Comments on: The End of the World: Planning Ahead http://scienceinmyfiction.com/2011/03/14/the-end-of-the-world-planning-ahead/ "I like a little science in my fiction" Tue, 21 May 2013 23:17:01 -0400 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Phiala - Sarah Goslee http://scienceinmyfiction.com/2011/03/14/the-end-of-the-world-planning-ahead/comment-page-1/#comment-11632 Phiala - Sarah Goslee Tue, 22 Mar 2011 17:02:03 +0000 http://scienceinmyfiction.com/?p=2007#comment-11632 I can raise food, preserve food, identify over a thousand species of plants and have a good idea of which are edible and/or medicinal, spin fiber into yarn and weave it into cloth, and so on.

Being a professional botanist, a medieval recreationist and a devoted craftswoman means I have quite a few useful skills and plenty of equipment. I wouldn’t want to have to practice any of them on a survival basis, but it does make planning for the Zombie Contingency more interesting. I live in a good area for anticipating survival, unlike Kay, and it’s fun to develop plans.

]]> By: Mike http://scienceinmyfiction.com/2011/03/14/the-end-of-the-world-planning-ahead/comment-page-1/#comment-11535 Mike Wed, 16 Mar 2011 12:27:46 +0000 http://scienceinmyfiction.com/?p=2007#comment-11535 In a survival situation you can’t count on your mind to pull you through, there will be so much adrenaline and emotion running through you the right decisions will not be made. Muscle memory, actions done automatically with no dedicated thought, are what will, in a clinch moment, pull you through. Take for example a complex attack I survived in Afghanistan. I was sound asleep in my bed, the incoming alarm went off, before I was even mentally alert I had my body armor and boots on, weapons in hand, and I was yelling incoming. The first rounds hit my building, blowing out the wall to my room. If I had to think about what I was doing at the time, I probably wouldn’t be writing this now.
The ensuing fire fight further demonstrated the need for muscle memory. Without even thinking, drawing entirely from training rehearsed countless time, and in complete darkness every man who had to scramble to a fighting position was able to mount, prepare, load, and charge an M2 machine gun to provide accurate fires on hostile targets. This is no easy task considering the amount skill it takes to put the barrel of an M2 on. Once again, anyone had had to stop and think about what they where doing, they’d have been killed.
Muscle memory should be counted as one of the greatest tools in the survivalists arsenal. Split second action could have saved countless B-movie action hero rejects!

]]> By: Kay Holt http://scienceinmyfiction.com/2011/03/14/the-end-of-the-world-planning-ahead/comment-page-1/#comment-11481 Kay Holt Mon, 14 Mar 2011 14:15:39 +0000 http://scienceinmyfiction.com/?p=2007#comment-11481 Given how close I live to the sea, and how close I live to a nuclear plant, and how far I live from rural areas… I’m a ststistical casualty, depending on the type of apocalypse imagined.

However, if we take location out of the equation (even though ‘location is everything’), I am personally well-suited to dealing with disaster. I’ve been in crisis situations before, so I have practice keeping calm under pressure. I know first aid and CPR, so people around me have a good reason to keep me around, ha. And I’m a good shot.

But one thing most of us speculators forget about is how little of disaster survival is determined by self-reliance. The present situation in Japan should inform our future plans and our future fiction: Because the Japanese prepare for disasters together, as communities and as a society, individual survival in Japan is far likelier than it would be in places where everyone is left to their own devices and where ‘every man for himself’ is touted like wisdom.

In short, the best resources we have in a disaster scenario are human resources.

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