Society seems to unravel pretty quickly.
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umme4uke — 9 years ago(September 28, 2016 07:06 AM)
It all depends on how scared people get (especially of other people). I agree with the idea that the more disconnected people in a given area the more quickly they would turn to self interest and violence in the absence of social norms. First week might be fine but I think suburbia would turn to hell within the fortnight.
A bunch of people that know each other and know how to work together, in a smaller rural community for instance, would probably hold on a lot longer. -
the_concreteguy — 9 years ago(December 24, 2016 09:15 PM)
@tecnogaming
I hate to sound like an ass, but you are mostly wrong in your posts. Not, I think, from a lack of understanding or an "attempt to rewrite history," but instead, from a desire to see the best in everyone.
Yes, there are many examples of small communities living and working together for the greater good, often without "modern" conveniences. However, those utopian communities tend to fall apart when they grow too large. This is what is known as the "free-rider problem." There are too many instances where people tend to take advantage of communities without contributing anything back. Check out Mancur Olsen for more about this (famous political scientist).
Alas, while Europeans did commit genocide on a massive scale, it is a bit much to claim it was merely for conquest. There are way more reasons than that for what went down with Native tribes, literally too many to list here. I agree that saying all tribes were at war with one another is a dumb thing to say. Many tribes were fairly peaceful. Yet, out of the hundreds of different tribes on the North American continent when Europeans first colonized, more than a few were war-like societies constantly in a state of conflict with each other.
Saying that most ships that came here were filled with assassins and psychopaths while the Native tribes were more advanced than the Europeans is nonsensical. Technologically speaking, Europeans of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the most advanced human beings had ever been. Much more so than the great civilizations in the Americas. Check out the "Columbian Exchange," which talks about how these two civilizations influenced each other.
Finally, modern society is based upon trade, often large-scale trade across vast distances. Lets say, hypothetically speaking, the power DOES go out across the entire United States. There would be no way to continue trade and society collapses in days. According to some research I've done, there is enough food in the City of New York to last three days without a constant influx of shipping (mostly trucking goods from distribution centers around the US). After three days, you'll have millions of people fighting for what is left. No matter how civilized you were, when you or your loved ones are starving without any other recourse, there will be the desire to do anything to fix it. This includes killing/stealing/lying, all marks of an uncivilized person.
Most people lack the skills to survive without modern society. Probably something like 90% of the population would die fairly soonish. Just imagine the disease that would run rampant without indoor plumbing. If human waste is within about 500 yards from your water supply, you'll die from disease. If you live someplace where there is no freshwater supply without piping it in, you'll die. These are just the facts of life as we know it. Civilization would collapse without indoor plumbing.
And before you ask, I am literally a trained historian with a BS and MA in history, with an emphasis in political science and the American West.
Cheers! -
beeryusa — 9 years ago(September 27, 2016 04:47 AM)
"It is in our DNA to do terrible things to each other."
If that were true, society would never develop. Humans are a social species. Individuals in a social species help each other, because survival demands it. That's why all the great apes live in social groups. -
umme4uke — 9 years ago(September 28, 2016 07:34 AM)
Sure, smallish social groups may be a natural predisposition for our species but civilisation usually develops through force. Take the rules away and civilisation would crumble fairly quickly, its a bit of a false construct.
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conchoreb-4 — 9 years ago(October 07, 2016 07:04 AM)
The family is naturally a close, protective unit and progressed to a tribal group also protective of itself. So, of course,they would not do "terrible things to each other" outside of punishment or rituals meant to hold the unit together. It was religions that held units larger than the tribe in check and prevented chaos and anarchy. Religion isn't very influential in the west now. It was not the innate goodness of man that held society together because that doesn't (never did and never will)exist.
To those who can't imagine things unraveling "pretty quickly", have you not heard news stories of the looting and violence in a blackout when the power is down for only a few hours? Of course this is usually in larger cities and is unlikely in smaller communitiesat first. If the power is down long enough (a week, a month?)and you're fighting for the last can of beans down at your friendly neighborhood grocery store so your family will have something to eat it all goes to hell "pretty quickly". -
desertrose0601-690-503760 — 9 years ago(September 18, 2016 12:13 AM)
But within days, people are raping women, killing minorities( I might as well just put Black people here), and killing each other over gas and food.
I actually do think it's very realistic to think that people would go on a power trip in a post-apocalyptic world, killing and raping. Just the fact that no one can communicate to police or other authorities very readily would lead to massive looting very very quickly. Six to eight months in I definitely wouldn't trust anyone to act civilly to each other anymore. Sure society would eventually correct itself into some sort of order, like has existed in generations past, without electricity, but in the immediate wake of the crisis, it's not instantly going to become a utopian pre-technology society. -
Thorakus — 9 years ago(October 18, 2016 08:09 PM)
The only real life example I can provide is when a city or part of a city suffers a black out look what happens. Riots, robbery, burglaries, etc. If people have no fear of getting caught I think they would surprise you what they are really like.
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ficoce — 9 years ago(November 21, 2016 10:11 AM)
A small, close knit community would fare better than a city. A community of a few hundred would do better than 20k or more. Through military history it's been found that it's hard for everyone to know much about each other in groups numbering more than 150. With strangers comes danger.
You can probably look at the history around your area for how the towns were set up, pre-automobile, to see how "safe" your community would be to strangers. Communities were usually set up around 20 miles from each other, give or take. This is about how far you could walk in a day. Settlers would camp at a river crossing and a town would develop. If your town is more than 30 miles away from anything and not on the way to someplace else - you can expect to be fairly isolated from people just wandering in on foot or horseback.
This film had the characters living 3 days walk from town - the two visitors that showed up only did because they knew something was there. If only Dad would have had a book on roof repair. -
Thorakus — 9 years ago(November 21, 2016 06:02 PM)
Well that makes sense to me. The less people the more likely everyone knows each other giving way to a more friendly and coming together in a time of crisis. I can totally see that. Very good points to consider. Thanks for making me see this.
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ladybug2535 — 9 years ago(December 03, 2016 12:35 AM)
Actually human beings are "wired" to live and survive in social groups. In primitive societies being ousted from your group is pretty much a death sentence. That said, when resources are scarce one group may very well try to "conquer" or chase out another group in attempting to take their resources for themselves. BUT, and I will stress this point, civilization will CHANGE and ADAPT not fall apart.
People lived without electricity for most of our history and still had strong well-organized societies as well as law and order. There is absolutely no reason to believe that our police force and our legal system would suddenly cease to exist simply because we suddenly have to go back to an older way of doing things. Lack of electricity doesn't prevent us from continuing to make bullets for our military or cops, and it doesn't stop us from making paper or even rebuilding. A strong EMP pulse over a large area could conceivably destroy sensitive equipment and interrupt our power supplies, but that certainly wouldn't signal a permanent end to things-and certainly not "an end to civilization as we know it".
I won't deny that there are likely to be some people who would seek to take advantage of the situation, no matter how temporary it is (we've seen that in black outs in the big cities) but that kind of anarchy wouldn't last even in the event of a prolonged outage as people re-organized and adjusted to the situation, and would even be a non-starter in many if not most communities. You would be most at risk when isolated or in large cities where neighbors don't know each other well. People living in isolation would continue to be at highest risk from those with ill=intent. If it such a situation went on indefinitely for whatever reason, people will adapt and relearn old skills. People with carts and horses or other old-fashioned tech would become very popular.
The whole idea that civilization would collapse and it would be every man out for himself is a fantasy not supported by the humanity's history, or by the continued existence of people who continue to successfully survive and even live quite contentedly by primitive means. -
lyrafowlpotter — 9 years ago(January 17, 2017 05:01 PM)
I think that the ass riots that have gone on since the election, and the ones that will likely ensue on inauguration day and after are a really good example of what happens when people think either the rules don't apply to them, or when they are gone what people will do. I have seen some scary stuff in the last year, and if it showed me one thing, whether you agree with this or not doesn't matter, with the God(of the Bible) and Biblical principles, society crumbles when it has an opportunity. I have talked to many of the rioters and most either have no religion at all (but most were not atheist, just not following a religion), or reject the major tenets of the faiths they supposedly follow. Without a moral compass from religion and without any possible consequences, eternal or now, man is capable of very very scary things. Recent history and older history shows this.
~Amy -
imdb-20212 — 9 years ago(January 27, 2017 01:12 PM)
nyway are there really that many people out there, that are being help back from doing horrible things
Not that many, but I feel like it would only take a handful of bad people to ruin things for everyone. Look at history for some examples.
The old quote (paraphrased) about "all it takes for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing" applies. In a civilized society, we pay people to be "good men" and keep evil in check. In the right circumstances, good men will arise naturally to take care of business. But yeah, far too often, bad folks become larger than life simply because everyone else figured it wasn't their problem.