Could you handle living in a rougher, tougher society?

[fuckingcoldshowers]

Thinking about this as it's freezing where I am, and thanking my lucky stars we can stick the heating on.

I would be 100% shit in a tougher world. Anything from the grinding hardship of WW2 to dystopias like The Walking Dead. I'd be so shit I mean, actually I wouldn't survive in the first place but if the universe was having a laugh and I did make it past the initial event, I'd be rubbish. I mean, obviously it would be very scary and devastating, but the sheer MISERY of it all would sap my motivation to survive, I reckon.

I can't think straight when I'm really hungry. Also, hanger would lead to some sort of stupid spat with the wrong person.

I'm also terrible without decent sleep. After enough sleep deprivation I'd give up.

Finally - even if fed and sleeping I cannot deal with no nice, clean shower or bathing facilities. I'd be SO CRANKY feeling grubby and dishevelled all the time, traipsing around trying to survive.

Could you adapt well and cope cheerfully without these basics after the apocalypse?

Basic instinct and hope would get us through.

Not showering is hideous but you would adjust. As with everything else. That’s the wonderful thing about humans we can roll with change. It’s mindset ultimately.

Whenever I watch any disaster film I wonder how I (disabled, powerchair user) would cope. Spoiler, I wouldn't.

I remember seeing an American series where the power has gone, society has broken into fractions etc. People relied on bartering skills or supplies, I remember someone hunting down the last antibiotics & another lady who swopped jumpers she was making from picking apart wooden items.

I found myself making a mental list to learn to knit & learn which herbs treat what symptoms!

I'd love to be one of those kick ass women from the walking dead. I often fantasise avout being that tough. But i doubt i'd last long.
I did do a gap yah in Nepal where we lived in very basic surroundings and showered under a cold tap and bathed in the river but came home to my palacial by comparison semi.

TeachesOfPeaches · 15/01/2024 21:33

I wonder how people survived the 1970s without central heating. That's traumatising enough

Why does this myth persist?

I was a child in the 1970s, living in a relatively modern house in the Home Counties. We had central heating throughout the house and I don’t remember ever being cold at home. And all my school friends’ homes were centrally heated, too.

@MolkosTeenageAngst makes some important points above.

I’d find it rough at the start but I’m fairly well prepped so unless I hit a disaster event that no one would survive, I’d continue. Most of my village would too.

In the absence of someone willing to look after them, anyone unable to look after themselves would not survive.

For those with some limited ability to look after themselves it would depend on where they are and how they are treated. In history the ‘village idiot’ was probably mentally disabled. There were also simple tasks that could be done for cash. Not a great life, but still a life.

Physical disabilities have existed throughout time. They went untreated but people in a community can survive if they have a skill that makes them useful and sufficient mobility to use it.

survival depends on the existence of some sort of a community and some feeling that we should support others though. A mad max style wasteland filled with nomads would not work.

Also some disabled people, particularly those with cognitive disabilities would be exploited.

Pre modern societies did help the elderly and disabled who could not work to a certain level. That is why there was the concept of the "sturdy beggar" ie someone that the community reviled and would not help as it was felt they could work

I have an apocalypse plan so I think I'd be ok, it really depends on the type of catastrophe. I'm quite close to London so I probably won't need my plan if it's nuclear war for example, but if I am immune to the terrible disease that kills 99% of the population then I'll put my plan into action!

Yes, grew up in houses without heating (except a gas fire in the sitting room). The first time my bedroom had a radiator was in halls at university, and my flat had no central heating for the first year I was living here.

NO wish to return to that, thanks.

I don't think anyone would cheerfully survive, op. But for most, survival instinct would kick in. I watched Society of the Snow recently and was gobsmacked by their resilience in the face of extreme adversity. I mean, all survivors ate other human dead bodies to survive!

You'd just have to adapt and learn to exist. It's not the same at all, but remember learning we were going into Covid lockdown. We had our freedoms removed and were effectively on house arrest. We couldn't see our loved ones. I remember driving the kids to school for what I knew was likely to be the last time for nobody knew how long and bursting into tears. It was all so depressing. But we adapted, we got on with it. Just like they had to in the Blitz. Humans are remarkably adaptable when it's a survival situation.

Having said all of this, in all out nuclear war, I'd lead my family to the nearest target, hold them tight, tell them I love them, and hope the end is swift and painless.

If we had a disaster (not nuclear), then, if we pulled together, many would survive it.

But, if you just look at the start of Covid with the panic buying, and the fights that break out in petrol queues, if there’s any sort of problem, it’s obvious there wouldn’t be the cooperation between groups.

People stockpiled ridiculous amounts, and gave no thought to leaving enough for others. Shop assistants were literally being assaulted for toilet rolls.🙄

Queuing has become a dirty word nowadays,

The elderly, disabled, weaker, vulnerable etc would be “trampled” underfoot.

It wouldn’t be pretty. 🙁

It wasn't a myth for WC people up north. The areas I lived in didn't get CH until the 80's. People were still living in prefabs and waiting to be rehoused in the slum clearing era. I remember visiting my Uncle (London bus driver) in Bletchley and it all seemed very posh. But how you and your friends lived wasn't the norm. Even those with money in Victorian terraces etc wasn't installing CH yet and what was being fitted wasn't adequate until double glazing came in.

It's not a myth. We didn't get central heating until the late 1970s (old single glazed house). And even then, we couldn't afford to have it on very much.

I knew people who lived literally round the corner who still had an outside loo.

@gamerchick Why? What happens when the power plant gets powered down? Asking for a friend 🙃

I grew up in the 80s/90s without central heating! We had a coal fire in one room downstairs, a two-bar electric heater in my parents bedroom and that was it.

@Tremblingmadness What an amazing story to have as your family history! I’m fascinated by people who had the drive to go on such ambitious endeavours (although often driven by poverty, war or famine).

@CharlottePimpernel Yep I grew up at a similar time with no central heating - wood fired stove in the living room, aga in the kitchen and electric heaters upstairs. My dad still lives in the same house with no central heating.

My grandparents moved form a famrohuse with no central heating to a centrally heated retirement bungalow in the early 90s. They kept the living room fire stoked up with the central heating on all day as well - the place was like a bloody furnace.

I was a child in the 70s. Mostly unheated homes, and for those who did have central heating, cost of heating oil made using the heating prohibitable expensive for most families I knew.