short haul long pork

SHORT HAUL LONG PORK

Post-apocalypse fiction is a brutal genre for a reader.  Not only is there huge steaming piles of pure unadulterated complete lack of talent, now the bitches have gotten involved and slap a PA label on their vampire werewolf alien mind control Gaia revenge romance stories.  As if zombies were not enough to deal with.  Note to every swinging cheese dingus out there thinking a word processor makes you a writer, the reason the Walking Dead became popular was because compared to a lot of other TV out there, it was an actual good story with characterization.  It has nothing to do with zombies, really ( and yes, smart asses, I know I started out with a word processor and zero talent, but at least I was trying for original content ).

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So, I’m slogging through yet another PA story that wasn’t going to go anywhere, but at least it had some really good “ah-yah! I wouldn’t have thought of that” moments at the beginning.  Food for thought.  Specifically, cannibal food.  Using cannibalism to good effect.  It was really the  best idea I’ve come across in a long while.  Your typical group of Evil Gang Dudes were escaping from the inland urban area to get to the coast ( I can’t remember why.  A batch of library books distracted me from the Kindle and I lost track of this one ).  Their problem is lack of transportation.  What to do? 

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Well, duh, slaves of course.  Every society large and in charge prior to the carbon fuel age had slaves.  But because 99% of the ignorant rabble of ‘Muricans were purposely taught to the lowest standard possible ( as in most things public school, you only succeed DESPITE the teaching, not because of it.  And you just know unless you are a snowflake with the no vacancy sign lit, that is on purpose to control us ), they think that only evil White dudes in the Confederacy had slaves.  So being a gang and having slaves?  Totally NOT the historical norm, in the pea brains of most.  Evil incarnate!

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Well, they certainly weren’t very nice, because they didn’t JUST have slaves.  They had slaves eating each other.  To me, and I apologize if I seem crass and insensitive, this just seemed like logistics brilliance.  There is no working vehicles.  You must escape to another area.  You can only find a small amount of food on the way, as this is a populated area.  So how do you carry everything you need for the trip?  Your canned foods, your winter clothing, ammunition.  Even your officers of the army.  Slaves, obviously, because every day you get more of them as you steal what little you find. 

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But there isn’t enough food for the slaves, and since muscle power runs everything now, slaves need calories.  Bodies cannot cannibalize themselves during famine and get any kind of optimal work performance, not after just a few days.  You still need calories.  So every day the slaves that were disciplined or were sick or for whatever reason they were not needed ( used up sex slaves-whatever ) ended up feeding the other slaves.  This hasn’t really been covered before in fiction, to the best of my recollection.  Cannibals are standard fare in PA fiction, but they are usually as evil as slave owners.

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In Lucifer’s Hammer, a non fan favorite as the mind numbing detail  overwhelms most readers, but my forever number one because I’m not your average bear ( whether good or bad is a discussion for another day ), the Cannibal Army used human flesh as a recruiting, bonding, initiation ritual, and not as their primary source of calories except in dire circumstances.  In the book Cannibal Reign, evil surface dwellers ate flesh through no other choice, and were still not excused for their dietary choices ( because, it is inferred, prepper dudes stock enough MRE’s so anyone not a cool survivalist ninja chooses to be evil ).

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The difference here is that even the evil gang dudes know that cannibalism is gross and very unhealthy.  They know better than to eat that nasty crap.  And all the slaves are totally innocent, just poor soccer moms who a few weeks previously was taking little Johnny to karate class so he could stand up to bullies who knew he was a rectal ranger.  Sure, you could choose to NOT eat dinner.  In which case you were immediately slaughtered and fed to everyone else.  It wasn’t even like you had the option of starvation.  Almost anyone would choose the long pork luau. 

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And the author didn’t gloss over how sick this made them.  The Donner Party might have gotten away with it, but people are a lot sicker today with malnourishment.  A lifetime of GMO foods, half in the form of corn syrup cola, do few folks any favors.  You are eating cancer and mutation if you go cannibal.  Back in Old Timey Days, you ate fresh raised foods made locally, and the worst food preservative was salt.  So these slaves were just used and abused.  They were a completely disposable product, just like the gasoline they were replacing. 

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Can you think of a more brilliant way to move supplies long distance without carbon fuels and without surplus food?  I can’t ( this was a military outfit comprised of criminals, not an uncommon historical occurrence-think of the Vikings-and so no, Francis, there was no ethanol engines or wood steam engines or whatever the hell your nerd brain is sitting on waiting to hatch.  Technology is a byproduct of surplus energy, it isn’t a source of energy.  By definition there is no surplus energy in the apocalypse ). 

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I just had to write on this, I was that impressed.  To be sure, like dealing with human waste this is NOT a cocktail dinner conversation.  But the apocalypse will be full of these awkward topics ( to be clear, there was a LOT of gear being schlepped by the slaves, and even the leaders sitting in a dead car being pulled/pushed so they didn’t have to walk.  Car loads of gear with no cars.  Simple solutions like bicycles or horses were not viable.  In the apocalypse, you get to use what you brought to the party, anyway ).

( .Y. )

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