I keep seeing commercials for the series Revolution, a JJ
Abrams show scheduled for the fall. I
may watch this thing just to see how hilarious it is because from what I’ve
seen in the commercials by my standards it is going to be awful.
It may be a well made show with decent scripts and great
acting, but I doubt that would be enough for me to get past the problems with
the premise.
If you want to enjoy the show without my observations
ruining things for you just skip the rest of this post. It’s also pretty long so if you don’t want to
bother you should just skip it.
So you’re still here.
Let’s rant. This is based only on
the commercials but I really can’t not comment on this thing.
Apparently the show takes place 15 years after electricity
has stopped working. OK, I’ll give them
that one for free. Something has stopped
electricity from working without affecting anything else – such as bioelectric
activity which I suppose it could be argued that animals create electricity
more than they use it. Yeah, well, I’ll
give them that one anyway.
But to me it looks like someone wanted to set a show in a
future post-apocalyptic world without technology so they could have athletic
young people riding horses, using swords and bows and arrows and generally
looking awesome. I can understand that,
but they seem to have grabbed an idea to cause it as opposed to having an idea
for what happened and then extrapolating a future from that.
Why do I say this, you ask?
Let’s start with the beginning as seen in the commercial. There’s a jet airliner in a flat spin that
crashes. Why didn’t it just nose
in? Why is it spinning? If it is crashing because the electricity
failed then Why Are The Running Lights
Still On?
And what’s with the bows and arrows and swords and
horses? Guns will still work without
electricity. Then there’s the driving
force behind the Industrial Revolution – steam.
Steampunk is a big thing right now and they can’t imagine a steam
powered car? Something that actually
existed – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanley_Motor_Carriage_Company. Not to mention trains and trucks and all
sorts of things. I might even be able to
make a diesel engine work. Also, gas
lighting.
Then there’s the scene of people walking past Wrigley Field
all overgrown and vine covered. Sure,
because in fifteen years no one has figured out how to cut the grass without
electricity and the actual last ball park to install lights would never again
host a baseball game if it had to be played in the daytime. But all the cities seem to have been
abandoned for some reason so, that broke baseball? Whatever.
What about the effects of loss of life after such a
catastrophic event, you ask? That’s a
fair question and one that should be asked before imagining this world. Let’s say that aircraft, traffic and other accidents,
lost ships at sea, deaths due to failed life support in hospitals and due to
excessive heat and cold and general mayhem add up. I’d say there would be at most 20% max loss
of world population in the immediate aftermath – almost exclusively in industrialized
nations. In the following years I would
estimate 30% to a maximum of 50% loss of population.
What would that do to the US?
It would give us the population that existed in the 1950s. Not colonial levels; 1950s levels. The country was not exactly deserted in the
1950s. Sure it would take some effort to
restore a working infrastructure and distribute food and other goods, but this
is supposed to be 15 years later. If
anything we’d have functionally full employment. All industry would require more human
involvement, not to mention the military.
Of course there would be increased death rates due to illness and injury
and the population would be younger, but horses instead of cars? Well, maybe, but not exclusively. And deserted cities? I doubt it – at least, there would be cities
even if the large metropolises were deserted though I think they would be
scavenged for material and rebuilt in a usable form.
The population would undoubtedly be younger because health
care would take a major hit and seniors and the disabled and chronically ill
would not live long in that world.
Though I really doubt that everyone would be in their twenties.
High speed communication would be much more difficult, but
not impossible. No more satellite
communication, or transcontinental or transoceanic for a while at least. But in the late 19th century, when
steam powered trains were the norm, you could get across this country in less
than a week. That slows down
communication but it doesn’t leave people cut off. And what about fiber optics? Why not use that to reproduce a telegraph
service?
Sure there would be initial problems and violence and
confusion and chaotic times, but it wouldn’t be permanent and it would take a
lot less than 15 years for signs of recovery to be apparent.
Mass transportation, mass communication, major industry,
industrial farming, densely populated cities with street lights and police and
fire departments and mail delivery and hospitals and all that stuff, all of
that existed before the revolution of electricity at the end of the 19th
century. The end of the 19th
century, that’s how far back this would take us. Think about that. Compared to today the technology was much
less advanced but it wasn’t non-existent.
There was even air conditioning. Aside
from the telegraph we could reproduce everything that was around then without
electricity.
So you can see how I would have a problem with a show that
wants to use the loss of electricity as the cause for anything really dramatic
15 years after the event. It would be less
post-apocalyptic and more historical drama.
Then there is the fact that everyone is dressed in new
looking clothes, which means that somehow people have managed to learn how to
build and operate looms, tan leather, make boots and shoes and the like. It also looks like there are enough bowyers
and fletchers around, maybe also people making katana and najinata as well, to
keep people in weapons. Plus they can
distribute all of this stuff. Yet they
can’t cut the vines that have taken over all of the cities.
I suppose they’re using cars as planters because – well,
there really is no reason for that.
People are also wearing eyeglasses. They figured that out but not the rest.
Is there any chance that people are going to be raiding
libraries and hoarding books to learn what they need to know to survive and
flourish? I doubt it.
And now I just saw another commercial that asks the important
ridiculous questions: what if there were no medicine, no law, no police?
Right, because we all know that none of those things existed
before electricity was being used.
Good grief. If that
isn’t just hyperbole thrown into a commercial – and even then it is just stupid
– then this show is going to be worse than I thought. And as you can tell I already thought that it
was going to be pretty bad.
What will be a problem is weather because forecasting will
be severely limited.
And now another commercial where people are armed and
wearing new clothes with well repaired houses but you can see through the damn
fence around their compound because it is made of uneven and unmatched twigs
with no chinking or wattle or daub. A five
year old could do a better job. Apparently
everyone also forgot how to make walls.
Can it possibly work as a guilty pleasure? Maybe I could see if it manages to not live
up to my expectations and has plots that I can’t predict right now. Maybe someone can convince me that I’m wrong.
This is a long and convoluted post not a long and
comprehensive post so I did not cover every possibility and maybe they explain
all of this somehow, but I think my main points are legitimate.
And what about lightning?
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