Well I deprived my new world of
electricity. At first it doesn’t seem so bad after all I grew up in an era before
fridges or freezers and we all could preserve food - but wait a minute – the reason my world lacks
electricity is because fossil fuel has vanished - no gas for cooking, so how
would the food be heated that will be turned into jams and chutneys, into
bottled goodies for the lean times?
Yes well – it can be done and those
lucky enough to have a range or open fire could as long as they have the wood –
or dried dung works quite well.
My world lost its transport
systems. Okay in a town? Well no. Looting is inevitable once everyone realised
there was no more food deliveries. Riots are panicky things –like a cornered
animal – new rules and those who cannot kill to defend and feed their families
are going to go without at best or die themselves.
So would it better to live in the
countryside. Better chances of surviving? Grow your own food (fingers crossed
on the weather), cut your own wood (hope you’re not in a treeless zone) get up
with the dawn and sleep at sunset unless you can find some source of burnable
oil (do you have an animal that can be rendered down?) Those starving folk from
the towns are soon going to be knocking on your door!
So now those who are left can clothe
themselves for quite a while from the shops. They can provide bedding for
themselves. If, of course, they haven’t been taken over by gangs and cartels
with enough guns to back up their claim of ownership. Oh I am so gloomy!
In the meantime the survivors
freeze or melt as air-conditioning and heating systems go down. Having just recently
had our temperatures across the UK
go down to minus 16 degrees (okay I know many of you have worse!) I think a
whole stack more survivors die. Recent heat-waves across Europe
indicated an increasing mortality rate with every increased degree of
temperature.
Back when our early ancestors
colonized the globe they wandered into extreme climatic conditions and slowly
over time acclimatized. Is there time for the progression from soft livers to
hardy intrepids? I think so, but many would perish on the way. In later
Chronicles mention of those who lose the survival battle, begin to spell out
the many ways there are to die.
How hardy are we when it comes down
to basics, how do our social structures cope? are questions for another day. As
mentioned before, there had not been any planning in Ellen’s world, when I
first sat down to write. Ellen was meant to be a short story so what need? I
managed to save some of my characters from all the wars, riots and plundering
by encasing them in rings of land mines – yup land mines. Now there’s a crazy
idea!
Actually the mining was carried out
by the government of the day to protect those who agreed. To save them from the
fighting, the disorder the mines laid down for just as long as it took to
restore law and order, then the army would removed them, No harm done. Indeed.
Except of course no one came back
to remove them. Not for 50 years.
