Imagine our world when the impact of climate change and a poorly conceived war ends in a devastating nuclear mishap obliterating continents into archipelagos created from their highest peaks. Little of the diversity and beauty of our planet survived. Life on another planet had not panned out as some had counted on.
Many hundreds of years later, life forms both evolved and those humans that had survived became healthier, sturdier, smarter, and multiplied and adapted to the changed world. We learned quickly that Nature heals herself better than we do. Homo sapiens had been clawing our way back to civilization enough that many of us were starting to think about and trying to understand what happened to our species to create such a catastrophe.
Many of us think that the social sciences and, especially, fields such as history, will have better answers to that question than hard science, although both are needed. Centers of studies are starting to develop. As that happened, teachers and students alike wondered how could this have happened; did those people alive then not understand what was happening? I am imagining myself as possibly the Heather Cox Richardson of the future! So what might I have discovered in the relics and artifacts of that time from about 1960 to 2040?
For the basis of this conjecture, I live on the island of Katahdin, once the highest point in what had been the state of Maine. I’m a strong kayaker, canoeist, and sailor, as well as hiker, so I’m easily able to visit other small centers for the study of history on islands dotted through what had been the New England area of the U.S. and the Maritime islands that had been part of Canada. We’ve developed a collegial network and share our research and ideas. We are as much teachers as we are students. Our particular focus of study is the deeper understanding of the human aspect of how and why this happened. We share a belief that the study of history helps us to prevent the mistakes of the past, which would be beyond catastrophic, if this were to happen again.
Much has already been gathered and, in a patchwork fashion, pierced together of that time. A surprising number of artifacts, documents, and books survived. I already have assembled my own ‘library’ of about 100 books. In some cases we do make assumptions, but always based on the best evidence we have gathered. We all know the scientific explanations; they’re quite clear. Climate change set the stage and had been accelerating for years with only piecemeal attempts to slow it down. The reality of global warming at an accelerated rate after the Industrial Revolution is well known. What isn’t known and what we want to investigate is why, once the causes were diagnosed, wasn’t there an international plan to “attack” the causes. Probably because they were too busy attacking each other (that’s just my personal aside, not one of our theories yet.) .
Those delusionists, as we have come to call them, seemed to have known what they needed to do to prevent the ultimate devastation. But little was being done. In fact as more and more materials were pieced together, it appeared they were actually accelerating the changes, both with climate change and war. Was this intentional? But if so, WHY? It made no sense.
In what had been the United States of America, historians here and there were sifting through the strata of what were labeled executive orders, redacted Epstein files, a large document titled Project 2025, collections called PowerPoints, media files that could not yet be deciphered, and multiple pictures of a fat man with an odd-colored skin tone, neither white nor brown, but something sort of orange and hair that almost matched, files called Talking Points with a simple chart or two. Some of those even showed how a nuclear war could be won, which, of course, was ridiculous. If not then for those delusionists, it was certainly known now that such a so-called win, simply meant no one wins,.
Also found were what were called Supreme Court decisions, which seemed odd as the contents of the U.S. Constitution are well known even today, yet these decisions are in total opposition to that, which seemed to make no sense at all. Each individual archipelago had a set of rules; often aspects would be similar. One widespread one was if you had multiple, say of dried fish, and your neighbor had none, you owed that person some of yours. Most of us did that without any prodding. Of course, you did not kill, you did not steal, although that one was sometimes overlooked if the neighbor had plenty of what you stole and you only took a small amount, it would work out as a win-win, you wouldn’t get punished for stealing and that neighbor wouldn’t get punished for hoarding. One extensive hoarding behavior that stands out from our research occurred in three distinct geographical areas that no longer exist as they’re flooded over Those areas are Washington, D.C., which used to be the center of the U.S. federal government and where divers were able to retrieve much of our historical information, especially gold framed photos and paintings of the “orange man” referred to above; Silicon Valley in what was California; and Mar-a-Lago, a tawdry fake palace type complex in Florida. The behavior was the hoarding of money, which seems ludicrous now as it has no value whatsoever; mostly we barter and share. It seemed it was just collected and not used for any useful reason, not donated to others, to open schools or care centers, or housing for the many homeless people, whom we leaned a little about, that lived in parks, corners of old buildings, and such places.
There were also constant references to ICE. Although the polar caps were quickly melting, which helped create these archipelagos of today, those references seem to be relating to people, who may or may not be wearing uniforms, have identifying marks on those uniforms, and are often masked, but we don’t know why…yet. Someone actually found a file of pictures that seemed to have belonged to one of these ICE people because it contained other personal items of that person. They showed various ICE people beating, doing what is most surely torture in closed rooms or against buildings, dragging people from their cars including one woman by her hair as she is clutching a baby, another of an old man, a disabled boy in a wheelchair, and then these same ICE people are standing over what I think is a dead body dropping cigarette ash on the man’s head. These are all vulnerable people, and why the ICE people are doing all this is not clear.
To be continued…
Note this was inspired by an aspect of this concept in “What We Can Know” by Ian McKuen, which I recommend with hesitation, only because it is complex and layered, but well-written and with accurate renditions of what life is like for the caregiver of a dementia person and being a dementia person, what life would be like after such a catastrophe, as well as many other literary explorations.