Not Your Usual Scary Stories

Budgeting For The Apocalypse

This isn't really a story, but it isn't NOT one....either? Was a budding of sudden inspiration that I had to get out. I quite enjoyed it. Hope you do as well. 

How easily we forget.

The lessons of history fall upon deaf ears as if fairy tales. The sufferings and gains of those who came before us are so vast that they seem unreal to the modern mind.

But I assure you, death is never more than a few feet or a few days away should circumstances suddenly shift.

I, like most humans, hold myself to certain moral standards. I'm nonviolent outside of context appropriate settings. I try to be kind to others and non judgemental about their lives. I pay my bills and my taxes and I root for the home team.

I do these things because when I was growing up that's what they told me a good person would do. I want to be a good person. I think most people do.

But even if you don't want to be a good person, there's not much choice. There are punishments for rule violators, harsh punishments.

I don't want to suffer those punishments.

So I don't steal, I don't murder, I don't adulter, etcetera, etcetera. Besides, that's what a good person should do, and as long as everyone agrees it works out just fine. It's a social contract established long before I was born, and as long as I agree, I'm promised a safe and fair place to live.

But what happens when that social contract doesn't hold up its end of the bargain?

History is very clear about this.

Even the most moral, upstanding person will break under the right circumstances. Imagine a man who always does the right thing; kind, meek, charitable, pillar of his community. Then imagine that one day the food deliveries stop.

Can you see it play out? Can you watch his inner dilemma as the contract shifts day by day, then hour by hour?

When the stores all go empty he is concerned, but there is still food at home, though not his favorites. He still goes to work and chats with his neighbors as if nothing is wrong. He has money and as long as he has money he'll always find food somewhere, right?

This is the problem. Every day that passes is opportunity wasted. While others are stockpiling the dwindling supplies, he is sticking to a broken social contract. Money only guarantees food if there is food for sale.

And then it arrives, the fateful day. He finally searches the city over for any source of sustenance and finds none.

Do you see it? Can you feel the moment that time shifts for him? The very instant where it stops being measured in bi-weekly paychecks and shifts to calories per hour?

How much food is left in the house? How much do we need to eat each day? How long will can we last on scraps? These are the questions that will be racing through his mind as he returns home defeated.

This is the first strain on his moral perspective. The first real test. A good person doesn't steal, but a good person CERTAINLY does not let his children starve.

It'll start small, neighbors vegetable gardens or fruit trees, but it will net him little. He's been too slow. Others will have done this days ago. He won't even be able to gain more calories than consumed each day with this method.

His supplies will go faster than expected. The habits of overindulgent parenting will be hard to shake. But each unsuccessful hour brings the calorie count closer to zero. The man must begin to weigh his priorities even further. What is a good person willing to do to feed his children? Would he break into a neighbor's house? Would he attack another human? Would he kill?