It would get very ugly very soon. Never underestimate humankind’s tendency to go batshit when there’s a feeling of no rules anymore, plus people would be scared as hell. I cannot fathom that complete chaos would not ensue.
I’d plant some cress right away. Or mung beans.
I would try to make amends and dish out "I’m sorry"s and try to get things right.
Then probably no matter how illogical I would also try to provide for what I saw as the aftermath - even If I was logically/rationally sure I would not be around, I’d grab ammo, breeding rabbits, chickens, feed, water purifiers, sun screen, MRE, gold, silver etc.
I wouldn’t just shrug and say we are SOL even if the leaders of every political, financial, religious, military, medical and scientific party told me, Jimmmy, personally that I was SOL - I’d still prepare like it was horrific but survivable.
The end of the world:
One day it will begin to snow. It’ll snow all the next day too. And the next, and the next and the next and… at first, before the snow is too crushing, people will worry about food because nothing can grow. After a while they’ll stop worrying about that and will worry about nothing other than keeping warm for one more day. Powerlines will fall under the weight of the relentless snow, plunging the world into darkness. Eventually everything on earth will freeze to death as it is encased in ice and smothered by snow.
Alright people, just to give you a clear picture of the scale of destruction for this hypothetical scenario, we’re assuming something like this happens.
Now out of curiosity, if anything were to survive something that wipes out all of humanity, what difference would it make to you? I suppose the idea might offer some solace but by and by would it really change the way you spend your last remaining days?
Sounds nice. If I lived in Colorado and it was a nice time of year I expect my reaction would be pretty much the same.
I have another question; this one for people who expect violence at the end of the world. Do you expect any yourselves to act aggressive and shed blood or is it only other people that do this?
Personally I think there’s enough food in most peoples fridges and cabinents, and enough food on the shelves of grocery stores to last most communities a week. Plus, once you get past all that there’s still farms and feilds of stuff to pick from.
I don’t imagine it would take more than two days for most people to accomplish either. I would think most people’s enemies and families live close by enough that they could have reaped their vengeance and joined up with their family without wasting too much time.
Oh, I’m sure they’d find a way to make their biblical scriptures sound as though they interpret the existing situation.
Well, the focus of the story isn’t so much on what’s bringing about the end of the world so much as people’s reactions to a loss of hope, so for me one harbinger of death is just as good as another. For the first couple of chapters, the fact that the world is ending isn’t even mentioned. You just have the mild mannered protoganist/narrator wandering around a city with people acting differently…and there’s a couple elephants there too.
And thanks for mentioning Last Night! Someone on this board mentioned it a long time ago and it looked really good. Then later I forgot what the name of it was and tried looking it up again with no luck.
Fair point.
Are there any good historical examples of people going apeshit during the proverbial calm before the storm?
Or to contrast that point, does anyone have any good examples of people acting serene in a similiar situation? I can think of the the band playing on the Titanic as it goes down.
Make friends with the cockroaches. Every doomsday scenario has them surviving, so it would be smart to befriend them and learn their hiding places.
Oh, and bacon. Drenched in sausage gravy.
Oh hell yes!
[QUOTE=Chefguy]
Make friends with the cockroaches. Every doomsday scenario has them surviving, so it would be smart to befriend them and learn their hiding places.
I would, for one, welcome our new cockroach overlords
I don’t think my husband and I would get aggressive, but I can easily see other people doing it. We see other people doing things we don’t do every day - bad driving, bad parking, acting like jerks in stores, not cleaning up after themselves or re-filling the photocopy paper at work…you know, I think I might have to get a little aggressive after all. I’m going to need some large calibre weapons, maybe some explosives…
When discussing this thread, my husband made the point of how impressed he was with people’s reactions after September 11th (not that that was a society-ending event or anything). I think the thing about humans is that no matter what you expect, they will always find a way to surprise you.
[QUOTE=chowder]
I didn’t say I would live amongst 'em. Curry favor, find their hideouts, and carry a can of d-con in my back pocket. Then lay up in their lair with my bacon and wait it all out…BWA-HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
I might. I mean, if you’re someone who has always been a sober, lawful, responsible citizen, and is suddenly thrust in a situation where there are no conseqences to your actions, wouldn’t it be tempting? (I can even see some of the most religious people acting out, perhaps out of a loss of faith.)
You know, I was always skeptical of the arguments of firearms enthusiasts that they might need their weapons in the event of civil unrest. But then I saw footage of the situation in New Orleans after the hurricane and flood, and it seemed to be exactly the sort of situation they were talking about. (For example, I vaguely remember stories of hospitals that were locked down to prevent looting. Supposedly, a doctor or nurse had gone outside to smoke and was either mugged or assaulted.)
Well, I did say that rather than presupposing a moral stand to abstain from violence, the people whom I’d consider avenging myself upon are distant and possibly already dead.
It’s worth noting, too, that I’m not entirely sane. So, don’t use my predictions for my personal behavior as a very good yardstick for general population behaviors.
I think you’re ignoring the fact that every vengeance killing, or even beating is at least as likely to generate new feuds, and desire for new vengeance violence, as it is to actually stop things. Consider the way the Hatfield-McCoy feud worked out - each death actually spread the violence and hatred, rather than containing it.
Well, it’s hard to come up with an exact parallel - the times that I can consider for predicted or eminent destruction of a community are often either very chaotic, or the devastation is so complete that there is no actual eyewitness record of the events.
Some semi-parallels might be found in, say, the Fall of Saigon, which was not precisely the most peaceful evacuation in history. I remember having heard/read that there were some riots around year 999-1000 as people began to expect the momentary return of Christ with the end of the millennium, but a Google search for historical millennial riots isn’t giving me anything.
Me? If universal, imminent annihilation looked to be a pretty sure thing? Here’s some of what I’d want to do in the last few days:
1:Right off the bat, I’d get as high as a bat’s ass and stay that way until it was all over. I don’t believe there’s anyone who wouldn’t want to get loaded to dig that spectacle.
2: I’d hit on anybody I wanted to have sex with.
3: I’d eat all the steak and cheesecake and salmon and chocolate fudge brownie ice cream and Cocoa Puffs I could steal, and drink Cazadores Extra Reposado tequila every day – hey, it’s the end of the world, I ain’t payin’ for shit.
4: You’d best believe that I’d be saying whatever the fuck I wanted to, to whoever the fuck I felt like.
5: Then I think I’d steal a car and drive it real fast – I can’t drive, never have, but fuck it, if the world’s gonna end for reals I might as well, just for the hell of it.
6: I’d scrounge up a haybale of C-notes and light them on fire.
7: I’d feed all the pigeons and every stray dog I came in contact with.
8: I’d fill a couple of spiral notebooks with poetry – they’d be the last poems ever written on earth, and the best in the world, too, and it would be acknowledged that I was the greatest poet our world had ever produced.
9: There’s a few people I’d be looking up --two of whom I need to either explain or apologize to, three of whom I’ve wanted to kill for a real long time, and a handful more I’d just like to say “hi” and “bye” and “hey, it’s been a while, ain’t it?” to and spend a little time hanging out with.
10: Oh, yeah, and I’d definitely be blowing up a church or two .
Asked this same question at age 7 or 8, I replied “get naked and steal a police car.” Though realistically I would probably tell everyone I could get in touch with how much they mean to me and then whimper for the remaining week because I don’t know if I could cope with death in just 7 days.
Another interesting question would be people's reactions if they knew the world would end in five years, or a scenario similar to Children Of Men (where humanity has a very long time to contemplate the end of existence).Some religious fuckhead will get his hands on a nuke or a bio weapon.
One tragedy would be all the people trying to travel to be with their families amidst the general breakdown of the transportation network.
Point taken.
Kinda sorta.
I think things like revenge and vigilantism are appealing in fantasies, but the reality of the matter would be far more grim. There would be blood, screaming, horror, and pain, and you’d be the one creating it. When you really come down to it, would you really want to fill your last days on Earth with that needlessly?
I don’t think Katrina quite compares to what I’m describing since what you describe was, quite literally, the mess after the storm rather than the calm before.
Good point.
Of course, now that I think about, it’s quite possible people would be very hard to find to kill on during the last days on Earth. Your disgusting pig of a boss may be at home for the slaughtering, but he may also be at his parents house, driving to a friend’s in Cali, or any other thousands of places.
Though if people are really violent enough to seek retribution in their final days, I’m sure they’d find other ways to exhaust their urges.
Hah! Wonderful answers 
.
I think that there would be one hell of a lot of people pointing fingers and demanding to know why we hadn’t devoted a lot more resources to developing space technology rather then pouring billions of dollars into third world leaders Swiss bank accounts under the guise of “Aid”.
I would also expect many of those finger pointers to be from among those who are at present the greatest deriders of "wasting"money on space exploration.