For context of how bad it was during the SU collapse: -Mens life expectancy went from 75 to 54, mostly due to alcoholism and violence -Food stores were often empty, so we had to grow our own -Black market for essential items was bigger than formal economy
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
People bartered / favour traded a lot. Say you were an admin at a college. You made acquaintance with someone who worked at a chicken factory. You put their dumb kid into college, they filled your freezer with chicken. Most goods didn't even make it to stores because of this.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
So it wasn't just resources people traded, it was also favours and connections. Any bureaucratic process became a point of bribe taking and favour trading to get things done. You figured out what you had or whom you could connect people to, and offered that.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
People often chose their jobs because of what kind of access they could get, because the wages were shit for most jobs anyway. Most people didn't steal from other people, they stole from institutions, and corruption allowed it to happen.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
My grandmother on the Bulgarian side lived in a village, alone. She didn't have many skills or resources, but she had a knack for remembering things about people - entire family trees, who did what, who needed what. She was a listener/connector. People liked her. So she survived.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
Another thing that tends to happen in collapse scenarios is that men die of first - due to violence or alcoholism or abandonment. So you end up with a shortage of men, especially good men. In these situations, good men (in the archetypal sense) become increasingly valuable.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
I must add that it does depend on culture, because in some regions like the middle east or Africa, violence against women is more prevalent, so the above may not apply as much.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
Archetypal characters become more prominent in collapse scenarios. We go back to our deeper nature. The warrior, the king, the priest/ess, the wise old woman, the mother, etc. People's roles become less egalitarian.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
Many people's fantasies of the apocalypse involve gratuitous violence and rape. Although it does happen a lot, especially in war zones, in a "slow apocalypse" of an economic collapse, most people figure out how to self-organize and cooperate.
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Replying to @euvieivanova @iwelsh
I'd like to conclude this by saying that these are my personal observations and thoughts based on growing up during a collapse, and also living in third world countries that are poor / chaotic. I am not a scholar on the subject.
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Thanks, Euvie. Fascinating insights. Even though it’s total fiction, I thought the book Slow Apocalypse by John Varley handled this possible scenario really well.
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