0.0.0.0 Would Our Legacy Survive?

by Richard Graupner

  To say this was disturbing was an understatement. What would I do in such a situation? It just seemed so far from my current reality. A chill ran through me.

  Turning towards my father, I said, ‘So what you are saying is that in the right circumstances, we are all capable of killing?’ Even in the soft light emanating from the inside light through the window behind us I could see the sadness outlined in my father’s expression.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘It comes down to kill or be killed, for the most part, and those more used to violence are generally not the ones carrying the knowledge and wisdom of the civilization, and so the learned ones mostly have a very low rate of survival in such a scenario.

  ‘So in a major disaster scenario where a civilization is threatened, how does one allow for the retention of the knowledge base, or at the very least a sufficient amount of it, to give the survivors a chance at a quick recovery? Quicker at least, than appears to have been the case to date in history as we understand it.’ My father paused for a moment, obviously disturbed by this conversation, before continuing. ‘It does not make for a pleasant scenario, and I apologise for that. I have evaluated this from a number of angles, but the most plausible is as I have outlined. Remember, we are not talking about a disaster striking part of the planet with the remainder being able to remain functional and come to the aid of those stricken by whatever befell them. We are evaluating a scenario where life as we know it, with all its current support systems, grinds to a halt on the entire planet, or at least sufficiently so that survival turns inwards and thoughts of helping others fade into the background. Under this type of situation, it explains why we appear to lose so much, as a species, when we are hit by a catastrophe.’

  I sat there in the darkness, finding breathing suddenly a function that was giving me some difficulty due to the tightness in my chest. I forced myself to take a deep breath to try to break this grip of fear, or was it terror, that seemed to have me by the throat.

  My father’s gaze appeared fixed on the horizon, and I had the distinct impression from the expression on his face that he was actually fully visualising the scene.

  ‘From my perspective anyway,’ he continued, ‘it seems our veneer of civilization is very thin, and in the right conditions and level of fear, we simply shrug off that veneer and revert to our primal nature. This may also explain the behaviour of many of those criminals, those whose behaviour we find so difficult to understand in our so-called civilized environment. The same can be said of the supposed fighting and killing of people during the disasters in Haiti, ostensibly for water and food. But how would we have behaved in that environment and those conditions? In the comfort of our civilized status, we are quick to deplore their actions, but what if the roles had been reversed? I think we are mostly fooling ourselves at our perceived level of civilization, and when placed in a situation such as a major catastrophe, one where the possibility of help from others appears non-existent, we will see the real human emerge from beneath the cloak we call civilization.’

  There appeared to be nothing more to add to such a dire sketch of the potential situation we could find ourselves in should such a catastrophe strike us. The frustrating thing for me was that it appeared that this was, in fact, the most probable outline of what had occurred in the past. We could never actually know for certain though, and I finally concluded that we would only realistically be able to determine how we would react when, and if, something as gargantuan as this actually occurred. How would you be able to prepare if these events happen so quickly, as appeared to be the case? We ended our conversation at this point, and I went to bed quite troubled.

  Chapter 10

  I sat there under the tree in the coolness of the approaching late afternoon, feeling quite chilled and apprehensive, my breathing short and shallow. I understood now why survivors of the wars in our civilized era were never able to forget the trauma they had experienced. All you could do was try to smother the memories with more pleasant ones to help you cope.

  I stood up a little shakily, from both the memories and the long period of sitting still I suppose, and walked slowly towards the housing cluster. The herders were focused on bringing in the animals, guiding them into their respective pens, so I did not distract them as I walked by. We needed to graze the animals outside the walls, as to wall off a suitably large area for them to graze in safety was simply not practical. The reduction in the number of renegades over the past two years, due to the disease that had ravaged their communities, along with the red ochre garments worn by the herders, had reduced the danger significantly, and I was pleased by that. Understanding and listening to nature was also playing a key role in this. My father had been right all those years ago. One can tune into and listen to nature. It will forewarn you of any changes, good or bad. For our community, it was becoming second nature, with the youngsters being taught this survival art from the time they became mobile.

  As I approached the houses, I marvelled at how different our accommodations were to what I had grown up in, and yet here I was quite comfortable and content in what would have been considered a primitive hut back then. For the most part, we had stuck with what my father had termed a rondavel, essentially a round-walled structure with a coned roof. In this case, the walls were constructed of intertwined sticks, anchored between sturdier wood poles buried some distance in the ground at intervals. The stick walls were then packed with smallish stones and covered with a clay mud. When this was dry, it was amazingly resilient, even to rain, and although it needed some measure of upkeep, it was fairly simple to do. The round wall and roof were simpler to construct and structurally stronger than a square or rectangle form and consequently required less resource materials. The wall was also a surprisingly good insulator.

  The roof was a series of medium-sized wood poles arranged in a cone and with thinner sticks arranged horizontally across these at roughly a forearm’s spacing apart. Our main challenge with the roof was always the difficulty in sourcing sufficient reasonably straight poles, so we had begun, a few years previously, to trim the side branches off the younger trees of both the pine and black wattle that we found in our area. Both were fast growers, and for the size of poles we wanted, we were already beginning to harvest from these stands of trees. It was this that was now allowing us to expand the number of rondavels and reduce the present crowding in the existing units.

  Long, tough grass was used in overlapping layers to create the roof, commencing from the bottom up such that the upper layers overlapped the lower. If the layer of grass was thick enough, it was waterproof even in the heavy thunderstorms we experienced in this area. To tie everything together, we used thin strips of animal hide. I blessed my father for his foresight in having collected all the items he had, and for what he and the other elders had taught me and others in the community during those initial terrible years. Passing on those tools and skills to the younger members in the community had in no uncertain terms greatly assisted us, giving us a definite advantage in our ability not to simply survive, but to now constantly improve our living standard and our ability to grow the community into a more robust unit.

  As I walked past what we called our community hall, I marvelled at how well our community had taken to brick making. Here again was something that had never even entered my mind in my young years. Why would I need to know how to do this when others were quite capable? Of course, this was precisely the issue my father had raised with respect to loss of knowledge and the extended recovery time of a civilization after being struck by a catastrophe. We had been blessed by the foresight of a few who had collected together a sufficient number of people with a diverse knowledge that could be passed on to those who followed.

  We had experimented with a number of mixes of clay, sand, and cut grass. The sturdiest of these mixes we had used on the community hall where we met to learn, to discuss issues, or simply to talk. It had taken some time to build as collec
ting the clay and sand from the river was time-consuming in itself, but we did not want to use up valuable wood resources for firing the bricks. The solution to this was quite simple in the end. A young lad, one of my brightest students, suggested that to conserve energy we first sun bake the bricks, with each household then placing a set of these bricks around their cooking fires, turning them around for the next fire. Utilizing this process, we were able, over a few months, to generate the number of bricks we required to build this large structure, which of course needed the increased strength to support its larger roof.

  As I passed by the community hall, I greeted a few of the out-of-village students standing talking outside their rondavels. These students from the other two communities near us were housed in a number of rondavels close to my own. The three communities had agreed that we had a better chance of knowledge survival and growth if we regularly rotated people between the villages. This way, as the students went from village to village, they were required not only to learn from the current village they were in, but they were also able to pass on their learning from the previous village. The system was extremely effective, and in the nearly five years we had been operating this way, the general knowledge base within the villages had improved exponentially. It was heart-warming to see how strongly the people approached the quest for knowledge, and I was immensely pleased that for a number of years now I was no longer the only teacher.

  We had many who had taken up the teaching role, who now being able to read and write had begun going through the books my father had collected and so carefully stored for this eventuality. Some of the people had already begun self-discovery and were evaluating and exploring further, such as Sarah who had taken to healing. Her observations of the animals had brought in a number of herbs and other plants that she had now determined had medicinal and other properties, and she happily transferred this knowledge to the other villages. Although I had originally been sceptical about this possibility, my father had insisted we had to ensure we worked at this until the teaching became self-sustaining, whatever it took. I now can see what he had seen. He had been right, and the quest for knowledge had indeed become self-sustaining. This was, in large part, why I had now decided to move on to the deeper, or softer aspects, the unseen knowledge. I now needed to get as much of these aspects across as I could in the short time I had left. I had also realised recently that to do this effectively I would need champions for the cause so to speak, people for whom these aspects came naturally. I was satisfied I had found these champions, and a sufficient number of them, for these aspects to be in safe hands. Tomorrow was going to be very different for the learners in the village. Tomorrow we would go beyond the knowledge required for basic survival.

  Chapter 11

  I awoke, as usual, before dawn and was lying in the dark, listening to nature stirring itself awake. It had been a busy night, what with a leopard attempting to gain access to the animals. The jackals had provided warning, and we had been able to scare the leopard off before any damage was done. We were not sure how it got in, and this was the first time this had occurred since we had completed the wall. We had built the wall slanting outwards specifically to make it difficult to climb from the outside. We needed to wait till morning though to see where it had gained access.

  I arose, my old bones complaining and my muscles stiff. The grass mattress certainly left a lot to be desired when I thought back to the bed I had had as a young woman starting varsity all those years ago. Still, it was better than the ground, and certainly much warmer. I pulled the rough blanket around my shoulders, barely covering my body. The scarcity of materials for clothing and bedding was still a concern, with the increasing population aggravating the situation. The availability of clothing from the old stores and warehouses was now severely limited. It was also dangerous and exposed our people, not only to the renegade bands that roamed and ruled the old cities and towns, but also to the potential for infection in the community.

  Although the renegade numbers had drastically reduced due to the diseases that plagued them as a consequence of their now-limited knowledge of hygiene, the amount of non-degraded clothing was now almost non-existent. One had to firstly find a warehouse with such commodities, and then move old rotten boxes and heaps of clothing, digging underneath the piles to find those items which had had limited exposure to the environment, such as oxygen, water, and rodents, and were still viable. It was a hazardous task, and we had lost members of the community over the years when they had been trapped in the warehouse or a part of the decaying city by the renegades. Luckily, those who managed to live in the cities never strayed far, not knowing how to survive or track in the wild. They seemed to be doing very basic stock farming, simply culling animals that were close to the towns or cities.

  It was for this reason that we preferred to make our living deep in the bush, as it were. It was safer, more hygienic, and far from the majority of the renegades. The few roving bands that had stumbled across us had all been small groups, bar one. The smaller groups had tried to pilfer from us and had met with little success. Sadly, there were usually deaths on both sides before they had decided to move on. The larger group had proved more difficult, and I still feel somewhat ashamed at the ruse we finally employed to protect ourselves.

  This group only found us, fortunately for us, after we had completed the wall. We were well protected but had animal herds, women, youngsters who could be turned into slaves, tools, and food stores. We were a prize they could not resist. Their first few attempts were just blind attacks on the wall. We were able to inflict quite heavy losses with the bows and few crossbows we had, but we also suffered a few deaths and injuries. The problem was that although we had some food reserves in the village for the herds, it was fast running out, and we could not take the herds out to pasture while the renegades were around. We were rationing the food for the herds, but they were becoming restless, both from this and from the fear felt in the village from the situation we found ourselves in.

  The last straw for me was when they found their way up the cliff and began throwing stones and rocks into the village. Loosing off an arrow uphill accurately is a difficult skill to master, and we broke many arrows on the cliff face before we were able to be effective enough to limit the damage by killing and injuring a number of them. Again, we too had injuries and fatalities, as well as damage to structures.

  We were not going to survive this onslaught by fighting it out as we had done with the smaller groups. Sitting there, somewhat in despair, I thought about the losses we had incurred, the injured people, some of who were not going to make it, and the rising despair becoming apparent in the village. Water was sufficient, but the food supply for the animals was becoming critical. I’m not sure how the idea came to me, but I remember staring at the wall, at first feeling that I could not, should not, do this. A touch from the young girl I was tending to brought me back to reality. I was sitting with her as she was dying, her wounds too great for our ability to heal. She had relaxed now in the knowledge that it was over, and with a squeeze of my hand and a slight smile, her eyes appeared to say, ‘it’s ok now, don’t worry so for me’, and her last breath left her. I closed those beautiful green eyes, a colour that was so rare, and despite having been through this more times than I cared to remember, I felt a rising anger. Dammit, it was the only way out that I could see.

  The assembled leadership group sat in silence after I had explained what I wanted to do. They understood it, and its implications, but they too seemed to be struggling with the ethics of the proposal. ‘If there is another option, I am open to suggestion,’ I said. ‘If not, we need to do this now. We have no more time left.’ Eventually Karl stood up and addressed the rest. ‘I agree, as we all seem to. We have no more time. I will arrange it.’

  The idea was as simple as it was cruel for the animal involved. We spent the next two days fighting off the sporadic attacks meant to wear us down. During this time, we had
killed one of the waterfowl, and quite literally had mashed the bird, entrails and all, leaving the bloodied mess in a shallow depression in a rock in the sun. After two days, I felt the concoction was toxic enough, and we collected the juices from the rotting carcass, squeezing the putrid remains to maximise the volume while taking great care not to infect ourselves. The sad part now was taking one of our sheep, an old ram, and contaminating it by making small puncture wounds in the skin all over its body, and using a thin hollow reed inserted small amounts of the sickly broth into each hole. This we did after dark in a poorly lit stable-like structure such that we would not be observed.

  Early the next morning, the poor old ram did not look good, but his ordeal was soon to be over. Three young men, all fast of foot and fit, led the ram out as light began edging into the eastern sky. They were heading for a spot near where we suspected most of the renegades spent their nights. Once the men felt they were close enough, they agitated the poor old ram, causing it to bleat a number of times. The trick now was to appear as if they were trying to recover the ram and return him to our fold. Having chosen a fairly open area, the men would see anyone approaching; it was almost certain the renegades would be open and bold as there were only three men from our village.

  It was not long before about ten renegades appeared on the edge of the clearing. It was quite light by this time, and upon seeing them, our young men behaved as instructed and appeared to get frantic, tugging at the old ram and seemingly trying hard to get it to follow them. As the renegades approached, our young men began to act as if in panic, one of them clubbing the ram behind the head, breaking its neck. It died instantly, and in so doing would not betray its sickness to the approaching renegades. Our lads took to their heels, running away in apparent fear. A few renegades tried to chase but soon gave up, drawn back to what seemed to be a free meal they might miss if they continued the chase.