Glynn Marshes writes:

. . . but with a crumble.

From time to time, scifi writer Sarah Hoyt blogs about The Collapse.

I find her perspective interesting. Hoyt was born and grew up in Portugal; she’s experienced first-hand what it’s like to live in a country in Western-style decline. “I have some experience with revolutions,” she writes in a post titled Sweet Liberty,

I get PTSD at the sound of Green Acres because Porto had one reel in its local broadcast station. Green Acres. When Lisbon got cut off, they played it back to back. This meant that someone had taken over the main broadcasting station in Lisbon.

So what’s her take on the topic?

In her most recent post on the collapse, titled Oh, Buck Up!, Hoyt begins by noting that she’s been reading Surviving The Economic Collapse, by Fernando Aguirre. The book is about the Argentinian collapse, which “is exactly the same [as what] I experienced, only harder and faster.”

She continues:

Like me, [Aguirre is] bemused by Americans who think when the economy collapses we go back to either the stone age or frontier days.  That’s not what either of us has experienced.  Things just get dirtier, shabbier, and more unreliable. The niceties of civilization peel away.  But we are not suddenly living in a Mad Max world.  We’re just living in our old houses with bars in the windows, three different kind of alarms and a way of shutting out [sic] doors so that burglars have to break in through three levels which gives you time to get the gun from the closet.

Hoyt then shares her observations about America’s national character and how it will influence our reaction to the collapse. She doesn’t suggest that things will be painless (she thinks it’s possible, even probable that we’ll see foreign incursions on U.S. soil, as opportunist aggressors take advantage of our growing weakness/preoccupation) but at bottom she’s optimistic. She notes that we’re ungovernable, so good luck to any would-be totalitarian strongman. Although we’re highly law-abiding, we’re also quick to circumvent authority if we have to (“I think we’ll take to the grey economy with a gusto and verve that will scare even Russians, and invent new forms of it very quickly”). And once the dust has settled, we’ll roll up our sleeves rebuild, because that’s the way we’re made.

We’re Americans.  Rising Phoenix-like from the ashes is what we DO.  It’s our individual story.  Most of us who came here came to build a new life because the old one had crashed badly – economically, emotionally or otherwise.  It’s our collective story.  Even those of us whose ancestors weren’t here at the time, are descended from the stock market crash and the Depression on our mother’s side, to paraphrase O’Rourke.  It’s also our character.  Mentioning O’Rourke reminds me that he talks about a restaurant (Russia? Poland?) where an American would set everything straight with a bottle of windex and a rag.  That is also to a large extent true.  Americans – self selected, having come here to start again or descended from people who did – look at messes and go “How do I fix this?”

This can be bad, but post collapse, it’s also good.

For another Hoyt post along the same vein, see this one, titled Galt’s Network, where she suggests we form distributed support networks so that we can help each other out in the event of a major infrastructure collapse.

Incidentally (or maybe not?) Hoyt is also a central figure in the Human Wave scifi movement, described here. Human Wavers are trying to bring back science fiction that focuses on terrific storytelling instead of teachin’ us a message.

If you’d like to read some her novels, here is Sarah’s author page on Amazon.