At the dawn of the twenty-first century, most people in Britain
assumed that life would continue much as it had done for the previous
few decades. People would continue to get richer, live longer, and buy
fancier electronic gadgets. They would continue to drive cars, work in
offices, earn money, and buy their food in supermarkets. Although this
way of life was only a few decades old, it seemed as timeless and
permanent as the sun and the moon.
A few sceptical voices warned that this sense of permanence was an
illusion, that infinite economic growth on a finite planet was
impossible, that global warming and the looming energy crisis would
soon put an end to the consumer-friendly economy. But few people took
any notice. Academics discussed the possibility of economic collapse in
comfortably upholstered leather armchairs, and politicians commissioned
lengthy reports recommending policies that they had no intention of
implementing. And the vast mass of ordinary people went on driving
cars, working in offices, earning money, and buying their food in
supermarkets.
When the predictions of the sceptics came true, and the economy
started creaking, there was no announcement on the evening news, no
billboards proclaiming economic collapse. It was much more banal than
that. The first signs of impending doom were no more spectacular than
inflation and unemployment. It was the price of energy that began to
shoot up first. Electricity and gas got more and more expensive, and an
ever larger slice of the household budget went on cooking and heating,
leaving less for cable TV, fancy clothes and holidays abroad – all of
which came increasingly to be seen as luxuries. Petrol doubled in price
too, a hard blow to a nation that had become accustomed to driving long
distances to work and shopping in out of town superstores. Since the
food in those superstores was also transported long distances, often by
lorry, the rising price of fuel also pushed up the price of food.
Everyone began to feel a lot poorer.
The consequent drop in demand for consumer goods put a lot of shops
and companies out of business, and unemployment surged further. Soup
kitchens reappeared in most cities, and the number of homeless people
rose dramatically as more and more families found they couldn't pay
their mortgages any more and their houses were re-possessed.
The news from abroad was increasingly bleak too, as high fuel and
energy prices hit the poorer countries even harder than the wealthier
ones like Britain. Hardly a day passed without some new outbreak of
civil violence in Africa, the Middle East or Asia – riots in some
places, insurgency and guerrilla warfare in others. Vast numbers of
beleaguered civilians fled these troubles, and the throngs of migrants
were swelled by those who simply failed to find work at home. Some of
the migrants blamed the West for their problems, and were willing
recruits to the expanding ranks of terrorist groups, whose multiplying
plots overwhelmed the already overburdened security services. The
response, in Britain as elsewhere, was predictable; more surveillance,
further restrictions on civil liberties, and tighter border controls.
The beefed-up security budget strained the public purse, which had
already been weakened by falling tax revenue as fewer people were in
work. Public services were slashed, and all sorts of infrastructure,
from roads to sewage plants, was no longer properly maintained. Then
the power cuts began. They started as an occasional annoyance, but it
wasn't long before the electricity companies were having to schedule
them so that people could at least plan for the current being switched
off, and turn on their emergency generators, sales of which boomed, as
did sales of solar panels and small wind turbines – at least, among
those who could still afford such things.
Those who couldn't just used candles, and sat around talking. All of
their previous evening activities had depended on electricity, so at
first people were at a loss to know how to entertain themselves without
it, but a few did eventually begin to rediscover the lost art of
conversation, or taught themselves how to play the acoustic guitar. But
the loss of light was in many cases accompanied by the loss of heat, as
houses with electric radiators were hit by a double whammy. Those with
gas central heating looked on smugly at first – until disruptions in
the supply of gas from Russia put them in the same boat. People
complained loudly to begin with, and then shut up and put on thick
sweaters. Whole families took to huddling together in one bed at night
just to keep warm, under piles of duvets and blankets. Many older
people succumbed to hypothermia.
Cold showers were harder to adapt to, and many people preferred to
stay dirty for longer. They had to wash their clothes by hand too, as
washing machines were not very effective without hot water, and used
too much electricity anyway. People became much smellier, and head lice
began to spread rapidly. Duvets became infested with bedbugs, and the
health system began to creak under the weight of so many cases of
pneumonia. As rubbish collection became increasingly infrequent,
rotting food and other waste began to pile up at street corners, and
soon there were outbreaks of typhoid and cholera in London and
Manchester.
And still most people failed to see that they were living through
the beginnings of a catastrophe. Every day on the radio an array of
experts could be heard claiming that a return to prosperity was just
around the corner, and suggesting policy initiatives that would turn
the economy around. More ominously, increasing air-time was given over
to the leaders of extremist movements, political and religious, who
took advantage of the growing fear and despair to promote their gospels
of hate.
Then came hurricane Gina. When it hit New York, on 30 September
2012, it did much more than make a lot of people and companies
homeless. The insurance market was overwhelmed by the claims, and the
resulting financial panic spread from one stock market to another like
a forest fire. The dollar lost half its value in one day. The Chinese
sold their dollar reserves, causing the dollar to collapse still
further. All major currencies went into free fall. Inflation spiraled
out of control. Soon, money was hardly worth having at all.
Suddenly, most businesses were no longer viable. All the big
supermarkets virtually shut down overnight. Panic buying ensued, and
attempts by the government to impose rationing failed dismally. Within
a day, there was nothing left on the supermarket shelves. Looters began
raiding the remaining shops that still had food, and the army was
deployed in all the major cities. But the soldiers were ill-prepared
for keeping martial law in their own country, and the trickle of
desertions soon became a flood. Likewise, most police officers
preferred to stay at home to protect their own families than face the
angry mobs rampaging through the city streets.
Huge numbers of people began to flee the cities – mostly on foot, as
the scarcity of petrol made driving a rarity. Most of the refugees did
not get very far. Unaccustomed to sleeping outdoors or even camping,
the cold winter weather put paid to thousands. Those who survived the
frosty nights grew weaker to hunger and disease.
All that seems a long time ago now. Today, in the year 2025, things
have calmed down a lot. There are still some people living the cities,
but on the whole they aren't nice places to be. The only way to make a
reasonable living there now is by prostitution, drug-dealing, or
protection rackets. Those who aren't involved in these lucrative trades
struggle to make ends meet. They pull the copper out of the walls and
rip out sinks and pipework to swap for food on street corners. They
would love to move out to the country, but they know it's too late for
that now – those who already live there don't look kindly on incomers.
In fact, they have a nasty habit of killing them.
Back in the first decade of the twenty-first century, before the
crash, some of few people who saw the writing on the wall got together
and started preparing for the challenging times ahead. They set up
self-sufficient communities in rural areas far enough away from the
major cities to avoid the first wave of refugees. They taught
themselves many old crafts that had been widespread before the
industrial revolution, but which had largely died out in the twentieth
century, such as weaving and smelting. They also learned to defend
themselves against attacks by hostile strangers. And they began to
store up cultural artifacts – books, music, works of art – to preserve
for posterity, like secular equivalents of the European monasteries
which preserved the great books of classical antiquity throughout the
Dark Ages, and so enabled future generations to enjoy these ancient
treasures.
One of those communities was called the utopia experiment. Nowadays, those of us who live here, simply call it utopia. It's not quite as ironic a name as it might first appear. For what we've discovered is that, in many ways, things are better now than they were before the crash – at least, it is for those of us who are lucky enough to live out here in the countryside. The air is much cleaner for one thing, and the wildlife has made a comeback. People have a lot more time to spend with their children, and neighbours are always helping each other out. And all that walking around and manual labor means that people are a lot fitter than they used to be. You certainly don't see any fat people any more. We like to think that the crash gave some people a second chance, an opportunity to escape from the awful state we'd got ourselves into in the late twentieth century.