Collapse-A Science Fiction Writer's Perspective

    Several months ago I wrote a review of Steve Stirling's "Dies The FIre" for my on-line alternate history newsletter.  Steve Stirling read the review and e-mailed me defending the book.  We e-mailed back and forth for a week or two.  The e-mails were cordial and I came away impressed.  Whatever you think of some of his books and of his politics, Stirling is a very analytical guy.  I don't agree with his ideas on how a civilization would fare in a "Dies the Fire"-type civilization though. Societal collapses are a common enough theme in science fiction that I thought it might be useful to pass along some of my thoughts about how they might play out.
    This is not a review of "Dies the Fire", and it is intended to address a range of scenarios, not just that one.
    Writers tend to get at least five things wrong in colllape of civilization scenarios.  I'll cover the first two this issue.  First, they underestimate the importance of water.  Second, they overestimate the rate at which people starve to death.  Third, they underestimate the resilience of governments.  Fourth, they underestimate the power of trade.  Fifth, they underestimate the distance that a wealthy society has to fall to get to starvation or anarchy .
    Food versus water:  In a drastic collapse situation most people would not starve to death.  They would die of dehydration long before they had a chance to.  If you go without water for more than four or five days you are at risk for permanent damage if not death.  A week without water or some form of liquid will almost certainly be fatal. 

      Starvation: On the other hand,  it takes a long time for most initially well fed people to starve to death.  Take myself for example.  I weigh aropund 225 pounds.  That's 45 pounds more than I feel comfortable with, but probably not unusual among us obese Americans.  Let's say that I am suddenly in a situation where I can scrounge no more than three or four hundred calories a day for an extended period of time.  I'm down to dry dogfood, bugs, and a can of Spam once in a while.  It take 10 to 15 calories to support a pound of weight, depending on percent of muscle mass and activity level.   I'm reasonably muscular and I'll have to work hard in this scenario, so let's say it would initially take 2500 calories to keep me at current weight.  That gives me a 14,000 calorie deficit per week.  It takes a calorie deficit of 3500 calories on average to lose a pound of fat or muscle.

    I lose 4 pounds per week of fat or muscle initially, and the rate of loss goes down from there as I have fewer pounds to support and my metabolism goes into starvation mode.  You can lose weight faster than that, but if you do the excess is water weight.  It would probably take around 3 months for me to get back down to where I need to be--180 pounds.  I wouldn't be happy during those 3 months, and I would be malnourished, but I would not starve.  Multivitamins would help on the malnourishment front, but not completely.
    Would I make it through the first year?  Well, my calorie deficit goes down as my weight goes down.  At 180 pounds I'll need 2000 calories, so the deficit would be 1500.  That means I lose 3 pounds per week, and that goes down every week.  At 6 months I'm at 150 pounds--5 pounds underthe bottom of my range in college.  For the next 3 months the calorie deficit averages 1000 calories per day.  I lose 2 pounds per week on average.  At nine months I'm at 120 to 125 pounds--skinny, not healthy, but not dead of starvation.  For the last three months of the year I might average losing a pound to a pound and a half per week.  At the end of the year I still weigh 100 pounds, and while I may die of something triggered by the rapid weight loss or of some infection allowed by my weakened immune system I would probably not have died of starvation.
     Obviously not everyone would survive that long.  Metabolism and the type of work you do would make a major difference.  One of my students weighs maybe 120 pounds and eats 3500 calories a day to maintain that.  She wouldn't anywhere near as long as I would.  To an extent you would get survival of the slightly obese in areas where food was the major problem.  Children, and especially infants would be very vulnerable to loss of both food and water. (more next issue)  

Shameless self-promotion section: If you enjoyed this, you may also enjoy reading reading my chapter in the gather.com First Chapters competition.  It's at:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976924766

If you enjoy reading science fiction, you may also want to look at the science fiction synopses from the First Chapters competition at:

http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976932299