Milius2, you just banged the nail on the thumb! I've been procrastinating over whether to post on this thread for a couple of days, asking if I really want to do it to myself!
A most fascinating topic and discussion, and far from one solely of interest to "Doomsday Preppers", but rather to all who suffer frustration at living in a socoi-economic climate where people feel they're getting ripped off every way they turn, and as for the idea of Kaczinski as some sort of anti-techno-establishment hero... now he'd be laughing his head off at the knowledge that he'd fooled someone into believing he was acting out of a sense of outrage at science and technology's usurpation of human morality. Has it ocurred to you that he may well represent one of its ultimate consumers?
I'd love to be transported back in time to prehistoric Britain... provided I was in a protective bubble where I could observe unseen. An unexpected vision is beginning to emerge of our idealistic Neolithic and Bronze Age which would bring a smile of satisfaction to the lips of any Victorian Antiquarian, due to recent discoveries indicating that human existence in prehistoric Europe was indeed closer to the savage Victorian model of prehistory than to the Utopian one some have come to envision.
A wee pal and I had a helluva fright when ferreting as boys when my pal put his hand into a rabbit burrow to try to coax his ferret out, and pulled out a human skull instead. On excavation, the remains were found to be face down and it was said to be a Bronze Age burial and, being situated on a still existent ancient crossroad, was either sacrificial, an outcast or a victim of murder.
Ötzi [the Iceman found in Ötztal in 1991] had the blood of three, possibly four other humans on his clothing and seems to have experienced an arduous and protracted pursuit and an extremely violent death. He had arthritis, Lyme disease, heart disease, soot coated lungs, and analysis of a suspected tumour is scheduled for his next day-trip from the freezer compartment he now calls home. Having experienced fully committed farming culture for only about 1,000 years, you'd expect he might be lactose and possibly wheat intolerant, and he was.
He was probably less than fifty years old and it doesn't sound like he had very long to go anyway!
What some might call a complete absence of evidence I'm prepared to argue is compelling evidence for a human pre-history of extreme brutality. To a mountaineer, Ötztal is an obvious and classical line of least resistance connecting Lago da Garda and Merano to the valleys of Austria and onto Germany, and highly likely to have been used as such for millenia. To argue that the one and only, the most ancient well preserved human remains ever discovered in Europe, which at 5,400 Before Present is older than the Great Pyramids, having died in extremely violent circumstances has no significance just beggars belief, and arguably signifies probability if not normality.
If we look at what are undoubtedly sacrificial human remains found in peat deposits in Britain, Ireland, Scandanavia and Germany, combined with recent archaeological evidence which is building an ever expanding picture of a brutal Neolithic, and a Bronze Age that may have been even moreso, any illusions of the peaceful idyll will quickly evaporate and you'll be forced to admit that however tough you think you are, none of us 'strangers' would last ten minutes! Thanks, but no thanks!
There's a lot wrong with the modern world, but we humans developed as such because of our very ability to adapt and instigate change, so do you really want to return to an environment that's trying to kill us off? I for one prefer to hold onto my daydreams whilst taking full advantage of the all the benefits modern science can bring me.
Now where's that paracetamol!
Cheers.
