Scavengers

I've been thinking lately about opening an e-bay business up. Entirely because the economy in my area is doing very poorly... nearly 20% unemployment in the county. I had been taking stuff to pawn shops so I could get a buck here and there and recently they all started refusing to give out cash. Credit only.

Scary times.

So maybe selling stuff on e-bay would be more fruitful? The only problem is, I'm starting to run low on things I'm willing to part with...
The good news?
My neighbors' house got repossessed and they left most of their crap in the backyard getting bleached by the sun. A few months passed and I decided to check out what was back there. Junk galore and some pretty cool action figures!

I wonder if Scavenging is becoming more popular in today's America. The recession doesn't seem to have an end in sight despite some idiots claiming it will end this year. Unfortunately it won't. America's got some deep running economic issues that will take time to sort out. Not to mention the millions of unemployed people right now. Can anyone honestly say they think 26 million people will get their jobs back before the year is over?

Scavenging could be good for Americans too! It would increase our recycling because people would be looking to re-use things that other Americans deemed as trash. All the trash would have the opportunity to be re-used once more either by the scavengers, or cleaned up and sold by the scavengers to thrifty Americans.

Plus the rotting food of landfills is likely to be chock full of wonderful probiotic bacteria! Landfill food just might be healthy for you. Eat that slightly moldy slice of pizza and you've got yummy bacteria in your body and you can boost your immune system.

So what do YOU think? Should we start scavenging a little more? Is there shame in digging in someone's trash? Would you chow down on some gnarly chinese food?

Here's some helpful links
Scavenging Dumps for Survival
Could YOU survive in a dump?

Trapped on Earth

Source: XKCD

Sometimes I wonder if in a few million years some advanced alien race will show up at Earth. They had long ago filtered out all of the radio noise in the galaxy, narrowed down the planets likely to hold life, and finally set out to explore the galaxy.
As they neared our star system they would do some scans and find that the third planet from the sun had a good atmosphere, a warm climate that could support liquid water, and even - to their joy - it was surrounded by thousands of tiny bits of metal; manmade satellites.

They would try to hail us, but would receive no reply. They would come closer to our planet and notice a few man-made objects on Mars. Their stomachs [or whatever they have] would twist with excitement at their realization that we too had the power to leave our planet and travel in space.

They would reach earth and scan it. They would only find primitive cities, barbaric savages, and derelict automated machines trying desperately to fulfill their futile mission. These humanoid barbaric savages couldn't be the ones who built the satellites and the man-made objects on mars could they? Something must have happened to them. Who was that once proud race that once beamed messages into space and sent robots all throughout their star system?

I wonder if the human race will really amount to anything other than a fascinating line of rubble in the fossil record. We refuse to seek out alternative sources of energy, we are so territorial that we kill our own species, and people are even suggesting we should abandon sending people into space altogether.

We are overcrowding this planet, we're killing much of the life on it, and no one seems to be getting it through their thick skull that this is the only planet that we have. That's it. We fuck it up and we're dead. There is no escape hatch, no reset switch, no backup planet we can jump to.

We have to work hard to leave this planet and colonize other worlds. We should be treating other planets the way we treat other continents: take it over and breed like mad.

Death and Destruction [Novel Spoilers]

--------NANOWRIMO NOVEL SPOILERS--------




I'm busy typing away at my NaNoWriMo novel and sometimes I get sucked into the universe I'm creating.
It's a sci-fi that involves asteroids and mass extinctions.
Sometimes I forget what a horrible and terrifying experience it is to see your death is imminent and to watch the world around you so utterly destroyed. I carelessly through around words like millions and incineration, and entire civilizations evacuated... I didn't realize the gravity of what I was describing.

Last night my dreams gave me a dose of what I was writing.
I was trapped in a city, great fireballs were raining down from the sky. I saw people burst into embers and ashes in front of my very eyes from the heat of the intense shockwaves. Buildings crumbled like sand castles.

Me and my family crammed into some sort of shuttlecraft and tried to get off the planet but our combined weight was too much for it, and it was having difficulty getting off the ground. We started to gain altitude and I saw planes trying to leave the city, some were crushed by the asteroids and burning bodies spilled out.

We barely pushed over a hill, families, holding their children, were chasing after us, begging to be let on. Everyone was covered in blood, some people had charred skin. The fireballs stopped falling for a moment. We dropped into some docks by the ocean.

Our engine had burned out. We were stranded on the docks with our damaged and sinking shuttle. The ocean was steaming and dead sea-life floated around us. A Sea-lion jumped onto the dock, its boiled flesh was hanging loose on its skin and it moaned and panted, trying to cool itself off. Its breathing sounded very pained and I had a feeling it would die soon.
But it was a wounded animal and it was angry. It tried to attack us, to protect itself. We backed far away from it and waited.

The sky darkened a little and we looked up to see one giant fireball cruising overhead. It would be the one to end our lives.

It was a chilling dream that shocked me back into reality. It scared me enough that this morning I even considered changing that part of my book. But it's important to the storyline so I can't. It was a disturbing feeling witnessing so much vivid destruction. I haven't had a nightmare like that in years.

Image links to a DailyMail article

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