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I'm loling about the idea that rural people are better suited to handling a post democratic world. I have family who were born and raised and still live in the country and I don't see why they would be better at surviving this imagined dystopia than I would be.
I'm loling about the idea that rural people are better suited to handling a post democratic world. I have family who were born and raised and still live in the country and I don't see why they would be better at surviving this imagined dystopia than I would be.
Oh, I thought you were getting ready to make a larger point, but then you just kind of left me hanging....
In answer to your question though, isn't it common sense how a rural population would be better suited to survive a catastrophe then an urban population?
#1 Urban population centers are more dependent. I don't mean that pejoratively, it's just a fact. Rural dwellers don't have cops on every corner. They aren't just a block away from the nearest grocery store. Rural populations are far more likely to be self reliant, more likely to have experience with hunting / gathering / growing their own food, more likely to have access to a clean, natural water supply, and over all just more used to doing for themselves and living without the luxuries and amenities that those in urban settings enjoy.
#2 If the SHTF, there are far more likely to be violent and chaotic mobs, riots, looting, and rampant crime in urban centers, just as a matter of population density.
A lot of it's just geography and circumstance. Rural dwellers are just better suited to adapting to a post civilized world because they are already experiencing some elements of what that would look like. Don't get me wrong though, I think if The End Of The World As We Know It strikes tomorrow, we're pretty much all in trouble, no matter where we live, because we have a population that has largely become dependent on "the grid" and has no idea how to truly survive on their own, but undoubtedly between urban vs. rural, rural has the edge.
OP, did you stay up all night binge-watching Jericho? If not, let me suggest it as an outlet for whatever it is that has infiltrated your psyche. It's right up your alley.
The battle hardened warriors of the inner city will easily dispose of the hillbillies experienced at plinking tin cans.
Doubt that because most people will be sick or dead without access to clean water in 3 days ...inner city warrior ... lol ... you will be feeding on yourselves if any of you are left.
I'm loling about the idea that rural people are better suited to handling a post democratic world. I have family who were born and raised and still live in the country and I don't see why they would be better at surviving this imagined dystopia than I would be.
Certainly there are plenty of rural folks who would quickly perish too. It is just that the odds favor rural folks. The difference is the sum of many small, and not so small things. My toilets will keep working as I am on septic. I just need to haul buckets of water from my pond for the toilets to work. I have unlimited clean water from my deep well that does not need filtering of any sort. It has a hand pump and I just need to haul it into the house. We heat the house with a wood stove and I have acres of woods to draw upon. I have a 1/3 acre veggie garden plot, a greenhouse to start my seeds in, a small apple orchard, hay field, fenced in sheep pasture etc, and lots of supplies to support all of the above. And I'm not a farmer by the way. I currently buy eggs from one neighbor, beef and maple syrup from another, and honey from a third. I am not saying life would be easy or that it wouldn't be dangerous, but my personal infrastructure addresses multiple issues that people would face.
Perhaps the most important difference between urban/suburban and rural/small town would be cultural. Nobody is anonymous in rural communities. We already know each other. I live in rural Northern New England. Our Town Meeting form of govt that continues from colonial days fosters a culture of cooperation in decision making. Our communities are largely run by volunteers and committees, and have been for centuries. We don't have a police force nor much of any town services beyond the schools and a couple guys that take care of the roads. We're used to doing for ourselves. Organizing ourselves in the face of whatever the event is would come more naturally than densely populated places where folks often don't even know the people living just a few doors down the road.
A key piece that urban folks don't understand is that the population is roughly 80% urban/20% rural in the US. The 20% rural cannot absorb the 80% if things fell apart. We'll do our best to take in friends and family that live in urban areas but we can't take in everybody. There isn't anyplace to put them let alone the resources to be able to provide for people who have little in the way of any practical skills to carry their load.
Whether one is a liberal or conservative, gay or straight, black or white, and so forth would be irrelevant.
Oh, I thought you were getting ready to make a larger point, but then you just kind of left me hanging....
In answer to your question though, isn't it common sense how a rural population would be better suited to survive a catastrophe then an urban population?
#1 Urban population centers are more dependent. I don't mean that pejoratively, it's just a fact. Rural dwellers don't have cops on every corner. They aren't just a block away from the nearest grocery store. Rural populations are far more likely to be self reliant, more likely to have experience with hunting / gathering / growing their own food, more likely to have access to a clean, natural water supply, and over all just more used to doing for themselves and living without the luxuries and amenities that those in urban settings enjoy.
#2 If the SHTF, there are far more likely to be violent and chaotic mobs, riots, looting, and rampant crime in urban centers, just as a matter of population density.
A lot of it's just geography and circumstance. Rural dwellers are just better suited to adapting to a post civilized world because they are already experiencing some elements of what that would look like. Don't get me wrong though, I think if The End Of The World As We Know It strikes tomorrow, we're pretty much all in trouble, no matter where we live, because we have a population that has largely become dependent on "the grid" and has no idea how to truly survive on their own, but undoubtedly between urban vs. rural, rural has the edge.
I just think people have a really skewed view of themselves and others in today's society. To act as if rural people don't benefit from today's technology, food convenience, etc. is really just silly. I think a VERY small fraction of people are smart enough and equipped enough to live in a dystopian reality. Of those I'm thinking of its about 50/50 rural/urban dwellers.
I never said "liberals are weak." They just overwhelmingly live in the wrong areas, and have the wrong hobbies to be successful in a "society crippling event."
This thread is more about how quickly would progressive ideology disappear once progressives became the extreme minority, and how long would it take before those ideologies returned.
There's little need for mainstream Democratic or Republican thought in this scenario. As I said, society would devolve in Hobbesian authoritarianism as a mean to control what little food there actually is. They'd both potentially return as the world heals after several hundred years, though what specifically they would look like would be dependent on the events that shape their views.
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