Post apocalyptic politics and government.

[carlton43]

Sept 2, 2015 20:36:43 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Relevant to anywhere beyond the western Highlands? There are good economic reasons why north-west Scotland has never been the centre of any major British polity and why even in the event of the collapse of modern civilisation political power would be concentrated more round the Thames than round Cape Wrath.

I concede that the fringes are just that, but to each they are as relevant as any other part of your 'polity'. As a straggly mainland with many islands, there are many such communities. You southern urbanites are not more relevant you are just more numerous. Cape Wrath is not a hospitable area because of poor soil and extreme weather conditions, but many parts of the extensive Scottish west coast have desirable micro climates and rich soils  that led to many of the very earliest communities and the birth of a wonderfully rich civilization when the Lower Thames was a swampy ague ridden deathtrap. You must also consider the nature of the particular breakdown (asteroid, nuclear device, dread disease or prolonged civil commotion) and what that disaster leaves for you to play with. Here in the West Highlands with a prevailing west wind coming from the very north of Canada and even Russia is unpolluted and likely to be so in most events. The proximity of the Lower Thames to the Continent may not be an advantage in these new conditions but indeed more of a threat. The pull and false 'centrality' of London may not survive the dire event. We may see the new civilization developing in much the same manner as the first civilization did, in the same places, and for the same reasons.  

[manchesterman]

The "government" could make a great play of the massive cutting jobless figures, NHS waiting lists, crime figures etc etc etc

[finsobruce]

Sept 2, 2015 10:30:56 GMT East Anglian Lefty said:

Sept 1, 2015 21:56:11 GMT carlton43 said:

Depends on the nature, complexity and severity of the event. Urban communities would be less resilient with fewer useful skills in the hunting, skinning, making do vein. Also they would have less land and less kit. Their food would run out quicker and they would be far more likely to predate each other rather than co-operate. If it was a very serious event I think we would quickly revert to local tribalism with a strong man in charge and a short way with outsiders/immigrants! The monarchy would seem completely irrelevant instead of just mainly irrelevant. Puts a premium on stocking up now, acquiring arms and ammunition, derv, and generators. I am well sited in the Highlands.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. Any apocalypse meriting the name is going to knock out transport connections and infrastructure, and without easy access to motor transport most rural communities are isolated and not tremendously self-sufficient - there aren't many village shops left and those get resupplied from urban depots anyway; most people do not grow their own food; hunting is very much the minority part of 'hunting and gathering', but even there only a minority of the rural population has access to firearms and cartridges would probably be expended within a couple of months anyway; I presume the electricity would be gone and modern rural housing rarely has cellars, so storage would be a problem too. Arable farms would be OK, but nucleated villages would probably be some of the least sustainable communities.

On the flip side, urban areas would have the advantage of better opportunities for scavenging from shops and particularly warehouses. Skinning is not difficult to learn and it's probably easier to find somebody who can teach butchery in a city. Co-operation would be necessary after the first few weeks and whilst there might be some predation, that's not a problem as a survival strategy if you've got a clear idea of an in group and an out group. Estates with a rough reputation and certain minority communities might actually do particularly well due to a tendency to identify together. The inner city would have limited appeal once the looting stopped, but areas on the edge of cities would have more land to put under the plough. The most successful areas would probably be on the edge of greenbelts and in close proximity to major supermarket depots - I suspect within a few generations there'd be a notable population concentration round motorway junctions, because it'd take a while to run down stockpiles of tinned goods.

Strongman politics is probably the likeliest outcome, but it wouldn't be hostile to outsiders. Without petrol or electricity, mechanisation is dead, and that means you need a lot of agricultural labour. Said labour might not be treated well, but it wouldn't be smart to turn it away.

That reminds me a bit more of "Survivors".

[Arthur Figgis]

More like a Green Party wet dream.

[carlton43]

Sept 2, 2015 23:11:57 GMT manchesterman said:

The "government" could make a great play of the massive cutting jobless figures, NHS waiting lists, crime figures etc etc etc

The actual joy would be in having a politics quite shorne of all that sort of blather. People would be concerned with pragmatic reality and drop all the abstract nonsense out of their lives. Having done so there would be virtually no need for an EAL-style polity of any sort and no need at all for the EALs of the world.  Deep joy!

[manchesterman]

Deep joy in the manifold indeedably!

[carlton43]

Sept 2, 2015 23:37:33 GMT manchesterman said:

Deep joy in the manifold indeedably!

With that remark you tar yourself as an oldie and you unwin the best thread of the week.

[manchesterman]

Depends if 51 is an oldie or not

[finsobruce]

Sept 2, 2015 23:43:21 GMT manchesterman said:

Depends if 51 is an oldie or not

See my Victor Hugo quote for help in this matter....

[finsobruce]

Sept 2, 2015 23:41:48 GMT carlton43 said:

Sept 2, 2015 23:37:33 GMT manchesterman said:

Deep joy in the manifold indeedably!

With that remark you tar yourself as an oldie and you unwin the best thread of the week.

[carlton43]

Sept 2, 2015 23:50:10 GMT finsobruce said:

Sept 2, 2015 23:41:48 GMT carlton43 said:

With that remark you tar yourself as an oldie and you unwin the best thread of the week.

It was really easy to make a living then as a poor actor or poor comic. Where do you get these from with such instant facility?

[Deleted]

Sept 2, 2015 23:50:10 GMT finsobruce said:

Sept 2, 2015 23:41:48 GMT carlton43 said:

With that remark you tar yourself as an oldie and you unwin the best thread of the week.

Well I am 41 and I remember him.

So 41 is officially old

[finsobruce]

Sept 3, 2015 0:05:23 GMT carlton43 said:

Sept 2, 2015 23:50:10 GMT finsobruce said:

It was really easy to make a living then as a poor actor or poor comic. Where do you get these from with such instant facility?

The good offices of youtube , Carlton.

The first thing I think of with Stanley Unwin is his collaboration with the Small Faces and there it was.

[Deleted]

I guess it all depends on how serious the event is. In 28 weeks later it shows american troops in the UK repatrioting UK citizens. Would the US if doing the same, try to lay claim to the UK? Or would they try to rebuild British infrastructure and government?

I have always toyed with being a prepper. and I guess it is always the sensible side of our lass which stops me from doing this, I guess much like being a hoarder or any other sort of addictive personality trait.

Then our lass, (and it always saddens me to hear it when she says it) does say "If anything was to happen she would want to kill herself rather than try and live thru it."

(I guess that there is a poll in the making their for the board "At what point would you want to kill yourself if ever in the face of a apocalyptic event?)

Now that is the major difference between me and my lass, even though I have many a time been low enough to contemplate suicide. My noseyness and desire to see the future much out weighs those feelings. I wish to see the year 2100, I want to see the result of the next election and then the next and the next. Each part of the future is a milestone to reach and to see the outcome of.

So if the apocalypse was to happen, as the programme says, the revolution will be televised. Much as I guess the end of the world / cultural changing moment will be.

I will be there watching it, with my solar panel / wind turbine trying to generate enough power to keep the telly going.

But still, what will create the apocalypse? What would be enough to bring society to it's knees?

I think the London riots were a pre cursor of how society reacts to a situation. People looted who would never dream of doing so. Why? Because they could.

Today there seems to be an invisible thread, written but unwritten codes of conduct. Thou shalt not hit my neighbour because he annoys me. Yet people still do knowing their is law enforcement, imagine that their is no law enforcement. Only the fear of what your neighbour will do in response. My family is more important than yours and I hated the neighbours anyway and they potentially have food i want. it is a win win, I get to bash them up and get their food.

So when people are saying which type of society will do best country or towns folks? I would say country folk to begin with.

They have by design the best chance of surviving due to the way of life they already live under, a need to be self sufficient, well stocked larders, secondary and third ways of generating heat and power. (We are not talking about the newly built escapes more of your old style farm houses and the like)

That is why as someone who has been interested in prepping myself, I have wanted to go off and be self sufficient now whilst you don't have to be, so you are prepared for what ever may or may not happen in the future.

Someone mentioned that town and urban areas would do best as of the proximity to food and the collective wisdom of the group will help.

I am guessing if the apocalyptic event was disease or Zombies your close proximity to other people would be your downfall much like children at school catching a bug and then bringing it home to the parents who then go to an office and then share it.

If the downfall is natural disaster, in the UK more likely to be weather related, then depending on length or seriousness of weather / natural event. It would or could wipe us out anyway. Minus 18 for a year with six foot of snow would take everyone out apart from someone with a bunker or years supplies of tinned goods anyway.

Meteor strike, would wipe out impact zone, of anything up to a 1,000 miles depending on size of rock. Then create dust cloud which would block out the sun for years. Everyone dies. or I guess No Overall Control

But how does it begin?

The poisoned tipped umbrella? The killing of a person who may or may not have had a gun? A rotton ham burger (I enjoyed ZombieLand)

Obviously if government does know something of an impending apocalyptic event. Do they tell us? If they were to, would that just cause more panic and looting, so ignorance is bliss.

I don't understand looting either. I am about to die, I am potentially going to be without means of supporting life. I know, I will go and steal a 50 inch telly. that will help things.
It doesn't even serve as a good base for a fire to stack wood on, the fumes from the telly as it burned would kill you. Maybe they are like me, and want to watch the end of the world in style. well I have no need for stealing I prepped and I already have the 50 inch telly.

But back on track. What will start essentially the descent into chaos? Now everyone is happy as long as their needs are met basically. Once what they have or want or perceive to want is not there they complain. If they then get withdrawal symptoms from not having what they want/perceive to need/want then they lash out and take from someone else that item or another item in the hope that, that will subdue the withdrawal symptoms.

Ever been to a gathering and the buffet table is open and everyone rushes up. Best idea is to put on as small a plate as possible. Reason being a majority of people will fill the plate, much as they do shopping trolleys, (thats why they make them as big as you can comfortably push them) take it back to their tables and then pick at a few things and leave the rest. People are like foxes kill everything but just take one, rather than just take the one they need and come back for the rest another day.

People will kill for items they don't even need. So this is why I can't imagine towns and cities doing well.

Yes, once the killing and mayhem has subsided. (It will be interesting how inventive people will be when it comes to killing as unlike America we don't have a ready supply of weaponery)

Then the groups led by the strongest will go out to the countryside and scavenge, believing that as they are alone they will be more vulnerable and easier to pick off, much like crime is rising now in the countryside as policing is thinly spread.

All in All it is shame that the synopsis didn't have a happy ending. We got over what happened, But then again that is what we did thru evolution, dinosaurs wiped out. I wonder if Dinosaurs had the internet they were debating what would happen if there was an apocalyptic event?

[carlton43]

Sept 3, 2015 7:10:05 GMT finsobruce said:

Sept 3, 2015 0:05:23 GMT carlton43 said:

It was really easy to make a living then as a poor actor or poor comic. Where do you get these from with such instant facility?

The good offices of youtube , Carlton.

The first thing I think of with Stanley Unwin is his collaboration with the Small Faces and there it was.

Well thanks. I am more computer savvy than most of my age group but have little facility other than the blindingly obvious. I had no knowledge of his collaboration with anyone. His was a strange and very very narrow niche of humour. Even at the time I wondered how he could sustain work as what was virtually a quarter of a trick pony? He was one of many people I and some friends termed 'BBC Pensioners', a form of licensed 'fool' of little talent that they persisted in using. Cyril Flether was another. Today there are exemplars in Count Arthur Strong and Johnny Vegas, being people who combine complete lack of any talent with no comic ability of any sort. 

[john07]

I do recall Stanley Unwin being introduced on a TV programme as an expert on a particular subject. My father had just come back from the pub and certainly a few too many. He listened to Unwin and said that he was dodging the question. He hadn't answered on point and he is supposed to be an expert. My mother and I fell about laughing at this point.

I did meet someone who had a remarkable likeness to Stanley Unwin and who talked about as much sense. I was working on a Insurance company construction project in Kendal in the late 1960s. He was the electrical engineer from the consultants Steensen, Varming, Mulcahy (now SVM). All of John Laing's staff on the site used to refer to him as Stanley Unwin. There had been a few strikes and the insurance company decided to install a back-up generator so Stanley Unwin was asked to draw up a specification.

A ground floor plant room was located to accommodate the generator. The problem was that it had nothing like the capacity to operate the building fully. There was a big ceremony planned for the unveiling of the generator with all the bigwigs from the insurance company invited. They duly powered down the mains and fired up the generator. The party were led from room to room switching on the lights as they went through. Unbeknown to them Stanley was following them around switching the lights off to avoid a brown out.

[Deleted]

I shall offer myself up for sunday dinner.

[East Anglian Lefty]

You won't like the fact I'm going to dissect this sentence by sentence, but there's a lot I disagree with here and in any case when dealing with hypotheticals you have to get down into the pedantic weeds, so indulge me for a second.

I concede that the fringes are just that, but to each they are as relevant as any other part of your 'polity'. As a straggly mainland with many islands, there are many such communities.

They're relevant to the people who live in them, but politics is about power and remote powerlessness doesn't signify on a politics forum. In a way I'm a bit surprised by your attitude here given your animus towards parish councils et al.

You southern urbanites are not more relevant you are just more numerous.

In the event of an apocalypse, the numerical imbalance might be considerably redressed. But that imbalance has always been there, even in the pre-modern era (and that ratio probably can't be obtained again, given the past three centuries of ecology and animal husbandry in northern Scotland) and even with equal population the resource advantage of southern areas would still be relevant.

Cape Wrath is not a hospitable area because of poor soil and extreme weather conditions, but many parts of the extensive Scottish west coast have desirable micro climates and rich soils  that led to many of the very earliest communities and the birth of a wonderfully rich civilization when the Lower Thames was a swampy ague ridden deathtrap.

Not sure which civilisation you're referring to (the brochs aren't all that impressive in a late neolithic context), and the Thames has never been that swampy at any point since the Channel appeared. In any case, whilst bits of the west coast are fertile, that basically puts them on a level with southern England. And there's a decent bit of southern England that's remote from major urban areas.

You must also consider the nature of the particular breakdown (asteroid, nuclear device, dread disease or prolonged civil commotion) and what that disaster leaves for you to play with. Here in the West Highlands with a prevailing west wind coming from the very north of Canada and even Russia is unpolluted and likely to be so in most events. The proximity of the Lower Thames to the Continent may not be an advantage in these new conditions but indeed more of a threat.

Huge volcanoes pollute the entire atmosphere and asteroids certainly would. In those catastrophes I think it'd take centuries to get back to a situation where civilisation is even a meaningful concept. A large nuclear exchange might well have the same effect, but even if not then you've got to accept that Faslane would be a target, and that's more than enough to give the western Highlands a decent dose (and particularly the better soils, which are generally further south.) Mind you, in the event of a mass exchange (and a small exchange is hardly likely, obviously) I think the new centres would mostly be determined by which warheads fail/are shot down, rather than by geography or ecology.

The pull and false 'centrality' of London may not survive the dire event. We may see the new civilization developing in much the same manner as the first civilization did, in the same places, and for the same reasons.  

The centrality of London would surely be gone, because that would be a target of any attack. But there is a reason why southern England and particularly that bit of southern England got to be dominant and if it was inhabitable those factors would probably continue to apply. Waterborne commerce is probably going to take a hit, but agricultural yields and decent infrastructure will still matter, and southern England has most of the UK's best soil, the flattest terrain and the best roads (assuming those survive, of course.) Society would not rebuild exactly as it is now, but there are systemic factors that led to the system and it's hard to believe that anything that we'd recognise as a society (a purely hunter-gatherer outfit surely doesn't meet those criteria) wouldn't conform to at least some of those factors.

[Crimson King]

Isn't it said that the Black Death was responsible for a lot of social progress by wiping out a significant portion of the workforce and making labour a rarer and more valuble asset

[neilm]

Sept 4, 2015 11:50:12 GMT Crimson King said:

Isn't it said that the Black Death was responsible for a lot of social progress by wiping out a significant portion of the workforce and making labour a rarer and more valuble asset

Yes, there is significant evidence that this is the case. It's also got some sort of link to inflation, but I can't remember what of the top of my head.