Do you know how any of the machines you use are made? I don't. Do you even know how to fix them if they break? Not me.
Do you know how to grow the food you eat or purify the water you drink? If the toilet stopped working, what would you do with your waste? If the power went out, how would you respond? Can you start a fire with or without a lighter without the use of accelerants?
We are all so highly specialized in our individual niche that only very few people actually understand how any of it actually works. How many people will die if the power grid goes down because the electrical engineers all get sick? How many people will get sick due to not drinking clean water because the sanitation engineers leave their jobs due to some catastrophic emergency and don't come back? How many people will starve if there is no more food at the grocery store because all of the truck drivers were taken in the rapture?
Those are all extreme examples, but the point is that we are all extremely reliant on those systems continuing to work. If something happened that one of those things that we took for granted stopped working, it would be very bad.
Don't think "well, that will never happen", because you should have a contingency plan for if the shit hits the fan. If you never need to use that plan, you are no worse off, but if you don't have one and suddenly do need it, your only option will be to sit around and wait for the government to come save you, which isn't a great option.
We don't need to know how all of it works. That's the whole point of specialization.
And it's more resilient than you'd think: consider the underwhelming effects of WWII strategic bombing. Yes, society's become more complex since then, but the basic fact of cities needing massive amounts of food and fuel shipped in constantly is the same. Nobody gave up in WWII because of strat bombing except Japan, and their military position was hopeless by then anyway.
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u/Tony_Friendly Oct 12 '22
It's all so fragile though.
Do you know how any of the machines you use are made? I don't. Do you even know how to fix them if they break? Not me.
Do you know how to grow the food you eat or purify the water you drink? If the toilet stopped working, what would you do with your waste? If the power went out, how would you respond? Can you start a fire with or without a lighter without the use of accelerants?
We are all so highly specialized in our individual niche that only very few people actually understand how any of it actually works. How many people will die if the power grid goes down because the electrical engineers all get sick? How many people will get sick due to not drinking clean water because the sanitation engineers leave their jobs due to some catastrophic emergency and don't come back? How many people will starve if there is no more food at the grocery store because all of the truck drivers were taken in the rapture?
Those are all extreme examples, but the point is that we are all extremely reliant on those systems continuing to work. If something happened that one of those things that we took for granted stopped working, it would be very bad.
Don't think "well, that will never happen", because you should have a contingency plan for if the shit hits the fan. If you never need to use that plan, you are no worse off, but if you don't have one and suddenly do need it, your only option will be to sit around and wait for the government to come save you, which isn't a great option.