Infrastructure Collapse: Part One

Submitted by Bill St. Clair on Sun, 22 Jan 2006 02:34:43 GMT  <== Science/Technology ==> 

Old Horseman - a grim reminder of how dependent most of us, yours truly included, are on our fragile technological infrastructure.

I drive one of the last vehicles manufactured with a hand crank for auxiliary starting. I almost always start it with the electric starter, but knowing I can still get it started if the battery goes dead or the starter hangs up gives me a certain peace of mind.

I also have developed, and continue to improve, my ability to live in reasonable comfort in a post-infrastructure world... Both in terms of pre-infrastructure (think 19th Century) capabilities, and modern infrastructure-independent technology.

I still enjoy modern infrastructure. But I don't rely on it for survival.

I have only one nit with this article:

Think about it. 19 guys with box cutters brought America to a screeching halt for weeks, justified a double war, and messed up the economy for years. A storm hits the Gulf Coast, and we're waiting in lines around the block to pay triple price for gas.

Nineteen guys with box cutters did not bring America to a halt. They knocked down a few buildings, and killed a couple of thousand people. Without television and a fear-mongering government, most of us would never have noticed. It was the goverment response to the incident that brought the country to a halt.

Part Two talks briefly about how the interelatedness of our technology and could make a problem like peak oil, which alone we could deal with, into a civilization-collapsing disaster.

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