Recently, I have been thinking a lot about the collapse of civilization and the end of the world as we know it. A quick google leads to an ocean of facts and figures about climate change, peak oil, survivalism etc. It can easily get quite overwhelming. None really get to the heart of what life will be like without electricity, cars, and the more frivolous aspects of civilization. In film, Barry Hines’s Threads gives a chilling glimpse of the effect of a nuclear winter and the Mad Max films show what life might be like without oil. But I haven’t read any books — at least not since Z for Zachariah when I was a child — that really made the end of the world a visceral reality. Until now.
Yesterday I found myself engrossed in Cormac McCarthy’s terrifying book The Road, about a world that is almost dead. Marauding gangs trailing chained catamites search for food amidst the ruins, whilst a boy and his father try to do the same while retaining a level of dignity.
The question I ask myself is: could I do it? The hero’s wife killed herself when she could no longer take the desolate lifestyle. Would I be like her or would I try to survive? Would I know when to keep my head down or would I find myself locked in a basement having my limbs slowly consumed by a desperate family.
The beauty of the book is how slight are the glimpses into the possibilities that exist in this world. Sometimes things seen out of the corner of the eye are more horrible than those you face head on. I try to imagine what life would be like were the meteroites or the bombs to drop on Britain and the nuclear winter were to destroy the biosphere. What good would it be to live in a block of flats? you’d have to move out of the city with its fearsome gangs of Neds and go out to the hills. Apparently the medieval castle is the best form of defence, which makes sense as that was the last time there were marauding bands in the area.
What Threads captured so well was the extent to which order would do its best to carry on officiously despite the grim inevitability of its doom. How long would the Prime Minister or the Queen be kept safe? These are questions that I would love to see answered, though prefereably not with a full-scale civilizational collapse.
Of course, you are reading these words on a medium that is guaranteed to disappear when the blackouts come. What good is the internet without electricity? What will remain at all of our civilization? We have produced so much but there is so little worth keeping.
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