fandomhigh | The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World

Perhaps surprisingly, Reno had the students meet in the classroom, today. If anybody asked, this was totally because being in the classroom meant that he could be lazy and slouch back against his desk.

"Yo!" Reno grinned and lifted his chin at the students gathered with a manly nod. "We're gonna take it easy today, yo. After this weekend, I ain't gonna be the one to go an' try to hit too many buttons talkin' morbid about the end of the world."

He'd save that for next week, or something.

"So, this week, I'm gonna talk about climate change." This should be rich. "Not that El Nino thing that scares the crap outta people every five years even though it's been goin' on since pre-friggin'-history. Shit, not even that global warming thing that people on this world keep whinin' about. Things like that, that'll creep up on you. Maybe fifty years from now a couple of coastal cities'll be up to their knees in water, maybe places you think of like tropical paradises will dry up an' turn to desert and maybe you won't never see a winter again. But, you know what? You all know that's comin'. It ain't no secret. You got time to prepare for somethin' that a century or two of bein' total idiots brought about, yo. I'm talkin' about water freezin' on the equator overnight."

Thank you, Reno, for clearing that right up.

"And what out there is strong enough, really, to cause the next friggin' ice age, but on a global scale? On a long-term scale, not a hell of a lot, yo. Let's keep this one simple and settle on somethin' you might hear the name of, but never really understand the meaning for, yo. Nuclear Winter." So much for keeping this class cheery! Oh well, keep moving along, Reno. "I'm gonna keep it pretty open-ended this week, steerin' away from the obvious fallout issues you'd have after enough bombs fall to blot out the sun with smoke an' dust for months or years on end. Next week we'll talk about poisins, yo. This week is climate."

He stuck his hands into his pockets and shrugged.

"The fear is that somethin' is gonna hit the Earth, be it a million nuclear bombs or a giant friggin' rock from the sky, and it'll kick up so much dust and smoke that the aftermath'll blot out the sun for months, maybe even years, yo. Wind is gonna carry that ash an' that dust around the world, so not only is the sky black in your neck of the woods, it's like that everywhere."

Oh, Midgar. Reno almost felt homesick all over again, talking about this.

"What do you got, if you don't got the sun?" He shrugged. "Besides a 24-hour guarantee against sunburn or a sudden explosion in business for your local nightclub, not a hell of a friggin' lot. Water won't evaporate as quickly as it used to, so rain or snow is gonna eventually become a real, real rare thing. All the plants in the world won't die overnight, that'll take a couple of days to weeks, at least. But they will die, because they won't be able to do that... chlorophyll thing, yeah, and because temperatures are gonna drop eventually, and because they'll just dry the hell up. Animals that are sensitive to cold, ones that are better adapted to daytime livin', and ones that eat them plants'll be the next to go. So, you got however long it takes for Mother Nature to starve to death to stop freakin' out because the sky is black, get your shit together, and figure out what your necessities are, yo.

"Good news is, if we're gonna be optimistic and pretend that anybody could survive a calamity so big that it blots out the sky, there'll still be buildings to sleep in, yo. Blankets, hydroelectric power, shit like that, it probably ain't goin' nowhere. Solar obviously ain't gonna do you no good. Burnin' fuels like wood an' coal for heat is just gonna make the problem worse, and that ain't gonna stop many people until the trees run out anyhow, yo. Different worlds got different ways of makin' power, so I can't cover 'em all, but electricity is somethin' you're gonna have to look at on a case-by-case basis. Wind, water if you got a source like the ocean that ain't gonna freeze, geothermal. Things that ain't gonna go away just because it's dark and cold... Those'll be your friends.

"Canned food, like we looked at last class, ain't gonna hold out through this, yo. So here, the problem ain't just keepin' warm after the temp drops down to under freezin' and keeps slidin' lower. Your biggest problem in the wake of it is, what the hell are you gonna eat? People can survive in the dark, and people can survive in the cold. We're made to adapt, it's what we do. But we can't eat the friggin' air. So." He held his hands open and gestured to the class. "Figure it out, yo."

[Open!]

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What options do you have to keep fed, once your world's agricultural base is thrown straight to Hell? Canned food might be a decent short-term fix, but preserves will only go so far. What about hydroponics, then? Heating lamps and controlled environments indoors? Genetic engineering for higher-yield crops?

It probably doesn't matter what you do. People are going to starve. You can't save them all. Even in the here and now, with a sun in the sky, you can't save them all.

Maybe, if you're lucky, you can save yourself.

"It's simple," Quinn offered. "We go Donner Party and eat the weak ones."

She wasn't entirely serious, but starving to death was such a creepy topic that flippancy was the only way she could manage it. Besides, someone was guaranteed to bring up the obvious; it might as well be her.

Reno raised an eyebrow. He didn't quite catch the reference, it was clearly an Earth thing, but the rest? Yeah, he caught the rest, clear enough.

"Could happen," he said, after a moment. In all seriousness. "You get hungry enough, you get desperate enough..."

Shrug.

"I'm thinkin' you probably wanna look for a better way to get food into your mouth before it comes down to chewin' on your annoying neighbor's ass, though. Save 'em for dessert, at least."

"Well, hydroponics seem the obvious solution," he said. "Gather as much plants as you can to cultivate them like that for food. And there's always going to be animals that'll survive. Nocturnals or predators, they can probably last much longer in the cold than most humans," Jacob reasoned.

Reno quirked a little grin, and then shrugged.

"Only so long as the prey holds out," he pointed out. "You stand a better chance rootin' for rats and roaches, yo. The bigger the predator, the sooner they'll starve once they clean out what's left of the starvin' plant-eaters."

"And you'll be dealing with them to keep them away from your own food, might as well catch two flies in one go," he hadn't intended the joke, yet there it was.

Reno gave a little snort, but shrugged and nodded nevertheless.

"Mmm, rats," he replied. "Might as well get a bit of protein in your diet, huh?"

Edited 2010-07-19 18:44 (UTC)

"Beggards can't be choosers?" Jake suggested, "and we're one of the biggest predators out there so we might not get a choice."

"I hear cockroaches got an interestin' crunch to 'em," Reno mused. "And you're right, maybe we don't get the choice. That said, you comfortable eatin' vermin for years on end? Ain't no way you're gettin' all your vitamins that way, yo."

"Insects are nutritious," Jake pointed out. "You'd get used to it and you've have the plants as back up. I mean, I'd rather have steak, but if you can't feed people, how the hell are you going to maintain cattle?"

"You don't," Reno replied. "Get your meat where you can, maybe small animals like chickens if you can grow enough with your hydroponics to keep 'em fed."

He smirked a bit. "You know anything about growin' plants in water like that?"

"I don't know squat about plants," Jacob said. "I can get an engine running, gardening isn't my shtick."

"Well, at least you got a skill that'll come in useful in case somethin' happens, yo. What kinda engines?"

See Reno. See Reno be nosy.

Jake figured the human heater thing wouldn't be bad either, honestly.

"Cars," he said, "but it shouldn't be too far a stretch to expand it."

"Shouldn't be," Reno agreed. "I can fix up a chopper blindfolded. Meant I could bullshit my way through an airship on another world, too. You think you can manage to jury-rig somethin' that don't run on combustion fuels, too?"

"Depends on how complicated it'd be?" Jake guessed. "I haven't tried, but the principle's got to be about the same, no? You need juice, it's just be a different kind."

"About the same," Reno confirmed, grinning. "I know this talk was about food, but here's a question for you, man. You got any idea what kinda fuel you could run a vehicle on, that way? Without gas or anything like that?"

"Electricity's obvious," he said. "If we can manage to keep that going, I'd think there'd at least still be wind? I've got no clue. There's been a bit of experiments. Vegetable oils would be one, there's cars that run on compressed air. Claudia and I were thinking of seeing if we could get a bike to run on steam even. Of course, then you'd need wood."

"Yeah, an' burning that fuel is gonna not only hurt your supply of buildin' materials, but it'll also add to that smoke and ash," Reno agreed. "We're tryin' to keep things from gettin' worse, right? So. Electricity. Charge the battery before you go, that kinda thing. It's shit for the long haul, but for gettin' from place to place quick and close, that'll do, yo."

"The vegetable oil sounds interesting too," Jake said. "If there's enough to spare anyway. Don't eat your greens and go for a drive. I'm guessing you'd probably need too much of it for it to work so yeah, electricity."

Effy rather liked the dark. Always had, and probably always would. It had never seem very likely the sun would get blotted out in her world, but the way Reno said it... it didn't seem completely out of the realm of possibility.

And who the hell, scientific facilities aside, had the technology to grow food and survive in that sort of darkness? No one she knew. If starvation didn't get people, the infighting over those resources would. Self-preservation would override anything else.

Of course, she was far too deep in her own head to say any of this musing out loud, or even really be paying attention to what people's suggestions might be.

Points for thinking morbidly on topic, maybe?

"..."

Okay, so Cloud wasn't even pissed at Reno this time. But he had no idea of what to do. This class was teaching him how bad of a survivor he would make in any other world besides his own.

So Cloud kept thinking on it silently.

The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World - Period 2

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