The survival of culture (and vice versa)

In the event of situation X, our culture will immediately begin to change from what we have known. The more profound the change, the more severe the distortion. Just think about how different the US became after 9-11. Now imagine what a death toll of 30 million would do, instead of a "mere" 3 thousand. Here are some opening thoughts:


A) The death of popular music

If gasoline and electricity are no longer available, then there's suddenly no car stereos and no MP3 or CD players after the batteries disappear. Even rechargeable batteries will become useless. And not even one home in a thousand has a solar recharger for handheld batteries.

So, how would this change us? If you're under 40, you live with music as a constant background; in stores, in your car, at work and home. Suddenly, the silence would be overwhelming. Playing loud music would advertize the fact that you have power, and bring the human predators running.

And American (and I bet Canadian, AUS, UK, Euro) culture has changed. The vast majority of people no longer produce music. Young people don't generally learn to play an instrument. If they do in the US, it's usually a marching-band instrument, or electronic, like a guitar or keyboard. It's sort of weird to sit around a campfire and listen to one person play a trombone or snare drum. How many people do you know that can play a harmonica? That will be the music of the apocalypse, the music of the frontier: harmonicas, jewharps, the spoons. maybe maracas. We definitely won't be the same without the old music. How will you explain that video killed the radio star, to a kid who grows up thinking that radios must have been a form of magic?



B) The death of the written word.

Young people today are no longer taught penmanship. They also don't read anything longer than a wikipedia article. It's a fact of popular culture. So what will it be like when the lights go out?

For one thing, with no more publishing industry, there will be MUCH less to read. A lot of posters on the survival board talk about libraries. But the factual books will be quickly stolen. And even those books need to be maintained. Most of them are on acidic paper. They'll deteriorate quickly when carried in a backpack and exposed to the smoke of campfires. How many books will be used as fuel, or toilet paper?

Loose-leaf paper will be used initially as KINDLING, I predict. So, with no paper industry, there will quickly be a dearth of anything to write on. Not to mention a lack of things to write with. Ballpoint pens dry up in a year or two; how many of you know how to make your own ink?

The march of knowledge will grind to a halt, and then begin a quick slide backward. Sure, there will still be medical textbooks. But medical students benefit from instructors---they don't do as well being self-taught and self-paced. With no labs, no exams and no implements, things like the human genome project will recede into myth and finally into oblivion.

And that's just the tip of the ice-berg. Every doctor will instantly become a general practicioner, whether he's a brain surgeon or a podiatrist. Specialization, and lab work, will go out the window. Their understudies, their replacements, will grow up in a world that not only lacks the internet, but lacks libraries, operating rooms, even disposable sterile pads and hypodermic needles---the old glass ones are gone, and the new ones are all single shot devices. So no more syringes.

And without the FDA and AMA, quacks will proliferate. With no oversight, "doctor" will mean a shaman or voodoo priest who claims to have "antibiotic" to sell you. Aromatherapy will vie with germ theory as an explanation for the spread of dysentery.

Scholars after the Fall won't be seeking degrees in business or the humanities; they'll be looking for an education in brewing beer and making gunpowder. Anything without an instant "real world application" will be ignored. The problem is, without all the arts and humanities, the other stuff quickly falls to pieces as well. Medical terms only make sense if you know some latin. who will be teaching latin grammar around the campfire?


Pleasant dreams.

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[edit on 21-2-2008 by dr_strangecraft]

reply to post by dr_strangecraft


Interesting thoughts.

Popular music may die, but music will never be exhausted as long as we are around.

We are musical beings. It is in our blood so to speak.

From the earliest age, I can remember tapping my foot to a good beat and drumming on the table.

We love music. We will not give it up.

I foresee a lot of terrible band being created once the mainstream is done, but that's another story altogether .

I would tend to disagree that written word would die as well.

Paper can be made from numerous sources and does not need a manufacturing plant.

A lot of people write in a daily journal or diary.

This will not change.

Instead of being reflections on the day, all sorts of things will be utilized in such a notebook.

I have a stockpile of notebooks, but not for a 'situation x.' Its merely so I don't have to go to the store so often .

However, if I wanted to, I could make my own paper out of wood pulp, hemp pulp, and many other things.

Heck we could even use our t-shirts as a form of paper. Cotton is a great thing to write on with the right materials.

As for our writing utensils, well there's always charcoal .

I disagree, writing and music will not die (popular maybe, but not on a personal level).

Our culture will move on, albeit in an altered form.

Remember before paper we carved in rocks and passed on history through oral traditions.

Those camp fire stories usually aren't written down, right ?



Great topic dr strangecraft, don't get me wrong. I just don't happen to agree with you.

You got my juices flowing though. Thanks.

Originally posted by biggie smalls

Paper can be made from numerous sources and does not need a manufacturing plant.

True enough. But you also need time and talent. Two commodities which will be in very short supply if most of your day is spent looking for something to eat. That's my point. Not that you CAN'T make paper or ink, but that you WON'T, because mere survival will get in our way.

A lot of people write in a daily journal or diary.

This will not change.

Eventually, their diaries will be filled. Sure you can make a sheet of paper, even 20 of them in a single afternoon, with someplace for them to dry for several days. But how many people will put the effort into making 300 pages of homemade paper for their personal journal, when there's nothing to eat and armed bands are looting all the stores. Local warlords may not be too interested in providing a scriptorium, is all I'm saying.


In sum, people like the posters on ATS survival threads WILL find a way; that's how they end up here. But the vast bulk of humanity will cease doing the things that we take for granted. They'll make music, just not in the same way. I'm sure they'll leave graffiti on walls; I just question how many new sitcoms will be written.

I have no doubt that YOU will carry on civilization wherever you go. As will I. But it's sort of like being the last Roman.



A one-eyed man, selling mirrors in the city of the blind.

reply to post by dr_strangecraft


Amen brother. Great points.

Its going to be a rough lot of people who do survive a "sit x" in the first place so I imagine they'll be able to make paper and writing utensils.

See ya on the other side.

No more crap they pass off as music by untalented teenagers with drug habits and anorexia? Sounds great!

Good music to me is someone playing a guitar around a campfire. Anything " produced" is my humble opinion is crap.

I guess I've never been much on culture, so the loss of what passes for music and literature nowadays will be no great loss to me. As for writing, I do very little of it now, so again, no great loss.

There's nothing that I can think or write that hasn't been expressed in a thousand or more different ways since the beginnings of time. There's no such animal as an original thought.

I have a graduate degree, but in all honesty I feel my education was a terrible waste of time and money. I should have went to vocational school and learned a useful skill such welding or diesel mechanics instead. I doubt my training as a counselor will benefit me much in the post apocalytic world. Thankfully I had the foresight to take a few other courses like emergency medicine, marksmanship, and basic survival training along the way.

As for doctors, the majority practice little more than trial and error experiments when treating an illness anyway. How many times have you had a doctor prescribe you one medication, then decide to try something else because it wasn't working? This trial and error method is conducted at your expense as well.

When there are no more pharmaceuticals, x -ray machines, ultrasounds, and PDRs, they'll be even less effective than the voodoo doctors.

I can play a pretty mean gut bucket.

Other than that, i don't think the loss of todays music would be missed by me, prolly the younger generations yes, they will have to learn to survive instead.

Making paper is a time consuming process, prolly the ones one that will have capacity to do so are those in large groups were the jobs are diversified.

A sit x might help the doctors, no longer relying on the tests and pharmicutical company's wanting them to push there brand of drugs. They would have to go back to the basics, it couldn't hurt to bad, they don't have a great succes rate anyway.

Ever wonder why when a doctor starts his own business they call it a practice. Thats what they are doing on you.

I really like this thread.

One thing I considered is the Re-birth of Crafts: woodworking, sewing, forging, pottery, etc. It will certainly take a while as people will run through what goods they have first, but - eventually - someone, somewhere will start to produce something of value to others.

Also, The Barter System. "Things" will start to have both real and intrinsic value. No more arbitrary $ amount. People will really understand the costs associated with production, from time to talent to resources.

I think our culture will still be there in oral tradition, by story telling we can keep our history and pass it on to future generations. We definately will be doing only the essential things using simple tools since all the modern technology will break or run out shortly after sit x.

Interesting concept, but I am not sure if I agree with it. The written word has been around for a long long time, in various formats. While major book publishing companies may vanish, I suspect we will continue to scribe down our thoughts in one form or another.

I also figure that the numerous ham radio operators and technology enthusiasts will cobble together a workable solution, and we will have radio broadcast music. The sleazy music industry will be gone, much to our benefit, but music will live on as long as a man can bang on a drum and Kokopele's ancestors can play a flute and dance.

It is the nature of cultures to change and adapt. The worlds cultures WILL change a great deal, even if no Sit X happens, But mans desire to express himself, to reflect on the world around him and his place in it, will never die. Only the form will change.

Originally posted by Terapin
Interesting concept, but I am not sure if I agree with it. The written word has been around for a long long time, in various formats. While major book publishing companies may vanish, I suspect we will continue to scribe down our thoughts in one form or another.

Oh, I agree with you, in so far as writing will never die out completely. I overstated my case. Maybe I should have said something along the lines of "the retreat of literacy rates" or something like that.

Yes, the written word has been around for 5000 years. But until about 1800, only the elites ever touched a written page, or could read more than a tavern sign.

After a more than about 5 years of chaos, you'll have a generation coming up without exposure to either electronic or printed material. And the emphasis will be on action, rather than reading. The ability to gather fuel, hoe vegetables, or prepare food will be far more valuable to most folks that will be the ability to read, or the possession of a book from the previous civilization.

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I think you are getting a bit carried away. I think it will only take man about 50 years to regain all the knowledge that we have attained over the last 1000 years. Once we know it can and does exist the easier it is to recreate it.

reply to post by disgustedbyhumanity


You might be right.

On the other hand, ALL of our scientific progress since about 1980 is dependent upon economies of scale.

Think about a CD-ROM. Could you and some kids with no formal education create one? Well, you'd need a computer, so after 50 years, you'll have to re-invent transistors, that require rare-earth elements like Molybdenum. There are only 5 mines worldwide that produce industrial amounts of moly. So you'll need access to china or south africa. you'll need advanced petroleum and aluminum technologies. In fact, you'll need to build an entire computer before you're ready to fiddle with a CD-ROM.

Now, the CONCEPT of laser-writing a magnetic or optical surface has been around since the 1970's. But it only became reality when it could be financed by the international music industry---again, an economy of scale. Same with computers, same with lasers and all the rest of the technologies involved. You need millions of consumers, to fund the research. A nation, even a group of nations with severely depleted populations and resources will not be in a position to erect that kind of economy out of nothing---it took our whole civilization at least 50 years to do it, and that was with abundand resources, which have now been mined and spread throughout the earth's junkyards.

Maybe we could do that, given the political stability we've seen over the last 50 years. But I'm confident, or perhaps I'm pessimistic, that if we have a global economic collapse, that we won't see anything like real political stability for a long, long time.

Affluence is a requirement for innovation. And we are talking about the end of affluence.

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I know this will sound odd, but I print the words to certain gospel songs so I have them if the end came and I was found to be taking care of others needs as a minister.

I know it sounds funny but when its quiet and just me and the dog I pull them out and try to sing my way through. Dog doesn't like it much, I noticed......

reply to post by dr_strangecraft


In response to the death of what is now called popular music: if it's the crap that the recording industry puts out these days, how quickly can we kill it? Notice the wording, recording and not music industry. Music is an art and as long as people can bang on something hollow and sing, music will never die.

Believe it or not, there are more unpublished novels now than has ever been written in the entire history of the printed word. I've a friend whose published 3 books who can't get one or more of his books published because his publisher says they wont' make enough money on them. I don't believe for a second that he's the only author facing this dilemma. There are probably at least 100,000 frustrated authors in the US alone much less the rest of the world. Kids especially teenagers of either sex have always longed for escape from the drudgery of a mundane life and will gobble up the written word if their idiot boxes are taken away from them. Paper while difficult to make, doesn't require a great deal of 19th century technology to mass produce and it will be produced enough for folks to read fiction and non fiction alike.

I doubt that humanity will slip into a technological dark age but I believe we're heading for a rough spot of several decades as those who would wish to and think they can control humanity become more desperate as more folks become aware of them and their nefarious misdeeds. EL Bore and Co. are going to never wish they'd never invented the internet.

Praise, Bob!

I think the spirit of the article has great value.

alot of people will be lost (litteraly dead, lost for a purpose, and most other meanings) when sit X happens. with out tv to influence decisions, charlatans and con artists will pray on the consumers like a fox in the hen house.

those cultural points will be greatly damaged. not only by the loss of our technology, but also from the shear mental laziness that is affecting most people under 24. (that is a general number not specific and only a generalization)

I think that some of our technology and information will survive to the re-establishment of a good power grid.

the real question is this

if you agree that people cannot live in anarchy for an extened period of time.

how long will it take for the crazies to kill each other and societies begin to emerge?

Great thread, I wonder about this type of thing quite often.


Music would remain, it has been a staple for generations that existed long before electricity and DAT recorders. From the tribal sounds of jungle rhythms to the old Irish folk music all the way to Appalaichian bluegrass, people have been making acoustic music for a long while. To me it is the most honest and sincere music that can be found. Old blues music played during the depression era, nothing but six strings, a glass beer bottle and a harmonica. Not to mention classical genius like Beethoven or Bach, all written well before electricity and modern engineering. I would welcome it's return.



Culture and the written word, again, been around an awfully long time. Socrates, Shakespear, Joyce, Dostoevsky, Sun Tzu, all of the truly great works were written long before modernized societies. Many of these people worked during heated political and dangerous times of lawlessness. Hardship rarely ever prohibits the creative mind from creating. Quite the opposite, turbulent and difficult times often are what inspire great minds to place pen to paper.


One thing that I believe a meltdown of modernized life would do, it would force people to use their brains again. By necessity it would challenge men to produce their own food and shelter, it would force humans to learn to adapt and overcome. Our society is severely lacking in real world survival and production skills. People these days are not useful, they are removed from our fathers and grandfathers generations in the sense that most do not know what it is like to struggle. In America most have no idea what it feels like to go to bed on an empty stomach.

Western society and easy living have spoiled us to our deaths. Most wouldn't know how to fend for themselves and couldn't if their lives depended on it (which it will). People these days dont know how to build things, create furniture by hand, they dont know how to plant and harvest their own food. Fortunately I grew up in the country and I know how to fish, how to hunt and trap, I know how to find clean drinking water and how to grow vegetables under makeshift conditions. Im no John Rambo, but I could probably make it better than most

City dwellers will be the most exposed because most dont know how to survive on their own, and when anarchy hits they will be surrounded by millions of other hungry and angry people who are just as helpless as they are. In that scenario you have strong feeding off of the weak. In this day and age you could not pay me to live in a place like NYC. I left Los Angeles for this very reason. The potential for insanity and bloodshed is epic in size. If a disaster even the size of Katrina were to hit L.A. the bodies would be piled ceiling high. Over six million people with no food or running water. Think about it.