Another sample of Chapter 4...
• Minor medical problems becoming deadly. The state of despair you will be in will affect your immune system negatively. There will not be an ‘injection from your doctor’ for coughs and fatigue. Minor cuts and scrapes will become deadly infections from an increase in common germs that we have over used antibiotics on for years.
Both of the Authors have walked with infected feet from blisters for tens of miles carrying heavy loads through rough terrain, one over 20 kilometers through mountainous Africa with no shoes, just two pairs of socks. The poor state of mind from the pain and concern of worsening infection plus poor nutrition makes the infection worse and can lead to Sepsis, or whole body infection, shock and death if not treated properly. Good thing the Authors were young and stupid when this happened... too stupid to know the true danger of our situation.
• Everyone is sick and the ‘Terminal Living’ will die. If a Crisis turns into A Failure of Civility, you will find people so stressed out and their immune systems so run down that eventually everyone will be sick at one time or another.
Those people that are dependent on insulin, oxygen, beta blockers and other items that medically assist them in staying alive will die within days, weeks or months. These people are... for lack of a more pleasant sounding term... ‘The Terminal Living’... amongst us.
- Little or no artificial visual or auditory stimuli as we have in abundance now. After some types of Catastrophic Events, especially an Electromagnetic Pulse Catastrophic Event, there will be no communications or external stimulus like TV, cell phones, internet or iphones.
The silence will be deafening. Picture yourself in a ‘Normal Rockwell Painting World’ with your family huddled around any functioning radio straining for a shred of news. Rumors will abound and the term “No news... is good news” will have new meaning to you.
- Walking wherever you need to go. After some Catastrophic Events, there may be no transportation other than walking or bicycles. Don’t drive to the corner market tonight, walk there and experience this difference. Bicycles will be worth their weight in gold as will be vehicles that operate and fuel.
- Living on top of each other. Envision your home with the number of people that you plan to have under your roof. Most people will literally be living on top of each other. Now add irritable people, no air conditioning, cooling or heat, the smell of unwashed bodies, and crying children to this. Maybe think of everyone hungry on top of these issues.
- No trust. Anyone, other than your family, and depending on how trusting and close knit you’ve managed to get the people in your Neighborhood Protection Plan, any people beyond your Protective Perimeters described as Outsiders will be looked at as a threat even if you previously intimately knew and trusted them.
- Going Cold Turkey. Everyone will quickly shed all the inconsequential things in life that consumed much of people’s daily thought and being. “Does my hair look okay?” type thoughts and the mechanics of satisfying addictions. Those who have these vices won’t have them long because they won’t have anything to give them their ‘fix’.
Smokers, drinkers, legal and illegal drug consumers will be forced to go ‘Cold Turkey’ and the desire to have just one puff, just a smell of liquor or one pill or injection of a drug will consume these people’s minds day and night... until they’re ‘cured’.
Be mentally prepared to see the ‘Dark Side’ of friends and people you know and love if A FailureofCivility occurs.This will include people you are related to by bloodor marriage.
- Psychoses will be appearing. A few Americans are on some type of drug for psychoses... panic, anxiety and delusionary behavior and take drugs daily for these issues. SomeCatastrophic Events will disrupt the supply of these drugs and after about 30 days these problems will appear in these people.
Years ago the most dangerous of these people would have been ‘committed’ to mental hospitals and kept off the streets because of the danger to others from their severe aggressiveness and disorders. We no longer commit these people, but they rely on drugs to be amongst us without harming themselves or others.
