Rats / by Akira Ohiso

We make squared figure 8s around the neighborhood like Etcha Sketch. Ellie admires front yard gardens but is disappointed by a bulldozed house, which includes rose bushes she had planned to transplant.

Old West Woodland houses disappear overnight - a heap of lumber, plumbing, and floral wallpapered plaster remains. An excavator is parked at an angle halfway up the heap as if it was quitting time, and the workers stopped mid-task.

In Tetris configurations, foundations are mapped out with stakes and twine to fit as many units on one plot as possible. Pieces of ripped cloth are tied on the twine in intervals to remind humans that there is twine to trip over.

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Analog skills will be in demand in the future when energy systems and data servers are breached and disrupted. Cash under-the-mattress thinking is an intelligent strategy.

Credit cards, electric cars, WiFi, refrigeration, smartphones, government, law enforcement, medical support, and anything in your life that is dependent on energy and data systems could cease to work.

Build a fort, start a fire…

In a scene from Rumaan Alam’s book Leave the World Behind, G.H. Scott, an Airbnb rental owner, shows up at his rental property to escape an event happening in the country's urban areas. The renter, Clay Sandford, and his family, already experiencing WiFi outages and becoming increasingly fearful, are distrustful, but they allow him to stay the night.

G.H., who alludes to having some inside knowledge of what’s happening, begins to talk openly to Clay.

G.H. Scott: A conspiracy theory about a shadowy group of people running the world is far too lazy of an explanation. Especially when the truth is much scarier.

Clay: What is the truth?

G.H.: No one is in control. No one is pulling the strings.

We are sure that our way of life will always be because we believe the selected narrative says it will always be. The truth is that no one is swooping in to save us from ourselves. If systems show inklings of catastrophic failure, humans will begin planning to save themselves like rats on a sinking ship.