[ WP ] Its been 4 days since the biggest solar flare in history took out the power grid . A well educated homeless man smiles as he sits watching the city burn in the valley below . Why is he smiling ?

It was all over the news, the flashing and sparking of power lines and generators, except of course now that the news was now being thrown into the streets by men hanging from the backs of garbage trucks, “ all over ” was about 5 pages. It was funny how prepared everyone seemed. Of course the first day was filled with anger and confusion. People rushed the streets and demanded answers, compensations. But once they realized that nothing would be given except the stark truth, that there would be no flip of the switch to turn back on the lights, they all quickly went about the business of preparing. They rationed water, put out fires and set up lines of communications. The second day was worse. After people had spent a night in the cold dark, they looked around themselves at the incredible destruction with new perspective. It seemed as though everyone wept that day. I think that they saw the screens and motors and chips that permeated everything in their lives as an expression of human ingenuity, a silicon Shepard which would lead them to lives carried out in end game, free from the agony and oppression of corrupt governments, unpredictable economies, famine and war. They cried in abnegation for the lost years of study, the waste of their humanly inheritance. 
 
 Nay, I say. 
 
 What I saw in the streets of the city was more akin to the throes of a drunkard denied his drink. If the whole of humanity could be summed by the people in the fallen metropolis below me, and if they could be represented by a single man, then I saw him beat his fists against the ground, licking the dirt in vain to recover his poisonous indulgences. 
 
 They didn ’ t know it yet, but they were weeping as a newborn weeps, out of confusion and powerlessness, unable to feed themselves without help, to protect themselves from their harsh environs. Soon they would realize that the scales of economy that sustained them previously had subsided, and a great exodus would soon occur. It would begin with those that had lived on the outskirts their whole lives, their comparatively rough lifestyles lowering the bar to entry into the countryside. Ironically they would be the pioneers of the future, leaders of the vagrants. But it would not be a gruesome tale of starvation for them. Men had knowledge this time, and with it they would rebuild. They would take their libraries upon their backs like the household gods of troy, and use the knowledge as hammer and nail. All would work hard, and honestly, for they would be working for the food to put in their mouths, the clothes to put on their backs, and their neighbors beside them. 
 
 The man looked down at the city burning in the growing light of the sun. As its radiance slid down the mountainside, he could see men hiking up towards him, backs laden with supplies and gear, their families in tow and confident. He smiled, and went to greet them. 

