Children finding their way

Many apologies for such a long absence - that old friend of mine, LIFE, came to stay and rather like those house guests in the old days of Jane Austin and Dickens just stayed and stayed:) LIFE is going to visit someone else , I hope, any day now but is going through that stupid ritual of just getting out of the door then remembering one last thing it forgot to mention. However, we are by the front door:)

So back to words, to writing and to this long and torturous process of The Children’s Tale, the first three were so easy to write in comparison.

Why the difficulty?

It wasn’t helped by the discovery that I was combining two stories in the one, two stories that didn’t really mesh very well. Stupid me!

That was last year, I had to untangle the two stories and reassemble them. I had been trying to write The Ancestor’s Tale but obviously my subconscious was telling me, or trying to, that the most obvious follow up to the three previous was a tale about how the children of our companions were going to manage in this world of want and war.

I have spent most of my working life with children, both privileged and not. In my travels around the world it is the children I have been watching. Mainly because the growth of baby to adult is so fascinating, the connections and conclusions they make so endlessly varied. And although I worry for all caught up in events beyond their controlling it is the children I worry for more.

So the children of my tale?

The Feral’s children would appear to be the privileged children, secure and fed. However, their fathers are at war and their responsibilities in the absence too high for their years. They are also, neither Feral nor Human, where do they belong? Where is their allegiance?

The mined-in settlements are fearful of the world outside and lacking knowledge, they have their own cultures formed over the 50 years of their confinement and with some troubling and disturbing history to absorb.How will they manage to assimilate with others.

The rag-tags are displaced,terrorized, many orphaned and alone.How will they find the trust so badly needed.

All have to find not only their place in this environment but, also need to help create a world they would wish to inherit, if they ever reach adulthood.

There is time for their ancestors to explain why and how all were in this predicament. Time enough for them to present their reasons and excuses. Their stories lie in a different volume.

Eating people is wrong?

Last time I was writing about the dilemmas of population control probably facing a population who were isolated, with uncertain food supplies. But maybe I should have backtracked a little and discussed what would have have happened to the food supplies before they were so alone.

In the Sefuty Chronicles I had set up a world ripped apart by war. Catastrophic wars in fact. Due to climate change and the decreasing availability of natural resources. I had supposed that there would be mass movement of displaced people, fleeing from growing deserts, minor wars over land control, drowned or salt poisoned land, floods and other climate disasters such as increased hurricanes, tornadoes, storms, rain and so the list goes on.

The world, at this moment, hosts billions of people. The global population growth is beginning to slow, it doesn’t feel like it but, individually, nation population growth is slowing down and in some cases almost stopped. There will be many more millions to accommodate as those who are young now reproduce, however this will be offset to an extent by the huge aging cohort dying. There is still the capacity to feed us all, if we become more responsible about resources.My scenario has discounted this responsible behaviour. Pre- chronicles the world has run out of resources and global starvation faces everyone.                                                                                        

Mass migration produces fear in the populations facing the arrival of so many extra mouths to feed, if resources are already reduced fear is easily translated into violence. There would little welcome. Equally there would be fear in the fleeing masses. Survival becomes all, if strength is left, feeding yourself and your family will incite violence. Small localized wars would soon spread to larger more violent conflict as governments mobilize to pacify their own and to deter outsiders.

Already all over the world discontent and rage is being generated over much smaller numbers of immigrants and refugees. Nothing on the scale I am talking about in Sefuty Chronicles, we can still hold out a hand to aid, but more and more the hand wants to only aid, not to take in, the displaced.

The richer nations will pour in money but not open up homes.

Selfish?

Normal human nature?

So pre-Sefuty Chronicles has been global war; the north against the south. The richer nations against the poorer. The more technology against the less industrialized. However, eventually the minerals and natural resources  which often came from the exploited south, ran short for the north. Machines ground to a halt and the north too faced massive food shortage.

The North may not dry up, but good harvests are not guaranteed.

Governments fell as populations sensed their coming doom and toppled them. Anarchy not far behind. Law and order breaking down and nations unused to violence in their own territory left to fend for themselves.

This has all occurred before the Chronicles are written; I have suspected that those who delight in, or mind not, violence would soon gather in the available resources once government was gone and rationing would be a matter up to highest biders, favours and who you know. 
Those who consider themselves law abiding, gentle, unable to hurt others would die or become as the others. Famine is a dreadful event. Starving not a pleasant death. Self survival, survival of your family becomes all.

During the 1930s, multiple acts of cannibalism were reported during the Soviet famine in the 1930s (Yaroslav Lukov 2003)

Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died. ... At least 2,505 people were sentenced for cannibalism in the years 1932 and 1933 in Ukraine, though the actual number of cases was certainly much higher. ( T. Snyder 2010 Bloodlines. Europe between Hitler and Stalin)

Cannibalism is documented to have occurred in China during the' Great Leap Forward', when rural China was hit hard by drought and famine.(Jung Chang Wild Swans: three daughters of China)

In modern history there is the documented account of the ill fated Donner Party trapped in cold, blizzard and helplessness in the mountains of North America, also of the survivors of an air-crash in the mountains of South America. During the 2nd World war cannibalism was reported from Russia, especially at places such as Stalingrad under siege for years, so long that all the domestic, wild animals and even the vermin had been consumed. German and Japanese troops, cut off from their supply lines and with no sources of food to keep them alive, no doubt there are many other events of a similar nature , when the world is such turmoil survival becomes all.

In The Gulag Archipelago, Soviet writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn described cases of cannibalism in 20th-century USSR. Telling about the famine in the 1920s in Povolzhie he wrote: "That horrible famine was up to cannibalism, up to consuming children by their own parents . . . ‘

Cannibalism has a long history not always proved, but common enough for it to be one of humanity's practices usually in times of famine, or for appeasements of angry gods.

Sailors adrift on the salty sea, shipwrecked or air wrecked survivors with limited hope of rescue, adverse weather marooning a population, nationwide famines when help is not forthcoming from governments all have thrown up this last taboo and broken it down.

I have placed evidence of cannibalism in the Chronicles, evidence discovered in the bones found 50 years after the event, at the time when the security of my nation broke and vanished. Cannibalism then, rumours of cannibalism, within the mined rings as well as in the land left unprotected.

Those left behind within ‘rings of explosives’?, yes, I can see some kind of cannibalism being practiced after successive bad harvests. Not always, for most it is a taboo to far.

But. . .but. . . but

Could I eat another?

My love of meat when younger was so strong friends would joke they wouldn't want to be shipwrecked with me, however, although I state that it would be foolish to die if there was a dead body next to one - could I?

Would I be able to kill another to feed?

If it was just me?

If my family needed the food?

Could you?

Eat live insects, eat human flesh?

Food Security and the part it will play in our future.

I am often asked why Sefuty? and have explained that is standing for food security – se and ty = the security bit and fu = food.  Why food security as a title for a series?  Well, it started as a short story, as I have said before, but when I realised it was going to be long and I had to find a title for it Sefuty sounded about right. The whole premise of this world I created, the earth in the near future, 2100s, is about the effect extreme climate change has on food supplies.

The world goes to war over the resources needed for life.  We may think it will be fossil fuel shortages that will cause our downfall, and so it will but not so much because we cannot heat or cool our homes or drive our cars, but because food production globally is tied so tightly into intricate knots with fossil fuel/technology.  The global population will crash if anything cuts the knots.  We cannot feed 6-9billion people without technology. 

I have been interested for many years now over feeding the world.  Food is of interest to me.  I have travelled widely and enjoyed the different cultures and been intrigued as to how closely bound each is to its own food stuff.  To the extent that some, that are starving, will not eat a food offered if it is not culturally theirs.  Who will eat a live insect?  Well I hope I would, if I was starving, but the taboos are hard to break through.  Eat human flesh? (if dead of course!) many will not, even to save themselves from the same fate.  To be able to overcome the bodies natural instinct for self survival needs a mighty strong force.  That something as basic as food can do this I found fascinating.  The other side of the coin is that since mankind began we have been lusting after ‘other’s’ foodstuffs.  Global trade began very early.  We are complex and odd creatures.

I have read extensively on and around the subject of food before, during and after taking a food science degree in my 40s.  Enjoying the books on the history of trade, an extension on a life time interest in travel and foreign parts. Discovering those Neolithic traders (amazing folk they were).  It became obvious that although trade helped to spread humanity around the world it also caused some horrific behaviour from Homo Sapiens. War, enslavement, torture being the worst. Because of course trade encouraged greed and don’t we all know why greed is quoted as a deadly sin!

Huge profits could be made, especially in foodstuffs – the spice wars were vicious and caused ethnic cleansing before the phrase had been invented, because the wealth to be made was tremendous – where there is rich profit there are speculators.  Where there are rich profits there will be the exploited. The more I read over the years the more the patterns grew.  The more convinced I became that we were repeating the pattern this time on a massive scale.  Even back 40 years ago, I thought that the starving of the world would be what brings us to our knees.  The poor, the discarded, those who have nothing left to lose.  Now I see tensions rising and spilling over.

I want to present a short summary of our history in the next couple of blogs, showing what the pattern is like.  Explain why the climate change behind The Sefuty Chronicles is about food more than it is about defunct air conditioning units.

Who is to live and who to die?

So okay – in my Sefuty Chronicles’ world I trashed the planet and caused devastating wars over diminishing resources!  I divided the survivors into three.

 1)      Those who made it into purpose built cities before the doors shut (for ever). 
2)    Those who hid behind rings of land mines on the promise that they would be rescued soon! (50 years) 
3)     Those who managed neither and were left to survive or not by their own ways.

I have not written about the whole world, other countries are mentioned but these Tales are a localized affair set in a locale I know reasonably well, and so some solutions may not ring likely to other nations.  Bear with me, the problems are still the same.

Whether or not the climate change disaster was caused by mankind or by natural changes matters not when the world is home to billions of our own kind.  We don’t really care if the ancient life forms millions of years ago went through the same and became extinct.  Now it us and it is  personal.  9 billion die before my Tales begin as one old man put it

‘By the time it was finished, the victors of the world stood on a mound of billions. We committed the greatest genocide of all time.  To save ourselves we killed them all.’

He was by anyone’s standards a good man before the Wars, and he struggled to do good after the Wars.  But things had changed. 

The next problem I had with this new world I was inventing was by how much would our nature change when the chips were truly down. How much does our civilized code depend on the basic security of food, health and shelter. Does the fact that the fall from our pampered world to bare basics would be huge make any difference to that code.

Each of my groups of survivors would need to tackle their changed lifestyles in different ways and this took much pondered time.  Studying historical events, anthropological theories, listening to people and tossing the mix together.  Testing my ideas.  I enjoyed it and what does that say I wonder?!

Population Control

Food Security

Law and Order

All these are the matter for heated debate and none more so than population control.  You scoff, why is it needed if the worlds population has crashed to Neolithic numbers? Well in the first two books of the Chronicles the City folk have no land to grow food, the mined areas have no room for expansion. Population control and food security walked hand in hand.

Population control is an emotive subject, complete with a dark history of coercion and eugenics, which has rendered the management of it almost a taboo subject.  There have been world summits over the years.  Many strands mooted as to how best manage the worlds rapidly climbing population little has happened, because we are scared of the subject. (a subject for another day) 

In my diminished world some of the problems remain. 

*  If there is not enough food or water who decides on who has the right to it?

*  If survival depends on the co-operation of the many what place is there for the ones who cannot/will not contribute?

*  If survival depends on the next generation who is to be allowed the right to produce that generation?

*  If medical expertise has vanished who is to be saved and who not?

*  Do people make their own rules or try and follow the old rules?    

You can see some potential trouble brewing in these questions. I wandered into murky depths and had to tease out some moral and ethical as well as practical solutions. 

World Building: Living in Isolation

If you have read my  post at the beginning of Feb - World Building: Drawing Board? what Drawing Board - you will know I had scattered land mines around my new world. Of course I made life difficult for myself in the use of landmines.  However I did think that, based on our past history, we would be making use of them to defend ourselves from . . . well anything really. We have been using them indiscriminately for years now and although the clearance goes on apace across the globe, I believe if any nation felt threatened, even we who have signed up against their use, would make use of them. But, I didn’t truly think through the consequence of keeping settlements confined, like I did, for fifty years.  Ellen was, after all, supposed to be a short story!

Thinking of lifestyles we take for granted, what would we lose?  It wouldn’t be just depriving the survivors of fossil fuels but depriving them of food and water, if for some reason they had little expertise or knowledge.  Also trade and looking further afield for supplies was a route of survival I had cut off.  In 50 years objects deteriorate from use and external conditions.  Each settlement would have to have the wherewithal not just to produce its own food but its own cloth, tools and amenities.  No buying in from the next community, no money in fact for what use would it be.  I had crashed my survivors backwards in time, the only difference between them and the original inhabitants of a pre-industrial world being that they had modern knowledge.

I thought it could be done but I had to research hard to find the ‘yes’ to it all.  Cloth I already knew about, from my own experiments in the past.  Linen we all know but nettles, that hated weed of every garden, makes splendid cloth.  If sheep are around then of course fleece not only provides wool but felt, so warm and waterproof.

Food when there is no backup would be difficult. Could it be preserved when there was no refrigeration, would they be able to learn the old skills?  Most towns and bigger villages would have had libraries of some kind and, although recent events (closing libraries or making them electronic) would foil my plans, I did think that knowledge in books would help them survive. Drying and smoking is the easiest way to preserve food without any chemicals to help. Vinegar can easily be made and, if you could harness them, bees will give honey.  All ways of keeping harvests through the winter.

Could they make leather without chemicals?  This last took a lot of tracking down because I didn’t have the correct words to feed into the search engines.   I knew there had to be a method; after all, I reasoned, those early trappers in the opening up of the wilderness would not have lugged massive quantities of salt with them, on canoes, into the wilderness.  It would make no sense at all; apart from the weight, water would be bound to get in.  Yet skins must be cured or they become rank and spoiled.  Yes I know, you over the Atlantic know the trick, you still have a wilderness.  Maybe others with their own wilderness know the trick also.

Brain tanning.  The day I found it was a great day.  Not only because I had found it but because I found the whole process fascinating.  It seemed beautifully neat and natural that each creature has the right size brain to cure its skin.  Not only is nature wonderful but so too the early peoples of our world who discovered all these skills.

So they could clothe themselves, tan skins, preserve food.  In this blighted world could my survivors produce the food they preserved?  What kind of farming would they be able to do?  I visited our local organic farm and Andrew very kindly took me around explaining and listening to my plans.  I left a little discouraged because the size of the fields and my inability to see how my small bands of survivors could possibly plough and seed such vast areas, and this was a good farm with hedges and wildlife and reasonably-sized fields.  I had to have a think and do more research!