You know, I have just had a troubling thought...
What is the world stopped today - no electricity, no TV, no internet... how would we survive. You youngsters would have to depend upon the older generation just to show you how to survive. Does that not wake you up just a bit? So many of toady’s generation have no idea what to do under duress.
I’m afraid for the future and rightfully so - our generation today thinks that without the internet and computers, they would be lost.
Just how many still know the art of farming or survival techniques. I would guess that it would be very few and those are the future generations of our world. Scary isn’t it...?
You are all worried about Apple and computers without regard to the power needed to run them. How about if we lost all capability to generate enough power to keep the going.
Not to worry though, it just could NOT happen! Think again.
Really bad times are coming...
Not a problem, this will probably be my last warning...since the Federal Government is now trying to take over the internet through Executive Order (I’m sure none of you have heard about it).
Maybe I’m watching too much Glenn Beck (for all those that are skeptical)...heh.
Youngster? I told you earlier, that I will be 61 next week. How old are you, Deagle?
Well, oddly enough and perhaps motivated by a completely different set of priorities, “green” instead of survivalist, Apple at one point had a manual generator for recharging laptops. They may still, but I haven’t seen it lately. Personal solar panels exist for that purpose, too, flexible so they can be rolled up, highly portable, less than $300.00.
We have frequent power outage here, due to ice storms in winter and severe thunderstorms or remnants of hurricanes in summer. I’ve got an array of things to make a household temporarily off-grid liveable. It’s really not that hard to do, and really not that expensive. The biggest chunk of change is wiring for a generator panel and the generator itself. Well pump, a few lights, hot water and refrigeration is all you really *need* because everything else can be handled separately. Cooking? Gas grill, nearly everybody has one. Heat? Wood stove or fireplace. As far as A/C, we survived without it less than a generation ago, sweat it out. Cost is too great to encompass powering that for most people.
L.L. Bean makes a great little hand-cranked multiband radio with LED flashlight, not expensive at all. Several online retailers sell manual well pumps. Refrigeration itself is comparatively recent as far as home use. Revert to other, time-tested preservation methods such as canning, pickling, or curing with antimicrobials like salt, sugar or smoke. My own grandmother dried apples from her own small orchard, watched her do it. Not hard to figure out, just time consuming.
Time is something we’ll have plenty of, if all the electronic distraction contraptions fall by the wayside.
That is an age-old lament that has been circulating for generations. My own father used to go around muttering what us "young-uns" would do without pocket calculators, transistor radios and all that other stuff he didn't grow up with when he was a kid. I can imagine a conversation between father and son going something like this back in 1892...
"Why back in my day son, we didn't have all these fancy things like e-lectric lights and telegraphs. No-sir-ee, why back in my day, we used to hafta navigate around at night with torches and if we had to get a message to somebody, why we had to jump on our horse and deliver the message ourselves!"
There has always been a notion with us older folk that the younger generation would simply curl up in a fetal position and die if the "modern conveniences" of life were ever taken away from them.
I think as we get older and our own physical capabilities start to deteriorate, we like to think ourselves as hardier and tougher than the generation that is replacing us.
The reality is however, that human beings are most adaptable and should our modern world crumble before us for whatever reason and our electrical infrastructure is gone, our young people will quickly adapt to it (and much faster than us older folk) even if they can't Google how to plant a corn field or gut a fish.
Sure, there will be some major disruption and a lot of weaker people will die off...that would happen in any civilization during any era, but the notion that young people would be powerless to help themselves is simply a romantic notion that older people tend to have.
BTW, the "weaker people" that I speak of in the previous paragraph? That would typically be people over the age of 55.