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Let's not get carried away here guys...
Firstly I wouldn't say I've developed any premise for my story as yet, I'm testing hypotheses with you guys right at the minute. All the things I have suggested here are merely possibilities, hypotheticals and for the sake of argument scenarios. Good, solid criticism and input here has already made me reexamine a great many issues, so thanks all for that.
Also while it may seem that I am ignoring or minimising rock solid information about firearms and all the rest of it, this is simply not the case, I'm not just thinking about weapons and zombies, this is a small, albeit significant factor in what I am trying to do.
As soon as you delve deeply into the subject, it becomes quite clear that it is entirely possible, as we have already done so in this thread, to argue entirely without appreciating the other persons point of view. The sheer immensity of factors which need to be considered means that the possibilities are practically endless.
I'm thinking about who's making the clothes?
Out of what?
Where are they living?
Do they trade?
What do they trade?
How do they trade?
Who has the power?
What kind of proto-states would arise?
Will literacy continue?
What kind of zombies?
What is the ecological effects of a zombie apocalypse?
Do the zombies procreate?
What do they eat?
What eats them?
Where's the power sources?
What kind of power would people harness?
Where would you situate your town?
What would the defenses look like?
Made of what?
Where would these materials come from?
Who would get them?
How would they move them?
What kind of cultural cohesion, if any, would arise?
Communication over long distances?
Would post-Enlightenment experimental scientific enquiry paradigms continue?
If so, how would this influence material growth?
What's the availability of manufactured goods?
And so on. The list could be extended indefinitely to take more and more accuracy into account. Then there's manifold layers of interrelationships between each of these factors, and moreover a whole bunch of entirely impossible factors to accurately calculate. Karl Popper, and I agree wholeheartedly with him, would say that it is not only pragmatically, but logically impossible. So, I can't be accurate, and I can't even begin to approach the knowledge required to synthesise a coherent theory. My premise is necessarily flawed, as is any that has been posited on this entire thread, nobody can accurately predict what would happen, we can only hypothesise, and any hypothesis will necessarily ignore gigantic interelated issues. It's just too complex to be accurate, and anything that is suggested can eventually be argued against on premises which are predicated on different arrangements or emphases on different, or slightly altered factors.
Change one single factor and repercussions ripple outward and create exponential complexities.
1. Zombies die.
2. Zombies die but rise again a short time later.
What I am doing in this thread is piecemeal social engineering, I'm trying to establish the material, temporal and systemic prerequisites for guns and ammo to continue to be used widely. Simple changes to basic factors like that above will entirely alter the significance of these factors. If I can think up a scenario in which these necessities are eliminated, or irrelevent, or lost over time, which, given the massive leeway afforded to me by the essential ambiguities of future worlds, then this is the scenario I will use. None of us will come to the same conclusion and fashion identical apocalyptic worlds, they would all be hugely different, and could be argued for with equal vehemence and passion. I'm not trying to create the most realistic world, it's really just a matter of making the history of my world coherent with its current state.
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