Survivors

Over the last week or so Jax and I have been watching Survivors.

"Survivors is an outstanding 38 episode drama series with a cult following that first aired between 1975 and 1977… the series concerns the aftermath of a plague which had wiped out over 99% of the world's population and the experiences of a group of individuals in England as they grappled with the post-plague world and the trials of day-to-day survival." link

In fact, in the first series the cull is stated as being 99.98% and is evenly spread, no families are favoured and the survivors face a world in which everyone they have ever known is dead.

What would we do if everything just stopped? To start with the survivors get by on scavenging and looting. As time goes on the towns become more and more unsavoury and dangerous through a combination of rotting corpses and bandit gangs and the group followed in the story found a commune, planning on producing their own food and making themselves self sufficient.

They are faced with starting over, in a world where most of their existing skills are irrelevant, having to learn how to make everything for themselves from scratch. From scratch means if you want a loaf of bread you start by ploughing the field….

This is self-sufficiency at a very different level, no fall backs. When things go wrong you go hungry and even die, no asking the bank for a loan to tide you over or signing on for income support.

I commend the program to you, it is as bleak as you might expect, but well put together and thought-provoking.