Surviving.

I am sticking on the book theme for tonight and deliberately avoiding the man subject. No doubt, I will explain in a later Blog. I have been reading the sequel to The Legend of Heorot. I have Blogged about this before. The sequel is called Beowulfs Children. I read the original book 20 years ago and last month read it again.

The original book is about colonising an Earth like planet that seems friendly but as the colonists discover more about the planet, it becomes apparent that they have misjudged the Ecology and have to fight for their lives when they discover a terrible monster called a Grendel, hence the Beowulf theme.

I think what entranced me about the original book was the question... If you were going to a Planet that would take you 100 years to reach, what would you take with you? What would you need to survive? Imagine a sort of Noah's Ark of the future. Every sort of plant seed, human/animal embryo, mining equipment, ad infinitum. The list went on. How would we survive if we had to start from scratch?

In our modern western world it would not take much to kill off most of us. As a bone fide Donut Child my father and I discussed this one night about 10 years ago. 'Just take out the power and most of us would be dead' said my father gleefully. I disagreed with him and said 'Nah, I know exactly what to do to survive.' He concurred that I probably could but how would I cope if I was older. So here I am, 10 years older and much wiser, about the art of survival but also much weaker, more unfit and finally realising that if the power went off I could probably survive longer than some, but not much....

Why am I fixated on this question, you ask? Well, first of all because I am a Donut Child and second because of what is happening in our lives today. The recession bites ever deeper, The Daily Mail adores scaring the pants off us with scaremonger articles and I have to admit, even that scurrilous little rag does have a point.

There is a new survivalist Middle England emerging through the financial crises. Many people are buying food and household items in bulk because they do not have any idea as to what will happen next. Garages that once housed Porches and Lamborginis are full of bottled water, baked beans and pasta. American companies who supply longlife food packs are cashing in - the cost of their foods are astronomical. One British man has sensibly decided to ignore their marketing ploys and adds two bottles of water and four cans of baked beans to his weekly shop. His attitude is that if the shit hits the fan, he will at least have something to eat. Frankly, if I had that much tinned food in my garage, I may just decide to buy a gun and seal the deal! Those of you who know me understand that I do have cupboards bursting with long life food because I have obviously watched far to many disaster movies and I have been brought up to understand that YOU are the only one you can rely on. Erm...Ray Mears also features heavily.

I suppose the big question you should ask yourself is 'If the little Western bubble that we live in did break down what would I do?' For me the answer is simple. If it was a Nuclear War then I would try and get into the centre of London, get extremely drunk and welcome that big blinding light. If it was a nasty virus/contaminated water system then I'd probably find a chemist and make sure me and mine were blissfully asleep before anything painful happened to us. Anything else? I suppose I'd try my best to survive. I'm not sure how long I would manage it though.

We all have the will to survive, it is part of who we are. The challenges that daily life throws at us are ever changing and in some way we manage to wind our way through the maze of our individual worlds and persevere. For me, I think I'll carry on with the bottled water and the pasta but ultimately the day to day thing is a lot harder than the planning for Armaggedon. Ce La Vie - Thats Life!