I was reading an article earlier today about how the sun is going to be sending out larger solar flares and inevitably causing a massive planet-wide electricity shortage sometime in the next fifty to a hundred years. Hopefully it’ll end up being one of those things I remember years later and laugh about, but it reminded me of a particular drama on Channel 4 (I think) about how society would function without electricity and power. In short, it didn’t; it all went into panic mode and lots of people died and it was frankly rather horrible.
All this has made me think about how conditionalised we’ve become to comfort and security. (Microsoft Word is telling me that conditionalised isn’t a word but I’m sure it is. Get it together Microsoft.) I’ve been born into this world to expect easy warmth and food, preceded by generations of people who have had the luxury of easy warmth and food. Now I’m not going to go all survivalist, but if it really did come down to hunting for food and creating our own shelters, I’m pretty sure that most of us – especially me – wouldn’t have a clue where to start, and would unfortunately be doomed. The very fact that we name these once imperative skills as “survivalist”, as if it’s an outlandish hobby, emphasises to me how comfortable we are in our brick huts with our magically controlled invisible fires.
That’s why an electro-magnetic pulse apocalypse would be my least favourite kind of apocalypse. One thing that electricity has done so well lately is providing communication. The entire world is in touch with each other (give or take a few countries) and the only thing worse than dying of starvation and disease in the dark is dying of starvation and disease in the dark alone. I’m not sure if this is normal or if I really am just a hyper-internetual (making that word up) junkie, but in the rare occurrence of me lacking the ability to connect to the internet, I feel this strange emptiness inside; a sort of loneliness. It’s almost like I’ve become more of a singularity and less of a communal being. I know that’s all psychological and I most likely am a hyper-internetual (proud of it) junkie, but it’s a real feeling and I’d hate to feel it all the time.
Speaking in a wider sense, we’re conditionalised to a whole range of things which are frankly unnatural. We consider normality to be living confined within shaped cloth, staring at moving colours for hours, walking up the road to fetch pre-killed and sometimes pre-cooked prey, sitting in and apparently controlling big metal noisy things to get where we want to, and talking to each other via magic in everyday life. This is all looking through the eyes of a caveman of course, but it’s interesting to see things from the perspective of what a natural human really is and how different technology, electricity or not, has changed us.
Speaking of apocalypses, by the way, the world was meant to end today. The Vikings said so. I personally think that it’s extremely rude that we would listen to the crazy sacrificial Mayans, but not to the… well… crazy, barbaric Vikings.
EDIT: I almost forgot to put the link to the article about the EMPocalypse (I’m calling it that from now on). Someone posted it on Twitter and I have no idea if it’s valid or biased or whatever but here it is: http://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/this-is-a-monster-sunspot-now-larger-than-jupiter-continues-to-unleash-solar-flares_02112014
Perpetually Perturbed 