Which post-apocalyptic scenario do you dread the most?

Even if you could change things up? As an omnipotent you could create an infinite new things out of nothing. You could just make dynamic life like human beings and interact with them just for a different perspective on life. You get bored? Create a new species with completely different emotions/environments. Honestly, I would be very happy if I was immortal, all that time and I wouldn't have to worry about anything.

I guess I just can't understand why this is such a bad thing.

 

I'm dealing with this very thing in TNT. There are a very few things that need to happen before we are prepared for eternity, then the nature of that existence becomes obvious. We need to be comfortable with our core selves, we need to accept a non-corporeal existence (including attachments), and we need to know we exist with a purpose (even if we don't know how we will fulfill it). The second will be the most difficult to achieve because it involves finding our origin, and returning to it. Then we will exist outside of time. The rest is a spoilerrrrrrr...

 

I have to disagree on this one. Let me start with the boring case. If you are immortal with a finite mind, then you won't ever run out of new experiences because you'll be forgetting old ones in the process. Sure, that kind of undermines a huge chunk of immortality, but I just wanted to say that before getting into where I think we'll have more contention between our beliefs.

If you really were to become a truly infinite being (including the power to "create worlds, universes, bring back the dead and so on") then there will still always be new things to experience. Sure, they might become more and more similar to things you've already experienced, but technically there will always be something more out there. Sure, it might be boring or beyond tedious (exploring non-self-similar fractal patterns or beating personal records for longest times doing things, for instance) but such things would still technically be new experiences. One might argue they aren't good enough experiences to make life worth living, and I won't argue against that. That's a matter of personal opinion.

I also contend that novel experiences do not equate to enjoyment of life (at least not to me). I enjoy doing things I've done in the past, even if it's nothing new. Even if one were to run out of novel experiences, that doesn't mean life can't be enjoyable. If life is enjoyable, then why would one want to stop living?

As for meaning and purpose, my belief is that there is no inherent meaning nor purpose in life if life ends (not an individual's life, mind you, but life in general). Extending that, I believe that as long as one's actions will have some effect on the future, then that life has meaning and purpose. This doesn't get negated just because an individual's lifespan becomes eternal.

I know these are all just personal beliefs, but this is my stance on things.

Oh, actually, there is one more thing. While perception of time is related to new experiences (more novel experiences equates to longer perceived time), that's not the sole reason for experiencing time. Time seems to slow down for individuals in extreme situations as well, and there is always some degree of noticing time pass. I'm not seeing you say anything against these claims, but I have seen others argue on this same subject that eventually an immortal being wouldn't even be able to perceive the world around them because time would move to quickly for them after so-and-so-many years. That is the conclusion that would be drawn via reductio ad absurdum, and I find that very hard to believe would actually be the case.

edit: reworded the last paragraph, which I had kind of stuck on without thinking to much how I was writing

 

What if you could create companions for yourself and stay rational? You needn't be insane or forever alone then.

 

Not necessary. The only place to exist outside of time is populated with other Eternals. We were never alone.

 

That sounds potentially spooky. "We were never alone" is like a horror movie line where they realise the ghost/demon/witch has been in the obligatory 12ish year-old kid's bedroom The Whole Time.

 

Seeker is watching you.

 

*Screaming*

 

I have a feeling that we as humans would have a frightfully difficult time understanding what being an Infinite Being is like.

 

It is simply a matter of existing without time.

 

Yes, I really shouldn't have used the term "infinite being". I should have said "being with unlimited mental storage capacity and the mental abilities to cope healthily and functionally with such". I'm not sure the term "infinite being" even makes since on it's own, because what aspect (or aspects) is infinite isn't specified.

 

I agree that this is an absurd argument and a kind of reductio that fails to take into account that the phenomenon of the perception of time as one ages is a phenomenon of retrospective perception, looking behind, so to speak, not perception of time as it is lived in the moment. I mention the phenomenon only because of how it is based on the perception of similarities and I don't agree that there would be an infinite array of novel things that could keep a human mind active and engaged. One's ability to identify patterns would just get larger and larger. Oh, look, life is crawling up out of the ooze yet again. Yawn. We're entering into argumentative territory that cannot be known because there is no example of a human who has done this.

The idea of an extended life is appealing to me.

The idea of an infinite life is abhorrent to me. I would not want that.

This would actually be less appealing to me. Looking at the same faces across literal eternity? No. I am insufficiently gregarious or tolerant of people under perfectly mundane, mortal conditions. This is worse, not better.

Agreed in full. Some of the altered conditions proffered up-thread change the conditions to one of functional godhood, and that is also not a thing I would want, at all. No one so far has even touched the idea of the accountability that would come with that. No thanks.

Regardless, I feel like this train of conversation is not the one the OP was intending. To return to what feels like the intended spirit of the question... In a The Walking Dead scenarios, I would try hard to survive. The environment is unaffected (in fact it has a chance to heal now), so I can hunt and I can farm, and luckily zombies are of the slow variety in that scenario. The most I would be looking for in the way of a group dynamic would be a couple of good dogs. I understand the benefits to be had in a group rather than on my own, and I still choose the latter. I have the kind of personality that often smells like a leader to followers looking for one, but I am not a leader or a follower. I'm happy to take the "get out of the way" option. In a situation like The Road, where the environment is blasted and we're basically living on whatever we can find in cans, and one another, that would be something I would not want to live through. I'll be checking out.

 

I have a scenario for this in my WIP. There is the Eternum, The Eternals, including the Creator, Expressions of The Creator, including matter, space, and time. Any existence is an Expression of an Eternal through The Creator. Our universe is an expression with an expiration date. The rest is a spoilerrrrr.

 

For the record, I think this is a cool conversation that I would love to talk about in another thread which I just made right here. You raise a lot of interesting questions that would certainly help a lot of writers here to gain some perspective and insight on things that we don't usually think about everyday.

On topic, you say you would hunt and farm, do you know how to hunt or farm? Do you possess the knowledge and means to do it? Could you bring yourself to kill an animal, skin it and cook it? Could you bring yourself to harm or even murder another human being? We all say we would be able to do these things but I severely doubt it, we've lived a privileged life in our safe and secure countries that are protected by militaries and police forces. We've never had to stick our hands in the mud to drag out the filth that the people protect us have.

Could you say for yourself that you could stick your hands in the mud and drag out the filth yourself? I know I'd definitely hesitate to kill or harm a human being, in fact, I usually do. I live in a rough area of England where you have to typically deal with violent gangs and thugs, I've had to defend myself outnumbered by gangs who wielded pipe irons and I know the fight or flight response is unpredictable. It's a cruel world, most people wouldn't be able to react properly if suddenly thrust into a brutal dog eat dog world like the Walking Dead. I certainly try to avoid hurting people if I can, even if my life is on the line, I never want to go further. But in a world like that? You would have to, or they'd just get up and pull a knife to stab you with.

Maybe you give them a warning to fuck off your property, they just smile and walk away. Later on in the night they shoot you to death in your sleep after breaking into your house. It's a really difficult life and on top of that, you have to maintain crops? You have to hunt? A person alone would get crucified out there, that's why we see people gravitate towards groups in real life in conflicts. Nobody can survive on their own for that long, even if you're stocked up on ammunition.

 

I agree. Preps can be destroyed, confiscated or abandoned. Siege mentality is ludicrous. Mobility would be the better tactic. Collaboration and unity is best.
I've got plenty of guns-and-ammo. At least one of them will help me snuff-off!

 

Planet Of the Apes and the sequel, for sure :\

 

Other people have touched on this, but I would be most afraid of one where resources are damaged. Hordes of zombies, realistically can be fought, and that kind of thing I reckon would eventually be averted and society would recover. But some kind of nuclear wasteland? Get me a ticket on the nope train. Society could recover with sufficient unaffected areas so in all likelihood this wouldn't happen but total nuclear disaster would probably kill of all humanity. We would be replaced by smaller and more radiation tolerant life like naked mole rats and cockroaches.

 

I do possess this knowledge. Hunting more-so than farming.

Absolutely. I've done it. Gamefowl, small game, deer.

And some of us have been part of the very militaries you mention. I was, and I still regularly train with .45 and a .22 at the federal range in Bayamón. I've had the .45 for some time and only recently acquired the .22, and it was intended for my husband but, as you mention, not everyone is capable of using a firearm. For some, the idea of a gun, the knowledge that death is quite literally in the palm of your hand, is too just frightening, and a gun you cannot bring yourself to use is a gun that will be used against you. My hubby fired the .22 a couple of times and I saw it on his face before he said anything to me. It's not for him. He doesn't have the temperament. I don't have that issue. I've owned and used firearms for many years. The idea of using a gun on a human as a matter of self-defense is not an idea that stops me cold.

 

The worst ones I fear is complete and utter man made destruction. “Natural” disasters are for me easy to deal with. There is... almost a certain kind of elegance. But if humans just kill each other.... like for instant a nuclear war.. then it is just stupid. And humans especially in groups are stupid. It almost sad because it is the most likely and believable

 

You see, the military provides everything for you. It has an infrastructure, people transport food, ammunition, beds, clothes and hygienic products. Things that won't be provided for you in a world like the one we describe, how long before your bullets run out? Will you be able to hunt without a gun? Do you know how to craft a bow and arrow? You'll have to, do you even know how to use a bow? How long before your hygienic products run out? Animals can smell blood, people will definitely be able to smell your stink from miles away and track you down. What if you gain an infection somewhere? You might be able to ransack some pharmacies but you know everybody's going to be doing that as well, whatever is left for you will very likely not be enough to prevent septicemia from killing you.

It's great that you can use firearms but in a world where nobody is producing bullets anymore, it's going to become useless real quick. And remember, if you fire that thing, every raider that's looking to gang-rape and eat people, every zombie that's looking to eat brains and every animal that just wants food in the vicinity is going to know you're there and track you down. You'd have to make a hard choice since you're a woman and you're going to be likely malnourished at this point. You encounter a man who is going to be physically stronger than you, do you take your chance in physically fighting him or shooting him? Knowing that both choices have severe consequences that can both result in your death or much worse, end up a sex slave to a raider gang?

You see, having the willpower to shoot and end a life is great until you realize it can work against you badly. Being able to hunt and farm is great until you realize that you've got a bad infection in your leg from that scuffle with the zombie a few days ago and you have no medicine. People say they would be "mobile", they'd travel from city to city. People really have no clue how big the world is without a car, nobody is pumping fuel anymore and whatever is left won't be enough to make a 30 minute drive especially with obstacles in the way. The amount of calories you'd burn trying to travel from city to city would make you anorexic in a few months, what would be the plan then? Animals won't be as abundant as supermarket wares, you'd have to individually search for animals and there'll be days you won't find any, maybe even weeks. Ever considered what happens then? What if the meat you harvest is infected? Perhaps it's a really hot day and you ventured too far, so it had enough time to go bad? That's a month or two without food probably.

We think we have it all figured out until we're dropped into a world like that and we realize we're severely fucked. Groups will be the only way to survive, living alone will get you killed long before groups get killed. And as a woman, if you end up in a group of men? You're going to have some extremely difficult realities to face, they're going to expect things from you and if you refuse, they'll just rape you. You're going to be expected to bear children, you're going to be treated like a broodmare because of the simple fact that once guns go out of existence, you will bring no practical use to the table to a group of physically superior males in a dog eat dog world.

Honestly, it's really fucked up and I'm not sure if anybody has actually thought about it in depth properly.

 

Yes. I have thought about it, obsessed over it, since 2003. It's odd how more people will read about the end of civilization, than talk about it like they would really face it. I stare at it, all day. Well, a hundred or so pages of it, anyway. Happy to talk about it, anytime.

 

Okay, hold up a second... No one said it would be easy. No one. I simply said that in a world where the environment itself is fine, where it's not also my enemy, I would genuinely make an effort.

We're probably also looking at this from culturally and geographically distinct points of view. I don't live in the UK, Canada, or the mainland US. I live in Puerto Rico, a small island in the Caribbean. Farming here is a very different creature to what you're probably imagining in your head. Forget any and all grains. Forget those. They're off the table because they are an absolute faff in a post-pox-eclipse scenario. By dint of culture and climate, farming where I live is all about vianda. Vianda is a word in Caribbean Spanish that refers to starchy tubers - most of which you will likely never have heard of - and also many varieties of bananas and plantains. The tubers here are ñame, yautia, malanga, batata, and yuca. They produce all year long and store for long periods of time. I grow them on my property now, as we speak, all of them. Plantains and bananas make up the rest of the vianda, and for us, these are not just sweet snacks. We use green bananas and plantains as a cooked item. All of the aforementioned items grow with very little in the way of human intervention or support. And I haven't even mentioned the fecund amount of fruiting plants and trees that make up life in a tropical climate. When they are in season you can pick huge mangos as you walk down the sidewalk, and mangos are just one of a laundrylist of things that grow wild here.

This is the benefit of coming from a culture that has extreme poverty as part of its historical makeup. My culture is different from your culture. Our bubble is not quite as large and delicate and dependant on outside input as you perceive in your slice of life.

We survived the utter devastation of Hurricane Maria by doing things the old-school way because we still know how. Your original question is slightly less academic to me than it would be to most people because just a year ago we actually had to do a lot of these things. Not all of it. It wasn't a complete collapse into "who runs Barter Town?" But more than a few facets of what one would face in a genuine "fall" were dealt with here.

Also, I'm not a woman. I have a husband because I'm a gay dude, so I'm engaging your question as a man (looks in pants at Hispanically ample penis) Yes, defo a man. So, while the points you make concerning the pressures a woman may face in the pox-eclipse are certainly arguable, making a brood-mare of me is an exercise in futility.

I will concede that I'm kidding myself about going it alone. I'm in a very cynical mood right now given everything that's going on in the U.S. and I've got a very "everyone can merrily fuck right off" attitude at the moment. Yes, I will likely need to make myself part of and useful to a group. If I stay here, in my house, where I've got just shy of 4 acres of land, then I will likely be the one to collect and organize said group.

Is it going to be hard? Of course.

Is it going to suck the pucker out of a donkey's ass? You betcha.

Am I going to try anyway? YES!

 

Uhm..! Did you just assume his gender?!?! Also, I may be wrong, but I think @Wreybies was (is) military, so he's probably in a better position to fight or shoot than most of us.

 

I'm a 6'0 300 lbs power-lifter in real life, I have taken on and fought 3 - 4 men to a standstill leaving them with injuries while sustaining none myself. Being able to fight means nothing in a post-apocalyptic world where you are not provided with food, shelter, water and essentials. I would no longer have access to food and protein to maintain my size and strength and would become weak although still stronger than 90% of the population.

Today if we sustain an injury from a fight, no problem, we head to the hospital and get it fixed. In a post-apocalyptic world, you sustain an injury, even just a scratch and it means you die. This was extremely common in medieval times and was actually a fighting technique amongst knights to get a single cut on the opponent because they knew it would mean their death. You'll want to avoid physical fights every chance you get.

And again, nobody is mass producing bullets anymore and the people who know how to make bullets are likely dead plus don't have the resources to make anymore. Things become finite again and that means conservation. Conflict is something you want to run away from without question.

 

Apologies for getting your gender wrong, I thought you were a woman.

The only cultures that are actually prepared for a scenario like this are tribal cultures, they're the ones that can literally fight, live off the land and understand ancient medicine. Puerto-Rican culture, while life is quite tough over there is still nothing compared to an all out post-apocalyptic wasteland.

But I understand that you would still try and put an effort into surviving.