Elderly

[Little Lou]

Meanwhile, back at the original topic...

This may sound bonkers, but in some ways I think the elderly may have it better than we think post SHTF. Today many people think of elderly people as useless and a burden, but post SHTF there will be so much they can do.

Think 'tribal' as RS says. We will have endless small manual tasks that we don't need now, but could all easily be done by a sedentary person - from keeping look-out to sewing clothes, from pickling walnuts to shelling peas, from watching the babies to making the herbal infusions. Even more importantly, they will feel useful, and if there's anything that really helps keep dementia at bay, it's that.

I accept that health is an issue, but I also wonder how necessary these 'meds' we speak of really are. We aren't so hung up on them in the UK as the US, and it's not so very long ago that old people who took pills were the rare exception rather than the rule. They still lived to their eighties and nineties...

This is only a personal theory, but I wonder if one reason we see so much dementia in modern life is that people are living past their natural 'sell by date'. Are we really doing ourselves such a favour by making our bodies keep going when they're ready to give up? Of course we must help our sick and elderly for as long and as much as we possibly can, but I think the biggest thing that needs to change is our expectations. Post SHTF life expectancy will probably go back to the old 'three score and ten' - which people maintained long before there were any serious medicines at all...