The nuclear powered EMP (Electro Magnetic Pulse) that was first written about in Warday, and than copied slavishly by folks with little actual information concerning its potential effects (see One Second After) is supposed to knock all your electronics, and leave you stranded in your car miles away from home. A large solar flare, which are not supper common but have the advantage of having actually occurred, is likely to be even more dangerous.
So what we need is a new method for hiking out of the clogged city streets that does not require electronics or fuel (no electric for gas pumps). And we have it!
Balloon jumping!
Balloon jumping was highly speculated to be the next big thing in the 1920s.
From the July 19, 1927 edition of the Joplin News Herald in Joplin, Missouri:
Matt Novak, Paleofuture, 23 October 2013 (hat tip: Root Simple)
How helpful this sort of thing would be. We could strip the spring cherry tree without endangering our legs. We could dispense with elevators and enter our offices on the third or fourth floors by merely leaping up to the window and crawling in. We could do a thousand and one things easily that we now do with difficulty.
One of the problems was that people had a hard time avoiding power lines, but of course that wouldn't be a problem if power is out.
5 comments:
I wonder how long it will take for the yuppie scum to think of something equally stupid, like jet packs. Good sarcasm mode, Russell!
Joplin Missouri and big ass balloons attached to people are two things that should not go together. Especially in tornado season.
James: Thanks - I am surprised that it hasn't been used in one of those Odysseus-like post-EMP trek stories.
Pioneer: Well they would get somewhere fast! LOL
oh Russell - you sooooo need to write an apocalyptic-end-of-times-doomsday-prepper book! it would be hysterically funny to those who understand your subtle level of sarcasm. it would probably be turned into a movie, too - and star tom cruise or tom hanks - oh - bahahahahahah! your friend,
kymber
Kymber: Unfortunately I barely have time for posts and comments these days.
Writing a realistic story would be harder. Mostly because nothing I know about societal collapse makes for exciting reading if it is told from the worms-eye-level. Thus the disastrous (except possibly for the unintended comedy) tendency of so many novels to introduce a storyline which includes the White House machinations as society crashes. So we jump from some nut in (lets say Texas) fighting over groceries at the local W-mart in one chapter, and in the next we are in some council meeting at the white house portrayed by an author who probably has no more political sophistication than when he lost his bid for student council in third grade.
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