amagra11

OK. Suppose there's some cataclysm that wipes out a lot of people. Society falls back to the dark ages. No electricity, no running water, no advanced medicine. Why, why WHY aren't we developing ways to do stuff like create medicines (antibiotics, aspirin), or create needed chemicals, or purify water, that could be done ad infinitum with just the tools that would be left to a collapsed society, instead of just stockpiling the stuff to high heaven? And why aren't we stockpiling THAT equipment?
Seems like most "preppers" think the disaster, whatever it is, will last years, not decades, and their supplies will last long enough. Might not be the case.
Thanks for doing this :).

Edit: Ehhh forget the "purify water" bit. Boiling and filtration work wonders. I got a little carried away :).

Thanks for doing this! If you ever come back, here's my question: I write poetry. Do you have any idea how I can go about getting a book / chapbook published, without submitting to journal after journal and gradually becoming famous, as is the usual route?

Thanks!

-Grace

Yeah but the thing is, if we developed those techniques, they wouldn't just be useful in an apocalypse. They'd be useful in places like third-world countries. Places that don't have electricity, or medicine, today. And on top of that there's the fact we'd unhook all those processes from dependency on things like electricity, which I think would only be beneficial, especially in regards to the amount of pollution we produce and the amount of resources we consume to power stuff. Aaargh...it's frustrating :(.