‘everybody’s on the stage, and it seems like you’re only person, sitting in the audience’ (Skating away, Jethro Tull)
A couple of weeks back we had a little prequel to an EMP here, with mobile phones and the internet (running through the same system) going down a Sunday evening. It happens here, occasionally, in the back of beyond, and we’ weren’t too concerned. It’s usually only a few minutes or in the sort of weather that you expect to break things.
But it did not come back up. By midmorning I went and turned on the TV (a satellite system, and made sure there still actually was a world with my kids and friends out there in it. I had already thought about driving to town (20 miles or so) and if no-one else could tell me anything trying the Ambulance radio system. I may tell you for the first time I was relieved to see a talking head blathering away about something he knew little about.
Of course, in a bad enough incident – even those tenuous links to the world would be gone. I live a fairly isolated life, but this was isolated enough to give me pause. So: like any writer, I promptly started taking notes on how I felt, how it affected me, what reactions it provoked in my normally phlegmatic wife. As a writer… a part of me is always sitting in the audience. And the other part is sitting in other people’s heads, trying to think how they must think and feel in these circumstances. I have to be quite cautious in ambulance scenarios to make sure I consciously only do the first part.
Do you find yourself looking at things and thinking ‘must note that down’ ‘Oh, so that’s what breaking your finger feels like. Must remember that.’ and eavesdropping… not out of curiosity about what is being said, but HOW they say it?
You must be a writer, then. And what do you think happens if all our comms go down at once?
Mad Genius Club 
5 responses to “In the audience”
We lost our water service for several days last month (sub-freezing temperatures plus ice on the roads plus a damaged main). Suddenly having no water, then having a day or so of, “boil it 15 minutes before you use it,” was a new and unpleasant experience. And yes, I addition to, “We need to store extra water,” I have thought a bit about how it feels to lose a taken for granted necessity.
We’re far enough out that we’ve lost internet occasionally. I was taken aback the first time. “But how do I research . . .” “I can’t check the BAR!!!!!”
I really hadn’t realized how social I’d become, on line, what a huge percent of my social life was on line. And being a writer, as you say, noting the curdling in the stomach. “What if it never came back? And I never heard from my friends again? Ever!”
And when you consider the wider implications of a Carrington Event (or was it a cyber attack from China? Will there be an invasion, and how will I know?) I’ve thought about these things, as an SF writer. And I was seriously bothered.
Being on the Gulf Coast we get hurricanes, and heavy rains with street flooding. No big deal. Lose outside communication, where you can’t find out what’s happening? *That* is deeply unsettling, even when you know it just a whopping big storm and the worst that will happen is living off what’s in the pantry for a week or two..
I remember having a dream a couple months back, where the electricity went off, possibly forever, and dream-me thinking, “welp, those bazillion blank notebooks I’ve collected are going to be useful.”
Lost power for a week at midwinter back when an ice storm wiped out electricity in a swath of three states. We were very, very fortunate. Some people in Arkansas were without electricity for six weeks, and I never lost water (some smaller towns did because it took out their pumps.) I did not enjoy the experience, even though I was semi-prepared, because everyone knew ice was in the offing and stocked up. I was also lucky that none of the falling trees broke windows. One came very, very close and struck within two feet of the glass, but missed.
And people wonder why I get twitchy when winter storms are in the forecast … Having been through that, and a tornado that wiped out over half the apartment block where I lived, I do not take utilities for granted. However, in both cases, communications remained up. No power and no comms would be … I fear civil unrest would start rather quickly, and have to be dealt with equally quickly. Dystopian short story in three, two, one …
I still vividly remember (30 years ago when we lived in York, SC) when the pump in the local reservoir failed. No water at all for 24 hours.
Then, somehow, the water board got the other pumps going. It looked and smelled like it had been used repeatedly for a variety of uses. A few days after that, they began dumping vast quantities of chlorine in and claimed it was safe to drink.
For two weeks, we couldn’t take a shower or wash laundry or dishes because the water would stain everything. At least, once they got it moving, you could flush the toilets again.
It took about three weeks to get this isolated area back to normal.
Wal-Mart was fast out of the starting gate and within 24 hours of the initial shutdown, had pallets of water to replace everything that had sold out within the first hour.
I always store water, along plenty of other stuff.
As for all comms out? I expect a weird mix of civil unrest and passive apathy (because not being apathetic requires sweat).
It won’t be pretty.