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nev

@chu I am amazed, like…does this person not know how people elsewhere in the world, or even elsewhere in Canada, live? Or how people have lived in the past?

Limited or no access to running water, rolling blackouts or only intermittently available electricity, no broadband and limited mobile coverage, can't just order things from anywhere in the world, etc.

I think a lot about ancient history and what "civilization" means (with all those very loaded connotations) and what it means for a "civilization" to "collapse". ("Rapid decentralization" might be more accurate.)

6 comments
Mer-fOKxTOwl

@nev @chu

No water to flush the toilets is one of the worst things that comes in the whole chain of infrastructure collapse, if it comes to this there will be so many cholera outbreaks.

Killick

@glowl @nev @chu
I think more people should read science fiction. Asking 'what if' is a big part of the world-building that provides the settings. The hoarding and panic buying of toilet paper at the start of the pandemic ought to have sparked at least an inkling in people's heads about what could be in our future. Imagine if you could no longer by paper products.

DSJezebell

@nev @chu @glowl and that is the number one killer of people in disaster zones and in places w/out infrastructure to clean the water.

Chris Martin

@glowl @nev @chu Rather than accept sudden collapse as inevitable, it's past time to start preparing for gradual deindustrialization and get familiar with composting toilets. Just because we're going to lose a lot of modern things doesn't mean everything just reverts back to all the same state of a few hundred years ago.

Lightning Bjornsson
@chris__martin @glowl @nev @chu for one, we no longer have the predictable, cold climate of 250y ago.
Mer-fOKxTOwl

@chris__martin @nev @chu yeah, definitely this :)
have written "if it comes to this there would be" exactly because of what you wrote.
i think we are able to avert the worst, but for big cities there are just to many people without knowledge and no interest in learning (right now) at least the basics about how to use a compost toilet or similar things. so there probably would be at least one outbreak in the beginning until people take "how to shit compost" lessons.

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