My vision for the future is binary (2 options) either we will develop and advance until we reach the technological singularity, or we destroy ourselves in the process. I don’t believe there is any middle ground for these as we are tending towards the singularity (at which point the robots will take over), or our fragile world will collapse and apocalyptic films will become a reality.
I will talk about my idea for the singularity tomorrow but this post is about the world end situation.
It stems from the truth that all great civilisations fall and we are no different, but due to the global nature of our society few will be spared. Be it from a nuclear winter or a contagion (or zombie whatever) it doesn’t matter, the environment we will have to survive in will be as:
- Little to no food
- Survival of the fittest and smartest
- Constant warring
- Disease rampant
- Few isolated communities that struggle to survive
- Production of anything slightly complex will come to a halt
plus anything else that is bad. It is for the long term so there is no escaping in a bunker or anything.
The only way to survive is to firstly make you and your skill set useful and needed. This can be from creating anything of value for an apocalyptic economy; when you manage to band together and form a small community it means the others have to feed you else they lose a necessary skill. The people who will be needed will be:
- Doctors
- Engineers and Craftsmen
- Leaders
- Warriors
There are many others, the important thing is to not be less useful than the food they are giving you (Probable cannibalistic nature of society makes this even more scary).
Secondly you need to know how to defend yourself, even with important skills rogues will ravage you to get to anything of value in your possession. With no production of guns or advanced weaponry you need to excel in hand to hand, sword and knife combat and archery.
Lastly you need to physically be at your peak, there is no time to waste on being lazy because you need to prepare your body for the immense shock its about to receive.
I have few of these attributes currently and its a little worrying, but we have a bit of time yet to prepare (I hope).
These should be a minimum for all who wish to survive an apocalypse.
Just to make a note though: The singularity is more probable but knowing all this stuff is an important contingency plan; plus it actually would help one excel in our modern society (who doesn’t want a strong, confident and useful person around).
Strikee 