The times, the place

[polaris93]

I saw my psychotherapist again today. I told her about the time when I was 2-1/2 that my adoptive mother came this close to killing -- or, at best, leaving us all so badly injured that death would have been welcome -- herself, her sister, Betty, me, and her sister's 1-1/2 year-old adoptive daughter, Jan, by trying to play chicken with a speeding

Comments

[prester_scott]

Yeesh. I haven't been through any of that sort of thing and it STILL drives me crazy when people point to 1950s America (or thereabouts) as some sort of golden age.

The thing you wrote about the plague of insects following a nuclear war, that's a new one on me. Do you have any links for documentation?

[polaris93]

If you're talking about the story from The Dragon and the Crown, the thing about the insects was nothing other than what normally happens after a battle or a tremendous disaster, when there are corpses of numerous creatures, human and otherwise, together with the wounded bodies of still-living ones, in quantity over a large area. The wounds nnaturally attract many insects, while the bodies, which begin to putrify, likewise draw insects as well as rats and other carrion-eaters, nature's garbage-men. If there are buzzards, crows, and/or ravens in the area, they'd come, too. When you have as many wounded, dying, and dead humans and other creatures all in one place as the scene described in that post, many millions of them including dogs, cats, pet birds, ferrets, even horses and some cattle as well as human beings, along with some wild creatures in the area for whatever reason, that's one hell of a lot of carrion, and within a day or two it all begins to stink, big-time. As far as carrion-eaters are concerned, that smell is like a

Afterthoughts

[polaris93]

BTW, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse in Revelation are actually a very accurate portrayal of the general outlines of war and its aftermath, especially a truly catastrophic war that kills countless people. Such a war would lay waste to the countryside in all directions as warriors/soldiers scavenged food anywhere they could find it. Famine often impels wars, and wars have often brought about famine for survivors because of the ravaging of the countryside by warriors/soldiers on both sides. The carnage of war -- the wounded and the dead -- draws flies, who need carrion in which to have their babies, along with rats, cockroaches, ravens, vultures, and other opportunistic scavengers. These in turn carry pathogens that cause widespread epidemic diseases that are frequently lethal. Malnutrition and starvation in the wake of war weakens the body, and survivors fall prey to disease pathogens of all kinds, some which ordinarily they'd be immune to, others brought into their country by invaders whose microbes their bodies didn't know

Re: Afterthoughts

[prester_scott]

I'm just tired of "golden ages." I don't think they exist. There are always tradeoffs.

I am with you on the four horsemen. They were, in fact, a great description of what happened in the siege of Jerusalem in the years leading up to the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. In my opinion that was the chief purpose of the text: to warn and encourage Christians that it was coming.

Re: Afterthoughts

[polaris93]

I agree with you that every age is a tradeoff among desirable and undesirable things. The 1950s did have some real stability for families with children, though there was no official acknowledgement of the reality of child abuse and wife-beating, nor remedies for these under the law. The 1960s were a time for celebration for those who wanted to sample anything and everything, but a terrible time in many cases for children, not to mention a time during which marriage came under more and more fire. And so on. I think we're supposed to do the best we can in whatever circumstances we find ourselves, including and especially carry out our responsibilities to our loved ones and the generations to come. But trusting that one's time is the best ever, or that it will last forever, is a fool's belief.

On the Four Horsemen: yes.

As to The Dragon and the Crown, one of the things my literary partner and I are exploring in it is the concept of "strategic disaster" vs. "tactical disaster" or "local disaster." In the latter, outside help can

Afterthought # 2

[polaris93]

Remember: prior to the 20th century, there were no antibiotics. The only antiseptics were wine, liquor, and salt or salt water poured into wounds. Anesthetics didn't exist. Analgesics were opium and potable alcohol, and those weren't standardized as to content. Abdominal surgery, open-heart surgery, brain surgery, any other sort of delicate internal work didn't happen. You got gut-stabbed by something and you died of peritonitis. The only Medevac services then were performed by men who hauled their buddies out of the battlefield by brute force -- often getting killed by the enemy if they tried it. When new pathogens got loose in a population of any kind, for any reasons, people died in droves, because they had no immunity to the new bugs. Flies, cockroaches, rats, and other scavengers and opportunists infested areas hit by disasters of any kind, whether human-caused or otherwise -- something that happens today, but we now have ways to combat that. So war --> pestilence --> famine --> death, death, death was the natural