Practical skills still relevant
St. Cloud (MN) Times5/2/2012
Each spring, as tornado season approaches, we are reminded to prepare for possible power outages and to have supplies on hand in case disaster strikes. With care and foresight most of us will be prepared to ride out a major storm and even to survive without power, food or water for a few days after should the unthinkable happen. But how prepared are we for a longer or more widespread disaster?
Many writers are exploring these questions in fiction, as in Max Brooks’ best-selling novel “World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War,” soon to be a major film starring Brad Pitt. The zombie-fighting genre is popular precisely because it asks its fans: Are you prepared not only to deal with the loss of daily conveniences, but the core necessities that make life possible?
Preparing for a fictional zombie apocalypse might seem like a ridiculous thing to consider, but consider the challenges: Survivors would need access to food, fuel, shelter, a group of friends large enough to provide for themselves, and a means of defense.
The problem is that few of us are prepared for any real long-term emergency, like a Hurricane Katrina or a major influenza pandemic, that could cut us off from outside aid for days or weeks on end. Could you manage a day without a cell phone? A week without electricity? Fifteen days without refilling your medication? A month without gasoline? A half year without shopping or adding anything you didn’t make yourself to your household?
In practice few of us can grow our own food, repair our own cars, make our own clothes, doctor our own wounds, or even keep warm without being tied to a global chain of mines, mills, farms, and factories. We are a nation of consumers, not producers. We can’t make, build, or do much of anything, but exist mostly to sell goods and services to one another while depending on a range of imported technologies we don’t understand but can’t live without. Close the stores, turn off the power, and use up the gasoline and we’d be on our way to total collapse even without the added threat of the living dead.
Zombie stories are popular not simply for their violence or horrific imagery, but because they offer an imaginary setting for conflict in which competent people survive. Indeed, in zombie fiction it is never the rich, rarely the beautiful, and often not even the strong who live to see the next day. Being prepared – which means being capable of self sufficiency – is the key to survival.
A century ago Americans would have enjoyed better odds against zombies (or a real natural disaster) than most of us today. People canned their own food, walked or rode horses for transportation, learned practical skills in school and on the farm, and they would have been just fine for a week or four if the power cut out or the trains stopped running. Most importantly, they knew their neighbors, so coordinating a group of survivors wouldn’t require an email chain to organize or introductions between people who had lived next door for years but never met in person.
Modern conveniences offer us a lot. We have more leisure time, a wider range of luxuries to enjoy, and the opportunity to specialize in whatever pursuits we like. But they’ve also isolated us, made us more dependent on things we can’t control, and left us soft. As any good zombie movie will tell you, being prepared means more than having some snacks in the basement or a flashlight by the bed. It means knowing how to take care of yourself, and your neighbors, until things get better. Your iPod won’t be much help, but grandma’s canned cherries might save your life.
Hopefully most of us are ready for storm season. Perhaps we can spend some of it relearning a few of the practical skills our grandparents took for granted. Just in case.
