How (or even would) people cope?

[OWWO]

I’m a relative newbie, and this post came about after a conversation with my elderly mum because of events at my work. I am interested in other people’s thoughts.

AIBU to think that, if people today had to live through an event like WW2, a lot of them wouldn’t be able to cope with the restrictions, rationing etc.

I work for a charity that helps those who are homeless, escaping domestic violence, or on a low income and, while 99% of the clients are genuinely grateful for what we do; lately we’ve had some who have been a little, how to put this delicately... entitled and grabby, not appreciating being told that something isn’t possible, no matter how many ways they ask or demand. Some even tell us to stuff it and walk out!

Am I wrong to think there there is a definite sense of entitlement (and an unwillingness to try to help one’s self) out there in the world today?

Personally I've always been aware of not letting 'traditional' skills die, partly for this reason.

We grow vegetables and fruit
I can humanely kill and gut a chicken
I can sew fairly well, including making basic children's garments
I can cook plenty of basic meals including baking/preserving

In the event we ever did go back to rationing or similar I think we'd be reasonably well equipped - but I can completely understand how people who haven't had previous generations teach them these skills may struggle

I hate about the griping about young people by the generations that raised us and shaped the world we were born into

Fwiw, I'm 22 and I'd probably be out of a job (web developer), not sure what I'd end up doing but I can sew, cook and garden (though I'm not wonderful at any). So practically I think I'd be ok but I wouldn't have money or land to grow my own.

Though I am a fussy eater I think boring ration food would be mostly ok, though egg... could swap with the veggies maybe

You'd have had access to very little imported food, probably including spices, and of course back then there was much less use of refrigeration and freezing. So not much fresh fruit most of the year. Vegetables limited to what could be grown in the UK. Bread made from UK wheat, not imported wheat, so not nearly as gluteny as people were used to, and full of bran, which wasn't to most people's tastes back then. Fish wasn't rationed but for obvious reasons there wasn't much fresh fish available. Freshly laid eggs would have been a huge treat. Most people had to make do with powdered egg most of the time.

@Caribbeanyesplease did you mean to be so rude? How is my post offensive it was an observation.

Haven't read the full thread

Just wanted to say that people eat so much more today then they did before the wars never mind during the wars. I think that would be the first hurdle. Once people adjust to less food than everything else will be easier to deal with. But survival will depend on adjusting to less food being available I think.

No, people would cope because they have to. You’re romanticising a shit time. People today don’t need to live like that so why would they? But they could, of course they could.

My fussy eater would probably die of shock.

Interesting point! I can't imagine there were many fussy eaters WW2. Although we have an allotment and I still wouldn't eat any of the beetroot DH is growing, starving or not.

I'd like to think I would survive. And become a lot healthier.
I can grow fruit and veg. I would have to become a vegetarian. I can't kill or prepare meat.
I can make do and mend. I do. And so do my kids.
No phone or internet? Suits me!
Tradable skills?
Yes. Repair cars and bikes.
Fix and alter clothes.
Make clothes. Yes, but I'm not the fastest knitter.
Almost everything in my house is used/recycled/second hand.
I think only the mattresses on our beds are new. (But from a discount shop)
And our underwear.
And a few tee shirts.
My radio came from the tip. I got it for my dd, but it's too complicated for her. She isn't reading yet (4).
So I got her a simpler one and I had the original. It's a DaB!

I'm very pleased...
I have made her and my ds many jumpers and hoodies over the years.
I think I learned from my parents and grandparents.
They don't waste things for the sake of it.
Cook as much food as they need to eat.
Compost. Recycle.
Mend. Re-use.
Yes, people would moan. But many would get on with it.
Not sure how my coeliac dd would cope.
Plenty of fresh fruit and veg I guess?

If it was like Britain in WW2 then we'd adapt, survive, and be Instagramming our perfect gravy browning nylon seams all over the shop and virtue signalling like mad about our Dig For Victory allotments.

WW3 though:
Nuclear holocaust, game over; or at least a more impotent fear of the common external enemy. You would know right well those church railings you'd spent the morning heaving to the collection centre weren't going to be melted into Spitfires or that the scarf you'd knitted wasn't going to Our Brave Boys. Most of us would just have to sit tight and hope that the British Army and friends were more skilled and equipped than the other lot and sufficiently numerous to subdue them before the food ran out.

Which - if there were effective enemy blockades in place- it would. I think in the 40s the UK could still grow and distribute enough protein and calories for everyone to survive. I think that is probably mathematically impossible now. So it would end up being like the last chapter in The Grapes Of Wrath, or worse still like those eyewitness accounts of An Gorta Mór. Most of the rich, the well connected and a good few of the very tough with a robust immune system and a bit of luck would survive but many would not, and I don't think- if there were starved bodies rotting in the streets- many people would give a shit about who won any wars or anything other than trying to keep themselves and their immediate family alive.

Looking at the kids in my school, I don't think they would cope at all well. Quite aside from the massive behavioral and medical issues, they have very little resilience and don't know what to do if things go wrong. I had four kids come up during writing yesterday and ask me what to do because they had run out of room on the page (errr, turn the page!).

But where I have my holiday house (and will eventually move to in the next few years) is a small island community that relies of everything coming in by ship. By the last couple of weeks before the ship comes in, the shelves start getting pretty bare. When the boat wasn't able to moor for three months a few years ago, people rode horses to work (no fuel except for essential services), shared vegetables and butchered their own meat. There's a much more 'practical' feel to the place, you're likely to come home and there's some fruit on your kitchen bench because the neighbor has extras (you don't bother locking the doors either!). Furniture is repaired and swapped around. Everyone has a vege patch and a few chickens. I notice that the children there are a lot more practical and resilient because they all have to chip in and help with the properties, and get jobs working in the tourism industry. Those kids are much more likely to cope with a major crisis than the ones that I teach in a major city.

The grabby entitled ones will do just fine.

OWWO

I am not sure it is entitlement, just that having not lived through WW2, our current generation are not used to deprivation. I am speaking very generally of course, as I know there is poverty around. I think we get more help than we used to, welfare state, NHS etc but that is a good thing. Don't forget, workhouses were still open in the 1930s. I much prefer to be alive now.

The grabby entitled ones will do just fine

You may have a point there. In WW2, the grabby and entitled ones played the black market wherever possible.

Expectations of what you should have are so difffrent now to when I was growing up. I'm 39. When I was growing up People’s houses were furnished with random stuff you inherited usually. A 3 piece suite was new fangled. Now people think they need to make their house look like a page from the next directory. That's a defined shift within a generation.

You were born in 1979 ffs Next, Zara, h&m, new look - all existed at that time. Don't let's get carried away. I'm 37. Photos of me as a baby and... gosh!! There's a three piece suite in the background

I think the point that the poster was trying to make was that people want everything and they want it now.

We owned our first home in 1984. It was furnished with a variety of hand me downs from family members or second hand shops. No one expected to walk into a house with everything brand new.

My MIL died last year and I had to clear her 4 bed home. Beautiful furniture, dining table and chairs, beds that hadn't been slept in, lovely coffee tables and a gorgeous mahogany dresser. I couldn't get rid of this stuff for love nor money despite it all being immaculate, even the charity shops wouldn't take it because "no-one wants dark furniture anymore" and they suggested I chopped it up for firewood. I offered it to my nieces and nephews (I have 13, most in the process of setting up their own homes) and not one of them would have "used" stuff. Such a wasteful society we live in now.

There are always some people like that in every generation. My aunt, rest her soul, was like that and she was of the generation you admire.

Would 'having anxiety' mean your excused from service?

you're

Some kind of app screaming? But what if the all the tech fails too? O my. God were all going to die!

People still furnish their homes with second hand stuff if it looks reasonable. Me and my DH are reasonably off and most of our furniture is hand me down or second hand. People still like a bargain. The dislike for dark furniture isn't new, my 58 year old mother is always going on about disliking it 😊.

Also you can't blame younger generations for products being cheaper. When we bought our flat screen TV I had a colleague wittering on about how in her day you didn't expect a TV when just married and I snapped and pointed out that we bought a TV because it was cheap (I was pleasantly surprised TBH) and easily affordable, we didn't go into debt or bully our parents into cashing in their pensions to indulge ourselves.

The lack of resilience does seem to be more of a problem. I know so many people who upon life transitions like leaving school or uni ended up having some sort of mental health crisis, I really struggled to adjust to working and adulthood so clearly something has gone wrong here.

Losing technology would hit hard because for many of us our close relationship s are with people who don't live near us so obviously we use technology. I think going back to letters, even for those who remember that time would be upsetting.

But why would you think people wouldn’t cope? To me that a very scornful, almost spiteful POV to put others down. They wouldn’t have any choice would they? There were people who couldn’t cope in WW2, plenty of them. But en mass, of course the nation would be fine. What’s the alternative?

I'm sure there have been grabby and entitled people in every generation for millenia

Powershower- no, Britain only grew 30% of our own food in the 1940’s. We were totally dependent on the brave merchant seamen on the North Atlantic convoys, bringing imported food from the US and the Empire, to provide the other 70%, while under heavy attack from German U boats.

Thanks for saying that @Babdoc - that included my Dad.
And, fwiw, I think people can cope better than we imagine without "on a plate" technology.

My paternal GM used to cope during the war by having sex with American soldiers in exchange for food. My Dad’s baby brother did not cope with the rationing and lack of healthcare- because he was found dead in the bottom drawer that passed for a cot back then.

It wasn’t all home-made jam and singing in Tube tunnels back then.

Of course it wasn't. I've said this countless times on here to Leaver idiots who fantasise about it.