As long as I've been alive, speculating about the end of civilization (and how to handle it) has been a favorite pastime for geeks. Books like David Brin's The Postman, Jerry Purnelle's Lucifer's Hammer, movies like Mad Max, The Road Warrior, Twelve Monkeys, and others all paint grim pictures of a post-collapse society. There's an interesting sub-genre of zombie survival planning, but it's really just one slice of the end-of-the-world pie.

The scenarios all differ -- nuclear war, giant asteroid strike, bioengineered virus, etc. The key, though, is a breakdown of the basic structures we take for granted in civilization and a mad scramble for survival by all the latte-drinking television-watching car-commuting folks that inhabit the first world. This morning, #plastic was buzzing with plans for farming and fortification based on recent news that China is decoupling its currency from the US dollar. That's an ill omen because of our debt dependency on China, and scenario-watchers cite that as the first pebble inthe economic collapse avalanche.

That's not the only plausible trigger event, though -- if there's one thing to love about the twenty-first century, it's the wide variety of doomsdasy scenarios available for modern civilization. No longer dependent on Cold War nuclear exchanges for our fear, we can turn to the collapse of peak oil, exotic mutating viruses, ecological disaster, and good old-fashioned economic implosion.

Almost all of the scenarios, though, boil down to a couple of key points: people will need to know how to grow food, defend their land and food from raiders, and adjust to life without lattes, ESPN, or commuting. The details vary depending onthe particulars of the collapse scenario, but the above three points appear in almost every one.

Being the geek that I am, of course, I'll take the next few days to outlin the scenerios that friends and I have brainstormed about. It should be a boatload of monkey-chuckles.