[UPDATE]: Instapundit readers. And you know? I think that I was referencing this. The series
(H/T: Instapundit) Let me note this paragraph of this post, which has by the way probably one of the most subtly depressing pictures that you’ll see today:
It is also worth pointing out that there are likely well over a billion people on earth who currently don’t interact with formal economies or technological society at all. They will be very well adapted to a post collapse world, you should find some and make friends. They will likely be far more helpful than a manual on restarting the internet, because they know how to gut a deer.
Unfortunately… no. I think that it was SM Stirling who noted that preservation of archaic skills and techniques occur in rich societies, not poor ones: rich societies are the ones who can afford to have hobbyists who can make and sell, say, spinning wheels to other hobbyists. Poor societies go with cheap, mass-produced crap made elsewhere. In other words, poor people do in fact interact with technological society, and in some ways are more dependent on it than the inhabitants of rich ones; they just can’t manipulate it to their benefit. Which is why they’re still poor, frankly*.
Ironically, if we do have a worldwide collapse the groups most likely to survive will be communities more than 200 miles from a major North American city. Who will then probably not need the highly elaborate information preservation systems that the post is advocating, and who will certainly have individuals in it who already know how to gut a deer.
Moe Lane
*I make no judgments or pronouncements about why they can’t manipulate it, merely that they can’t.