First I want to thank all the folks who post their stories or the beginnings of a book, so freely and generously. I know it takes a lot of time and effort. I have posted a story or two here on the forum and at least have some idea of how much work goes into writing something. I believe the person writing the story has a right to write the story their way. If they want to skip over or gloss over some of the realities of living in a post-apocalyptic world so be it, it’s their story after all. Since the rest of us are reading for free it doesn’t much matter what we think, unless the author askes for impute, then of course it does matter.
I read the stories here. Also I read a lot of prepper, TEOTWAWKI, even things that aren’t really prepping but that take place is some type of cataclysmic event. Even some good zombie stuff.
I wanted to throw out some observations about books that fall into these categories. The trends I see in 80% plus of the stories. So many stories center around folks that are mid 50’s or mid 60’s or older. Yes they may bring in some younger folks for filler but basically the story is about folks past middle age and up. Nothing wrong with this but as I said it seems that so many authors keep using this age range.
Until recently I work for a company that employs between 550 and 650 people from 15 to mid-20s for between 3 to 4 months. There are managers in their teens who are running facilities with anywhere from 1 to 10 younger people under them and a hundred guests. They deal with hundreds of wild kids, soccer moms and stressed out dads every day. They might run a snack bar or be training kids between 6 and 18 to participate in swim teams.
I admit they aren’t being shot at but my point is that they can and do deal with a good amount of stress and they are responsible for the lives of many young kids and adults. They rescue drowning victims, administer first aid call ambulances etc. To ignore them as potential leaders or organizers of survival groups seems to be ignoring the abilities and decision making skills many of them. After all, age doesn’t necessarily bring wisdom.
If we were to see a real hard core end of the world as we know it event, with no fuel, no electricity and little or no food. Who has the best chance to survive the physical hardships to be alive 10 or 15 years after the event? People who started the event at 65 or those who started in their 20s or 30s? Of course the lifetime of knowledge that many of the older folks portrayed in stories have is a great resource. It is a source that younger leaders should tap that is for sure but having knowledge doesn’t allow you to be a hard charging, forced march, ridge running dynamo either.
Yes, I have heard of those folks in their 80’s and 90’s that still work in their fields or chop wood but those are the exception. It is a fact of life that after 65 and headed into your mid 70’s you start to slow down. So maybe more stories with people in their 20’s or 30’s might be more logical.
Something else I see regularly in stories is the folks who head to the farm, or BOL etc. who drive an hour or slightly more from their home, sometimes in regular traffic and sometimes in jammed up traffic in their city or town. I know the point I am trying to make is somewhat dependent on the metro area the author is using for the basis of their story.
I live outside the perimeter/beltway or bypass, whatever term suits your local, of a metro area. If I drove in the traffic for an hour I would never be far enough away to actually avoid most of the roving gangs, etc. that are in most dystopian fiction today. Another thing. In stories the folks are heating or cooking with wood. I can’t think of a place less than 80 to 100 miles from where I live that you would dare burn a wood fire in a world ending event. The smoke would be smelled or seen pretty easily. Just an opinion of course but it seems to me if the story is going to be believable the people involved in the story have to make it at least 150 miles from bigger towns.
The next thing I would like to point out is what I think of as the “magical supplies” syndrome. An author will go to great lengths to point out that supermarket shelves have around a 3 day supply of food and that food will be off the shelves and gone in anywhere from one day to four days. Then they go on to explain that a lot of people only have a few days of food at home for their families and that even those who made it to the store in those first four days will be starving in a matter of two or three weeks. I can’t argue with that explanation it seems all too likely to me. What I do take except to is what comes next in these stories. This is where the magical supplies come in.
They pick a small town anywhere from a thousand to a few thousand and have them come together for mutual support and sharing. According to the authors this new group of a couple thousand will make it through fall and winter all the way up the harvesting of the many backyard gardens they will all plant. How do they make it to the harvesting season? Well by pooling their supplies of course! What supplies???? Didn’t you, the author just spend a chapter or more telling me that everyone will be starving in weeks and that almost no one has more than a couple weeks of food? I admit my math isn’t all that good but I believe I was taught in school that 0 + 0 = 0, or am I mistaken? Some authors do place these towns in a somewhat farming areas, still how many cotton farmers or tobacco farmers are going to feed how many people?
While on the subject of food, let’s examine another author favorite. The three hearty meals a day that so many of them write about. First there is breakfast which many times is three or more eggs, ham or bacon or sausage and either pancakes or porridge, grits, oatmeal etc.. This first meal of the day might be served up to anywhere from four to forty people. To be fair the author did tell us that the original number of folks who live on the farm, anywhere from four to six, have chickens. So that solves the egg production problem right?
Well yes and no. According to folks who produce eggs for a living all pullets (female chicken under 1 year of age) lay small eggs at first and after a while will lay larger eggs. Younger hens will lay 1 egg every 3-4 days. A hen 30 weeks old can lay 2 eggs every 3 days. How many chickens did those folks with an original four to six people have? Even if they were only trying to feed ten extra people plus the family two eggs per day that comes to thirty-two eggs per day. Maybe I am getting the math wrong but the best case scenario looks to me like they would need to have had forty-eight chickens. What about feeding an additional fifteen people? So, if the folks who have a lot of new arrivals living with them aren’t commercial egg producers why did they have anywhere from forty to a hundred extra chickens?
Another thing I see is the “we shot a deer, hip hip hooray we can feed those sixteen to twenty-one folks for a long time”. Really? A University of Wyoming publication says:
Boneless Meat
Age class Bucks Does
Field Dressed Weight Boneless Meat Field Dressed Weight Boneless Meat
(years) (pounds) (pounds)
1.5 – 2.5 102 49 85 41
3.5 – 4.5 150 72 93 45
5.5 – 6.5 192 92 102 49
7.5+ 207 99 130 62
But let’s not quibble. Let’s say that that deer by the time you get it to the point of being cooked actually produced 124lbs of edible meat.
Taking a hypothetical number of folks, let’s say twelve, how much meat does that work out to per person? Ten pounds I believe. So you only eat let’s say six ounces per day that is twenty-six days. Better than nothing but to keep that ratio you would need to kill ten or eleven more deer to make nine months with everyone else hunting them and without giving your position away. What happens when the generous folks take in not six extra mouths but another ten or fifteen? I’m sure you are beginning to see my point.
Here is an interesting tidbit I got when I was younger from folks who actually lived through the depression of the thirties. In rural Minnesota so many people were hunting deer etc. that it became extremely difficult to find any to kill in the area you could walk to. There may have been plenty twenty miles away, but we are talking about an area around the home folk’s house that the young men could reach on foot. They basically had to settle for smaller game.
One relative who lived in a one room cabin with a large loft who was one of thirteen children didn’t go to school much and basically hunted every day. They lived by the one shot rule. One shot from your 22 better get one rabbit. If you missed your shots your family didn’t eat meat, or much of anything actually. He admitted that after about three years it was almost impossible to find much to hunt in an area he could walk to. He was paying between one and one and half cents per cartridge. To make enough money to purchase cartridges he would shoot two rabbits and sell them in the little town for twenty-five cents to those lucky enough to be employed.
I suspect I am getting away from the point so I will get back to the three hearty meal per day scenario.
Next let’s examine the “I stored or grabbed a lot of canned goods so I can feed six to twenty people” scenario.
By going to the pantry and picking up either a can of string beans or a can of corn you will notice that they weigh give or take 15 ½ ounces. Some research shows that Green Giant canned Cut Green Beans has approximately 70 calories in it. That can 15 ½ ounce can of Yellow Sweet Corn, whole kernel has about 355 calories.
For one of those large cans of white meat chicken from say a Sam’s or a Costco that weigh 12 ½ ounces you are looking at around 636 calories.
The USDA recommends that men between the ages of 19 and 50 who exercise vigorously each day eat as much as 3,000 calories per day just to maintain a healthy level of energy.
With our can of beans and corn along with our chicken we now have eaten a whopping 1061 calories. Gee we are only about 1900 calories short hmmmm.
I can’t imagine eating beans, corn and chicken three times a day every day but for the sake of this discussion let’s just take those as a base line. That means we must eat 3 cans of beans, 3 cans of corn and 3 cans of chicken per day. That’s right at 8 pounds of canned goods per day or looking at it another way that is 9 cans of food per day. Times a week that is 63 cans. With the average number of cans per case being 8 for many things that means we had to have grabbed or stockpiled anywhere from 6 to 8, let’s call it an average of 7 cases of food per person per week. Ten people total, 70 cases, 15 people total 105 cases PER WEEK!
Some folks are going to point out that home canners put up 32 ounce jars. I agree that is pertinent but it brings up a different dynamic. Now that person only needs 4.5 jars a day, or 31.5 jars per week. That comes out to 126 jars per month per person! So, ten people need 1260 jars a month? Even an avid home canner isn’t likely to have that many jars extra sitting around in their pantry.
By now you may be sitting there saying, wow this guy is kind of overstating the amount of jars, cans, bags etc. that it actually takes. Maybe, but just cut those numbers in half. You still need 200 plus cases of store bought food, or 1130 jars of home canning per month per ten people. If it is only six months until you can resupply in some manner, and according to the end of the world books this isn’t likely, you need 1200 cases or 6780 jars of food for ten people.
I realize this doesn’t count rice or pinto beans or pasta, but by now I think I have made my point. Way too many stories are written without even considering how much food, supplies etc. six to ten people will actually require to stay alive for 6 months.
By now I’ve bored you enough. I won’t even start on the stories that have two or three of the good guys, smashing through a roadblock of 8 cars blocking the highway manned by 7 to 12 heavily armed bad guys with hardly a scratch between the three of them! Sheesh.
Reality check!
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