Here Comes The Pale Horse

At least it hasn’t reached the kitchen!

“And I looked, and behold a pale horse…” and it was looking me right in the eye. Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash

There’s one snag with the collapse of civilisation. It won’t happen like we’re expecting it to happen.

Covid crept up on us. It didn’t behave like a pandemic is supposed to behave. We didn’t have any of *Contagion, nor indeed [Outbreak](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114069/)*. It wasn’t a zombie apocalypse, either. Those early arguments about whether it was a lab accident or a wet market were — in their effect — a kind of displacement activity.

Remember the cruise ship? At first, it was all so far away.

I’ve just had an email from the Deep Adaptation people. It begins with the words “Many of us are lucky that societal collapse is still only a concept.” It goes on to acknowledge that various parts of the world are in various kinds of chaos, and builds into a substantive discussion of, well, obstacles to adaptation.

My point today isn’t to go into detail about that. It’s to share the image that came into my head when I read that opening sentence. “True,” I thought, and out of the depths of my mind came an image of a couple holding hands across their kitchen table, smiling and happy, the fire engulfing the rest of their house still only a concept to them.

Funny how the mind works, isn’t it?