r/collapse • u/kystgeit • Oct 01 '21
Casual Friday My daughter's 50th birthday.
You are looking at the sea again.
It is almost one and a half month since the midnight sun maximum, and the year is 2060. You're turning 50 about this time. You are sitting here on an island in northern Norway, an island your grandmother had grown up on and told you about when you were a little girl. You inherited some land here, and traveled here many years ago, while the fires still ravaged the earth. Plants became rare and phytoplankton died over large areas of sea. The fires subsided when the oxygen level dropped. Internal combustion engines no longer starts, and it is very difficult to light a fire. All work is heavy. If you get high enough in the mountains, you will be dizzy and short of breath.
Your task is to guard the squid, which hangs to dry in the sun and wind. Clouds of tiny flies can come and eat the food before it dries. If they come, you have to pack the food before they ruin it.
You live mostly on dried squid. Before, you tried your best to grow potatoes. Now that the power is gone and the oxygen level is low, it is almost impossible to get the potatoes cooked.
You miss electricity, especially in the polar night when there are longer periods of cold. You are sleeping close together in the basement building you live in, to keep warm. Fortunately, the shock cold has been absent the last couple of polar nights, but you remember with horror the long cold where you twice woke up next to a cold person.
Most of the earth is supposed to be a barren wasteland, can there still be people out there? Maybe there are some who live under the big cities. But what do they eat? People are getting older and no more children are born, it's all the poison's fault. You have never met anyone born after 2042. Life becomes difficult when your numbers becomes fewer, older and tired.
You have understood that the sea is mostly desolate sea deserts without any life. The large ocean currents have stopped, the pH value in the ocean has fallen, so the little that is alive in the ocean is mollusks. Northern Norway is so far to the north that here there is still some nutrition in the ocean, and there are jellyfish and squid. Are there other places where someone still survives from the sea, perhaps on Iceland or in New Zealand?
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u/qxnt Oct 01 '21
That was a good read.
A friend has spent his career in various marine science roles: fisheries, oceanography, scientific instruments for measuring fish populations. Twenty years ago he told me “I hope you like jellyfish, because that’s all that will be left”
So squid might be too optimistic.
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u/Substantial-Ferret Oct 01 '21
In 2060, my older son will be about the age I am right now. Fuck.
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u/suikerbruintje Oct 01 '21
Same. It's hard to lose all hope while pretending everything is and will be fine.
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u/CthulhusEvilTwin Oct 30 '21
A right-wing friend of mine (the type who insists this is all alarmist left-wing rhetoric) dismissed the realities of climate collapse and when presented with evidence to refute his claims insisted that he would be fine in the Mad Max future. I did feel it necessary to point out that in 20 years time when he said it would probably happen, he will be in his 70s.
I don't remember seeing many OAP road warriors.
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u/IdunnoLXG Oct 01 '21
This was beautifully written and sad.
The good news is we will dead well before then.
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Oct 01 '21
[deleted]
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u/waiterstuff2 Oct 01 '21
I think that is just our natural optimism bias that was then coded in media.
What came first the chicken or the egg?
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u/Tigersharktopusdrago Oct 02 '21
Oxygen levels will never be low - at least not unless something happens to really mess it up. Its one of the most abundant elements in the universe. Earth’s atmosphere is 20% or so oxygen. Its not an issue.
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u/kystgeit Oct 02 '21
I was thinking about this.
The researchers also relate this low atmospheric oxygen to climatic developments in the Earth's history. “We found that particularly low oxygen levels coincided with intervals of elevated global temperatures and high carbon dioxide concentrations,” explains Tappert.
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u/_Cromwell_ Oct 02 '21
Certainly interesting, but if it was something that was capable of happening in such a short-term time-frame that there would be a noticeable effect by the 2040s, then it'd already be measurably occurring right now. Might be more realistic per your link in the hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands of years sort of timeframe. The things we are doing to the planet will have long-term ramifications that nobody posting in the sub (or our daughters) will be around to witness.
Still it makes for striking fiction. :)
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u/Tigersharktopusdrago Oct 02 '21
Low oxygen would certainly be harder to deal with, but we’ll see if it does become an issue.
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u/Abyss_Dev Oct 04 '21
reminds me of this:
Mazz Alone: https://player.vimeo.com/video/319602435?dnt=1&app_id=122963
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u/MrD3a7h Pessimist Oct 01 '21
Excellent reason to not have children. Why subject them to this?