Storyteller’s World

Archive for September, 2005

Fragile

Thursday, September 1st, 2005

Every new report emerging from New Orleans, Biloxi, and the rest of the stricken Gulf Coast, brings more horrors. They’re talking about a whole major city being effectively destroyed; about the possibility of simply abandoning it and never rebuilding, so great is the destruction.

I’ve been trying to remember my limited American history, and whether any major American city has ever suffered devastation on this scale, which is more within the experience of European cities (Dresden, Berlin, Frankfurt) or Japanese (Hiroshima, Nagasaki). I could only think of San Francisco in 1906, Chicago in 1871, possibly Richmond, Charleston, and other Southern cities of the Civil War?

The truly frightening thing is how fragile modern civilised life is, and how easily our complex web of law and ease can be torn apart by forces of nature that are beyond our control. The nearest thing in fiction it calls to my mind is something like John Wyndham’s Day of the Triffids, and other disaster scenarios.

It’s bad enough, as we see, if civilisation collapses and there are people Out There who are able to fly in food, water, medical assistance. But what would it be like, if there was no one Out There? If the whole of a nation, or the whole world, were equally stricken?

As it is, it is the poor we see suffering out of all proportion. Does nothing ever change?

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