Another book for this sort of thought excercise is Stephen King’s “The Stand.” HE addresses many of the same issues you’re pondering. I don’t agree with how the characters solve some of the problems, and he imposes a couple of extra conditions that you didn’t mention. It is a long book, but worth the read. Just do yourself a favor, before you start, insert a second bookmark randomly about 30-40 pages before the end. When you reach this bookmark – stop reading. The ending sucks. Of course if you read a lot of King, then you are used to cop-out endings.
But the first 300-400 pages are fascinating.
To address your question about large predatory animals – no problem here in North America. We really don’t have any to speak of, the ones we do have don’t view humans as food / are frightened of us / and are so rare that you probably wouldn’t encounter any anyway. And all are small enough body size that any large caliber semi-auto rifle will solve the problem…if not, then you were a poor choice for the sole survivor anyway.
About planes…I ponder that myself while reading “The Stand” and having worked on my private pilot’s license I can say this. If I’m the only guy left, I won’t be flying. Anywhere you can go in a small aircraft you can go by other means. And those suckers require a lot of maintenance. It would really blow to die because of a stopped up fuel line.
Agreed. King took a fascinating premise to build on and then moved the focus of the story elsewhere, namely the two surviving factions. The best part of the book was early on as he unfolded things falling apart and the way people were adjusting.
Its one of those books that you may enjoy more as you have to put it down and do something else but continue to mull the premise over in your own mind.
Maybe you’d get to the summit faster and easier, but you’d die there. First, you can’t really land a plane on top of Everest, so you’d have to land somewhere further down and hike to the top. Second, and worse, you’re not acclimated. Without proper acclimation, you’ll die at the top of Everest in a matter of minutes due to the lower amount of oxygen present there.
What King I have read I don’t like much, and the time I spent watching “It” was an utter waste. For that reason I did not watch much of “The Stand” miniseries.
In a lot of apocalyptic fiction, the other survivors are a big problem to the protagonist: they are competitors for food, shelter… most everything. In this scenario we have the opposite problem.
As far as rules for winning the game are concerned, I think a fair condition is to get to the place B alive, and stay that way briefly. Maybe even fatally injured would be enough to win. That way parachuting onto the summit of Everest would be a win, but not ramming it in an airplane.
Close, but no banana. The air’s much too thin to land at the top with a helicopter. You can land a helicopter on Everest, but it’s much further down the mountain - something like at camp II or III. You’ve still got a good ways to go.
