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2005-11-18 - 2:05 p.m.

Knights on the beach.

Ok not really, I don�t know who these guys are, but I�m digging the foot high crucifix attached to a gold logging chain on that one dude. Coming soon to an event near you.


Freezing here. I realized last night that I am pretty much squatting in my own house. It�s pretty rugged here, I�d be better off in a shelter somewhere.

I was talking to my wife a bit ago about the end of the world. Not a really philosophical conversation, but more about the idea that we can�t make 90% of the things that we use anymore.

150 years ago, there were very few things in the world that you could not make with your own two hands and some acquired skill. If civilization were to come to a sudden end over 70% of the people wouldn�t even know, they would just keep on living on their farms like they always did.

Power failure? Who cares.

Nothing that anybody needed ran on electricity. There was some heavy industry, but that industry, and the products of that industry ran on steam.

If you needed it, someone near you could make it, but most likely you could make it yourself.

The things that we use every day, and that our modern civilization depends on, cannot be made with our own hands. A machine made this computer that I�m typing on,, and that machine was made by another. Obviously if you go far enough back a human had to put that first machine together, but we are far removed from that process now.

The processor that runs this computer can only be made by a machine. A person, no matter how skilled, could not make it from scratch.

Most of the modern appliances we use today, at some point were made by hand. I have an old tube radio that was obviously soldered together, and the screws installed, by hand. We were able to do these things at one point. My question is, can we still do it if we had to?

I�m sure there are people out there who could build a radio from scratch, but there can�t be that many of them. When we started making armor in the SCA it was very nearly a lost art, and it has taken some time before we started producing very high quality armor, and that with the benefit of modern steel and methods.
Anyway, just something to think about on a cold November morning. If the modern world ended tomorrow, how well would you survive?


Justus


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