Reno of the Turks (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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fandomhigh2010-07-19 10:34 am
raspberryturk) wrote in fandomhigh2010-07-19 10:34 am
Entry tags:
The Day After Doomsday: Getting By In a Post-Apocalyptic World - Period 2
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!]
"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!]
Re: Discuss!