When the System Fails: The Importance of Book Stores

Written by Scott Edwards

While I was driving home the other day, I had a random thought pop into my head about what would happen if all of our systems failed. Now, with watching all of these zombie shows and disaster movies, I have seen how it is scripted, but you never truly know how people will react if something like that really happened. Although in some of these scenarios, all of our power and water are working just fine, but what if it didn’t?  What if we did not have all of the things that make life easy for us at our finger tips? Then I thought what would be one of the most important places to hit up before everything was looted and I will say that a book store would have to rank right up there.

With everyone changing their reading habits over the past couple of years to digital books rather than the old-fashioned ones, I have a fear that they may not be prepared at all. When they are no longer able to access the internet to find out how to make a potato light bulb or build a generator that runs off their hardly ever used bike, what will they be able to do? Not much. That is why I think that a book store would be the perfect place to hit up first when the world is seeming to come to an end. With plenty of How To books on the shelves, it may be the only way to keep civilization from coming to a complete end. Being able to create your own candles might be helpful for some people, while figuring out how to make gun powder would be the essentials for others.

Then there are all the people who depend on electronics for everything, well guess what, if you are able to build a generator, you would only be able to have these run for a short amount of time. I know that I would not be able to survive without my music, but what would I do when my iPod finally died? Even with the original CD’s, it would not be much better without a way to get power to a CD player and that is something that I would have to have on the top of my list. Then you would need your distractions from what is happening with the outside world, a good book might be able to take the place of a movie. Even though I love watching movies, I can get lost in the words on a page for hours at a time and sometimes that makes me feel even better.  

I can come clean about this, I have a huge problem when it comes to books, I have too many, but I do not feel bad about that. My collection varies from history, horror, science fiction, and some classics that will never get old. Over 90% of my books are also in print form so I will not run into any problems when the lights go out for good, I will just need a candle. Thinking back when I started to buy these books, I never thought about the end of the world, I just liked having them in my hands while reading them, but now while writing this, I think I do have the fear that something could happen, even to the internet that could limit what we are able to view and/or read. With books in hand, I am pretty sure I will be okay, unless of course Fahrenheit 451 takes place and someone comes and burns all of my literature.  

Let’s get back on topic though and a real fear would be something happening to the internet that will deny us all of the enjoyment that it has brought. Since most of our electronics are tied on to this system in one way or another, it might make it impossible to find the information we will need to survive. Being able to raid a book store and pull the How-To books might be the only way that we could survive this kind of travesty, at least in my thinking. I have a bunch of useless knowledge about how to do things in the woods, but for the life of me, I will never remember what berries I can eat and which ones will make me see strange things. Just a random thought from mind of Scotty and I hope that everyone has a good book to curl up with since you never know what life will throw at you.

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