If you read the "Dune" series by Frank Herbert, you will be familiar with this concept:
"Burning Man is the new age boot camp to help train the unwilling children of the coming Apocalypse and ten thousand year dark age."
I had this idea in 1999 while looking around the camp. When society falls away and the next "ten thousand year dark age" begins, those who have some camping training and experiment in social organization will be more likely to survive.
Like the story where the Dune planet Arrakis will be returned to a desert and the descendants of the original inhabitants will be forced to relearn their ancient culture; planet Earth will return to it's primordial state in the coming "Apocalypse and ten thousand year dark age." Humanity will be forced to survive in a tropical jungle and desert wasteland, of a newly hostile planet if they hope to survive.
Dramatic concept and difficult to believe, but interesting nonetheless...
copyright(c)2015
William Schaeffer
It is my own poetic idea that there will be a "ten thousand year dark age."
ReplyDeleteI am well aware that the last medieval dark ages went from 500 AD till about 1300 AD. This next "dark ages" will be much, much worse. [in my mind] It will be the total collapse of human civilization for at least several thousand years. The survival rate will be so low that the genetic structure of humanity itself will be changed by the environmental challenge. Coupled with a three hundred foot sea level rise, extreme global warming, nuclear fallout, insect blight, biosphere collapse, and the total disappearance of the infra-structure of civilization ---it will be thousands of years before the basic technology of civilization we recognize will reappear. At that time Antarctica will be grassland and valleys and the tropics will be so hot as to be virtually uninhabitable by contemporary man. The majority of plant and animal species alive today will have become extinct.
This will make mad max look like fun and games. Of course this is only fanciful conjecture and cannot even be debated sensibly. All of us will be long dead. Nevertheless, I think it a likely future scenario.
Sam 4 hours ago 0 0
ReplyDeleteYou only have to look at the span of the dinosaurs compared to humans.
Nothing even says life needs to be sentient.
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William Schaeffer 3 hours ago 1 0
Sam that is what I was thinking. In the geologic history of the planet there have been several different states of surface climate equilibrium. These vary from "totally frozen with ice" to "tropical hot house." At the same time the oxygen content of the atmosphere has varied widely from 18% to 31%.
Our present biosphere equilibrium state has lasted since about 10,000 BC, which was the end of the last Ice Age. Prior to that the climate was at another fairly stable Ice Age state for two million years. Before THAT the climate was more similar to the climate we are familiar with now... Everything changes and change will come again. Enjoy the nice summer while you can and then enjoy the fall.