The Quiet Earth.

It's become a sort of standard assumption in science fiction that an apocalyptic event would mean the end of civilization.  Depending on the event, that would certainly be the case - obviously the sort of destruction caused by an extinction level asteroid strike or a nuclear war would push things below the level at which our current society functions on a planetary basis.

But not all end-of-the-world scenarios involve extreme property damage. Is the threshold for civilization based in any way on the size of the population?

Let's posit a pandemic scenario which wipes out 95% of the world's population, but without the sort of theatrics which normally accompany this sort of disaster in fictional descriptions.  In other words, maybe we don't panic. Yes, we swamp the hospitals, and yes, an awful lot of people die, but why would that make the government collapse?

We'll set some ground rules. Our nemesis is an untreatable contagious disease that kills its victims in less than a week, and it's spread by airborne transmission.  As with Captain Trips in Stephen King's The Stand, if you catch it, you pretty much die.

The current population is 7.5 billion people, so we're left with about 375 million after the infection burns out, which is more or less the population of the world in 1000 AD.  (In reality, the less organized and compliant a country's response to an emergency, the greater the loss of people, but let's keep the math simple and just say that 1 in 20 people are left alive right across the board, without any bias toward either democratic societies or brutal dictatorships.)

So we assume that the response to the catastrophe is controlled and organized.  Inevitably, there would be a certain percentage of unrecorded deaths, but for the most part, the victims come to their end in hospitals or under some other form of final care.  A brutal simplicity is enforced: there's no time for individual burials, just daily truck convoys to the mass burial sites. Over time, there are fewer trips - and fewer truck drivers - until eventually the virus burns itself out.

What does the world look like afterwards?  How many links can break before the machinery of our society ceases to function?

Logic says that we condense, that everything pulls in toward the center - whatever the center happens to be.  We're left with massive amounts of unnecessary infrastructure, but the framework of everyday life is still there, and I would think that in some odd way, it would all balance out.  If you were a bus driver before the epidemic, you're still a bus driver, and you have about as many passengers on a daily basis, but 19 empty buses are left to rust at the depot.  Karli and I live in a small apartment building that holds about 20 people - now there's just one of us, no more lineups for the washing machines.*

But what if our landlord is dead?  Is there anyone left to collect the rent? For that matter, why would anyone stay there - 19 out of every 20 homes are now empty, why stay in an apartment? How would the government control squatting?  Or would they even attempt to?
  
Perhaps looting and squatting would become acceptable activities as the government urged people to clearly indicate what homes are inhabited, and created a system by which you apply to take over the empty home of your choice. The remaining locksmiths would become very busy, especially people who can re-key vehicle ignitions.  As with houses, there are a lot of cars left, and no reason not to trade up.

A certain percentage of empty buildings might simply be demolished.  After all, if everyone living in three story walkups like ours has moved into an empty house, it seems wiser to simply eliminate those buildings rather than abandoning them to decay and eventually collapse.

Businesses combine and vanish, as employers without staff seek out workers without bosses.  As with residential property, there's a process in place to take charge of rare materials, inventory and factory space. 

When it's all over, it's a quiet world.  There are no traffic jams.  There are no lineups.  And hopefully it's a kinder, gentler world than the old one, a world where people are more tolerant, friendly and affectionate.  If 95% of the people you loved were gone, how could you not treasure the ones who were left?

- Sid

* In my heart, I would hope that there would actually still be two of us.  And the cat, of course.

New York X: But then again, too few to mention.

 

And so, back from New York.  It seems odd to say that we had a whirlwind tour of Manhattan, given that we had almost eight full days, but it speaks volumes to say that we didn't manage to fit in everything that we had planned, even with just over a week. (Karli's sister and her family went for four days - now that's a whirlwind visit!)

 

However, even with the limitations of time, we did pretty well:  two visits to the Empire State Building (daylight and nighttime); a backstage tour of NBC Studios;  the MOMA, the Met, the Whitney and the Museum of Natural History; the 9/11 Memorial, which may or may not count as a museum at this point in time; a wonderful wander through Central Park and a walk across the Brooklyn Bridge; two Broadway shows, Wicked and Chicago; some excellent dining experiences, with particular praise for Co. Pizza, Tacombi, Ivan Ramen and PizzArte; and the endlessly entertaining experience of just walking the streets of the city.

I'd also like to thank Michelle for our ideal little AirBnB pied-à-terre in Chelsea. And, as always, my girlfriend Karli was the perfect travel companion - New York would have been dull and tedious without you, my love.

But I do have one regret from the trip: I didn't find the used science fiction bookstore of my dreams.  Given the pivotal position that New York occupies in the development of modern science fiction, combined with a general belief that if you want to buy something, it will be available in New York, I had high hopes for finding a few gems to add to my collection.

The Strand bookstore was a great location, but I obviously misunderstood their position regarding used books. They do purchase used books, but their inventory - at least the portions that I browsed - seemed to be entirely hardcover or trade paperbacks, and relatively recent ones.  I didn't browse through their Rare Books section, but I feel that used science fiction paperbacks only qualify as "rare books" in a few cases (and when they do, they become a rather expensive commodity).  Similarly, Unoppressive Non-Imperialist Bargain Books was an intriguing little spot, but not a used book venue.

I had hoped that Singularity and Co. would be that store, and all evidence on line indicates that, at one point, it would have been exactly the place I was looking for.  However, online evidence also suggests that both the store and the associated scanning endeavour came to an untimely end (to the frustration and irritation of its Kickstarter™ supporters) leaving behind nothing but an empty rental space in Brooklyn and the digital equivalent for their web site.

Further research indicates that had I broadened my search, I might have found what I was looking for in one of the surrounding boroughs, but with the exception of our brief jaunt over to DUMBO, our plans never extended to leaving Manhattan.

Ah, well...there's always next time.

- Sid

New York IX: Angels in America.

"New York, the city of a million stories. Half of them are true, the other half just haven't happened yet." 

Sam Garner:  The Angels Take Manhattan, Doctor Who

Did you know that Central Park isn't a natural phenomenon?  Until I took the Big Bus tour of Manhattan, I shared the popular impression that the Park was a little piece of wilderness that had been set aside as a common space during the growth of New York.

I was quite surprised to discover that, in fact, every tree, rock, pool and pathway in Central Park is deliberate, the result of the Greensward Plan which was drafted in 1856 by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted and his partner Calvert Vaux.*  Olmsted and Vaux treated the park as a blank canvas - their plan called for a complete reconstruction of the 843 acre location, creating a deliberately picturesque and pastoral oasis in the centre of Manhattan. 

Regardless of its origins, Central Park has a special place in the hearts of Doctor Who fans as the location of the poignant farewell to Doctor companions Amy and Rory in the Season 8 episode The Angels Take Manhattan, filmed on location in New York.**

 

It's always interesting to visit a filming location and see how the production version compares with real life - or real geography, in this case. For example, Rory certainly covers a lot of ground on his coffee run near the start of the episode: the trio are enjoying their picnic near the southeast corner of the park, and he encounters a Weeping Angel near Bethesda Terrace, which suggests that he must have gone to the Loeb Boathouse for coffee. That would be about a solid half mile of walking, depending on exactly where he started.  On the other hand, he's just escaped from a conversation about the signs of aging on his wife's face, so he may be deliberately taking his time.

 

Subsequent action takes place throughout the city, although I'm not sure about the location of the cemetery in which the Doctor says his final farewell to Amy (not counting her appearance for Matt Smith's final episode).  We were able to find the park bench where the Doctor reads Amy's final farewell to him, though.

"Hello, old friend, and here we are. You and me, on the last page."

"I should have worn a bow tie for this, bow ties are cool."

When Karli and I visited Bethesda Fountain during one of our strolls through Central Park, I was sharply reminded of the downside of the immobile Weeping Angel lifestyle, the one that never seems to come up on the show...

...pigeons.

- Sid

* Okay, almost every.  The original plan did not include playgrounds, and the Zoo also was not part of the original plan, but was rather the result of informal donations of exotic animals to the Park, which led to the founding of an official home for the menagerie in 1864.

** Mostly on location.  They did some additional greenscreen shooting in Cardiff when they got home.