What if civilisation collapsed tomorrow?

What would you do?

I recently watched a short video about what would happen if the Internet died? When I say the Internet. I mean the whole thing. You turn your computer on and open your mail application, no mail. No websites, no porn, no MSN chatting with your friends or family.

Take that a step further. What if there was no fuel as well. Trucks couldn't get to supermarkets for your food. Buses stop running. You can't drive you car. And since most of this country is still powered by coal, there probably won't be any electricity either.

That means you can't even turn on your computer to see if the rumours are true, the Internet is down. You can't watch television, store food in the fridge, dry your clothes, your hair, do your washing up.

What would you do?

Do you think you'd be prepared to grow your own food? Get on a bicycle to travel places? Build a windmill in your backyard for power? Wash your clothes the old fashioned way?

How do you think society today would recover from something like that?

Kids are bored if they don't have their PSP or Nintendo DS, and usually they're bored even when they do have them.

One of my guitar students said the other day "I'm playing it faster because I had three cans of V this afternoon", when I asked him to slow down the tempo. He's only ten, and he's drinking that vile, chemical drink that gives you nothing different from a drug hit. I bet he was bored during that lesson.

With todays society, over stimulated on energy drinks, more ads on TV, the Internet, video games, hand held games, kids don't go outside to play. They don't hurt themselves taking their home made billycart down the steepest hill in their neigbourhood. They don't climb a tree and fall out of it. Instead, they're at home, in the car, on the way to school, with their head burried deep in the electronic device resting in the palm of their hands, emmiting the wonderful glow of sunshine they call video games.

But if the grid failed, they won't be able to charge their game console. So they'd turn to their gaming machine connected to their TV, bored and uninterested as to why that won't work either.

Mum and dad will have to leave their jobs because everything is done on computer. Which is probably a good thing because they'll need to be home growing fruit and veggies for themselves and their family.

The kids will either be playing games like marbles, catch & kiss, hide and seek and all those other games they have forgotten about. Then come home to eat.

Schooling would change for them too. Most kids in Australia have laptops that the schools have given them. My neice has one. She's also got her own computer. One of my customers is a school that has provided all the kids school work on their laptops. Kids who have been brought up on this system will have a shock to their system.

When I discussed this with a friend, he said that something like this won't happen in our lifetime. He could be right, he could be wrong. Either way, I think everyone, whether you're green or not, whether you're savvy of the impacts and how our current way of life will only evolve into something even more detrimental to the environment is going to only speed up the process and make all this happen sooner than expected. It doesn't really matter. I think we all know that this will happen.

Are you prepared for when it does?

As I asked before, can you grow your own food? And I don't mean just say "yes, I can" because you think you can. Can you really grow your own food? Remember, it won't be the time for trial and error. Lose your small veggie patch, and you along with your family will starve.

You could rely on your local farmer. But do you know where they are? You'll have to travel to them on your bicycle, because they can't bring their truck load of produce to you.

While you may think "This isn't going to happen while I'm around anyway, so who cares?" If you care about your kids, and your grand kids, then you'll make sure, just like with everything else, that they're going to be okay.

Parents want the best for their children, so why give them a life they may not have chosen themselves? And if you don't have kids or don't plan on having kids, think about your friends and their kids.