Maintaining Mental Function and staving off insanity post SHTF

[Mortblanc]

99% of my existence is spent with only the sound of farm equipment and livestock in the distance breaking the quiet. At the moment I can hear a tractor in the field mowing hay. Occasionally I can hear a train passing two miles in the distance after dark.

The chickens do raise a ruckus on occasion and I have one hen that feels she should have the run of the house and comes to the door to tell me about it when it crosses her mind.

In the evenings when the temps cool a bit the neighbors come out to take their constitutionals/walk their dogs and often stop and chat as they pass. I know them and their hounds and on occasion the dogs will slip their leashes or jump their fences and they come to see me. I will look up and one will be standing at the door giving a low "woof" to attract my attention and get a pat on the head and a conversation.

I am blessed with good kids in my neighborhood. They are country kids, riding their bikes down to the lake to fish and waving as they pass. When they catch something they stop and show off their skill. I have become the bike mechanic of the neighborhood and guide them through maintenance and repairs. Occasionally I hire them for odd jobs and the 12 year old girl around the bend serves as watchdog and security when I am traveling. She comes down and feeds the chickens when I am gone for long stretches.

We are country people and we do things and build things and we yell for help when we need an extra pair of hands. We lend tools and swap advice and I know what gauge shotgun shells and pistol cartridges both my neighbors use. I also know that our community will expand and not contract SHTF, due to extended families arriving, seeking refuge. They are other young people that grew up in this road and come back on weekends to "visit the folks" and I know them by name, know their kids too.

I do not consider them an intrusion. I consider them help. Many of those young adults are working their way through school on veterans benefits, meaning they already have 2-3 years in combat and their skills et is still fresh. And in our modern and progressive military both make and female are combat trained.

All in all, I do not expect to be lonely SHTF. I strongly anticipate more contact than I have now, as people drop by to coordinate security and plan work, and the kids stop by to trade fish hooks for work in the garden and get their bikes fixed.

Of course, as the retired teacher on the road I also have the library. Boredom leads to reading and reading leads to learning. I imagine my Mother Earth News and homesteading magazines will be scattered all over the community and my textbooks will be traded from house too house as the kids in each family grow into new subject needs and new interests.

And there will be more kids. After 30 days, when the birth control pills are gone, dark comes early and can not be extended artificially, TV is replaced by talking in the darkness while listening to the crickets chirp and the owls hoot. There will be more kids, at least there will be in the country.

I can see why that picture might be terrifying to someone hiding alone in a cellar in the city, with no one to care if they live or die, wondering what that scampering sound in the darkness might be.