What would happen after the quiet apocalpyse?

[writeright1]

I've been thinking about what would still be operational.  While we still don't know the details, it's clear high tech is gone, but older technology would still exist.  Pre-computerized cars would work, so as long as you could get he batteries recharged, you could get them running again.  Vintage hand cranked ignition cars and trucks would suddenly be worth their weight in gold.  Older boat motors, motorcycles and snowmobiles would still be operational.  Steam trains would be pressed into service to reconnect cities once the tracks were repaired.  Once the governments began to reorganize, getting controls of older transportation would be a high priority.  They'd be raiding private collections and transportation museums.  WWII armored vehicles would become the backbone of the reconstituted government.  Planes from back to WWI would be pressed back into service in the crisis. 

Telegraphs and Morse code would become important tools of communication again.  Blacksmiths would find themselves in high demand as horses would become the immediate favored mode of transportation.

The governments would seize control of coal mines, timber and oil as there'd be a high priority on keeping the fuel flowing.  People raiding gas stations and abandoned vehicles for fuel would be rampant. 
 

Vancouver would have its hands full dealing with the refugees fleeing Alaska.

Actually, the apocalypse would still be pretty noisey. 

[Fuarian]

Well we know it's global and considering that it takes place in around 2019 (source: old model for cooking book said 2019 edition on it) so it can be assumed that some small technological advancements have been made. That's not good since everything is connected. Major cities would go down in a flash when the aurora hit and fires would be a big issue. Not to mention the ongoing economic situation and the ongoing winter (which is getting worse)

I'd say a lot of people died... long before any government organization could pull stuff together and start rebuilding anything... 

Oh and also, the aurora logic in this story doesn't make much sense. Doesn't matter if something isn't computerized or not. As long as it has something electrical (that has an impact on it's functionality) it won't work unless the aurora is active in the sky. 

 

[writeright1]

But if something that that much power, wouldn't it affect the human body and it's electrical impulses and strong enough electromagnetic fields can affect the brain as well.

[Mroz4k]

6 hours ago, writeright1 said:

But if something that that much power, wouldn't it affect the human body and it's electrical impulses and strong enough electromagnetic fields can affect the brain as well.

Heard that argument before, I dont think its true, really. But yes, some people theorized that this is why supposedly "people" started killing each other and became more hostile, same as wolves. 

Besides migranes, dont think there is much an EMP can do to people, certainly not enough to hurt them permanently. With that kind of level of EMP, life wouldnt be possible in the long term.

There are so many people alive these days that have no idea of survival skills, so you could expect typical doomsday scenarios. People in cities who wouldnt leave soon would start being more hostile towards each other, with looting and pillaging going on. Tribes would be formed over resources. Smarter people would migrate into the countryside and try to rather live off the land. People relient on electronics (like pacemakers) would die very soon after initial wave. Tribes would war together over thinning resources, as nothing would be produced anymore - and would likely try to expand their territory in search of new resources. Raids would be conducted on people, trying to live off the land in the countryside. Eventually, tribes would grow either into migrating violent groups, or armed established cities - basically combining the intial tribe congragating logic with the logic of people that moved to the country side to live off the land. This is where new infrastructure starts rising. Communities would either war together or hopefully, start working together - via trade and coalition pacts. The latter would eventually create grids that could go for hundred of kilometers, even without the use of cars - but old-school, on horseback and carriages. New trade routes would be established.

Alliances would become bigger, and eventually new goverments would be formed. The society would adapt to the new conditions of no electricity. My guess is, if the aurora gave sufficient power, then railroads with some type of altered trains would be used to transport goods on the trade routes using the power from aurora.

But yes, you could expect a total chaos and near wipe-out of the civilization just thanks to a loss of electricity. Shows how relient we are on it nowadays, doesnt it. The most likely survivors would be the people with sufficient skills, experience and knowledge to live without the electricity.

[KinoUnko]

6 hours ago, writeright1 said:

But if something that that much power, wouldn't it affect the human body and it's electrical impulses and strong enough electromagnetic fields can affect the brain as well.

People get popped into MRI machines all the time. They're fine so long as they don't have metal/electronic bits on their body. MRI machines have magnetic field far far stronger than geomagnetic storms, many orders of magnitude stronger.

TLD takes place on an isolated island, the population has been leaving long before the Flare event. The Flare shut down all transportation and communication with anywhere else. In a large city life would probably be as you imagined, lots of chaos and noise, and lots of people dying.

[Fuarian]

11 hours ago, Mroz4k said:

Heard that argument before, I dont think its true, really. But yes, some people theorized that this is why supposedly "people" started killing each other and became more hostile, same as wolves. 

Besides migranes, dont think there is much an EMP can do to people, certainly not enough to hurt them permanently. With that kind of level of EMP, life wouldnt be possible in the long term.

There are so many people alive these days that have no idea of survival skills, so you could expect typical doomsday scenarios. People in cities who wouldnt leave soon would start being more hostile towards each other, with looting and pillaging going on. Tribes would be formed over resources. Smarter people would migrate into the countryside and try to rather live off the land. People relient on electronics (like pacemakers) would die very soon after initial wave. Tribes would war together over thinning resources, as nothing would be produced anymore - and would likely try to expand their territory in search of new resources. Raids would be conducted on people, trying to live off the land in the countryside. Eventually, tribes would grow either into migrating violent groups, or armed established cities - basically combining the intial tribe congragating logic with the logic of people that moved to the country side to live off the land. This is where new infrastructure starts rising. Communities would either war together or hopefully, start working together - via trade and coalition pacts. The latter would eventually create grids that could go for hundred of kilometers, even without the use of cars - but old-school, on horseback and carriages. New trade routes would be established.

Alliances would become bigger, and eventually new goverments would be formed. The society would adapt to the new conditions of no electricity. My guess is, if the aurora gave sufficient power, then railroads with some type of altered trains would be used to transport goods on the trade routes using the power from aurora.

But yes, you could expect a total chaos and near wipe-out of the civilization just thanks to a loss of electricity. Shows how relient we are on it nowadays, doesnt it. The most likely survivors would be the people with sufficient skills, experience and knowledge to live without the electricity.

But consider the ongoing economic crisis (or recession from it) and how that affected modern society, production of food and medicine etc... And the fact that the aurora can cause fires (in a city that can be disastrous). It can also cause cars to crash, planes to plummet from the sky and other things that can cause major devastation and death in major urban areas. Then the winter goes nuts and people get cold and die of hypothermia (the NA Ice Storm of '98 caused a lot of deaths by the cold where I live, but there was aid centres, in a situation like this that would be nearly impossible). The military and government would be of barely any help since there's no communications, no transport, nothing. 

Long story short; people would die fast, widespread looting would occur and there'd be chaos. BUT I don't think that groups of people will rise up and start taking things back quickly. I think it would take a good while before that starts happening. Maybe by the time spring rolls around and it gets warmer. But most people would probably rather stay south.

[omoon66]

21 hours ago, Fuarian said:

Oh and also, the aurora logic in this story doesn't make much sense. Doesn't matter if something isn't computerized or not. As long as it has something electrical (that has an impact on it's functionality) it won't work unless the aurora is active in the sky. 

 

It doesn’t really have to, since this is a fictional story

[Fuarian]

15 minutes ago, omoon66 said:

It doesn’t really have to, since this is a fictional story

That's what I'm saying...

[omoon66]

2 minutes ago, Fuarian said:

That's what I'm saying...

Ooooh, I see what you’re saying. I thought you meant it as a criticizing way. Sorry 

[Mpat120]

Right after the Event? Bad, lots of bad. Lack of services, in cities in particular, will cause basically barbarism in short order. Those out in "the sticks" or raised there before the age of the cell phone will fare better, they are used to electric, water ect not working and many can/do hunt and farm.

Those of us that remember old skill sets no longer in common use, Blacksmiths, people that can run steam/water/wind powered equipment would be very useful. Life would move on, society would rebuild after a period of time.

(speaking as a person that grew up in the "sticks" and was raised by family that lived through the Great Depression)

[Boston123]

Per the game's lore, anything involving electricity is out, even simple stuff like flashlights.

1) Its probably not gonna be as violent as people think it will be.

People have an amazing tendency to band together and work together when the going gets tough. People won't instantly turn into rampaging barbarians, looting and burning, the second the lights go out. Instead, they will band together, in family-groups and neighborhoods, to work together to survive. Yes, this likely means at the expense of other groups, but it wouldn't be the anarchistic free-for-all survivalists espouse.

Neotribalism, basically.

2) More people will die from disease and lack of resources than violence over the same.

Without power, pretty much all of the amenities of modern life become inaccessible. You can't treat drinking water, much less pump it. You can't move food to a city, much less grow it without petrochemical fertilizers. You can't have heat, even with an oil heater (not even touching the fact that oil will run out), without electricity. So, what will people do?

Move to the country.

Contrary to what some people here may think, just because you live in the country doesn't mean you are able to completely divorce yourself from modern amenities and services.  And that is before hundreds of thousands of squatters start moving into your land.

Overwhelmingly most people are probably going to die from disease pretty quickly, especially the communicable diseases (influenza, pertussis, that sort of thing) or diseases like infection, diarrhea (from bad water), food poisoning (from bad food), etc, , even more so since being cold, being hungry, being thirsty, being tired, and being stressed out often leads to a depressed immune system.

Once people start dying, it will just snowball, since the removal of corpses will be difficult at best, and sickness breeds sickness.

3) Technology and learning will take a nosedive.

Modern technology is based at the end of a looooooonnnnnnnnggggggi logistical train, much of which is unsustainable in the face of a lack of intercontinental or even regional trade. Anything that doesn't come from within 20 or so miles of your location might as well be on the moon for all you can access it (at least until trade gets started back up, which could be a while depending on how much of the population survives and how spread out they are), and therefore you will have to 'down-tech', that is, make use of materials that come from local sources, and technology you can make yourself.

I expect clothing made from textiles to basically disappear for a little while, as people would have to relearn how to spin and weave cloth from nettles, cattail and the like. As soon as all the bullets are fired, people will go back to using bows and spears. As soon as synthesized medicine is gone, people will revert to herbal remedies, which tend to be much less effective. Expect more people to die from infections, as well as anyone with a chronic disease (like diabetes) to die off pretty quickly. Sad, but true.

Modern society is very specialized, to the point where many people would have difficulty making their own clothing or finding their own food. Therefore, society will have to learn how to do these things again, which is difficult even when you are warm and not dying of starvation or disease. Preindustrial agriculture is very difficult, and very time consuming, and in preindustrial societies, roughly 9/10 people were engaged in agriculture of some sort. That doesn't leave a lot of time for other stuff, like hunting, much less teaching your children how to read. Literacy will probably take a nosedive. Same thing with technical knowledge, especially since overwhelmingly most of it will be useless for the immediate future.

So on and so forth.

[cekivi]

@Boston123: That's a very reasonable scenario. Tribalism and diseases would be the two most likely outcomes of a technological breakdown. In the end though it all comes down to how badly tech has been impacted. If it's everything (e.g. analog engines) than it will be a very long and painful drop. If it's just the electrical grid... it would be super bad but provided enough skilled people can survive the weeks it would take to settle down things can be rebuilt eventually (eventually in this case will be years). While tech may be inoperable it won't be completely gone either. It will still be there (in the form of artefacts, books, and technical manuals) for a future literate populate to rediscover. 

In the end, it will come down to the details of what the aurora actually did and what the ongoing effects will be.   

[Boston123]

I am presenting this scenario as it is in-game, where even stuff like simple flashlights wont work without the aurora overhead.

For an example, i turn to the archtypical "societal collapse" in the western world: the fall of the western roman empire.

People like to think that the WRE collapsed in an orgy of blood and burning, but the reality of the situation is more "say goodbye to the old boss, say hello to the new boss."

The Late Empire had high taxes to combat various economic woes, meaning the urban middle class and poor both couldnt afford to make and/or purchase finished goods. That, coupled with the decay of urban infrastructure (sewers, water, food) and logistics, lead to a decline of urban populations. The middle class migrated to the countryside, becoming farmers in order to feed themselves.  As stated before, preindustrial agriculture takes a lot of effort and a lot of time, and that, coupled with a lack of available resources -and- lack of a need, led to a decrease in literacy.

Now, dont get me wrong: literacy is great, but it isnt -necessary- for survival, especially in an environment where you dont have the luxury of time or spare hands. Even if The Long Dark lasts less than a generation (meaning electricity could hypothetically be used), lack of resources comes into play. Fuels and oils and lubricants degrade with time, so unless you can replace them (unlikely) , the machines are little more than conversation pieces. Not to mention that the machines would be a glut of resources in and of themselves: forgable metal especially.

[cullam]

A quick note of the effect of the disaster on humans directly (rather than our societies and infrastructure): 

Presumably, the incident is the soon upcoming event of the earth's magnetic poles reversing. This is something that happens about every million years or so, but the frequency is pretty variable. Currently, most researchers in the field agree that we're right on the edge of another switch, due to the huge acceleration of the movement of the poles (up to 10s of kms per year!). And by "right on the edge of it", they mean in geological time scales. So should be somewhere in the next 10,000 years or so. 

So, for the most part, the pole flip (which comes with a few thousand years of the earth's magnetic field still being in flux, with multiple sets of mini polls appearing and disappearing around the globe) doesn't seem to have a huge effect on life on earth, as previous flips have not been accompanied by major die offs. There is less shielding from solar radiation, so sun burns would be more of an issue. And it can mess with some species migration instincts, as magnetic sense of direction goes out the window. 

Of course, now we rely on electrical grids and compasses for EVERYTHING, so... yeah, we'd be screwed. 

[cekivi]

On ‎2017‎-‎12‎-‎14 at 1:27 PM, cullam said:

Of course, now we rely on electrical grids and compasses for EVERYTHING, so... yeah, we'd be screwed. 

Again, it depends. Pole reversal is a known thing. Precautions can be taken to prepare for the event. 

[Boston123]

These tropes would by-and-large apply

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScavengerWorld

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ApocalypticLogistics