Where did I get the idea to write my novel, you may ask? Quite simply, it started out as a thought experiment—a Gedankenefahrung, as my ancestors across the Atlantic would have called it.
The thought experiment was very basic—if I ended up with advance notice of a cataclysm that would disrupt human civilization, who would I like to have with me? I’m not talking individual people, like Chris Kyle or John McClane. The question I posed to myself asked what types of people—what skills—I would want represented.
Sure, everyone would want a bunch of grade-A ass kickers with them when the manure hits the fan. You hook Chris Kyle up with his McMillan TAC-338 and a few boxes of .338-caliber Lapua Magnum rounds, and you’ve increased your odds of dying in bed of old age.
But I’m going to guess that Chris didn’t know squat about growing tomatoes or canning them for winter. Bullets are great for self-defense, and for barter if the dollar becomes worthless, but you can’t eat them.
Your ass kickers need to eat. That means you’ll need someone who can grow and preserve food. When John McClane cuts up his feet on the broken glass of Nakatomi Plaza, you’re going to need a doctor or a medic to bandage him up and keep his wounds from getting infected. Getting access to real-time intelligence so that Chris and John have advance notice of the zombie mutant bikers coming will require a communications expert, which after a collapse means a ham radio operator.
On and on this thought exercise went, until I ended up with an eclectic list of about a dozen people, including a preacher (you gotta look after people’s minds as well as their bodies) and a teacher (to help keep the world ten generations down the road from becoming Ayn Rand’s Anthem).
Anyway, to wrap up this post, a voice in my head told me as I stared at this silly list that I compiled for no good reason that it would make for that novel I had always wanted to write. And here we are.
In future posts, I’ll probably go down this list of people one by one, and give you a taste of the characters in my book and what they all bring to the table.