How long would you want to survive?

[bigpaul]

same reply as before i'll make my quality of life as comfortable as I can and feck anyone else.

[Tibbs735]

I think I'd still want to survive, even in the event of something truly horrific like a nuclear war, or "The Road" style scenario where there is little nature left. It's hard to really tell from a position of relative comfort though.

[Midnitemo]

until my family don't need me anymore.

[Mortblanc]

Realistically and honestly I do have a few limits and they deal directly with pain and "quality if life".

I have gone through several injuries that caused extreme pain for long periods of time. I am talking about constant screaming pain that keeps one curled up an the fetal position and unable to function. If that happened post event and there was no medical access to procedures/medication that would eliminate extreme pain I would not last long.

If there has never been a time in your life when you wanted to die then you have never experienced real pain. There is a thing known as the "sweet release of death".

When I was in the army I saw a lot if injuries that would have ended meaningful life. Sad to say, but in those days we would have a talk with the unit medic and tell him when to allow us to bleed out and die. No life without arms and legs, fed through a feeding tube with a colostomy bag taped to the bed rail for me thank you!

Historically, there was a time when "battle field medicine" included finishing off the severely wounded when there was no hope of recovery. A mallet blow to the base of the skull was common, or a spike driven into the brain stem.

My limit was clear. If I still had one arm save me. If both arms were gone do not treat me. Same for traumatic brain injury, just let me bleed out please.

It was actually no different that having a Do Not Resuscitate Order or instruction for when to "pull the plug" in ones living will.

I can hear the argument even now. All the kids gathered around and the Son looking at the Daughter saying,

"You pull it."
"No you pull it!"
"Everyone get out of the way, Gramps said I could pull it."
"No don't pull it, all the pretty lights will go out!"

Post event I suppose they will just smother me with a pillow.

Right now I have a "use by date". About 6 weeks after my heart meds run out I will have "the big one" and die. That is simply the course of life which preppers like me deal with. My life extends only a little past my med supply and that supply is controlled by others.

[bigpaul]

the question was: how long would you WANT to survive? not how long could you survive with a crippling ailment!

[Tibbs735]

I really want to see humanity go full on Star Trek mode and start sending colonization space ships etc to Alpha Centauri. We sometimes act like the whole of human history has been building up to this collapse of civilization, whereas it is just part of the inevitable cycle of rise and fall, of entropy, only this time around we have things like globalization, massive supply chains and nuclear weapons in the mix. My ancestors survived through all sorts of stuff, what right do I have to give up, even when things get really, really bad.

[Skean Dhude]

Tibbs I'm with your on this. However, this cycle we have expanded so much that we have consumed too many resources. If we don't get off this rock and start mining asteroids for raw materials and building in space when we go down we will have difficulty getting back up. This site doesn't help us progress but is intended to help us in the fall.

[Tibbs735]

Thats a big worry for me as well. Our ancestors could find big surface deposits of things like gold and iron just sticking out of the ground, whereas after a collapse, most of the resources remaining to be extracted will be far, far underground or we will lack the technology to extract them. Many technologies were discovered by accident, could we relight lost tech?

That said, the resources for rebuilding will most likely be in a different places. Traditionally resource extractors in our societies will be replaced with scavengers, both for functional/fixable old tech, and the raw materials; it's said that computer waste has more gold that modern gold ore.

[Hex]

kinda wanna survive until i die

[Mortblanc]

(2 July 2014, 12:19)Hex Wrote: kinda wanna survive until i die

We're all going to survive until we die!

And in spite of all the prepping in the world, only a handful of us will have a shred of control over when that will be.

They are the ones we refer too as suicidal.