This originally aired on The Final Straw radio show.

After having rattled off a five minute history of the world to explain why I am against swivilization, it’s clear that I’m going to have to dispel some myths. It seems that we’re all held captive by some really bad movies from the 80’s
Hollywood produced a pile of post-apocalyptic  movies where swivilization collapsed. In everyone of them, there is a band of maurauding pillagers and rapists who terrorize survivors and steal limited resources for their survival. The most popular of those films was the Max Max series, staring Mel Gibson back before he became a Jew hating, drunk, producing blood sport movies starring Jesus.

It seems everyone imagines that in the absence of swivilization we’d face a Mad Max world. So out of fear of that alternative everyone hangs on to swivilization as a as a kind of “lesser evil.”But I think we need to consider that these Mad Max movies are not written by sociologists. We need to question  if a Mad Max scenario would really happen if swivilization collapsed.
There are two necessary preconditions that have to exist for a mad max  scenerio  to happen. The first is, there would have to be bloodthirsty, irrational maniacs who have a popular following of other, roving around and terrorizing peace-loving people. The second is, there would have to be a scarcity of resources.
Think about it: In every Mad Max  scenario , you’ve got bloodthirsty irrational maniacs. They are a key ingredient. Without them all you’ve got is Mel Gibson playing with his kids, picking some wild tomatoes, and playing Joan Baez songs on an acoustic guitar, by a campfire. Not exactly a gripping plot for an action film. Likewise, there’s always a scarcity of resources- and there has to be, because, if you have plentiful resources people are lazy and they’d just go get their own rather than fight over someone else’s.

So a Mad Max scenario would only happen if you had both of those ingredients. It would not even be enough to have one or the other. If you have no roving lunatics, you have a situation better than civilization because people will develop resources; and if you’ve got roving lunatics in a land of plenty, you can give the lunatics what they want and go get more, or the lunatics will just go get their own and leave you alone.

So, lets first discuss the roving band of lunatics. I know if swivilization collapses, my priorities will be to find my loved ones and get safe. We need water, food and shelter and weapons for defense. Medical supplies. I imagine most if you feel the same way. Those are pretty universal priorities.

I can’t say that there won’t be a handful of idiots who seek out a maniac leader who looks like Dennis Hopper with a Mohawk and an eye patch, and I can’t say they won’t have barbed wire wrapped around their diesel trucks. But I can say that’s not the wisest strategy for survival. So the unwise, the Dennis Hoppers with mohawks and eye patches looking to murder survivors and rape their house pets will soon join all the other socket-lickers who can’t make the transition to a post swivilization world. I can’t imagine that in a world where we’re all seeking out communities of reasonable cooperative people who further our own survival a group of bloodthirsty maniacs will get much of a following.

That right. Without  swivelization the Republican party is doomed. So  much for the Mad Max scenario. BUT theres also the question of whether there would be a scarcity of resources. I think we have to consider that swivelization collapse, just like natural disasters,would reduce the population. You would have a short period of upheaval.

Dead people are food for small scavengers which are food for larger scavengers, which are food for humans. That gives the clear population a break too. Not to mention that, without human interference, wild edible plants  grow on their own. If you read the accounts of the bounty of resources present in the Americas before the colonizer, there’s no reason to think we’d be facing a Mad Max scenario after civilization falls, fighting over breadcrumbs. There’d be plenty for everyone.

So, without roving maniacs and scarcity of resources, the vision of a post swivilization just shifted from Mad Max to Dances with Wolves. It doesn’t make much of an action movie, but certainly makes for a much better future than the one we are facing now.

What are you waiting for? Swivilization is not the lesser of two evils, its just evil. It’s just a vast machine and there are so many monkey wrenches just waiting to be thrown into it.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Ohio’s Supermax facility. If you can hear the sound of my voice; you are the resistance.