending someone who knows something about computer networking while they work to rebuild.
Yo, what you need Cisco, FortiNet, Aruba, Ubiquity, Extreme Networks?
Best case scenario would be it results in less greenhouse gasses being released and some semblence of general ecological balance able to return.
Though, I’d imagine there will be unattended nuclear reactors that melt down and poison regions or w/e. So I’ll qualify that first bit by “…and also I live upwind/upriver of any nuclear catastrophe.”
Basically high tech elves. Having passed through a self imposed disaster, humanity faces it’s destructive greed and overcomes it, achieving a profound integration with nature, while retaining the technical knowledge of the past. The new culture is stable and long lasting, and heals the blighted areas of the planet. The ecosystem becomes more resilient and more abundant than ever before.
Diaspora by Greg Egan has high tech elf humans. It was cool.
I feel like the most likely sort of collapse would be a Roman empire style collapse where it takes centuries to reach completion and we see a period of increased governmental instability/local authoritarianism for a little bit. The most likely cause would be some sort of climate disaster. It probably wouldn’t happen everywhere either, the Byzantine empire lasted well into the middle ages, after all, going on the Rome metaphor. The best strategy would be to move somewhere less effected by the collapse with a hospitable enough climate to support local food production, and enough resources to ensure long-term maintenance of infrastructure. The Great Lakes area of the US/Canada fits this pretty well
Ok, but what is your best case scenario of what you think comes after a collapse?
Best case? People cooperate with each other to share labor/resources in a way that eventually gives rise to a more democratic, non-capitalist economy. Basically star trek without the (probably) impossible technology or the aliens.
You know that part in 12 monkeys where plant life has overgrown all the buildings and animals are free to roam our cities? That one.
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I’d estimate that 90%+ of us would be dead in a matter of months if not weeks.
Consider the significant lack of food available. Think about how much food the average person has in their house. Probably a week, maybe two. Perhaps a month if you’re wise and start rationing immediately. But most won’t. Most people would be in denial at the start and assume someone or something would rescue us.
Now consider how much food there is available at your local grocery store. And how many people that store could feed. Compare that to the population of the geographic area that store supports and you’ll see that for the most part we would be out of food in a matter of months.
Sure we could scavenge and perhaps hunt small game, but that’s limited and not something most people could do. But to get to a point where we’re actually able to do some level of substance farming, that could take up to a year to complete depending on the season society collapses. Before we get there most of us would have staved to death. Probably too many would die and there wouldn’t be enough labour to work the farms either.
And that’s just considering food. There’s still the issue of clean potable water, and infections or other health issues that turn deadly quickly without modern medical intervention.
And these issues are all compounded if you live in a high density urban environment. Which many do.
TLDR: if society collapses, it might be wise to just bow out before things get really bad.
the sweet release of death.
Hold your empty disemboweled gas tanks up high
Turn them into a bong or a still
Rootin’ through the gas stations
Tilling up our backyards
That’s my rosy picture of the End Times, my friend- from “Floodwaters” by Defiance, Ohio, though the song doesn’t stay rosy for long
Ever read Parable of the Sower? Yeah, that.
Like me personally or like societally?
I was thinking societally.
Best for humans, or best overall?
Your choice.
And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn,
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
