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Connections, episode 1: Trigger Effect

Connections is a wonderful old PBS show looking at the history of change. showing how things are all interconnected and how things that have little seeming connections to each other were influential on each other.

one of the other big messages is how dependant on technology we have become, while at the same time becoming so accustomed to it we don't think about it, until we loose it.

the first episode introduces these topics. it starts with an examination of one event in new yorks history, where a single, seemingly harmless, peice of technology failed, which created ripple effects resulting in societal changes. albiet small ones.

he then expands on this in a hypothetical situation, where he looks at the collapse of society, and works his way through the many steps to survival, and shows us how little we understand about surviving without our modern technological cructches.

no comments? the show is a bit old (early 80's. before the digital age took off, before the internet!), but the examination of how technology was developed, even back then, showed how dependant on it we've become, and how helpless most people would be if it stops.

not to mention, if you watch it, and the sequals, you'll have lots of knowledge of how a bookworm, historian, or reenactor could enable a community to survive after the collapse of society, merely becuase they knew how to build a water wheel, or a plough, or could take common materials and make useful substances....

I watched the first segment

that is interesting the guy managed to research back 12000 years

I like the show and it brings up some valied points. However I think most people will die irregarlus of this. Most are not prepared to kill for food and would not understand that they should not go out unprepared. Everyone should have a basic survival supplies for two weeks for themsevles and thier families.

Think about it, if everyone in Katrina's detruction path had this and excersiced some common sense. They would not have suffered so much.

A good show! I used to watch Connections and Connections 2 allot when I was younger. I thought they were well written. Unfortunately the Katrina survivors fell into the same sort of technology trap he was speaking of in the show. We all expect the modern world to be there when we wake up in the morning. So except for that crazy survivalist guy and Y2K crazies not many of us even bother to plan for something of that magnitude because our government will be there to bail us out right? Sadly this is a false sense of security which the victims of that tragedy have shown us.

Oberoth wrote:A good show! I used to watch Connections and Connections 2 allot when I was younger. I thought they were well written. Unfortunately the Katrina survivors fell into the same sort of technology trap he was speaking of in the show. We all expect the modern world to be there when we wake up in the morning. So except for that crazy survivalist guy and Y2K crazies not many of us even bother to plan for something of that magnitude because our government will be there to bail us out right? Sadly this is a false sense of security which the victims of that tragedy have shown us.

According to the Church of mormon you are suppose to be have a pantry of supplies for you and your family. But you are right most of the people sit there with the government will bail us out. But there is also the guy who just refuses to sit down and die. Who will take a forward step when everyone else just sits there.
But it also show who the survivors types would be and allow us to make our characters have more depth.

the problem comes when that pantry of food runs out. something he mentions. most people don't know enough about growing things to grow food for their families. not do all that many know enough about hunting to support their families that way.

and in either case, what they know tends to be just as technologically dependant. what do you do when the ammunition runs out for your rifle? when the extra powder runs out for the ammo press? can you make gunpowder? can you craft a bow and arrows/ make a spear? know how to hunt with a conventional bow or a spear?

what happens when your pre-packaged seeds run out? your fertilizer? do you know enough about plants to know how to collect and store viable seeds for the next harvest? how to rotate crops and keep a soil in good condition?

not to mention cooking. most people today don't know how to cook witohut a stove. at best, they can cook over an open fire. do they know how to build a fire that is good for cooking? know how to tend the fire to keep it a semi-uniform temp? know how to prepare and cook large amounts of food over an open fire? know how to build a brick or stone oven for cooking bread?

or medicine? do you know which herbs can be used for medical uses? and how much of each one to use to avoid posioning your patient? do you know how to extract various chemicals from herbs to make medicines? which ones to mix, which ones not to?

or clothing? do you know how to sew? how to tan leather? how to spin yarn/thread? how to weave?

there is a reason i argue the saviors of society in the event of a technological collapse like that will be historians and historical re-enactors. they already have a basic idea of how to do all this stuff. so relearning it wouldn't be very hard for them. for the average person off the street, they'd be worse off than if they were suddenly dropped into the jungles of the congo. at least in the congo, you have the hope your phone might still be able to contact someone for help...

Ok I see your point Glitterboy2098, I cannot say that I can do all this myself. Though I am still learning.

But you are right, the majority of the people will die. But I think the re-enactors and historians are in just as much trouble. Only the die hards are going to be able to pull it through.

However in the Rifts world I think those who are going to survive are those who can pull thier strengths together.

Connections and Connections 2 are some of my favorite tv shows.

As for survival, even though I have some wilderness survival skills I'm pretty sure in the event of global apocalypse (like World War Z) I'd be dead within 4 months. That's assuming I had a stock of supplies. Even experienced hunters and trappers in the age of exploration died often died during the Canadian winter, and they knew more about how to live through it in the wild than 99% of people today.

Just recently I was using the internet when it stopped working for no apparent reason. I did what most people would do; I jiggled the hard connections to see if they were secure and checked my connection settings, but to no avail. So I called my service provider the on the Monday, a full day since it failed. She said, "Well sir, we aren't detecting a problem on this end; so we'll send someone out." They didn't get around to me until Friday afternoon (I had to take the day off from work and spend all day waiting for them.)

During that week of no internet, I realized how 'dependent' I had become on it. That's when I thought of this thread; and it was killing me that I couldn't post anything without going to an internet cafe and spending more money on it. So I found other things to do during that time. How does this relate to this thread? I couldn't have repaired my internet if I tried! Not because I'm not a smart guy, but because I wasn't trained as a cable guy. Back in the before time(He he, tell me what movie that's from ) There was little to no specialization. You built your own house, chopped your own wood for heat, dug your own well and provided your own food with a farm. It wasn't until much later that we started heavily sourcing ourselves out to specialists. If you needed your car fixed you went to a mechanic. If you needed food you went to the grocery store and bought it ect... Nowadays, we are so interdependent on specialization that we take for granted the basic needs of people.

That's because specialization creates wealth (vz Adam Smith) and doing everything yourself (poorly) creates an impoverished subsistence economy (see North Korea, Laos and China's Great Leap Forward). Trade and specialization are good things, and would re-establish themselves quite quickly after an apocalypse. It's just the moment right after an apocalypse that it would be a big handicap.

That's because specialization creates wealth (vz Adam Smith) and doing everything yourself (poorly) creates an impoverished subsistence economy

Umm I'm an oddjobber and farmer and very much into the whole doing everythign myself as much as absolutely possible and am doing a lot more than merely subsisting. What being self reliant and capable of standing on your own two feet without having to rely on others does is make you stronger and more able to survive and thrive in times of crisis and danger and disaster.

I mean take last winter when the big storm came throuhg the ohio valley. we wher ewithout power for about a week and half. My neighbor had to come over and hang out with us because their generator broke and they couldnt fix it. I have wood heat (installed by myself), oil lamps, candles (made by myself) and a hand pumped well that has been on the farm sicne it was hand dug by my great grandfather (but I could do one if i had to as I know how) and is still certified drinkable by the county health department. We raise chickens and have a garden and would get along just fine if modern civilization with all is gross consumerism, lazy let others do all the thinking ignorance and proud to not know which end of a screwdriver to hold people went away.

I work with the amish at times and they would probably survive the apocalypse rather well as their world is definately not our world and they do just fine.

The definition of subsistence and wealth is highly subjective when it comes to economics, personal viewpoints and life paths.

Anyhow sorry for going off tangent like that. Just saying that I sincerely doubt our modern consumerist society would be broughgt back that quickly if it ever did as it takes a certain degree of laziness brought about by exuberant luxury to have. in Rifts the only civilization able to have anythign even close to our consumerist society would be the CS and then only the elites (hey not too different than right now after all I guess.)

peace out all!

Mechanurgist should have appended "in a non-technological society" to his statement. before you have technological multipliers, it is hard to live anything but a subsistance lifestyle. the polw, irrigation, mathmatics, and so on were all means to allow a smaller number of farmers to grow food, and allow other people to focus on things other than being farmers. even back in mesopotamia. before systematic agriculture itself allowed the creation of fixed location communities, "generalist" meant "i farm, i raise animals, and i make all my own cloth, clothes, and tools"
as our technology increased, people started to be able to drop parts of that, and eventually drop "farming" entirely from their job description.

the amish would certainly fare better than most in a technological collapse. but even they use technology. spinning wheels, horse drawn plows, ect. we consider it primative because it is less complicated than what we have. but in it's day, those were all miraculous and world changing inventions. and without those items, even the amish would have a hard time producing enough food to allow them to have the rich culture they do. the horse or oxen drawn plow will till a field an order of magnitude faster than doing it by hand, which means they can till, and plant a field much much faster, which frees up more time to devote to religion, to crafting things, and so on.

Why its true the Amish use a primitive technology, in your connections video he was saying not many could survive because they do not understand how to make the technology work. The Amish families I have met have all understood how to repair and scratch build most of thier technology. They have a understanding of how to do things and a why they do it.

While I enjoyed the insightful comments on this thread, I have to respectfully disagree with Rahmota when I read:

"...[the Amish] would probably survive the apocalypse rather well as their world is definately not our world and they do just fine."

Quite the opposite might be true. I wouldn't hold much hope for anybody surviving the Apocalypse, or Coming of the Rifts, but I believe, from a religious and roleplaying point of view, that an Amish community has less chances to survive than a State prison would.

I believe the supernatural events would be mentally overwhelming to many of the faithful, whereas the less pious might take it, well, differently.

The Amish practice of non-resistance, which discourages physical resistance to an enemy, a subdivision of nonviolence, might lead them to refuse to retaliate against an opponent, or offer any form of self-defense.

The Amish separation from the world might lead to their downfall also, during a time when the world needs to pull together to survive the Apocalypse.

I just want to shoot down any Amish techno-wizard power armor brigade ideas, or any other silliness that anybody might suggest to Jason Richards for upcoming books. Afterall, we are not all Jason Richards.

Jeffrey W.

(Hope that I didn't steer this too far off topic. It's actually a great discussion you're having.)

Ahh advanced technology is what he was meaning I guess. Yes everythign from the wheel up (or a stick if you use it for digging or stabbing) is technology. So to say if all technology vanished would mean going back to basically beneath wild animals as even gorillas and chimps have been observed using tools.

And yeah in the rifts style apocalypse with actuals demons, magical powers and all the rest of the horrible tentacle monster coming out and wanting to kill you rape you and eat you (hopefully in that order) then the amish would go extinct due to their beliefs and culture. However in a less supernatural style TEOTWAKI event the Amish lifestyle (maybe not belief system but the lifestyle and back to earth knowledge) would be a very beneficial one for survival of humanity and communities.

And yes the understanding of how the technology that you do use works is vital to being able to rebuild it, continue it or reinvent it. Too many people dont understand how the thigns they do everyday work or where it comes from. I mean take a hot dog? Somethign pretty simple eh? But do you know how to raise a pig up healthy and to the proper weight. Slaughter it and prepare the meat into pork chops hot dogs and everythign else? How many people in the middle of say Chicago or LA or New York have even seen a real live pig?

Advanced technology is a good tool but like any prepared craftsman you should have many different tools available incase the one doesnt work. Shiny, fancy and specialized does not always get the job done.

Rahmota wrote:Ahh advanced technology is what he was meaning I guess. Yes everythign from the wheel up (or a stick if you use it for digging or stabbing) is technology. So to say if all technology vanished would mean going back to basically beneath wild animals as even gorillas and chimps have been observed using tools.

And yeah in the rifts style apocalypse with actuals demons, magical powers and all the rest of the horrible tentacle monster coming out and wanting to kill you rape you and eat you (hopefully in that order) then the amish would go extinct due to their beliefs and culture. However in a less supernatural style TEOTWAKI event the Amish lifestyle (maybe not belief system but the lifestyle and back to earth knowledge) would be a very beneficial one for survival of humanity and communities.

And yes the understanding of how the technology that you do use works is vital to being able to rebuild it, continue it or reinvent it. Too many people dont understand how the thigns they do everyday work or where it comes from. I mean take a hot dog? Somethign pretty simple eh? But do you know how to raise a pig up healthy and to the proper weight. Slaughter it and prepare the meat into pork chops hot dogs and everythign else? How many people in the middle of say Chicago or LA or New York have even seen a real live pig?



Advanced technology is a good tool but like any prepared craftsman you should have many different tools available incase the one doesnt work. Shiny, fancy and specialized does not always get the job done.

Well put!

I found this on Youtube and it made me rethink of this tread.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S0bj76389U

this:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0085404/
no demons or magic, but you get to watch john lithgow and steve guttenburg try to survive a nuclear holocaust.

and this could be the British version:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2023790698427111488&ei=Y1zGSqmlLqigqgKGncUN&q=threads&hl=en#

also, as terrible as they are, the Roland Emmerich-style hollywood disaster movies can provide inspiration as to what the Great Cataclysm might be like. See 2012 and The Day After Tomorrow if you can manage to sit through them without your brain melting out of your ears through sheer disuse.

I always think about the 60's when I hear about post-apocalyptic fiction. People were buying bomb-shelters awaiting The Bomb, and those people are now in nursing homes having never experienced the apocalypse they were planning for.

There is a tension between society and individualism and is well-seen in post-apocalyptic visions.

In a setting where no one trusts anyone else, individual competence is king. If you can do everything yourself, you don't need to depend on other people, then you are insulated from needing other people. However, if you can trust others, then people can specialize, and this specialization is why agricultural societies totally out-strip hunter-gatherer societies in almost every respect. Supporting any sort of reasonable population requires societal trust.

A professional soldier is orders of magnitude more effective than a man who farms, makes his own clothes, and defends himself with a home-bought rifle. A farmer and a soldier are much more effective than two guys who each dabble in both agriculture and defense. So much moreso that societies with professional soldiers have been conquering and exterminating their more 'jack of all trades' counterparts for millennia.

Which to me is the greatest irony. To the guys who want to hold up in the woods, make their own jerky, and defend their homesteads with amateur militia, I always want to point out that they feel they're being tough and independent, but history has a different lesson. To societies where people specialize, these groups are little more than annoying prey. Specializing societies have been exterminating them for millennia, we have become very efficient at it....