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Many people live fairly solitary lives. But I wonder how many people can live a "last person on earth type lifestyle - something like in the above mentioned movie (or for another example "CastAway", where Tom Hanks was absolutely alone on an Island for 4 years.
Honestly I admit I don't have the skills required to survive in such a scenario. Very few people today (including myself) have what it takes to live off the land. It would be very difficult. Just getting a tooth infection would be game over. Things would revert back to the way our ancestors lived which which were often miserable and short lives.
You should post this in the survivalist forum. Nevertheless, the character in that movie (I Am Legend) wasn't living off the land so much as scavenging the supplies left behind by the plague. I think most people could scavenge a generator for electricity, fuel, canned food etc and survive. He did grow vegetables in Union Square as I recall and hunted a bit -- but he didn't need to when you see the food in his pantry.
It's really the same mentality that a lot of survivalist types get caught up in. They imagine being either the sole survivor or one of only a few survivors left in a region. They would then have the run of the place.
As has been mentioned, its very hard to truly "live off the land". Even hard core types stop into civilization to pick up basic supplies every once in awhile.
I used to think that all the people but me vanishing would be cool. The sole survivor. That was 40 hears ago. Then I went through the Damnation Alley phase of post apocolyptic adventure. Lol....then came Red Dawn. Now, I'm just glad to see the dawn. I don't think I'd be to cool with a sole survivor situation anymore. Oh, I might be OK for a bit, but not very long.
I would probably use a bit of pharmaceutical therapy. Daily, nightly wtfe. Now the I am Legend scenerio involved an enemy. A serious predator at that. Needless to say, I would be forted up. Being eaten alive doesn't appeal to me.
Many people live fairly solitary lives. But I wonder how many people can live a "last person on earth type lifestyle - something like in the above mentioned movie (or for another example "CastAway", where Tom Hanks was absolutely alone on an Island for 4 years.
Do you think you could do it?
Yes, I do.
First, I am a solitary person. Second, in the scenarios you cite - I Am Legend, Cast Away - there are simply a lack of companions in the moment, but there is still hope for finding others. Other immune survivors (or, a cure for the onfected) in the former, and of getting off the island in the latter.
Perhaps a more relevant fictional analog would be the novella by the eminent paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, The Dechronization of Sam Magruder. A scientist, Simpson did not have a fictional writing career while alive. His novella was found, unpublished (apparently, he never even tried to publish it) among his papers some years after his death, by his daughter. She then had it published.
The novella, a wonderful read, concerns a 22nd-century scientist in the field of chronology who manages to 'slip' himself into the past while working on a thorny issue of quantum theory. Given what he knows of the past, he guesses his temporal location to be roughly 80 million years before the present. The story is told by the chronologist, by means of carvings on stone tablets that he secures in a swamp. He knows the chances of them every being discovered and read is miniscule, but he also knows that he will never be able to communicate with anyone else every again in any other way. This ever-so-slight chance at one-way communication is what sustains him through the decades that he lives alone in the Cretaceous. Thus, he relates the tale of how he survives in the past world dominated by dinosaurs, alone. And that's what the novella is essentially about - being alone without any chance of every seeing another human being (though, amusingly, he does interact with small rodent-like creatures that he knows could very well be his distant ancestors).
Anyway, I highly recommend this read for anyone interested in a meditation on the 'only person on Earth' notion.
With an entire country or more to poke around and explore in? Sure!!
With trespassing no longer having any consequences attached to it, my thirst for urban exploration would move along just fine.
Going through each abandoned building and house would be enough to keep my mind occupied for quite some time.
What went on here? Who lived here? What were their lives like before they died/disappeared in the mass calamity?
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