Expect people are going to talk about this like they do some of the madder scenes from the World Wars. Can you imagine what it would have been like in the siege of Leningrad? Fighting in the mud fields of Paschendale? It's funny--you read these stories . . .
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or hear them--
@HardcoreHistory is really very good at this--and then four hours later you set down your book or close the podcast and get on with your day, left with just a fleeting recollection of the nightmare you've been imagining. Less than a spooky campfire yarn.2 replies 1 retweet 32 likesShow this thread -
This isn't going to go away when we close our browser tabs or flip off the teevee. It's going to stay out there killing people en masse and no one is going to forget that their parents and family and friends are at risk.
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We're going to watch footage of the dead and dying whenever we close our eyes, as long as this goes on and maybe til the end of our days.
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My grandfather is 96 years old. He fought in the Ardennes when he was 21, and seventy years later at a Christmas party something about the snow sparked a memory of the war. Not fighting per se; but corpse duty.
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See, the woods were full of dead men, and they couldn't leave them for thaw or there might be contagion. So, corpse duty. Very simple: go into the woods, find corpse, drag it back to camp for disposal. He told us this story out of nowhere, and ended, "I didn't like that much."
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I don't know the full history of this time that our grandchildren will learn in schools, but they'll probably see video--maybe in high school--of hospitals melting down, dying people spilling out into the hallways on gurneys or towels, photos of whatever we do with the corpses
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I expect they'll watch it and be horrified for that instant, and then close their books and move on to math class, mostly unperturbed. Maybe some will dwell on it. I have sometimes--Timothy Snyder's _Bloodlands_ ruined me for a good week. But
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I don't think I understood until recently what it was like to live in a time of horrors. I'm still not sure I do but I'm afraid we're all about to find out. Twitter is going to be a different place in two weeks, I think. Tell your family you love them.
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Replying to @eigenrobot
vector (wagmi) Retweeted eigenrobot
It's a bit funny: I've been thinking how soon after I created my Twitter account we had the conversation about civ collapse in this thread: https://twitter.com/eigenrobot/status/1197996255135203328?s=20 … I think you followed me just after that. It better when all this was weird theoretical obsession.
vector (wagmi) added,
eigenrobot @eigenrobotlong thread about why any *substantial* civilizational collapse will very quickly become a complete collapse I bet Our civilization is pretty robust within limits but past those limits (who knows where they are) its some kind of negative foom https://twitter.com/MorlockP/status/1197857957192568837 …Show this thread1 reply 0 retweets 2 likes
Oh oof. November 2019, a simpler time. 
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