Station Eleven and the Fate of the English Major When Society Collapses

Warning, this post contains very modest spoilers associated with the novel Station Eleven by Emily Mandel. They are not much of a spoiler, but you are warned.

One artifact of science fiction becoming mainstream is that one has to deal with reviewers and even readers who have not had the benefit of knowing the genre, those who have not submitted to the discipline required to truly understand faster than light travel, telepathy, multi dimensional time portals and a host of other topics.  These mainstream critics may thus not be qualified to understand the field and its conventions. It can lead to some unfortunate encounters such as when a fellow undergraduate at college once said "You should read Pynchon, he writes science fiction that is actually good" and I thought to myself, I will probably hate Pynchon.  Well, I did not hate Pynchon, nor do I hate Station Eleven by Mandel, but it is not great science fiction despite what the reviews say.   But Station Eleven did have an unexpected benefit.  Although it was not intentional on the part of the author it alerted me to a terrible danger facing this nation as it awaits the inevitable collapse of civilization.

Station 11 is the highly acclaimed fourth novel by Emily Mandel about the world after a pandemic. It has its moments. I might give it a sold B- or so, but never, ever the acclaim that it is getting. The point of this post is not to review the novel per se, but to report to you an unexpected weakness that could inhibit our recovery from the type of disaster the novel describes.

You see, one of the unintended subtexts of the novel is to reveal just how powerless and incompetent a bunch of liberal arts majors are without their internet. This was not an intentional theme of the author, rather it is an accident that is revealed by the author's (and the reviewer's) ignorance of what would be possible technologically even in the absence of electrical power, the internet, and high octane gasoline. This is apparently a disaster novel written by an English major. Very good at crafting paragraphs but not too bright when it comes to technology about which she clearly knows almost nothing.

So now two light spoilers although the first one isnlt much of a spoiler since you probably can not get through the first two pages without figuring it out.

Spoiler number one: Station 11 is set in a near future where 99.9 percent of humanity has died of a particularly infectious and fatal form of the flu. You can be infected by being around someone who already has it, no direct contact is necessary, and anyone who gets it is dead within a few days which is presumed to be long enough to infect everyone else. The end result is that within about a month pretty much everyone is dead. The people who do survive have to go out to the country to find food and create the setting for the rest of the novel.

In our second spoiler, we reveal that people are reduced to bows and arrows and it is a major plot point that some unknown people have actually recreated a small electricity grid. Technology you see has completely gone away and we are back to perhaps Late Antiquity or so. In other words, people know about horses, wheels, and plows, but can only dream of having a refrigerator or an electric light.

This is what comes of a deficient education system. This is what comes of having children raised on the Internet and reality television.

You see, seeing as how this is set in the near future, Toronto and the state of Illinois, where our plot mostly takes place, has something called a library. Probably every small town has one. And in this library are books. And down the street, now abandoned, are machine shops. And yes, while the rotary tools might very well be powered by electricity that is not immediately available, there are other ways to use those tools even without electrical power.

First, build one of these and use it to distill alcohol... 

Then go to your local abandoned hardware store and pick up one of these....

On top of that, it is not so hard to build a steam engine out of all the spare parts left around after everybody dies. One could easily build water driven devices and steam engines even without electricity or gasoline. A handy stream and some wood will do. And they can be rigged to drive a magnet with wire (which is lying around after the apocalypse in every building) and you have an electrical generator.

If you want to repurpose any of those millions of abandoned automobiles, where, you might wonder, would the gasoline come from since the story has established that gasoline went away through evaporation in a few years?

Well, not all engines run well on alcohol, but many can be tuned to run acceptably well.   Many engines such as one finds in things like portable power generators, available and in stock at your local hardware store, are made to run on a variety of fuels.  Even more useful, but more specialized and less immediately available, are belt driven generators which can use a variety of motive forces.  This is something that could be easily interfaced to a water wheel or wind mill.

Here is an article on converting your car to run on alcohol and how to distill your own by Mr. Keat Drane. See http://journeytoforever.org/biofuel_library/ethanol_drane.html.  This article is filled with interesting information about the history of fuels to power engines, and how to distill your own fuel.

The great American philosopher, Clint Eastwood, said that “A man has got to know his limitations” (1) and very clearly Ms. Mandel does not know what she does not know.

But Mandel has done us a favor and just in the nick of time. She has alerted us to the complete ignorance so many of our citizens have about how the basic things in their life work.  We can not choose who will survive the inevitable destruction of civilization, and if they are all English majors then we would have a second disaster on our hands. 

I hope you will join me in petitioning our public servants to create remedial education programs, programs which must be made mandatory for all English majors, to correct this dangerous knowledge gap before it is too late.

Station Eleven by Emily Mandel on Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Station-Eleven-Emily-John-Mandel/dp/0804172447

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1. This is from Magnum Force, and Mr. Eastwood was being sarcastic.

The Hills Illuminated by Fire and the Esoteric Prophecy of Human Resources

draft/in progress

At 2AM last night, I walked out onto my patio to check on my garden, where to my surprise I saw that the nearby hills were on fire. A layer of smoke lay over the valley. “Is this the time, Oh Lord”, I thought to myself, “Is now when the world will be cleansed of the sins of the wicked biped mammals who have turned away from the path of righteousness and wallow in the filth of self-aggrandizement and narcissism?”

As I watched a fire seemed to explode on a hill to my left. When I ran to get my camera and returned it had diminished to nothing much. So will the wicked explode, I thought with grim satisfaction, when they are touched by the vengeance of the Lord. A burst of flame and then nothing much.

Is this a sign that the End is near?

As I watched the hills burn down around me, my thoughts turned to happier times, years ago, when I consulted for Viacom in New York. There I made friends with a beautiful woman who was consulting for Human Resources on a special project.  Although we did not know it, Cindy and I were working on different pieces of a much larger, more important,  project than the one we were nominally working on.

We both thought we were on very different aspects of the Interactive Television AT&T Castro Valley Test but in fact those differences were irrelevant.  There was a real project that underlay the apparent project, and this was the project that was truly driving events.  You see, Viacom is a cable company, it exists and profits in a beautiful monopoly ordained by the Lord and granted by Our Government to those who are Worthy.  And in the interests of the Public, these monopolies are reviewed from time to time by the specific agencies of our government that hand out these monopolies to the rich.   Viacom's monopoly was up for review and as part of that review we demonstrated advanced technology in the public's interest, we had Sumner Redstone speaking at the Washington Press Club, I even contributed to the signage of a third party industrial press firm who was working on the publicity for this event.

But soon this very long process that the three of us, Cindy, Sumner and myself, had been involved in would be over and the monopolies given by certain agencies of our government would have been reaffirmed, the little theatre of interactive television having played its part, the forms having been observed, the lobbyists paid.   Then the blessed bloodletting could begin to sacrifice those who would through their wretched jobs stand in the way of the profits that rightfully belonged to the shareholders. 

Some might think that because these types of companies are in fact government created monopolies in their region and sector, that there might be some rules such that some of the money extracted from the consumer might also trickle down to the workers, perhaps in the form of employment.  But such a thing would be anathema in America.  The poor can go fuck themselves for all the government cares as long as they pay the taxes on their pathetic wages.  That is the way it has always been, that is the way it must always be. Anything else would be to turn away from the values that have made this country great.

Because Cindy liked me, she let me see the real Human Resource manuals, not the ones that they let the uninitiated see, but the secret one, the one reserved for the Elect.  She turned to the section on Layoffs and told me that it foretold the future and talked about the end times. She asked me to read it to her out loud.

I turned to the first page and read

The fire of God's vengeance will burn away the corrupt flesh from the body.

“Hallelujah!”, she said, and laughed.

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Who Stole Japan's Submarine?

Great events of history often start with deceptively small incidents.   A glacier melts and suddenly we have Global Warming.  Several gay men dying in a ward in San Francisco in 1984 and suddenly we have the AIDS epidemic.

Or a submarine disappears and we suddenly have the beginning of the end of all civilization.

Recently, Japan lost one of its submarines in the Tsugaru Strait between Honsho and Hokkaido.  They have looked everywhere but can not find it.   They were using this $5M remotely operated submarine to map the ocean floor although some news articles have said that the submarine was actually used to detect other submarines at a distance.  The lost submarine was on a tether, it was not free and autonomous. It is very hard to lose such a submarine, but they did.

Somehow, the cable got cut. No one knows how. They looked everywhere in the area for the submarine, but they could not find it. It did not just drift to the bottom in the area, it did not float to the surface. It disappeared.

Maybe it was an accident and the submarine got caught on something underwater and they just could not find it.  It is, after all, very dark down there.

Graphic from a news article on where the submarine was lost

Or maybe someone cut the cable and took the submarine because they figured it would tell them a whole lot about Japanese technology.   

But, if it was stolen, who would do such a nasty thing? Would China or Russia perpetrate such a criminal act?  These countries are peace-loving dictatorships that regularly talk about destroying the West.   We might do something like this to them, of course.

No, those who would suggest that China or Russia did such a thing are just war mongers looking to increase the defense budget.   This explanation is just a front to hide the possibility of what really happened.  

What else could have happened then?   Notice where the submarine went missing.  That is not so far from the worst oceanic radiation leak in history, Fukushima.   Perhaps the radioactivity from this disaster has caused the mutation of giant underwater monsters.   Everyone has seen the movie Godzilla, we know the score. What if those movies channeled the future of the end of our civilization?  What if these giant radioactive monsters were sleeping but were disturbed by someone dragging a submarine over them?

That is an explanation that you will not read in the Western press anytime soon.

We may all look back at the missing submarine and realize that we were witnessing the Beginning of the End.

I want more submarines !

http://rt.com/news/japan-unmanned-submarine-lost-357/

http://news.ph.msn.com/regional/japan-navy-admits-losing-dollar5-mn-submarine-1

http://www.defensenews.com/article/20140129/DEFREG03/301290038/Japan-Navy-Admits-Losing-Unmanned-Submarine

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/japan/10603880/Japan-navy-admits-losing-5-million-submarine.html

Repent! The End is Near!

Prophets of doom rarely made a good living in the old days. Prophets of happiness and so forth could count on buying that new goat, wagon, or slave from profits from grateful customers. But prophets of doom, never. They lived in caves and wore sackcloth and needed a bath.

I remember reading all the way through Hemingway's "For Whom the Bell Tolls" before I figured out what the title meant. (1)

As many of you know, I keep a variety of doctors employed and off the streets. Because of various regulations involving the illegal resale of certain attractive medications, I need to see them every month or so, as the prescriptions are kept on a tight leash. Since I am an outlyer in various ways, it can be problematic to find a suitable doctor and therefore, once found, I stay with them for a while. So I drove to LA to see one of these doctors whom I had been seeing for a decade and they channeled me to one of his assistants whom I knew and liked because, I assumed, my doctor was not available. Well, yes, but not the way I thought.

She opened the conversation with "So let me tell you why you are seeing me today instead of Dr. Friedman. Dr. Friedman died last week suddenly and unexpectedly of a heart attack. His funeral was a few days ago."

Excuse me? Bob Friedman was in perfect health when I saw him about 30 days ago. He looked about 65 years old (he was a few years older it turns out but so what), and was in great shape. Yes, he could have lost a few pounds and I doubt if he spent too much time doing aerobic exercise, but he had years and years to live, as far as anyone could tell.

But when the penalty flag goes down, death appears like a thief in the night and there is no appeal.

And he left some very confused people, including his many employees who would like to continue their practice and keep working together and probably will, but its all a little confused because, sensibly, Bob did not expect to be leaving anytime soon, so nothing had been arranged.

Therefore do not expect to be warned, or rather, take this as your warning. The bell could go off at any time, make good use of the day and see that your paperwork is in order.

This may be the only notice that you will receive.

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1. It comes from something John Donne wrote a few centuries ago. He wrote, 

"No man is an Iland, intire of it selfe; every man is a peece of the Continent, a part of the maine; if a Clod bee washed away by the Sea, Europe is the lesse, as well as if a Promontorie were, as well as if a Mannor of thy friends or of thine owne were; any mans death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankinde; And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee."

The custom in Europe (or parts of Europe) was to ring a single bell very slowly to announce the death or funeral of someone in that parish. People would know to come to the church to find out who it was tolling for, if they did not already know.

The Aesthetics of Earthquakes in Southern California

Well we finally had a decent earthquake after a long time. Not that great, but a 4.7 which is just ok. About 60 miles away. Pffft.  One good shock.  Is that it, I thought?  That's all you got?  Definitely not enough.

I may as well tell you that I have been very disappointed by the earthquakes I have experienced in S. California since I came back from the East Coast. Let me be blunt guys, its for your own good.  S. California is less than the East Coast in almost any measure one can use, its crummy weather, its crummy non-transit system.   Its failure to deal with civic planning.  The only thing it has going for it imho is earthquakes and a few other things like surfer girls and beachside Mexican restaurants.

Before I left for NY and Aspen in 1994 or so, I could count on a solid interesting earthquake every few months. One that would rattle the house, rattle the windows, annoy the dogs and set off the happy chirping of car alarms up and down Lookout Mountain. It was the car alarms and the barking that convinced the observer that the earthquakes were real and not just the result of a happy dream.

But since I have returned that old earthquake magic seems to be gone.  Dried up. Every once in a while  a dreary little rumble is felt, occasionally a shock to the house, more your imagination than anything substantial.

What happened?

No one knows. No one asks, No one cares.  Its like the rest of Los Angeles.  Dreary devolved robots, joyless, idealess, soulless.  Going through the motions.  Hoping that nothing will shatter the fragile illusion of normality that they clutch to their bosom so tightly.  That nothing will happen to make them fall into the abyss like so many of their friends, screaming soundlessly into the night, and then gone forever.

What constitutes a good earthquake? 

1. The earthquake should have structure, periods of intensity, periods of quietness. It shouldn't just be on and off.  One boom equals boring.  No, there should perhaps be a solid and dramatic initial shock to get your attention, then perhaps an anticipatory pause, then a good solid series of shakes building in amplitude to the point where you wonder if you should get out of bed to stand underneath a door jam. Then a pause again, and a few more shakes as a finale. Many variations on this theme are possible, this is not a hard and fast prescription. The general principle is that a good quake will reveal a structure and not just be one blow.

2. The earthquake should have solid aftershocks. After the main quake, in a minute or two, or five, or an hour, there should be another good earthquake or two. More than one if possible. Maybe not as ambitious and complicated as the first one, these could indeed be just one shock without structure, but an aftershock or two.  (1)

3. The house should demonstrate harmonics and vibrations. You should hear windows rattle, doors creak, and see or hear other examples of wave interactions.

4. The neighborhood should come alive with noise. Dogs barking, car alarms going, wind chimes chiming, radio announcers announcing.

MCA/Universal's Masterpiece starring Charlton Heston and Ava Gardner

5. Going beyond "good" to "excellent", an excellent earthquake should be violent.  It should wake you up and make you think.  It should make you wonder if this is it, if this is when you die, or someone you know dies, your existence forever extinguished.   An excellent earthquake makes you think about your own mortality.

6. After "good" and "excellent" of course is "Apocalyptic".    The "Wrath of God" Earthquake.  The one like the one you saw in disaster movies, but without the happy ending and Charlton Heston.   The earthquake that announces the "Last Days".  The one that demands your complete attention.  The one that does more than shake up your day.  The one that lasts a minute or two or five, is off the Richter scale, and leaves Los Angeles flattened, an even 1.5 or so feet of crushed plaster, with an oil derrick or two sticking out of the ruins and millions of BMWs, Mercedes, Lexus and Acura's alarms demanding attention but getting none until they finally run their battery down and one by one go silent.

Miles and miles of cars protruding above the crushed plaster, silent, motionless.

They stand silent forever, monuments to the shallow greed and the shallow graves of their former owners.

Soon, maybe, soon.

[Of course we do not really wish for the Apocalyptic earthquake to happen anytime soon, at least not until all the people we care about have sold their property in LA and moved out, especially the surfers and people who run beachside Mexican Restaurants. ]

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LA Times Article on Today's Earthquake:
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2013/03/more-than-100-small-aftershocks-follow-47-quake.html

Information on 4.7 Earthquake

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/ci15296281#summary

Information on All Recent Earthquakes

http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/map/

Earthquake (1974) on IMDB
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0071455/

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1. The managed news media in S. California tells me that there were over 100 aftershakes after the one this morning.  Well, maybe.  But if so, I did not feel a *single* one.