The Beginning

Yes, this is the beginning! The beginning of what? Well, that remains to be seen I suppose, but it is the beginning of something. The beginning of writing something meaningful, something beautiful, perhaps something earth shattering, or world changing? That remains to be seen I suppose, but again it depends on how this all turns out, doesn’t it? Should I go back and recap the events of the last few days, or the last few weeks or years, or just start from right now, this moment? Perhaps the most important question is this: When I am finished this piece of writing, will there be anyone left to read it?

I guess, for those who might be reading this who have absolutely no idea what has been going on for the past few weeks, months and years on the planet Earth, then some background is in order. Perhaps this will be read in the near or distance future, by those who have survived this apocalypse. I have little doubt that I am not going to survive very far into the future, with my limited supplies of food and water and I believe I am one of the few survivors in this area. In reality I have no idea how many have survived in my larger community, but to go out and wander about to try and find out is a suicide mission, sure to end in my demise.

The animals have taken over here, and while herds of deer or other animals are not a danger, the predators that feed on them are also numerous, including cougars and bears in sufficient numbers to almost guaranty an encounter of the fatal kind. They have lost their fear of humans now and we are just another meal for them. Even animals like racoons can be deadly, as rabies and other diseases fatal to humans are common among a variety of smaller creatures that also have no fear of humans.

I feal like I am in some science fiction dystopia reality, but the truth seems even stranger than the sci-fi books I used to read growing up and just as unlikely. 20 years, that is all the time it took to take out us humans and right up to 20 years ago we had the power to change things but chose not to. We were warned decades ago that we were damaging the environment but didn’t do enough to stop the inevitable. When sea levels rose, as we were warned they would, every city, village and country suffered, and millions died. The combination of entire cities, even countries, being under water in 5 years was devastating. All of the low-lying agricultural area all over the world were also under water and food shortages starved millions more in the following years. Riots and civil disorder followed in almost every country in the world, as millions of displaced people flooded into countries above the new sea level. An estimated 1 billion people died in those years and everybody, in every country, suffered as a result.

The only positive thing that happened was that the rich and elite, the millionaires and billionaires were all pulled down, their wealth taken back by the sheer number of people that would not stand idly by while the rich and powerful had full bellies and everybody else starved. For the survival of humanity, the playing field was levelled, wealth was redistributed to try and stave off what everybody feared was truly the end of the human race. It did help, for a time, although many died wrestling the power away from the rich, who did not give up their positions and possessions willingly and used their personal armies to fight back. In the end they could not stop the flood of people that were determined to take it from them.

For maybe another 10 years it looked like humanity might survive, but the damage done to the environment was severe and then, yet another natural catastrophe came at us with the speed of light, literally. A massive solar flare from our sun, or several as it turned out, turned out the lights, for good. I saw a TV show many years before all this that warned about such a thing, that it would be a giant electro magnetic pulse that would fry all manor of electronics, burn out massive transformers that powered our electrical grids and take out the whole system. That is exactly what happened, all over the planet, and the world went dark. There was an attempt to produce more transformers, but with no power there were no factories able to produce them in large enough numbers to undo the damage. Small pockets here and there somehow avoided the general power outage, the systems they used being isolated, or some having the ability to replace some of the damaged components in their systems, but 95% of humanity that was left were without power.

Within short order there was complete anarchy and chaos everywhere and many more millions, perhaps hundreds of millions died of starvation, civil war, and disease. 2 years later the world population was maybe half of what it had been before the sea levels rose. Of course, the global community was no longer, so it was hard to say how many people had died, how many were left or what the state of the world was beyond one’s local community. We were in the dark ages, truly cut off from any other places in the world outside of a day or two walk from where we lived. Foot travel was the norm at that point, as most livestock, including horses, had been eaten while the world starved. Of course, that was not necessarily true everywhere, after all there were some with enough forethought to think worst case scenario and so had maintained small herds of some livestock for milk, wool, eggs, and such. But largescale operations had been devastated, as the hordes fell upon them and put an end to such things as large pig, cattle, and chicken operations all over the world.

Humanity might have bounced back still, despite all of this, but there was more to come, perhaps the thing that struck the killing blow. I had seen movies before the start of all this, where the change in climate precipitated an ice age and, yes, that was the next thing that killed millions more. It was not sudden, but over about 3 years the Earth entered another ice age. The northern hemisphere was hit worst, of course, with the higher population to begin with. The central portions of North America, Europe and Asia became uninhabitable in that short span and those that did not move, froze to death. Of course, where they moved there were already survivors, and it became a battle for survival all over again. It is almost impossible to estimate how many died in the years that followed, but a world population of initially almost 8 billion humans became millions of survivors, hardened by years of struggle, war, famine and disease.

The balance of humanity survived in pockets, in areas where the risen sea levels had not drowned everything, the ice age had not frozen the land and it was possible to survive on the land. Of course, the remaining wildlife of the planet had moved as well, and they were just as hungry as us humans. Weapons had disappeared, as the factories had shut down and all the wars and anarchy had used up the remaining ammunition, so we were back to primitive weapons to defend ourselves from the increasingly hungry natural predators. We had not fared so well, and it might have been my imagination, but the lions and tigers and bears seemed to have gotten a little smarter and certainly lost their fear of humans.

That was where we were at, and it did not look good for us. One more catastrophe would finish us off, I was sure of it. The latest increase in sea levels had cut me off from everyone and might well be that last thing. How did I know all of this, given the state of the world? As humanity became concentrated, I had heard many things from those who had come to my area and then left again looking for a better place to be. I had decided to stay on my little island, before it became an island, and that might become the end of me. If you find this and I am gone, then indeed it is the end, not the beginning as I had hoped.