Seriously. Because I have an idea for one, and I want to see whether I can make it work. I don’t know if I can find an artist who’d be interested in collaborating on it, but if I can, I have some ideas on how to fund it. I just want to see enough people would be interested in it.
Surely I can’t be the only one who’s tired of the idea that the apocalypse would wipe out all disabled people because we couldn’t possibly survive.
let me put it straight. disabled people are way way way way WAY less likely to survive in the unlikely event of an apocalypse.
it’s already extremely unlikely for ANYONE to survive to begin with. and then someone who already faces difficulties in our modern world with all its accomodations? hard to imagine.so i hope for you that your story is so damn good and clever that it could work. otherwise it’S just garbage that lives on the suspension of disbelief the reader brings with him. and that is no basis for any good story.
Do you even have the first clue what a disability is? I’m asking, because you seem to be a very ignorant sort of person. Allow me to educate you a little.
“…our modern world with all its accomodations[sic]…” Bwahahaha! You silly, silly able-bodied person, you. What accommodations? You think the occasional wheelchair ramp and some IEPs count as accommodations? You have no idea. The modern world is already hugely inaccessible to disabled people. We’re used to it.
I bet you think “survival of the fittest” means survival of the strongest, the fastest, all of that, don’t you? But it doesn’t. It means survival of the most adaptable. You think you’re automatically more capable of surviving than people who have to adapt every single day of their lives to an inaccessible world? Do you even biology, bro?
Life has survived apocalypses on this planet before. The Permian-Triassic extinction event killed 70% of all terrestrial vertebrates and 96% of all marine life. Yet here we stand, because life did survive. And it isn’t the big, strong gorgonopsids that we descend from. They didn’t make it. Nope, it was the tiny diictodon. Diictodon, a creature little bigger than a chihuahua, that could burrow to survive the elements. In fact, it’s possible that diictodon, like modern lagomorphs, could sever tree roots as a source of water. They survived because they could adapt to the harsh changes in their environment. Not because they were the strongest or the fastest.
The Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction (otherwise known as that thing that killed the non-avian dinosaurs) took out three-quarters of all plant and animal life on earth. And yet again, here we stand. And the reason for that is because there was life that could adapt, and once again, it wasn’t the biggest or the strongest. Why do you think avian dinosaurs (more commonly known as birds) are the only ones who survived? Because yeah, birds have some traits that make them very suited to survival, but odds are all dinosaurs had these traits. Yet all of the non-avian ones are gone.
A combination of factors played into this. Many non-avian dinosaurs were far too large and specialized. Their strength and speed were no longer advantages after Chicxulub laid waste and the world began to deteriorate. And yeah, the birds had the advantage of flying, but that wasn’t the only thing. Birds were small, and they’d taken over a very important niche. As pterosaurs evolved, they grew from small flying insectivores to large, ground-stalking carnivores. They overspecialized into that niche, while birds started sitting pretty in the niche the pterosaurs left behind: Small, flying insectivores. Notably, it wasn’t just birds that survived, but most of what did survive was small, and thus in need of less energy than those big strong creatures that are gone now.
And why do you think it’s Homo sapiens that stands as the dominant hominid today? By all accounts, Neanderthals were actually stronger, faster, and smarter than us. Yet here we stand. Of course, modern science shows that to some degree, at least, Neanderthals were bred into Homo sapiens. But we still had an advantage over them. Being smaller, we needed less food for energy. A few bad years food-wise would knock down the Neanderthal population far more than it would the Homo sapiens one. For all we were not as big or as strong or as fast, we had an advantage in hard times.
Now tell me, taking all of that, why able-bodied and neurotypical people, who spend their lives sitting comfortably in their overspecialized niches, should be so very much better suited to survival to those of us who spend each and every day adapting?
Maybe it’s because you think we’re all bed-ridden and helpless? Newsflash: Disabilities come in many, many types. Maybe you think none of us can survive without modern medicine? Newsflash: Not only do many of us already survive without access to care that would make our lives easier, but the standards of modern medicine also illegalize substances like marijuana, which has been shown to be effective on disabilities ranging from glaucoma and fibromyalgia to ADHD and bipolar disorder. Legal narcotics aren’t the only effective ones, they’re just the only legal ones. Maybe you think none of us have any sort of useful skills? Or that we aren’t strong enough to protect ourselves? You go ahead and fuck with this guy after the apocalypse, see how far that gets you.
Yeah, a lot of people wouldn’t survive an apocalypse. That’s part of the point of post-apocalyptic fiction, dude. But we make up one seventh of this world’s population and yet you think all one billion of us would go down simply because of your ignorant preconceptions?
Pfft. Please. We’ve survived you assholes for millennia. We have the same chances of survival as you do and we’re more used to adapting.
I’m highly amused when abled folks think that they’re automatically the ones who would survive the apocalypse. Aka, “The fittest” in “the survival of the fittest”.
Fantastic response to such ignorance, seriously.
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