Having the time to think, to react, and to frantically plan, is worse in some ways than gut-wrenching terror and desperate action. A sudden attack or viral overload is horrifying. They are wrapped in tales of societal niceties disappearing and ravening beasts tearing from suburban homes to feed on the offal of a collapsed society. The movies minutely describe the people who scream from buildings in the city, how hundreds gutter in gas attacks or die when shrapnel shreds their town, but they tell us little about how people respond to a disaster. Reality is never as explicit, life never as exciting, and cinematically, drudgery is not inspiring.
People merely struggling to eke out a living despite a gradual collapse of their society is the real survival story, it is a tale of grasping for a landmark while quicksand opens under your feet. When infrastructure crumbles, media services have been closed or are lost without electricity and transport, goods are no longer imported and the story frays at the edges. Some recognize what is happening, and therefore they prepare. Others are caught unawares, the highways emptying before neighbours become suspicious and aggressive.
Despite the stories of generalized horror and despair, there are those who attempt to preserve laws and books and machines, those who have the forethought to plan for a society when people again want it. They might only be feeding a stranger, stacking books in a library, or banding together for protection, but that is how the cultural edifice is rebuilt, one brick at a time.
