Before Technology Fails: Mitigating Disaster
|
Tweet this story! Support our efforts for a sustainable world.
|
|
Francesca Rheannon, host of Writer’s Voice, talked to Matthew Stein, author of When Technology Fails: A Manual for Self-Reliance, Sustainability, and Surviving the Long Emergency, about mitigating disasters like climate change and peak oil so that when things go south—as they undoubtedly will, if our society continues its relentless march toward the cliff—it need not be quite so bad. And if it is quite so bad, we’ll be ready.
In this interview, Mat discusses the Donner Party and their “famous barbecue,” and reflects that some of those families really didn’t do so bad. Imagine if they’d known you could just peel the bark off the trees and eat the green layer, like deer do when food is scarce. Things might have turned out differently.
(PS: With this interview’s casual reference to cannibalism, Mat comes as close as he ever has to addressing my pet post-apocalypse survival scenario: a countryside overrun by mindless, brain-thirsty zombie hordes. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Mat will finally get to this topic in his next interview. Come on, Mat! The third edition of WTF may be too late!)
