Filed under: Ballistics, Emergency, Failure, Flu, Government, movies, Politics, Predictions, Preparedness, Society, Writing stuff
Sometimes I wish that I listened to my own advice. For literally decades, my mantra of advice for friends has always been “trust your instincts”. This isn’t just some mystical mumbo-jumbo: a healthy, functioning human brain with a decent amount of education and experience is an amazing data processor, with multiple layers of analysis always going on – and one of them is what your subconsious is considering that kicks up to your conscious awareness as a “gut feeling”. This is the premise behind the book Blink (which I haven’t read, but have read enough about from the author and others to have a decent understanding of).
OK, so what am I going on about now?
[Mild spoilers ahead.]
Just this, when I originally conceived Communion of Dreams, I was writing a book about . . . wait for it . . . the aftermath of an economic collapse. Yeah, the bulk of the book you see now was pretty much the same. But the backstory was more about how a series of severe but not pandemic flu epidemics lead to the collapse of the world economy around 2011 – 2012. And how that collapse would lead to a significant downturn of the human population worldwide, as the carrying capacity of the planet changed. Yes, I still had the extant plot device of the Fire Flu there, but it was to be what Diabolus became in the current version – a terror threat that played off of the memories of what happened a generation previously.
But I was writing this initially around 2000 – the economy was just too good, things seemed like they would be smooth sailing forever. Trying to get people to think about, let alone believe, that an economic collapse could occur was just too difficult. Most people only understand the functioning of the economy when it smacks them in the face – and in spite of the brief downturn following the 9/11 attacks, few people understood what was building on the horizon.
So I went with the current revision of the book.
I should have trusted my instincts. They have only very seldom let me down. Because now there is a growing awareness of the precariousness of our economic situation. Most people are still only thinking that we’re in for some “rough times”, which I gather they think will be a limitation of how many new plasma televisions they can buy. But even that level of understanding would be enough for them to understand what I was (or, rather, would have been) writing about in that earlier version of Communion.
And yes, if you look at what I said above, you can conclude that I think that things are actually going to get a lot worse for a lot longer than what the current awareness believes. It really depends on how foolishly our government and business leaders act – right now I am not optimistic. Will it mean a global economic collapse? As one of my favorite actors in one of my favorite roles said:
Personally, I’d give us one chance in three. More tea anyone?
Jim Downey
(With apologies for having my Monday doom and gloom a day late – it was a busy weekend launching Ballistics by the inch.)
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Communion Of Dreams 
[…] a note from a friend in response to yesterday’s doom & gloom report. He asked what my advice would be for anyone wondering about how to handle some modest […]
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